Strabo, a native of Pontus, reported that Amazons sent boys away to be raised by their fathers, the Gargarians. This practice has been misinterpreted by some modern scholars who assume that the story was fabricated by the Greeks to show how Amazons “negate the value of boys by banishing them.” But Strabo’s account had a basis in fact. What Strabo describes is the premodern, widespread custom known as fosterage. Sending children, especially boys but sometimes girls, to be raised apart from the clan or tribe was common among Caucasian, Circassian, Scythian, Central Asian, and Persian-influenced cultures in antiquity, and it was still in evidence in early modern times in the Caucasus (it was also traditional among Welsh, Irish, and Scottish clans). Fosterage was a kind of guest-hostage exchange of sons, similar in purpose to marriage alliances. Raising each other’s children ensured trust and friendly political relations among groups that might otherwise be in conflict. Homer and Hesiod allude to the practice, and many other
Ancient sources describe fosterage relationships for sons of powerful families in Macedonia, Armenia, Media, and Persia.4 The Amazon queen who invited Alexander the Great to her bed promised him fosterage of their son (Chapter 20). Among many groups in the Caucasus and Central Asia, sexual relations within a clan or tribe were forbidden as incest; fosterage was another way to encourage exogamy.
Jordanes, the historian of the Goths, said that Amazons’ sons were either given to their fathers or else “killed with a hatred like that of wicked stepmothers.” He added another detail: “Among the Amazons childbearing was detested although everywhere else it is desired.” But Philostratus disagreed, declaring that the Amazons “loved their baby girls immediately upon birth and cared for them as is the nature of mothers, regarding them as belonging to the race of Amazons. The boys they take to the borders to allow their fathers to claim them.”5
In Greek myth, two Amazon mothers raised their sons to young adulthood. Both boys came to bad ends. Hippolytus was the son of Antiope and Theseus, and Tanais was the son of Lysippe and Berossus, a mystery man with a Babylonian/Akkadian name. Both young men died because of their vows to reject sex, love, and marriage, which angered the goddess Aphrodite. The goddess caused Hippolytus to be destroyed by his own horses. Tanais was compelled to drown himself in the Amazon River (so called because the Amazons used to bathe there). His mother, Lysippe, renamed the river “Tanais.” The mythic message seems to be that headstrong, powerful foreign women raise sons who refuse to take on the traditonal male roles of Greek men.6
As fascinated as the Greeks were by the heroic valor and erotic appeal of Amazons of myth, their own male-dominant perspective made it a challenge to envision an actual society in which women could be the equals of men in so many ways. As Strabo exclaimed, “One would have to believe that women were men and men were women!”7 Greeks would expect able-bodied Greek men to revolt and take their rightful place as the masters of women. So it is easy to see how the rumor of Amazons’ breaking boys’ legs—and spirits—might have appeared plausible to the Greeks. As travelers’ and historians’ tales began to multiply about tribes in Scythia in which women really did ride and fight, Greeks strove to understand why Scythian men would agree to share power and glory with their women. One popular conclusion was that if women
Went to war, then the men must have been disabled and forced to do domestic work.
Archaeological findings help us to visualize many features of nomad life and tease out which aspects were known to the Greeks and which support or conflict with their image of Scythian Amazons. For example, signs of maternal attachment despite a woman’s warrior status might have surprised ancient Greeks. Yet as we saw in chapter 4, archaeologists have discovered infants and children buried with armed women and children interred with armed male and female couples, indicating family groups (on the Dnieper River, and near Bobrytsia, Chertomlyk, Ordzhonikidze, and other Ukrainian sites). Notably, at Pokrova (Kazakhstan) some children were buried with single adult men. In some cemeteries, in fact, all the children’s skeletons found by archaeologists had been interred with men.8 This intriguing evidence from the grave suggests that some men associated with warrior women helped to raise children, recalling Diodorus’s description, above. Moreover, awls, knives, hemp-burning kits, spindle-whorls, whetstones, jewelry, and mirrors appeared in men’s as well as women’s graves.
In Greek families, sons were highly valued, while daughters were less well fed and educated, confined indoors working wool, and considered a drain on resources to be “transferred by marriage to another house as soon as possible.”9 In contrast, within nomad bands on the harsh steppes each individual was crucial to the survival of the tribe. Children dressed and ate alike, and all learned to tame and ride fast horses, shoot deadly arrows, bring home game, defend the tribe, and attack foes. Many of the shared duties attributed to Scythians and Amazons in antiquity are mirrored among some present-day nomadic peoples of Caucasia and Central Asia.
In Kazakhstan today, for example, women and men alike still participate in the traditional singing contests called aites, long question-and-response sessions that test the people’s knowledge of their traditional history. Girls and boys are expected to learn by heart at least ten generations of their family trees. Within living memory in the Caucasus, another heartland of the ancient Amazons, female and male bards would recount old legends and heroic tales (Nart sagas) in many different languages whenever the scattered tribes converged for seasonal socializing and rituals. Egalitarianism is reflected in the celebrations and festivals
That bring far-flung groups together for communal feasts, games, and contests in Central Asia. For instance, it is common for girls and boys aged six to nine compete in horse races as equals, riding their ponies a grueling twenty miles or so over the steppes.10
World History
