Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(36)

As we have seen with other parts of the Amazon myth, there are multiple versions of this story. Some sources say that the woman who fought beside Theseus (Plutarch has given up on a conclusive name, it seems) was killed by another Amazon, called Molpadia. In other words, this version of Antiope fights against the Amazons who have come to reclaim her. But Plutarch reassures us that the antiquity of this story means we shouldn’t be surprised that it wanders about. And wander about it does: Theseus goes on to marry again, a woman named Phaedra. Sometimes it is this which provokes the war with the Amazons, because he has ditched Antiope for another woman. Theseus also has a son by Antiope/Hippolyta, called either Hippolytus or Demopho?n.

It is a sign of how popular Amazons were in the ancient world that there are so many contradictory stories about them. It implies that multiple storytellers were creating their myth across different parts of Greece over a long period of time. Perhaps the Athenians felt left out of the Heracles story, so added their local hero Theseus into the mix. And maybe they also preferred a version of the story in which Theseus didn’t kidnap Antiope, but rather she fell in love with him when he was besieging Themiscyra alongside Heracles,21 which she also surrendered to him. It’s interesting how the addition of the favourite Athenian male hero doesn’t just add romance to Antiope’s story, but also makes her a weaker fighter, more prone to betray her sisterhood for the love of a man. Most versions of the Amazons emphasize their solidarity with one another, whether it is painted on a vase, sculpted in a temple, or told in a history, biography or poem. So Antiope’s story offers a particular, reassuring counterexample to those who found the idea of women supporting other women to be disconcerting: even an Amazon could be lured away from her true nature by love. Yes, these warrior women were a mighty fighting force, but at least there was the possibility that you could seduce (or kidnap) one and even the odds a bit that way.

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Alternatively, you could try to engage an Amazon in single combat, though it might help if you were the greatest warrior the Greek world had ever known. And the best place to do that would be at the third great battle between Amazons and Greeks, which took place in the final year of the Trojan War. As Herodotus puts it, the Amazons were in no wise found wanting during the battles of Troy.22

Pausanias was a bit more perplexed by this Trojan expedition. Looking at a sculpture of Amazons fighting Theseus, he wonders that they didn’t lose their enthusiasm for danger after earlier defeats.23 They had lost Themiscyra to Heracles, and then lost the army they sent to Athens against Theseus. Nevertheless, he ponders, they came to Troy to fight against the Athenians and indeed all the Greeks. It’s an interesting question. Is it so surprising that the Amazons keep fighting even after they have lost battles? That is what warriors do: win or lose, they continue to fight. The Greeks spent nine years not winning the Trojan War, and in Book Two of the Iliad, Homer shows us how keen many of them are to give up and go home. But they stay and keep fighting even so.

We have lost the vast majority of literature written in the ancient world: well over 90 per cent. And among those losses is, or rather was, an epic poem called the Aethiopis. It followed on from the Iliad, continuing the story of the latter part of the Trojan War. As we have seen, the Iliad concludes with the funeral of Hector, the Trojans’ greatest warrior, who died at the hands of Achilles in brief, brutal combat. The Iliad’s concluding line is, ‘And so the Trojans buried Hector, tamer of horses.’ For a modern reader, the poem ends by looking forward obliquely to the fall of the city: her mightiest defender is dead, and we know the city cannot hold out against an invading army for very much longer. But there is a Homeric scholiast (a textual critic writing in the ancient world) who tells us something absolutely remarkable about the connective tissue between the Iliad and the Aethiopis. Some versions of the Iliad which he had available to him apparently concluded, ‘And so they buried Hector. And then came an Amazon, the daughter of great-hearted Ares, killer of men.’24 Another variant identifies the Amazon by name, and mentions her mother too: ‘And then came an Amazon, the daughter of Otrera, graceful Penthesilea.’

There are reasons to be sad about most of the lost pieces of Latin and Greek literature. But I feel a special pang for the Aethiopis, which covered the story of Penthesilea and also of Memnon, the great Ethiopian prince who fought the Greeks at Troy. So much of our understanding of the Trojan War comes from the Iliad, which finishes before either of these characters appear. And classics so often stands accused of being limited in its scope (thanks, in part, to the very limited number of schools that are able to offer it as part of the curriculum, as well as the undeniable truth that almost all authors writing in the Greco-Roman world were from a tiny elite of wealthy, educated men). So it is especially painful to have lost a poem which would have shone a much-needed focus on characters who are barely represented at all in the literature we do have. And there is something extra-tantalizing, therefore, in these alternative endings to the Iliad, which mention Penthesilea by name, and tell us of her divine parentage. In the Homeric tradition, this is exactly how we are introduced to male heroes: Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis, for example. Or Agamemnon and Menelaus, who are often referred to as the sons of Atreus. Family connections are a crucial part of how we define a hero, and when that hero has divine relatives (Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, or Sarpedon, son of Zeus), their hero status is that much more impressive. There is a moment in the Iliad25 when Hera asks why the gods should care about Hector, since he is mortal, and was nursed by a mortal woman. She contrasts him unfavourably with Achilles, whose mother was a goddess. While a hero can be of purely mortal parentage, a divine parent is better.