Amazons

The Amazons came ashore in Scythian territory after escaping from the Athenians. They travelled inland on foot and found a herd of horses, some semiwild and some trained for riding. They seized the animals and rode away in search of loot, returning to the mounted life they knew. Herodotus records this account.

The Scythians saw the strangers and attacked them, taking the Amazons for beardless boys because of their clothing and speech. They killed some of them. When they examined the bodies, they discovered that the dead were women. The Scythians then sent young men to follow the Amazons and remain near their camps instead of fighting them.

The young Scythians avoided open battle. The Amazons gradually realised that the newcomers were men, and the two groups formed relationships. The Amazons refused to settle among the Scythian women, since they were accustomed to riding, hunting, using weapons, and living by their own customs. They told the young men to return to their fathers and ask for a separate land where the two groups could live together.

The young men agreed. They returned to the Scythians, took their possessions, and travelled east with the Amazons beyond the Tanais, also called the Don. There the two groups settled together. Their children became the Sauromatians, or Sarmatians, and the Amazons became the mothers of that people. Their daughters retained the practices associated with the Amazons. They rode, shot arrows, threw javelins, and fought their enemies. They did not marry until they had killed three enemies and completed the required sacred rites. After marriage, a woman no longer rode unless a general expedition required it.

Oreithyia led a large Amazon force across the ice of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. She crossed the Danube, then passed through Thrace, Thessaly, and Boeotia. The Amazons had come to rescue Antiope, whom Theseus had abducted to Athens. Some accounts name Oreithyia as Antiope’s sister, seeking vengeance for her capture. Others confuse her with Hippolyte, the Amazon whose girdle Heracles won.

Before reaching Athens, Oreithyia sent a detachment into Laconia. This was meant to discourage the Peloponnesians from sending help to Theseus through the Isthmus. At Athens, the main force encamped on the Areiopagus and sacrificed to Ares. Some said that this sacrifice gave the hill its name. The Athenian army was already assembled, but neither side began the attack at once. Theseus acted after receiving advice from an oracle.

The fighting then continued for a long time. The Athenian left wing charged from the Palladium, Mount Ardettus, and the Lyceum. It drove back the Amazon right wing to its camp and inflicted heavy losses. The Amazons were eventually defeated. Some accounts say that they offered peace only after four months of hard fighting. The armistice was sworn near the sanctuary of Theseus. An Amazonian sacrifice held on the eve of his festival preserved its memory.

Other accounts say that Antiope fought beside Theseus until Molpadia shot her dead. Theseus killed Molpadia in return. Oreithyia escaped to Megara with a few followers and died there in grief. The surviving Amazons left Attica, and some were said to have settled in Scythia. Wounded Amazons found on the battlefield were sent to Chalcis for treatment. This was said to be the first time that the Athenians had repulsed foreign invaders.

The Amazons and the Gargareans made sacrifices together before meeting for two months. Strabo records that the women and men had sexual relations after dark, with partners chosen from those present. The Amazons then returned to their own land, while the Gargareans went back to theirs.

Many of the Amazon women were pregnant when they left. Strabo says that daughters born from these unions remained with the Amazons and were raised by them. Sons were taken to the Gargareans, who adopted and raised them, although their individual paternity was uncertain. The children were therefore divided between the two communities, while the Amazons kept their separate female kingdom.

Strabo also gives an account that places the meetings at a marketplace on the River Halys in western Pontus. Whenever the Amazons needed children, they went there and had intercourse with men. He reports that as many as seventy tribes from Sarmatia and the Caucasus gathered each year at Dioscurias on the coast of Colchis for trade and social contact. The Gargareans belonged to this wider setting, although it is not clear whether they were understood as an entirely male tribe. In one report, they had originally lived with the Amazons in Pontus.