Classics/Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies 127:
Women, Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome
Fall 2009, Macalester College
Professor Beth Severy-Hoven
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Classics/Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies 127: Fall 2009, Macalester College |
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Questions: How did the Athenians use Amazons to think about gender? Citizenship? Athens?
A. Vase Painting
I. Before 480 BCE:
II. After 480 BCE:
Finally, read the full description of and view Mississippi 1977.3.97 (c. 440-430 BCE)
II. Written Texts
A. Stories about Amazons told before the Athenian Democracy was founded:
Homer
Iliad 3. 185-189. Priam relates his previous war experiences to Helen:
"Once before I visited Phrygia of the vineyards...
and I myself, a helper in war, was marshaled among them
on that day when the Amazon women came, men's equals..."
Iliad 6.186 Military exploits of the hero Bellerophontes:
"[The king of Lycia] sent him away with orders to kill the Chimaera
none might approach; a thing of immortal make, not human,
lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle,
and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of fire.
He killed the Chimaera, obeying the portents of the immortals.
Next after this he fought against the glorious Solymoi,
and this he thought was the strongest battle with men that he entered;
but third he slaughtered the Amazons, who fight men in battle."
II. Amazons in Athenian Writings
Herodotus's description of the Amazons (4.110-117; Herodotus was an historian
who lived in Athens in the mid 5th century BCE and wrote about the war between
the Greeks and the Persians):
[110.1] About the Sauromatae, the story is as follows. When the Greeks were at war with the Amazons (whom the Scythians call Oiorpata, a name signifying in our tongue killers of men, for in Scythian a man is "oior" and to kill is "pata"), the story runs that after their victory on the Thermodon they sailed away carrying in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take alive; and out at sea the Amazons attacked the crews and killed them. [2] But they knew nothing about ships, or how to use rudder or sail or oar; and with the men dead, they were at the mercy of waves and winds, until they came to the Cliffs by the Maeetian lake; this place is in the country of the free Scythians. The Amazons landed there, and set out on their journey to the inhabited country, and seizing the first troop of horses they met, they mounted them and raided the Scythian lands. [111.1] The Scythians could not understand the business; for they did not recognize the women's speech or their dress or their nation, but wondered where they had come from, and imagined them to be men all of the same age; and they met the Amazons in battle. The result of the fight was that the Scythians got possession of the dead, and so came to learn that their foes were women. [2] Therefore, after deliberation they resolved by no means to slay them as before, but to send their youngest men to them, of a number corresponding (as they guessed) to the number of the women. They directed these youths to camp near the Amazons and to imitate all that they did; if the women pursued them, not to fight, but to flee; and when the pursuit stopped, to return and camp near them. This was the plan of the Scythians, for they desired that children be born of the women. The young men who were sent did as they were directed. [112.1] When the Amazons perceived that the youths meant them no harm, they let them be; but every day the two camps drew nearer to each other. Now the young men, like the Amazons, had nothing but their arms and their horses, and lived as did the women, by hunting and plunder. [113.1] At midday the Amazons would scatter and go apart from each other singly or in pairs, roaming apart for greater comfort. The Scythians noticed this and did likewise; and as the women wandered alone, a young man laid hold of one of them, and the woman did not resist but let him do his will; [2] and since they did not understand each other's speech and she could not speak to him, she signed with her hand that he should come the next day to the same place and bring another youth with him (showing by signs that there should be two), and she would bring another woman with her. [3] The youth went away and told his comrades; and the next day he came himself with another to the place, where he found the Amazon and another with her awaiting them. When the rest of the young men learned of this, they had intercourse with the rest of the Amazons. [114.1] Presently they joined their camps and lived together, each man having for his wife the woman with whom he had had intercourse at first. Now the men could not learn the women's language, but the women mastered the speech of the men; [2] and when they understood each other, the men said to the Amazons, "We have parents and possessions; therefore, let us no longer live as we do, but return to our people and be with them; and we will still have you, and no others, for our wives." To this the women replied: [3] "We could not live with your women; for we and they do not have the same customs. We shoot the bow and throw the javelin and ride, but have never learned women's work; and your women do none of the things of which we speak, but stay in their wagons and do women's work, and do not go out hunting or anywhere else. [4] So we could never agree with them. If you want to keep us for wives and to have the name of fair men, go to your parents and let them give you the allotted share of their possessions, and after that let us go and live by ourselves." The young men agreed and did this. [115.1] So when they had been given the allotted share of possessions that fell to them, and returned to the Amazons, the women said to them: [2] "We are worried and frightened how we are to live in this country after depriving you of your fathers and doing a lot of harm to your land. [3] Since you propose to have us for wives, do this with us: come, let us leave this country and live across the Tanaás river." [116.1] To this too the youths agreed; and crossing the Tanaás, they went a three days' journey east from the river, and a three days' journey north from lake Maeetis; and when they came to the region in which they now live, they settled there. [2] Ever since then the women of the Sauromatae have followed their ancient ways; they ride out hunting, with their men or without them; they go to war, and dress the same as the men. [117.1] The language of the Sauromatae is Scythian, but not spoken in its ancient purity, since the Amazons never learned it correctly. In regard to marriage, it is the custom that no maiden weds until she has killed a man of the enemy; and some of them grow old and die unmarried, because they cannot fulfill the law.
