Amazons

The Amazons were a society of female warriors reputed to be the daughters of the war god, Ares.

The Amazons lived at the fringe of the civilized world beyond the shores of the Euxine (Black Sea) in the land of Skythia (Scythia).

The Greek word, Amazon, comes from the combination of A (meaning Without) and Mazos (meaning Right Breast); the Amazons were said to have cut off their right breast so that it would not interfere with their use of the bow in battle.

The historian, Herodotus (Histories, book 4, chapter 110), said that the Skythians called the Amazons oeorpata which is the equivalent of Man Killers (orer being the Skythian word for Man and pata for Kill).

Early artwork representing the Amazons showed them as fierce warriors but later renderings showed them as comely women dressed in Persian garb.

There are several accounts of Greek heroes encountering the Amazons:

1. The Ninth Labor of Herakles (Heracles) involved retrieving the belt of the Amazon queen, Hippolyte; the belt that Herakles was supposed to retrieve was not magical or valuable but simply an emblem of dominance, i.e. if Herakles could take the belt, then the Amazons were inferior to the Greeks; the Amazon queen either voluntarily gave the belt to Herakles or he took it by force, regardless Herakles was the master of the situation;
2. When Theseus, king of Athens, encountered the Amazons, he married their queen, Antiope; the subjects of Antiope declared an unsuccessful war on the Athenians;
3. Bellerophontes was sent to Lykia (Lycia) by the jealous king of Argos, Proetus, so that he could be killed; Bellerophontes was given a series of suicidal tasks and one of them was to go to the land of the Amazons and slaughter them; true to his heroic nature, Bellerophontes survived and the Amazons suffered under his sword; and
4. During the siege of the city of Troy, Helen and king Priam had a conversation in which Priam told of the time when he had fought with the Amazons; he said that they were the equal of men and the only reason the Greek men won the battle was because they outnumbered the Amazon women.

The legendary ferocity and uniqueness of the Amazons endures into our modern age; when the Spanish conquistadors were exploring South America (circa 1500 CE) they came across a tribe of women warriors and named the river where the warrior women lived the Amazon.

Iliad, book 3, lines 181-190; book 6, line 186