ORE THAN A THOUSAND AmAZONS ARE DEPICTED
On Greek vase paintings, and most of the warrior women are clad in tunics and trousers or leggings, like those worn by their fellow Scythians. Standard Greek attire was a rectangle of cloth draped and fastened with pins and belts, as it was for many other ancient cultures (such as the Roman toga, Egyptian wraparound skirt, and Asian sari). But trousers were more complex. Trousers and tunics required piecing together wool, leather, or cloth and sewing strong seams to construct shaped garments; the seams were frequently decorated with contrasting thread. The earliest preserved trousers have been excavated in burials of horse-riding men and women in the Tarim Basin, dating to 1200 to 900 BC. The most recent discoveries are two pairs of trousers fashioned more than three thousand years ago from three pieces of wool with complicated zigzag and other woven patterns and featuring an inset crotch gusset for freer movement. The design was an innovation that facilitated riding on horseback. In other words, trousers were the world’s first “tailored” clothing. Trousers did not just happen but had to be invented.1
Who invented trousers.? According to the Greeks, it was powerful barbarian women. Ancient Greek traditions traced the origin of this exotic attire to various warrior queens of the East. One legend claimed that trousers and long sleeves were first introduced by Medea, the mythic sorceress-princess of Colchis who became the lover of the
FiG. I2.I. Amazon in trousers and corselet, with Thracian cloak. Attic, Greek, white-ground alabastron (perfume jar), Syriskos Painter, ca. 480-470 BC. Princeton University Art Museum, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund, y1984-12. Photo: Bruce M. White/ Art Resource, NY.
Argonaut Jason. According to this ancient folklore preserved by Strabo of Pontus, Medea wore trousers and a tunic when she and Jason ruled the mountainous territory on the Caspian Sea (now Azerbaijan and Armenia), home of the Nisaean horse herds. Some fifth-century BC Greek vase paintings show Medea in this Amazon-like attire. Medea’s garb was so suitable for archers on horseback that her style was taken up by nomads and later adopted by the Medes and Persians.2
According to the lost history of Hellanikos (fifth century BC), a great Assyrian or Persian queen of the misty past named Atossa was the first to wear trousers. She had been raised as a boy by her father, King Ariaspes. After she inherited his kingdom, Atossa created a new kind of dress to be worn by her male and female subjects: long-sleeved shirts and trousers that obscured gender differences. Thus “disguising her feminine nature, Atossa ruled over many tribes and was most warlike
And brave in every deed.” The name “Atossa” is known in Persian royal histories, but this Atossa is an enigmatic figure. So is another fabled Persian warrior queen named Rhodogyne (“Woman in Red”) who rode a black Nisaean mare with white blazes to her many victories over the Armenian tribes. This queen refused to marry and delighted in killing men. “Resplendent in a scarlet belted tunic and trousers woven with charming designs,” Rhodogyne rushed off to battle before she could finish braiding her hair. Some scholars wonder whether Atossa and Rhodogyne might have been conflated with another more famous Assyrian warrior queen, Semiramis, renowned for her impressive conquests, new cities, innovations, and stupendous building programs.3
Semiramis (Akkadian, Sammuramat; Persian and Armenian, Shami-ram) was a historical queen of the late ninth century BC. A large body of legends grew up about her reign (ca. 810-805 BC; see chapter 22). It was said that she disguised herself as a boy and revealed her sex only after illustrious victories on the battlefield. According to legend, Semiramis designed a new style of clothing for herself and her subjects: long sleeves and trousers that were deliberately intended to blur the physical differences between men and women. The outfit was streamlined, offered protection from the elements, minimized chafing on horseback, and allowed Semiramis to attend to all her personal needs modestly. In this “comfortable, practical garb,” Semiramis rode her horse to conquer Baktria (Afghanistan). She personally led a special group of rockclimbing soldiers to attack the enemy’s citadel on a high cliff. In another legendary exploit, she waged war against an Indian army, riding a swift horse and surviving arrow and javelin wounds. Like the Amazons, Semiramis rejected marriage as a threat to her power. She chose the most handsome of her soldiers for sex. (After their dalliances with the queen it was said that they were never seen again.) Semiramis’s tunic and trousers were so convenient and attractive that, as Strabo had claimed about Medea’s clothing, the Medes and Persians adopted them ever after.4
The ancient Greeks considered their short, draped, sleeveless chiton the proper attire for men; women wore layers of similar, ankle-length garments. Arms and legs were bare; cloaks and capes provided warmth in mild Mediterranean winters. In contrast, snug or loose trousers (anaxyrides and sarabara, Greek words of probable Persian origins) and
Long sleeves were the mode of dress favored by barbarians from the Black Sea to the Xiongnu territories on the western border of China. By the sixth century BC, trousers had become emblematic of foreign archers—especially Scythians, Persians, and Amazons—in Greek art. Greek writers described Scythians, Saka, Sarmatians, Dacians, Getae, Celts, Siginni, Medes, Persians, Phrygians, Parthians, Hyrcanians, Bak-trians, Armenians—and Amazons—as clothed in anaxyrides. The Greeks were literally surrounded by trouser-wearing peoples.5
What did all these trousered folk have in common? They were horse people par excellence, and—no coincidence—many of these groups were also distinguished by relative gender equality, compared to the Greeks. The nomads, reported Hippocrates, “always wear trousers and spend all their time on horseback.” Leg and seat coverings are essential for serious—all day, day in and day out—horseback riding, to prevent chafing. As we saw in the previous chapter, the Greeks believed that the Amazons had been the first people to ride horses. So it comes as no surprise that the Greeks assumed that trousers must also have originated with women warriors.6
Trousers and long sleeves were especially required in cold northerly climates, but Strabo explained that the Medes and Persians had decided to adopt this “feminine” Scythian style because it seemed so “august and ceremonial” compared to “going lightly clad.” We know from ancient writings and art that the Greeks themselves adopted some distinctive articles of Thracian, Scythian, and Persian dress as practical or fashionable “foreign accents.” Vase paintings, for example, show Greek men flaunting geometrically patterned Thracian cloaks (zeira) of thick wool, and some even sport Scythian-style caps at symposia. Greek men and women also wore Persian-style sleeved tunics with patterns and decorative borders. Some modern scholars suggest that some Greek appropriations of foreigners’ dress in artworks should be viewed as “politically motivated mythologizations” of certain attire. (Others maintain that ethnicity has nothing to do with Scythian-style clothing worn by males in vase paintings—i nstead the non-Greek attire is thought to signal low-status Greeks, either pubescent boys or archers. However, this argument explicitly excludes Amazons in Scythian-i tyle attire.) As the Greeks became more familiar with peoples of Thrace, Anatolia, Persia, and Scythia, they began to depict foreign figures such as Medea, King
Priam of Troy, and Amazons in the typical garb of contemporary ethnic groups. Even Atalanta, the Greek “Amazon,” was sometimes portrayed in Scythian-style dress (prologue).7
World History
