Amazon Warrior Women from Herodotus' The Histories

[Mary...]

Did the Amazon warrior women (as described in The Histories by Herodotus) really exist or are they a myth?

[PeterL]

Opinions vary. There were women who were warriors in various places, but which of those were what Herodotus wrote is uncertain.

[Mary...]

What is your opinion?

[PeterL]

I haven't looked into the matter enough to have formed a good opinion. I think that the theory put forward by George Fraser McDonald in one of the Flashman novels was better than many. That was that there were some woman warriors in West Africa (Dahomey) with a name somewhat like Amazon. Take a look at the wikipedia entries, and they may lead you to some good information.

Considering where and when Herodotus was, I think that the theory that they were of Iranian origin makes sense, but there isn't much history to back that up. It is not unlikely that they were enemies of the Iranians at some point, so the origin in Sarmatia would make a lot of sense, but India is as likely, or more likely.

[OrphanPip]

The largest problem is that Greeks and Romans have about a million different stories about Amazons, making them seem largely mythological. Though they seemed to think the myths true in antiquity.

Women fighting in a last ditch defense of a settlement wouldn't be unusual. Women fighting in a professional military (especially one composed only of women) would have been strange, and is likely a fantasy of the Greeks.

[Ecurb]

If there were no Amazon Warrior Women, how did Theseus have his son Hippolytus, borne by Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons? Also, how did Herakles gain the girdle of Hippolyta, one of his twelve labors?

[Mary...]

Peter L -- I'll have to read one of the Flashman novels by George Fraser McDonald sometime.
I have already looked at a few wikipedia enties and read all the footnotes in my Landmark Herodotus.
I guess I am really asking about the Amazon women warriors that supposedly lived on the southern coast of the Black Sea, near the Thermodon River.
Do you think they really existed or do you think they are a myth?

OrganPip -- What would have been strange about a professional military composed only of women?
Why would the Greeks have been likely to fantasize about such women?

Ecurb -- So are you saying that you think they are a myth?

[Ecurb]

\?

Ecurb -- So are you saying that you think they are a myth?

I certainly don't think that just because something happened in a myth, it never actually happened. Why would anyone?

[Mary...]

Ecurb -- So are you saying that you think they really existed?

[Ecurb]

Nothing that really exists is described exactly as it was, especially when the description has been passed down through oral traditions for centuries. Something existed (I'd bet) which ended up being recounted in tales of Amazons -- just like something happened that ended up being described as the Trojan war. Are all the details historically accurate? Heck, the details aren't even accurate when people describe something they saw yesterday.

[PeterL]

Peter L -- I'll have to read one of the Flashman novels by George Fraser McDonald sometime.
I have already looked at a few wikipedia entries and read all the footnotes in my Landmark Herodotus.
I guess I am really asking about the Amazon women warriors that supposedly lived on the southern coast of the Black Sea, near the Thermodon River.
Do you think they really existed or do you think they are a myth?


Where there's smoke there may be fire, but Herodotus wasn't all that good with details. In the area which is now Ukraine horses were first domesticated, and it is where the story of Epona arose, and Herodotus said that there were woman warriors. Maybe so. While female warriors are not widespread in the Indo-European culture, the idea isn't necessarily foreign.

[OrphanPip]

OrganPip -- What would have been strange about a professional military composed only of women?

It would be vastly inferior to male dominated militaries in a world dependent on physical warfare.



Why would the Greeks have been likely to fantasize about such women?

They were more than likely to, because they did. Although, what I said was that the stories are likely fantasies.

Historical accounts of women involved in war usually involve nobility in leadership roles. There are also instances of cultures who allowed female militia in their militaries, but they were usually a small component of their forces. There is archeological evidence that women participated in the Scythian military.

The idea of a culture composed entirely of women that excluded men is silly. The invented stories of them coming together once a year to procreate is equally silly, because given the odds of human fertility that would be a horribly inefficient way to procreate. This is a creation of the Greeks that appeals to their sense of inverted "natural" conditions and oddities.

[Mary...]

Peter L -- I always try to picture what they might have looked like. Did they look Slavic or Celtic or Iranian or other? What is your best guess about these hypothetical warrior women?

OrphanPip -- You say that a military that did not include men would be vastly inferior in a world dependent on physical warfare.

