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Page 2 of 4 One of these stories (told by Herodotus) tells of how the Greeks battled the Amazons on the coast of the Black Sea and defeated them at Thermadon (now Terme, Turkey). The Greeks then filled three boats with their Amazonian captives and set sail.These uncontrollable women attacked their captors, threw them overboard and took command of the ship. However, they were not trained sailors so their boat ran aground off the shores of the Black Sea, in the land of the warrior tribe, the Scythians. The Scythians did not take kindly to these intruders and promptly engaged them in battle. At the end of the day, they examined the slain of their enemies and discovered they were women. They were so impressed by their bravery and military skills that they decided to “make love, not war” with the ones remaining. (I am sure,too, that they thought about the great children that would come out of this bonding.) So they sent a group of their best young warriors to court the Amazons. As the story goes, the two groups did intermarry but the Amazons wouldn’t go back to the Scythians’ tribe because they did not feel they could fit in with the other women. So, they insisted that their new husbands claim their inheritance and ride with them northeast deep into the steppes. There they started the next generation of women warriors, the Sauromations or Sauromatae in Greek. Herodotus wrote in his book, Histories:
“Ever since then the women of the Sauromatae have followed their ancient usage; they ride a-hunting with their men or without them; they go to war, and wear the same dress as the men.” He also wrote that “in regard to marriage, it is the custom that no virgin weds till she has slain a man of the enemy; and some of them grow old and die unmarried, because they cannot fulfill the law.” (IV: 110-116)
Another Story, or rather legend, comes from the Twelve Labors of Hercules. In the ninth of these adventures, Hercules is commanded to take the girdle (the Greek symbol of chastity) from the Amazon Queen, Hippolyte. She fights bravely against her assailant and eventually gets killed (or raped, in some versions of this story). Many of her female soldiers died as well. The story goes on to tell of the Amazons’ seeking revenge by invading Attica (in ancient times, east central Greece including Athens) and setting siege to the Acropolis. But, as with most of the accounts and stories of the Amazons in Classical Greek history ( ca. 5th to 3rd century BC), they were unsuccessful.
Always inspiring admiration and contempt, the Amazons filled the literary pages of Greek and later Roman authors, playwrights, philosophers and historians. As the renowned archeologist and expert in Eurasian nomads, Jeannine Davis-Kimball, states in her book, Warrior Women, “Plato praised them for their readiness to fight in defense of their nation and Aeschylus proclaimed them ‘virgins fearless in battle’, though the latter declaration of their chasteness seems to be a minority opinion – most Greek authors stressed the women’s sexual freedom as much as their boldness on the battlefield” and that they “ dallied with the opposite sex with wild abandon once a year to ensure the propagation of more little Amazons.”
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