From a speech attributed by Herodotus (9.27.1-5) to an Athenian commander before the battle of the Greeks against the Persians in 480 BCE. He is presenting the case that the Athenians deserve leadership of the left wing of the Greek forces:
"It is incumbent upon us to show you the origin of our national heritage, by which we claim on past bravery to be before the Arcadians. The sons of Heracles, whose leader the Tegeans say they killed at the isthmus, we alone received afer they were driven out by all Greeks to whom they came in flight from enslavement under the Mycenaeans. We humbled Eurystheus' pride, defeating in battle those who controlled the Peloponnesus at that time. We made an expedition against the Cadmeans of Thebes, where we buried the bodies of those Argives who attacked the city with Polynices and, perishing there, were left unburied. We have the successful exploit against the Amazons from the Thermodon River who once invaded Attica. In the Trojan War we were inferior to none....Let this suffice for past exploits. If we had performed no other success-even though ours are as numerous as yours and others of the Greeks-from that one in Marathon we would be worthy of having this honor and others besides. We alone of the Greeks, fighting the Persian by ourselves and taking in hand a great task, prevailed and conquered forty-six nations."
From a funeral oration delivered over Athenian war dead by Lysias, 395-386 BCE (Lysias 2.4-6):
"Long ago there were Amazons, daughters of Ares, who lived along the Thermodon River. They alone of the peoples around them were armed with iron, and they were the first to ride horses. With them, because of the inexperience of their enemies, the Amazons slew those who fled and outran those who pursued. For their bravery Amazons used to be considered men rather than women for their physical nature. They seemed to surpass men in their spirit instead of falling short of them in appearance. They ruled many lands and enslaved their neighbors. Then, hearing of the great renown of this land, they gathered their most warlike nations and marched against the city. A glorious reputation and high ambition were their motives. But here they met brave men and came to possess spirits alike to their nature. Gaining a reputation that was the opposite of the one they had, they appeared women because of the dangers rather than from their bodies. For them alone it was impossible to learn from their mistakes and form better plans about the future. Since they did not go home, they could not announce their misfortunes nor the bravery of our ancestors, for they died here and paid the penalty for their folly. They made the memory of the city imperishable because of its bravery and rendered their own country nameless because of their disaster here. Those women who unjustly lusted after another's land justly lost their own."
In his play about Orestes' trial in Athens for killing his mother (Clytemnestra), Aeschylus (mid 5th century) gives the following origin to the name of the Areopagus hill, where Orestes' case will be heard. The traditional version said that Ares had been tried there for homicide.
"This is the hill of Ares (Areopagus), where the Amazons pitched their tents when they came with an army in spite toward Theseus and built towers against this new, lofty-towered city. They sacrificed to Ares, thus giving his name to the rock." In the same play, Athena casts her vote in favor of Orestes' acquittal: "This is my task: to decide the case last. I will add this pebble for Orestes. There is no mother at all who bore me. I praise the male in all things wholeheartedly, except in marrying one. I am exceedingly my father's. Thus I shall not prefer the fate of a woman who killed the man, overseer of the house. Orestes wins should the case be judged by equal votes."(734-41)
III. Story about the Athenian hero Theseus and the Amazons
Plutarch, Life of Theseus 26.1-27.4 (Plutarch died about 125 CE)
[1] He also made a voyage into the Euxine Sea, as Philochorus and sundry others say, on a campaign with Heracles against the Amazons, and received Antiope as a reward of his valor; but the majority of writers, including Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodotus, say that Theseus made this voyage on his own account, after the time of Heracles, and took the Amazon captive; and this is the more probable story. For it is not recorded that any one else among those who shared his expedition took an Amazon captive. [2] And Bion says that even this Amazon he took and carried off by means of a stratagem. The Amazons, he says, were naturally friendly to men, and did not fly from Theseus when he touched upon their coasts, but actually sent him presents, and he invited the one who brought them to come on board his ship; she came on board, and he put out to sea... [1] Well, then, such were the grounds for the war of the Amazons, which seems to have been no trivial nor womanish enterprise for Theseus. For they would not have pitched their camp within the city, nor fought hand to hand battles in the neighborhood of the Pnyx and the Museum, had they not mastered the surrounding country and approached the city with impunity. [2] Whether, now, as Hellanicus writes, they came round by the Cimmerian Bosporus, which they crossed on the ice, may be doubted; but the fact that they encamped almost in the heart of the city is attested both by the names of the localities there and by the graves of those who fell in battle. Now for a long time there was hesitation and delay on both sides in making the attack, but finally Theseus, after sacrificing to Fear, in obedience to an oracle, joined battle with the women. [3] This battle, then, was fought on the day of the month Boedromion on which, down to the present time, the Athenians celebrate the Boedromia. Cleidemus, who wishes to be minute, writes that the left wing of the Amazons extended to what is now called the Amazoneum, and that with their right they touched the Pnyx at Chrysa; that with this left wing the Athenians fought, engaging the Amazons from the Museum, and that the graves of those who fell are on either side of the street which leads to the gate by the chapel of Chalcodon, which is now called the Peiraic gate. [4] Here, he says, the Athenians were routed and driven back by the women as far as the shrine of the Eumenides, but those who attacked the invaders from the Palladium and Ardettus and the Lyceum, drove their right wing back as far as to their camp, and slew many of them. And after three months, he says, a treaty of peace was made through the agency of Hippolyta; for Hippolyta is the name which Cleidemus gives to the Amazon whom Theseus married, not Antiope. But some say that the woman was slain with a javelin by Molpadia, while fighting at Theseus's side, and that the pillar which stands by the sanctuary of Olympian Earth was set up in her memory.
Beth Severy-Hoven, Macalester College
8/31/9