AMAZONS, a legendary nation of female warriors, said to have lived in Pontus near the shore of the Euxine sea, where they formed an independent kingdom under the government of a queen, the capital being Themiscyra on the banks of the River Thermodon (Herodotus iv. I '0-1'7). From this centre they made numerous warlike excursions—to Scythia, Thrace, the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean, even pene trating to Arabia, Syria and Egypt. Ac cording to one account, they originally came to the Thermodon from the Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azov) . No men were permitted to reside in their country; but once a year, in order to prevent their race from dying out, they visited the Gar gareans, a neighbouring tribe. The male children who were the result of these visits were either put to death or sent back to their fathers; the females were kept and brought up by their mothers, and trained in agricultural pursuits, hunting and the art of war (Strabo xi. p. 503).
The Amazons appear in connection with several Greek legends. They invaded Lycia, but were defeated by Bellerophon (Iliad, vi. i86). They attacked the Phryg ians, who were assisted by Priam, then a young man, though later they took his side against the Greeks under their queen, Penthesileia, who was slain by Achilles (Virgil, Aen. i. 49o). One of the tasks imposed upon Heracles by Eurystheus was to obtain possession of the &irdle of the Amazonian queen, Hippolyte. He was accompanied by his friend Theseus, who carried off the princess Antiope, sister of Hippolyte, an incident which led to a retaliatory invasion of Attica, in which Antiope perished fighting by the side of Theseus. They are heard of in the time of Alexander the Great, and Pompey is said to have found them in the army of Mithridates.
The origin of the story of the Amazons has been the subject of much discussion. While some regard them as a purely mythical people, others assume an historical foundation for them. The deities worshipped by them were Ares (who is consistently as signed to them as a god of war, and as a god of Thracian and generally northern origin) and Artemis, not the usual Greek god dess of that name, but an Asiatic deity in some respects her equivalent. Another theory is that, as the knowledge of geography extended, travellers brought back reports of tribes ruled entirely by women, who carried out the duties which elsewhere were regarded as peculiar to men. Hence arose the belief in the Amazons as a nation of female warriors, organized and governed entirely by women. It has been suggested that the fact of the conquest of the Amazons being assigned to the two famous heroes of Greek mythology, Heracles and Theseus, shows that they were mythical illustrations of the dangers which beset the Greeks on the coasts of Asia Minor; rather, perhaps, it may be intended to represent the conflict between the Greek culture of the colonies on the Euxine and the barbarism of the natives.
In works of art, combats between Amazons and Greeks are placed on the same level as, and often associated with, combats of Greeks and centaurs. Their arms were the bow, spear, axe, a half shield, nearly in the shape of a crescent, called pelta, and in early art a helmet, the model before the Greek mind having apparently been the goddess Athena. In later art they approach the model of Artemis, wearing a thin dress, girt high for speed; while on the later painted vases their dress is often peculiarly Persian—that is, close-fitting trousers and a high cap called the kidaris. The battle between Theseus and the Amazons is a favourite subject on the friezes of temples (e.g., the reliefs from the frieze of the temple of Apollo at Bassae, now in the British Museum), vases and sarcophagus reliefs; at Athens it was represented on the shield of the statue of Athena Parthenos, on wall-paintings in the Theseum and in the Poikile Stoa.
In the i 6th century the Spanish explorer Orellana asserted that he had come into conflict with fighting women in South America on the river Maranon, which was named after them the Amazon (q.v.) or river of the Amazons, although others derive its name from the Indian amassona (boat-destroyer), ap plied to the tidal phenomenon known as the "bore." The exist ence of "Amazons" (in the sense of fighting women) in the army of Dahomey (q.v.) in modern times is certain, but they are said to have died out during the French protectorate.
See H. L. Krause, Die Amazonensage (1893) ; P. Lacour, Les Amazones (19o1) ; articles in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyklopadie and Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie; Grote, Hist. of Greece, pt. i. ch. xi.; L. Whibley, Companion to Greek Studies (1916).