Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 309

NIKI KARAPANAGIOTI

Oxford High School GDST

In Greek mythology, the Amazons were a tribe of women warriors. Herodotus dwells on them for several chapters (4.110–16) when the SAUROMATIANS—whose women maintain an Amazonian way of life—enter his narrative as neighbors of the SCYTHIANS. The Amazons fought the Greeks at the THERMODON RIVER in CAPPADOCIA. The Greeks captured them alive and put them on board ship, where the Amazons massacred the crew and escaped (4.110.1). Pausanias refers to the battle at Thermodon, as Herodotus does, but reports that the women subsequently tried to invade Attica and were defeated (Paus. 1.2; see also Hellanicus BNJ 4 F166; Herodorus BNJ 31 F25a; Diod. Sic. 4.28 and Plut. Thes. 26–28). Herodotus reveals awareness of this legend: before the battle of PLATAEA, the Athenians, speaking of their glorious past and previous military records, cite their triumph over the Amazons in Attica (9.27.4). Herodotus’ version in Book 4 is one of the very few Greek accounts where the Amazons survive a confrontation with the Greeks (Hazewindus 2004, 211). PINDAR, for example, mentions that Bellerophon, HERACLES, TELAMON, Iolaus, and THESEUS were victorious in all their encounters against the Amazons (Pind. Ol. 8.46–48, 13.87–131; Nem. 3.34–39; F172 S‐M); centuries later, Quintus Smyrnaeus refers to the death of Penthesileia, the Amazonian queen, by the hand of Achilles (1.18–19, 718–21).

In the Histories, after massacring the Greeks, the Amazons invade SCYTHIA and mate with Scythian young men, with whom they create the nation of the Sauromatians (4.110.2–116.1). Sauromatian women keep the Amazonian warrior features: they go HUNTING together with their husbands or alone, they go to war, and none of them is married until she has killed at least one enemy; finally, they wear the same DRESS as men (4.116–17). However, Herodotus gives no sign that among the Sauromatians women have more authority than men or that men fear women (Dewald 1981, 102–3; Hazewindus 2004, 213–14). On the contrary, it is clearly mentioned (4.119.1) that the Sauromatians have a king (contrast Diod. Sic. 3.52–53., Ps.‐Scylax 70, and Ephorus BNJ 70 F160 where the nation of the Sauromatians is mentioned as gynaikokratoumenon, “ruled by women”). Moreover, contrary to the Hippocratic corpus and other sources, Herodotus does not refer to monstrous Amazonian and Sauromatian customs, such as the cauterization of the women’s breast so that they can use their weapons better or the dislocation of the joints of the male CHILDREN at birth in order to make them lame, to prevent the males from conspiring against the females (Hippoc. Aer. 17.1–18, Art. 53.1–10; Hellanicus BNJ 4 F107 and Diod. Sic. 2.45).

SEE ALSO: Athens; Ethnography; Gender; Medical Writers; Myth; Oeorpata; Sex; Tanais; Women in the Histories