I agree with you. There is no way that an all female army could beat an army which included males in sword fighting or wrestling, or some other kind of close up combat that pitched strength against strength.

But the Amazons rode horses and were archers, and threw spears. These things require more skill than strength. They were also raiders. I don't think that the world back then was entirely dependent on physical warfare. I think it was also very dependent on farming, herding, fishing and trade. In the world I envision, it seems very possible.

You do have a good point about the part of the story where they get together with the males of the neighboring tribes once a year to copulate. I hadn't really thought about their odds of not getting pregnant.

You are also right about the myths. Some of the stories are obviously myths. I guess my real question is, 'Were these myths based on an actual group of warrior women, like the ones that Herodotus described in the Histories?'

What part of his description seems believable to you, and what part seems too unrealistic?

I

[JBI]

It would be vastly inferior to male dominated militaries in a world dependent on physical warfare.



They were more than likely to, because they did. Although, what I said was that the stories are likely fantasies.

Historical accounts of women involved in war usually involve nobility in leadership roles. There are also instances of cultures who allowed female militia in their militaries, but they were usually a small component of their forces. There is archeological evidence that women participated in the Scythian military.

The idea of a culture composed entirely of women that excluded men is silly. The invented stories of them coming together once a year to procreate is equally silly, because given the odds of human fertility that would be a horribly inefficient way to procreate. This is a creation of the Greeks that appeals to their sense of inverted "natural" conditions and oddities.

That isn't fully true, there were, for instance, originally female Samurai (and female Shoguns) as well as, legend would tell us, female Hwarang (who were said to be too merciless hence the abolishment of the institution for women), and actually were the originals (the historical basis for the second elements of the abolishment of females is located in the highly unreliable Samguk Sagi).


As an understanding of society, in general the more you go back, the more significant the role of women. It seems possible a group of amazons could ave existed, given the equivalent existing elsewhere in isolated form - the chance encounter could have had the lasting effect on memory, to have them become part of a greater tradition.

By extension, it could just be a base myth expanded - for instance, all the men in the village die (which is possible if something goes wrong when they are all together), then they try to fend for themselves for as long as they can, then somebody encounters them - that leaves an impression, which, not being written down leaves a myth.

[PeterL]

Peter L -- I always try to picture what they might have looked like. Did they look Slavic or Celtic or Iranian or other? What is your best guess about these hypothetical warrior women?



I don't know or sure, but, i one assumes that this was about 500 to 2000 BCE, then they probably looked like Ukrainians with round heads, light brown hair (blond as children), medium height, etc. At that time Greeks probably looked much the same with darker hair coming from mixture with Mediterranean peoples.

[Mary...]

By extension, it could just be a base myth expanded - for instance, all the men in the village die (which is possible if something goes wrong when they are all together), then they try to fend for themselves for as long as they can, then somebody encounters them - that leaves an impression, which, not being written down leaves a myth.

I think this point is a very good one, and I would like to expand on it if I may.

A. If all the men in the village are killed: perhaps while hunting; perhaps while raiding a town; perhaps while defending their village, women and children; perhaps while fleeing from an attack by the Scythians; perhaps while etc.
Most likely the women would all band together and fend for themselves. The ones that didn't do that probably didn't survive, so we would be left with the ones who did.

B. This survival strategy, likely would have worked for a while until it was out competed by other survival strategies. This would explain why, like many other groups, they aren't still around.

C. Herodotus describes the tribal people of Asia as being more egalitarian that the Greeks, at least when it came to gender. I think that the Amazons were most likely of Cimmerian Descent. The Cimmerians were chased by the Scythians out of their homeland in southern Russia and fled to the southern coast of the Black Sea where they resettled.

D. In the Mediterranean cultures back then, women were property. Even the free women were bought and sold, and practically slaves themselves. I am sure these women would have wanted nothing to do with the Greek men and the Greek Culture, even though they were practically living on Greek turf.

E. The Greeks were notorious for killing all of the men, babies, and old people and enslaving all of the surviving women and children. Who wouldn't do everything they could to avoid such a fate, especially if they were raised free.

