So when Heracles is sent to acquire Hippolyta’s belt, this is the object he is looking for. There is assuredly a sexual subtext to a man – and particularly a man so renowned for his multiple, complex and sometimes violent personal relationships – seeking to remove a particular item of clothing from a woman, particularly something worn around the waist or hips. But trying to convey that by translating the word zōstēr as something other than ‘war belt’ costs far more than it is worth; Hippolyta deserves better. Besides, there is often a sexual, indeed a sexually aggressive subtext in Heracles’ adventures: we would do well to remember that Heracles is performing his labours only as a penance for the murder of his wife and children during temporary insanity （this part of his story was wisely omitted from the Disney animated film Hercules, which is by far my favourite cinematic adaptation of any Greek myth, omissions notwithstanding）。
Heracles arrives at the Amazons’ home, which is placed most frequently at Themiscyra, on the southern coast of the Black Sea, although they are occasionally placed in Libya. His reception is, perhaps, surprising. The warrior women do not attack him. Instead, he is received by Hippolyta and her women in a scene we can see on a fourth-century BCE pottery fragment held by the Metropolitan Museum.14 A somewhat uncomfortable Heracles stands, making his case to Hippolyta: his raised eyebrows and wide eyes give him an anxious expression. Amazons surround him, armed with axes, so perhaps this is what is alarming him. Hippolyta sits serenely in front of her guest. She is wearing a belt （it looks like leather studded with metal discs）。 Perhaps this is the very one he has come to claim.
We can read a more detailed version of this story in Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca. Eurystheus orders Heracles to bring back Hippolyta’s belt for his daughter, Admete. We glean some extra information about Hippolyta here: she rules over the Amazons, a people skilled in war, who live around the River Thermodon.15 Pseudo-Apollodorus describes their lives as andrian – ‘manly’。 He then repeats one of the stranger myths to appear in the Amazon story: that they ironed one breast to aid the successful throwing of spears or firing of arrows （sometimes it is more dramatic still: surgical removal）。 This is not a practice with which the Amazons are associated earlier in literature （Pseudo-Apollodorus is writing in either the first or second century CE）， or in visual representations. None of the vase paintings mentioned above shows single-breasted Amazons, and none of the Amazons seems to be struggling to cope with her weapon. Indeed, vase paintings often show another female figure – the goddess Artemis, who was renowned for her hunting skills – with a bow and arrow, and she holds the bow at arm’s length from her torso. Even the most pneumatic breasts would be no hindrance.16
So where does the mysterious breast-removal idea come from? The Greeks were enormous fans of what we might call folk-etymology, but a less generous person might describe as nonsense. They loved to find meanings in names through the words which appeared to lurk within them （the obsession that some fifth-century BCE intellectuals had with doing this is mocked magnificently by the comedian Aristophanes in his play The Clouds）。 ‘Amazon’ was believed to derive from the negating prefix ‘a-’ and the word mastos, meaning ‘breast’ （we obviously derive our word ‘mastitis’ from this Greek word）。 But the name ‘Amazon’ wasn’t Greek: there are several suggestions as to which language it may have been borrowed from, but we don’t know its origin for sure. The one thing we do know is that it was a loan-word for the Greeks, a word taken from another language. Attempts to impose Greek meaning onto it were a diversion for intellectuals with too much free time, but nothing more meaningful than that.
No explanation is offered for why Admete might want Hippolyta’s war belt, only that she has set her heart on it. Perhaps she has a yearning for something which Pseudo-Apollodorus describes as being a gift from Ares, and a symbol of Hippolyta’s supremacy over all the Amazons; perhaps she wishes she too could wear brightly coloured leggings and swing a war axe. So Heracles sets out in his ship, kills a large number of men in assorted fracas en route, and arrives at the harbour of Themiscyra. Considering the reputation for slaughter which must accompany Heracles, Hippolyta behaves in an extraordinarily generous manner. She approaches him, not armed to the teeth and ready to kill this dangerous adventurer, but peacefully, to ask why he has come.
When he explains that he wants her belt, she doesn’t argue, or barter. She simply promises to give it to him. This is scarcely the behaviour of the bellicose barbarian women we have been led to expect. Why should Hippolyta give away her prized belt to a man she has never met before, who only wants it as a trinket or status symbol for a girl she has never met at all? The belt was a present from Ares, after all, and as we know from other stories, gifts from gods are enormously valuable to heroes: Perseus required a whole set of them to take on Medusa. And yet Hippolyta is willing to hand over her father’s belt without any argument. Later authors would suggest an instant attraction formed between the two heroes, which serves to explain Hippolyta’s kindness. The notion that this barbarian woman might simply be generous with her fighting equipment is obviously too strange to stand: there must be romance in the air. But generosity at first sight is all we see in the scene on the Metropolitan Museum pottery fragment, which is four or five hundred years older than this written account.