Assuming Thalestris really existed, where was she from? Diodorus says her home was between the Thermodon and Phasis rivers, in Pontus-Colchis. Strabo places her in the Thermodon-Caucasus region. Curtius locates the extent of her rule from Pontus to the Caucasus range in Colchis (which he mistakenly assumed bordered on Hyrcania). This area corresponds to Caucasian Iberia, the foothills above the Phasis valley, and Caucasian Albania between the eastern end of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. According to Strabo, “Amazons were said to live in the mountains above Albania.” (This is the region where the Roman commander Pompey would encounter Amazon fighters in the first century BC; chapter 21.) Justin reports that Thalestris’s Amazons were “neighbors of the Albani.” He reminds us that the Amazons had lost their foothold in Pontus, and many moved to the northern steppes after Queen Orithyia’s defeat at the Battle for Athens. The next great warrior queen of the Pontus region was the brave Penthesilea, notes Justin, but her band was wiped out at Troy. He, like others, indicates that isolated pockets of beleaguered Pontic Amazons remained in the mountains around the southeastern corner of the Black Sea, in Pontus, Colchis, Iberia, and Albania (northeastern Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia). “They managed to survive down to the time of Alexander the Great,” says Justin. “One of these was Queen Thalestris.”8
Another geographical possibility is that Thalestris was based in the territory west of the Caspian Sea, northwest of Hyrcania (southern Azerbaijan, northern Iran, Armenia), and that the Greek writers simply assumed an Amazon queen must have originated on the Thermodon plain in Pontus or in Colchis, two lands where ancient Greek myths placed them. Notably, an Azerbaijani legend tells of a meeting between Alexander and a Saka “queen” from Caucasian Albania (Chapter 22). The region between the Black and Caspian seas and beyond was inhabited by Saka-Scythian and related tribes (nomadic and seminomadic) whose numbers fluctuated, and whose men and women made war, traded, and raided other tribes for horses and gold, forming mixed and same-sex groups according to circumstances and whim. Thalestris could have belonged to a tribe that marshaled groups of men, men and some women, or just women for hunting, reconnaissance, negotiations, battle, raiding, or adventure—all options in nomad culture. All-women groups came together and disbanded on an ad hoc basis for various reasons (when a particularly strong woman leader arose, or when most men were away or had been killed in battle). If Thalestris “left the bulk of her army at the border of Hyrcania,” as Diodorus and Curtius reported, these might even have been male soldiers. (Only Justin says her entire force consisted of three hundred women warriors.)9
The great news of Alexander’s epic victory over the Persian Empire certainly resounded in all the Persian-influenced lands between the Black and Caspian seas. Alexander’s historians describe numerous tribes of Scythians and others dispatching emissaries with armed escorts to meet and greet the leader of the next superpower. Such a party might be led by one of the tribe’s best warriors, who could have been a woman.
What was the route taken by Thalestris.? The sources are unclear. Strabo preserved a scrap of information from Cleitarchus, who was with Alexander but whose work is lost: Thalestris set out from “Thermodon” and came by way of the “Caspian Gates” to Hyrcania. As noted, “Amazons of Thermodon” was a familiar trope from myth. Adding to the uncertainty, three different passes were known as the “Caspian Gates” in antiquity. One was the narrow passage between eastern cliffs of the Caucasus range and the Caspian Sea (Dagestan), also called the Marpesian Rock after the Amazon queen. This pass was sometimes confused with the Scythian Gates over the mid-Caucasus because Greek historians were unclear about the precise locations of these two passes. Both were major migration routes from the northern steppes to the Caspian (chapter 2).10 If we accept that Thalestris started from the southern Black Sea region of ancient Colchis, then she would not have crossed either of these Caucasus passes. But she may well have traveled through the third pass by that name, the “Caspian Gates” east of Ecbatana, the very same pass traversed by Alexander on the way to Hyrcania.
If she set out from the southeastern Black Sea/southern Caucasus, Thalestris’s likely path would follow the Phasis and Cyrus river valleys through the lands of Caucasian Iberia and Albania, eastward to the Caspian Sea. There she would turn south, through the luxuriant horse pastures west of the Caspian Sea. Migrating nomads from the Black Sea, Caucasus, and steppes routinely ranged over this territory west of the Caspian (see chapter 4 For armed women’s graves in this region). Justin
MAP 20.1. The routes of Alexander and Thalestris. Map © Michele Angel.
Indicated that Thalestris’s army had to avoid hostile Saka-Scythian-Sarmatian tribes on this trek. After Darius Ill’s defeat by Alexander, nomad bands would have been attracted to the Nisaean Plain to capture fine horses from the celebrated royal Persian herds.
Because Thalestris knew only that Alexander was marching east on the main caravan route, but was unaware of his exact location, she would not travel around the southern Caspian but would continue south across the Elburz range, Mardian territory, perhaps following the Mardos (Sefid Rud) river valley. At a point near ancient Rhaga, her party would join the main caravan route. From here, she could easily retrace the path of Alexander’s immense Macedonian army as it headed east through the Caspian Gates (about fifty miles from Rhaga). Thales-tris would now be passing through lands recently subdued by Alexander, meeting people who could fill her in on his progress. Indeed, many of Alexander’s soldiers would have been strung out along this trail.11 Following Alexander’s route made sense; sooner or later she would catch up with him. Learning the location of his headquarters at the spring north of Hecatompylus, she and her escort of three hundred female warriors would overtake Alexander after he returned from the Mardian venture, in late summer 330 BC.
Justin provides another important detail: “Thalestris traveled 35 days through hostile territories in order to have a child by king Alexander.” Strabo thought that such a long journey—“more than 6,000 stadia from the Thermodon to Hyrcania”—was impractical. The distance of the trek outlined above would be about 600-700 miles (1 mile = 8.7 stadia). Depending on the terrain, weather, water, pasture, weight of her supplies, number of spare horses, and hostile encounters, Thalestris and her cohort could ride an average of 20 to 30 miles a day. Mounted nomads could easily travel 700-1,000 miles in 35 days. Strabo’s geographic doubts, at least, can be laid to rest.12
World History