F. They (the Amazons) have a marriage law which forbids a girl to marry until she has killed an enemy in battle; some of their women, unable to fulfill this condition, grow old and die unmarried.
The Histories by Herodotus Book 4 passage 117
He is telling us that they did get married, therefore it was not a society composed entirely of women.

Try to picture a group of: fair complected, armed, unmarried, young women, riding their horses here, there and everywhere, looking for a fight before their biological clock runs out.

Now try to picture it from the point of view of the Ancient Greeks.

[Ecurb]

I've been reading "The Poison King", a biography of Mithridates, one of Rome's greatest enemies in the First Century BCE. Mithradates ruled Pontus, a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea. He expanded his empire to include most of modern Turkey, Macedonia and even much of Greece. The sack of Athens by Roman Legions in 85 (?) BCE was part of the Mithridatic wars. For the last ten years or so of his life, Mithridates consorted with Hypsicratea. The Poison King was 60 or 65 when they met, the Amazon Warrior much younger. Hypsicratea rode to war, armed herself with a bow and lance, and fought like a man. According to the book, it was common for Scythians, from the steppes of Asia, like Hypsicratea to fight alongside their men. This makes sense in that fighting from horseback with bows and arrows, the disadvantages of feminine size and strength are lessened (just as they are in modern, technological warfare).

It also makes sense in that I read another book (“The Secret History of the Mongol Queens” by Jack Weatherford) in which female warriors from the steppes were prominent. Mandukhai, the great Mongol Queen of the Fifteenth Century, fought at the head of her troops, as did other famous female Mongol warriors.

Of course I recognize that this does not suggest an all-women society, the lopping off of breasts, or other details of the Amazon myths. However, Hypollyta (sp?) and the other Amazons were Asians (acc. the myths), and may very well have been from Scythia (just north of the Caucuses, between the Black and Caspian Seas).

[JuniperWoolf]

The Spartans also used to let women compete in the games, but it was more a form of psychological warfare. As in, "we're so tough that our little sisters could pummel you." Since sports exist to mimic war, ideas about female warriors might have been inspired by Spartan women.

My classics prof in year one told us that stories specifically about the Amazons probably originated from two sources: first, the occasional rare female warriors from various rival tribes during the Greek dark ages. There would be the occasional woman who would have a natural aptitude and enough room to excel in battle or hunting during that age because gender roles weren't that strict (mostly because if you imposed any kind of rules on anything at all they would last as long as the next time your people were slaughtered). They would have gotten some press simply for their novelty. Also, like Pip said, once the militairy was beaten and your city was invaded, all regular citizens would pick up a weapon. The odds are pretty good that all of the men died first, so maybe there were a few instances in which the women who were left actually succeeded as a last line of defence and won. Imagine the stories that that would inspire, you just get through beating the militairy, your forces are depleted and many of you are injured, when this big mass of women with swords comes out of the city and kicks your ***. It's a pretty cool image, actually. That reminds me of the Amazons who fought the Greeks during the Trojan war, they were among the last warriors to fall. Maybe the ladies put up a pretty good fight one of the times that Troy was sacked.

Second, stories about all-female tribes of warriors could have just been a misunderstanding. Warriors who's custom it is to keep their hair short could have seen other male warriors who wear their hair long (possably from a distance) and, because in their own society only women have long hair, they could have mistakenly thought that those warriors were all women and brought that information back to their homes for their story-tellers to run away with.

It is an intriguing idea though, it's not difficult to see why ancient story tellers would take interest and rumors would evolve and grow.

[Ecurb]

Quick update (if anyone cares). I finished the book. Conventional history has it that Mithradates (on the internet, he's often spelled "Mithridates", but the book uses as "a") poisoned himself and his two young daughters to prevent them from being paraded in a Roman triumph. However, Mayor speculates that the suicides may have been a sham. Mithradates had disappeared before, and been taken for dead. When his body reached Pompey, the face had decayed and was unrecognizable. "Lousy embalming," was the excuse.

IN addition, an ancient historian who wrote about Mithradates wars and Pompey's triumphs is named Hypsicrates. Mithradates often called his lover by the masculine form of her name, since she dressed in armor and fought like a man. Mayor (a Stanford classicist) speculates that Hypsicrates and Hypsicratea might be the same person. None of Hypsicrates' writings have survived, but they are cited by other ancient historians.