Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(33)

The Greeks were fascinated by these women: barbarians as opposed to Greeks, who often fought against Greeks. Amazons are the second most popular mythological figures (after Heracles) found on vase paintings.2 More than a thousand Amazons appear on vases, in fact,3 and more than sixty Amazon names are painted onto those vases. So what is it about these women – who exist in a space between masculine and feminine, between civilization and wildness, between real and fantastical – which proved so compelling to ancient writers and, in particular, artists? And how did we lose them? Most people could probably name Heracles, Theseus or Achilles, but the Amazons with which each hero was associated – Hippolyta, Antiope and Penthesilea – have been remembered less well. And when they have been, it has rarely been for a good reason.

We should, though, think about the Amazons as a tribe, or group. Because one of the most important things about these women is their collective nature: they are usually found together. It’s a stark contrast to the winner-takes-all mentality that pervades the male hero ethos in, for example, the Trojan War. Look at Achilles, in the first book of Homer’s Iliad: because he feels his honour has been slighted by Agamemnon, he begs his mother (the sea-nymph, Thetis) to intercede with Zeus and have him aid the Trojan – enemy – cause. The Greek soldiers, who were moments earlier his comrades, are now mere collateral damage in his quest for personal glory. Or Ajax, the Greek hero so tormented by losing Achilles’ armour to Odysseus (the two men offer competing claims after the death of their comrade, and the Greeks decide in Odysseus’ favour) that he attempts a killing spree of his erstwhile friends. Only the intervention of Athene – who confuses Ajax, making him kill livestock while believing he is slaughtering his comrades – prevents him from committing a terrible crime. When Ajax comes to and realizes what he has done, the shame is so great that he takes his own life.

In other words, the heroic mindset for the Greeks who fight at Troy is intrinsically selfish and self-absorbed. There are exceptions (Achilles’ devotion to Patroclus, for example, and Patroclus’ desire to heal their injured comrades), but the Iliad and Sophocles’ Ajax show us a profoundly individualistic type of hero. And if you want to see what a good leader of men Odysseus is, count how many of the Ithacans with whom he sets sail from Troy make it home alongside him. The answer is: none. Odysseus is a hero because of his own adventures, his own brushes with monsters and mishaps. But he is not a man to stand alongside, unless you have a death wish. Rather, he is a man who can lose a comrade on his travels and not even notice that the poor guy is gone and needs to be buried. Elpenor would lie unburied forever, except his ghost seizes the opportunity of Odysseus’ trip to the Underworld and pitches up to complain about his fate.

Unlike these men, Amazons fight alongside one another. When, in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Fall of Troy,4 Penthesilea decides to fight Achilles in the later part of the Trojan War, twelve Amazons accompany her. Quintus lists all their names. It is the Amazons’ intensely tribal nature which helps keep them alive in battle – Amazons are generally shown fighting alongside one another on the vase paintings and sculptures we have – but this loyalty can also jeopardize their safety. Although vase painters list the names of dozens of Amazons, we tend to come back to the stories of only a couple. Of these, the best-known today is probably Hippolyta. Hippolyta was a queen of the Amazons, and the daughter of Ares, god of war. Not only does Hippolyta inherit her father’s martial skill (the epic poet Apollonius of Rhodes calls her philoptolemoio – ‘war-loving’),5 she also has her celebrated belt from him: Pseudo-Apollodorus calls it Areos zōstēra6 – the belt of Ares. It is this belt which Heracles (his name isn’t Hercules until the Romans get hold of him) seeks in his ninth labour. And which, somewhat irritatingly, translators have tended to describe as Hippolyta’s girdle.

This translation is a bizarre choice even if we are, like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, thinking of a genderless girdle which can be put round about the earth in forty minutes7 (though for many people today, the word ‘girdle’ implies an undergarment worn by women of my grandmother’s generation. One occasionally saw them on washing lines in my childhood: damp instruments of torture). It is an enormous pity to see Hippolyta distorted and diminished by this linguistic shift. She is wearing neither restrictive underwear nor a simple tie around her waist: she is wearing a war belt. The Greek word used to describe her belt is zōstēr: the exact same word used to describe the war belt worn by a male warrior for holding weapons. The word for a woman’s belt is zōnē, which doesn’t have martial connotations. Not for the first time, we see that an accurate translation has been sacrificed in the pursuit of making women less alarming (and less impressive) in English than they were in Greek. Euripides, Pseudo-Apollodorus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Diodorus Siculus and Pausanias all use the word zōstēr.8 For all these men, Hippolyta is a warrior, plain and simple.

Or rather, not plain and simple: ornate and highly decorated. Because Amazons separated themselves from respectable Greek norms with their choice of clothing, as well as their all-female society and fighting skill. Unlike Greek men and women, who wore tunics of varying lengths and draperies over bare legs, Amazons wore tunic tops over trousers or leggings.

The British Museum has a wonderful alabastron: a slender pottery perfume bottle, about fifteen centimetres tall, made around 480 BCE.9 It is decorated with a lovely black and white figure of a woman, her head turned so we can see that her long, curly hair is tied back. She is most probably an Amazon, because she is dressed in the style which we will soon see worn by figures securely identified as Amazons (potters often painted names next to the characters on their pots). She wears a pair of black straight-legged trousers, beneath a tunic top which belts in tightly at the waist. It is a linothorax (a protective garment made from either glued linen or leather) represented by monochrome patterns of lines and dots. In her right hand she holds the Amazons’ favoured weapon – an axe – and a quiver is also visible, strapped to her back. The style of her clothing could not look less dated: her weapons are the only things which differentiate her from someone walking through the museum to see this little bottle. That, and the fact that her tunic top would protect her from your weapon if you attacked her.