AMAZONS WERE ‘A BUNCH OF GOLDEN-SHIELDED, SILVER-AXED, man-loving, boy-killing women.’1 The fifth-century BCE historian Hellanikos of Lesbos presumably doesn’t intend this list as a compliment, but it certainly makes me want to join them. It’s not the only description of these warrior women that might leave the reader wondering just how much disapproval is vying with desire. If Hellanikos is aiming only to tell us of Amazonian martial prowess and barbarian habits, he surely wouldn’t need to mention the man-loving element, unless loving men is itself a sign of an unnatural, barbarian woman （which it may well be）。 The boy-killing, incidentally, is his explanation for how the tribe of Amazons remains all-female: they must get rid of any male children one way or another. But, as mentioned above, many ancient societies had no problem with killing or exposing what they perceived as weak baby boys （and any kind of baby girls）， so his disapproval is perhaps not quite as pointed as ours would hopefully be, on the subject of selective infanticide.
The Greeks were fascinated by these women: barbarians as opposed to Greeks, who often fought against Greeks. Amazons are the second most popular mythological figures （after Heracles） found on vase paintings.2 More than a thousand Amazons appear on vases, in fact,3 and more than sixty Amazon names are painted onto those vases. So what is it about these women – who exist in a space between masculine and feminine, between civilization and wildness, between real and fantastical – which proved so compelling to ancient writers and, in particular, artists? And how did we lose them? Most people could probably name Heracles, Theseus or Achilles, but the Amazons with which each hero was associated – Hippolyta, Antiope and Penthesilea – have been remembered less well. And when they have been, it has rarely been for a good reason.
We should, though, think about the Amazons as a tribe, or group. Because one of the most important things about these women is their collective nature: they are usually found together. It’s a stark contrast to the winner-takes-all mentality that pervades the male hero ethos in, for example, the Trojan War. Look at Achilles, in the first book of Homer’s Iliad: because he feels his honour has been slighted by Agamemnon, he begs his mother （the sea-nymph, Thetis） to intercede with Zeus and have him aid the Trojan – enemy – cause. The Greek soldiers, who were moments earlier his comrades, are now mere collateral damage in his quest for personal glory. Or Ajax, the Greek hero so tormented by losing Achilles’ armour to Odysseus （the two men offer competing claims after the death of their comrade, and the Greeks decide in Odysseus’ favour） that he attempts a killing spree of his erstwhile friends. Only the intervention of Athene – who confuses Ajax, making him kill livestock while believing he is slaughtering his comrades – prevents him from committing a terrible crime. When Ajax comes to and realizes what he has done, the shame is so great that he takes his own life.
In other words, the heroic mindset for the Greeks who fight at Troy is intrinsically selfish and self-absorbed. There are exceptions （Achilles’ devotion to Patroclus, for example, and Patroclus’ desire to heal their injured comrades）， but the Iliad and Sophocles’ Ajax show us a profoundly individualistic type of hero. And if you want to see what a good leader of men Odysseus is, count how many of the Ithacans with whom he sets sail from Troy make it home alongside him. The answer is: none. Odysseus is a hero because of his own adventures, his own brushes with monsters and mishaps. But he is not a man to stand alongside, unless you have a death wish. Rather, he is a man who can lose a comrade on his travels and not even notice that the poor guy is gone and needs to be buried. Elpenor would lie unburied forever, except his ghost seizes the opportunity of Odysseus’ trip to the Underworld and pitches up to complain about his fate.
Unlike these men, Amazons fight alongside one another. When, in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Fall of Troy,4 Penthesilea decides to fight Achilles in the later part of the Trojan War, twelve Amazons accompany her. Quintus lists all their names. It is the Amazons’ intensely tribal nature which helps keep them alive in battle – Amazons are generally shown fighting alongside one another on the vase paintings and sculptures we have – but this loyalty can also jeopardize their safety. Although vase painters list the names of dozens of Amazons, we tend to come back to the stories of only a couple. Of these, the best-known today is probably Hippolyta. Hippolyta was a queen of the Amazons, and the daughter of Ares, god of war. Not only does Hippolyta inherit her father’s martial skill （the epic poet Apollonius of Rhodes calls her philoptolemoio – ‘war-loving’），5 she also has her celebrated belt from him: Pseudo-Apollodorus calls it Areos zōstēra6 – the belt of Ares. It is this belt which Heracles （his name isn’t Hercules until the Romans get hold of him） seeks in his ninth labour. And which, somewhat irritatingly, translators have tended to describe as Hippolyta’s girdle.