Amazones

The legend of Amazones

According to the legend, Amazones live banks of the Thermodon, in Cappadoce in current the Turkey. They kill their male children or make them blind or lame, for then using them like servants. As for the women, they show their centres to decentralize their enemies to facilitate the shooting with the arc. To ensure the perpetuation of their civilization, they are linked once per annum with the men of the close tribes of which they choose most beautiful.

The attributes of Amazones are it πέλτη / péltê , a light shield in the shape of half-moon, the lance, the arc and arrows specific to the riders of the steppes, the horse and the axe - σάγαρις / ságaris initially, then double axe starting from the hellenistic time, for example at Quintus of Smyrna. The signal before the battle is given by the Sistre (kind of grelot) generally of bronze.

Many a Greek heroes - Bellérophon, Achilles, Héraclès, Thésée or Priam - dealt with them. Curiously, each one had its queen to like and, finally, to kill. Achilles affonte Penthésilée come to help the Trojan , of éprend and kills it in same time. Priam, the old Trojan king, pushed back itself an Amazon invasion. Héraclès must seize the Ceinture of Hippolyte and ends up massacring the latter, like his/her partners.

According to a tradition that Plutarque allots to the atthidographe Philochore, Thésée joint with the forwarding of Héraclès after having concluded the Synœcisme of Athens. It receives Antiope like leaves the spoils. According to another tradition that Plutarque pays in particular to Hellanicos, Thésée only leaves and captures itself Antiope. Amazones retort by invading the Attic - after having passed the the Bosphorus taken in the ices, according to Hellanicos. The combat in front of Athens is held in the month of Boédromion, from where the festival of the Boédromies. Thésée has a son of Antiope (also called Hippolyte by certain authors), Hippolyte. Bellérophon, finally, after having killed the Dream, faces and overcomes Amazones.

Amazones see their continuity with the female one; the legend says that they kill the male children and only the girls raise, which appears difficult to ensure their perpetuation. It is thus more probable than after weaning, the boys are entrusted to the men with whom they gave birth to. That presupposes more a type of company matriarcale, that of which the Greeks had horror, reason for which they blame this population so much. The legend also reports that Amazones keep near them only mutilated men, estropiés, applicant that would increase their sexual capacity, calculating that the infirmity would prevent the men from being violent one and to misuse the capacity. It appears on this subject that the queen Antianeira answered a delegation of Scythian men who had proposed as lovers free from physical defects that “estropié is the best lover”.

Alexandre and Amazones

A tradition located at the border of the history and myth allot to Alexandre Large the a meeting with the queen of Amazones, Thalestris (or Minithya). This tradition resulting from the Vulgate from Alexandre (Diodore of Sicily, Fifth-Curce, Justin) comes from Clitarque and Onésicrite, contemporaries of the conquests of the Asia whose accounts deliver a share of fables and the marvellous one. A historian of the conquest, not identified (perhaps Onésicrite), judge that Alexandre must meet Amazones because Héraclès and Achille, his mythical ancestor, fought them.

Diodore writes that the queen of Amazones wishes a child of Alexandre: “By its exploits, he was indeed more the brave man of all the men while it overrode the remainder of the women by her force and its bravery. That which is born excellent parents would thus exceed the remainder of humanity”. Fifth-Curce adds that “thirteen days were devoted to satisfy the passion of the queen”.

This meeting with the queen of Amazones is regarded as a fiction by Plutarque and Arrien. These two ancient, concerned historians of authenticity, follow the opinion of Ptolémée, Aristobule and Douris de Samos which already disputes the reality of this meeting. For as much, Arrien and Plutarque seek the historical base of it:

an embassy Scythe arrives at Alexandre at Samarkand in 328 before J. - C.; a Scythian chief of tribe offers the hand of his daughter to Alexandre.
According to Arrien (IV, 15,1-6) and Fifth-Curce (VIII, 1,7-9), the chief of the Chorasmiens, people of the edges of the Aral, proposes in Alexandre to conduct campaign against Amazones.
According to Arrien (VII, 13,2), Atropatès the satrap of Médie makes gift with Alexandre of 100 Scythian women of which it is known as that they would be of Amazones.

