The History of Antiquity (Vol. 1-6). Duncker Max
been compelled to bring the girdle from Hippolyte, the queen of the Amazons, for Admete. Theseus and Peirithous had carried off Antiope. Among the Phenicians, as we have seen, Baal-Melkarth looses the girdle of the moon-goddess; the Greeks transferred the legend of Melicertes to their Heracles. Even as early as the thirteenth or twelfth century B.C. the ships of the Phenicians had probably brought the worship of the warlike moon-goddess to the coast of Attica. At any rate, at a later time, tombs of the Amazons, i.e. abandoned seats of the worship of the Artemis of Syria and Asia Minor, were shown there. After the Attic territory was united under the rule of a military monarchy, of which, among the Ionians, Theseus was the embodiment, the Phenicians were driven back from the coasts of the Greeks: Theseus was said to have conquered the Minotaur and the Amazons. In order to establish the existence of Amazons in Attica, Theseus was said to have carried off Antiope. To avenge this wrong, the Amazons marched from their distant home on the Thermodon to Attica; and the Athenians considered it one of their greatest services towards their common fatherland that they had conquered the Amazons, "an enemy who threatened all Hellas."[793]
Out of these elements the Greeks framed a circumstantial history of the Amazons. Even among the historians, their home is the land of the Thermodon. Here the Amazons dwelt, according to Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo, and here, as Diodorus tells us, they offered splendid sacrifices to Ares and Artemis Tauropolus. Their first queen is said to have been the daughter of Ares, and she built the great city of Themiscyra; the second queen extended the dominion of the Amazons as far as Syria; and finally queen Myrina reduced the whole of Syria, and received the voluntary submission of the Cilicians.[794] It is obvious that the Amazons founded all the cities where the worship of the maiden war-goddess flourished or had ever existed. Roused by the crime of Theseus, they marched to the west, founded the sanctuary of Ephesus, where "they set up the image of the goddess under the trunk of an elm, and, armed with shields, danced the war-dance, so that their quivers sounded."[795] Then they marched to the north, and founded Smyrna, Myrina, and Cyme.[796] Analogous rites proved that they were also in Lesbos and Samothrace. Through Thrace and Thessaly, and finally across Eubœa, they are said to have marched to Attica; tombs of the Amazons were shown at Scotussa and Cynoscephalæ, in Thessaly, and at Chalcis, in Eubœa.[797] After returning home, the Amazons next marched to the aid of the Trojans, and were conquered by Achilles. When the Greeks had founded Cyrene on the coast of Attica, and found, among the Libyan tribes of the surrounding district, the worship of a female war-goddess—when they found the Libyan women wearing corslets of goatskins, they came to the conclusion that the Amazons once dwelt on the Tritonian lake in Libya.[798]
A nation of heroines was certainly never found by the Greeks on the Thermodon. On the other hand, they received accounts of the warlike queens of the Saces and Massagetæ, of Zarinæa, Sparethra, and Tomyris, who fought against the Medes and Persians; and on the coasts of the Black Sea, in the colonies of the Milesians, they heard of the riding, the archery, and hunting of the women of the Sauromatæ. Hence the Greeks resolved to make the Amazons the ancestors of the Sarmatians. They were represented as taking ship from the Thermodon across the Black Sea to the coast of the Mæotis, because here, in the Crimea, on the "promontory of the maiden," a cruel maiden goddess, who was also called Artemis Tauropolus by the Greeks, was worshipped. Herodotus, and after him Ephorus, tells us that the Amazons fled over the Pontus from the Thermodon, and landed on the shore of the Mæotis. Here they took the young men among the Scythians, who, according to Herodotus, were settled between the mouths of the Danube and the Don, as their husbands, and with them marched eastwards over the Tanais (Don), beyond which river and north of the Caucasus lay, according to Herodotus, the dwellings of the Sauromatæ, whom later writers call the Sarmatians. Hence the Sarmatian women still preserved the customs of the Amazons; they carried bows and javelins, and wore the same clothing as the men, sat on horseback, and rode with or without their husbands to the chase or to battle, and no maiden married till she had slain an enemy; "so that some never married at all, because they were unable to satisfy this rule." The language of the Sauromatæ was the same as the language of the Scythians, but they spoke it badly, because the Amazons had never perfectly learned it. These statements, and especially the assertion that the Sarmatian women fought as long as they were maidens, were repeated by Greek writers—in other respects very trustworthy—in the fifth and fourth century B.C. Others also maintained that the women were rulers among the Sarmatians.[799] Poetry and plastic art had stamped the legend of the Amazons so firmly on the Greeks that they could not break loose from it. Several of the historians of Alexander of Macedon tell us that the queen Thalestris, with 300 Amazons, sought out Alexander from a great distance, and made a proposal of marriage to him, on his return from Hyrcania,[800] a story which has perhaps arisen out of the fact that the satrap Atropates of Media sent 100 mounted women to Alexander.[801] When at a later time Pompey fought in the Caucasus, and women were found among the wounded, it was thought that the real Amazons were at last found;[802] and the story was now told that the Amazons dwelt northward of the Gelen (in Ghilan), on the southern foot of the Caucasus. In order to solve the difficulty of their propagation of the race, the story was invented that for two months in the spring they met the Gargareans—a neighbouring tribe—on the mountains by night, and associated with them, as accident might determine. The boys were then sent to the Gargareans, who brought them up in common; the daughters were retained by the Amazons.[803] In order to explain the name Amazon, which in Greek can mean "without a breast," the story was invented that they burnt off the right breast of the maidens, so that they might use the right arm better, and draw the bow—a story which Hippocrates had already told about the daughters of the Sarmatians.[804] On the monuments of plastic art the Amazons have both breasts; the older period represents them with a broad girdle, an ample robe, and a Phrygian cap, a crescent shield (the symbol of the moon-goddess), a bow, and a battle-axe. In later sculptures the Amazons, when they had been connected with the Scythians and the Sarmatians, were generally represented on horseback, in a Doric tunic, with naked arms and thighs, a helmet on the head, and a spear in the hand.
On the western slopes of the table-land of Asia Minor, in the river valleys of the Hermus and Mæander, the Lydians were settled. Their land reached from the sources of the Hermus in Mount Dindymon to the Ægean sea, from Messogis and Cadmus in the south to the Temnus range in the north. The valley of the Hermus was exuberantly fertile, and still more luxuriant was the vegetation in the district round the Gygæan lake. The mountain pastures supported herds of powerful horses and numerous flocks of sheep. The Pactolus brought sands of gold down from Tmolus; in the rocks of this range and its western continuation, Sipylus, rich veins of gold are said to have been found.[805]
But little has been preserved of the legendary accounts of the Lydians about their rulers in the earliest times. About the middle of the fifth century B.C. the Lydian Xanthus, the son of Candaules, wrote the history of his people in four books, in the Greek language. Of this some fragments have come down to us, which can here and there be supplemented by the statements of Herodotus. From both we learn that the Lydians traced back the origin of their royal house to the gods. Atys, the son of the god Manes, was the first sovereign of the Lydians; after him came his son Lydus, who gave the name to the people. From the brother of Lydus, whom Xanthus calls Torrhebus, and Herodotus Tyrsenus, the tribe of the Torrhebians or Tyrsenians was derived. The territory of the Torrhebi lay on the upper Cayster. From Asius, the son of Cotys, the son of Atys, sprang the tribe of the Asionæans, who inhabited the Asian meadow.