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Aeschylus calls them "The warring Amazons, men-haters." They were a nation of women, all warriors.
They were supposed to live around the Caucasus and their chief city was Themiscyra.
Curoiously enough, they inspired artists to make statues and pictures of them far more than poets to write of them.
They invaded Lycia and were repulsed by Bellerophon. They invaded Phyrgia when Priam was young,
and Attica when Theseus was King. He had carried off their Queen and they tried to rescue her,
but Theseus defeated them. In the Trojan War they fought the Greeks under their Queen Penthesilea,
according to the story not in the Iliad, told by Pausanias. He says that she was killed by Achilles,
who mourned for her as she lay dead, so young and so beautiful. (from Mythology by Edith Hamilton)

A race of warrior women. Their kingdom was in the north on the boundaries of the civilized world.
They conducted their own government; they were ruled by a queen;
they could not stand the presence of men except as servants;
at certain times they had intercouse with strangers to preserve their race,
keeping only the baby girls. They removed one of the breasts of the infant girls
so that they should be able to shoot with the bow
or to handle a spear, and it was from this custom that the
Greeks often derived their name from having no breast.

Bellerophon fought the Amazons at the command of Iobates.
Heracles received the mission of taking the girldle of Hippolyta,
the queen of the Amazons. Hippolyta would have been willing to give him the girdle,
but Hera incited the Amazons to mutiny and Heracles was forced to kill Hippolyta.
On this expedition he was accompanied by Theseus, who abducted an Amazon called Antiope.
In revenge the Amazons marched against Athens. They were defeated by the Athenians led by Theseus.
There was also a story that the Amazons had sent a contingent commanded by their queen Penthesilea,
to help Priam. Achilles killed her, though her last look around his love for her.

The goddess worshipped above all by the Amazons was Artemis,
whose myths have so much in common with their lifestyle.
They were sometimes regarded as the founders of Ephesus
and the builders of the great Temple of Artemis.
(from Dictionary of Classical Mythology by Pierre Grimal)

Queens & Amazons
(of today)
Stories of the Past