According to the opinion of Hérodote, which already considers Amazones commes the Scythian warlike women or Sauromates, Arrien and Plutarque try to bring a historical guarantee to a legendary meeting.

Did Amazones exist?

Hérodote provides in a digression (IV, 110-117) a historicized version of the legend of Amazones. Following violent one engagements with the Egyptian 2000 years front J. - C., of the tribes Scythe S occupy the Cappadoce. Scythian warriors are exterminated in a ambush and the women remained only take the weapons. According to Hérodote, the name the Amazon means (wrongly) “private of udder”, the Greeks thinking that it is with an aim of drawing more easily with the arc. In Caucasian language, this name would on the other hand mean “those which do not eat bread” (what defers to the companies Nomade S and thus nonagricultural) or “those which live together” or could refer to possible “a magic belt” range by Amazones.

The horse is inseparable from the populations of the steppes, which is the case of the Scythians and the Sauromates (proto-Sarmates) famous in Antiquity as stockbreeders of horses and excellent archers. One can suppose following Hérodote which Amazones are the wives of the Scythians and the Sauromates which, made inconceivable for a Greek, have the right to overlap and of guerroyer. From there was born the myth from savage warlike, raised like such.

Recent archaeological excavations , led by Jeannine Davis-Kimball to the border between the Russia and the Kazakhstan, made it possible to update tombs of warlike women, buried with their weapons between 600 and 200 av. J. - C. One of the tombs was richly furnished with many objects and female jewels and also with 100 arrowheads. An in-depth survey carried out in the same area showed the existence of a long-lived tradition of the riding woman Archer and highly skilled, them arc being of very characteristic form exactly identical to that which is represented on the ceramic antiques. Relations Génétique S were also proven between the human remainders found in the tombs and certain Mongolian families whose girls are born sometimes fair, particular characteristic of Amazones, which is an absolutely single fact in these Ethnie S with the hair uniformly black and which tends to prove a mixture between Mongolian tribes and remainders of the ethnos group of Amazones whose exact origin remains still a mystery.

Artistic representations

The topic of the Amazon usually appears in Greek art. They are represented bearing short tunics, following the example Artémis, or with Asian baggy pants. Often, a center is stripped. On the other hand, one finds no occurrence of cut center. The young women athletes are often represented in Amazones.

The Amazonomachie, or fights Greeks against Amazones, is also a popular topic: it is reproduced on the avers of the shield of Athéna Parthénos or on the throne of Zeus in Olympie. It is often represented symmetrically with the combat of the Lapithes against the Centaure S, as it is the case on the métopes Parthenon.

In particular, the combat of Héraclès against Amazones is one of the most popular topics of painting on vases attic with black figures: one finds it on nearly 400 vases. In the monumental sculpture, it is represented in the métopes treasure of the Athenians with Delphes, temple E of Sélinonte, temple of Zeus with Olympie and Héphaïstion of Ahènes, like on the plank of the Temple of Apollo with Bassae. It is in fact a singular combat which east depicts: Covered Héraclès of its skin of lion faces the Amazon carrying most of the time an armor of Hoplite, more rarely vêtue like a Scythian archer or a Persian warrior.

Amazones out of Greece

August 1st In XVIe century, the explorers of the South America believe to discover similar tribes on the edge of the Maragnon which they then call the “river of Amazones”, “the Amazon” then Amazonia and his forest. They indeed meet there women who fight as savagely as the men.

There exist other traditions thewarlike ones apart from the people of the steppes of Central Asia, as in the Dahomey of the king Behanzin.

Random links:

Gargenville | Theorem of the incomplete base | Castle of Hohenfels | Charles Philippe Robin | Except Control