Strabo, Justin, and Plutarch mentioned that the Amazons of the Caucasus “make their helmets, clothing, and belts from the skins of wild animals.” The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that once a steppe nomad donned his or her “hideous” hemp tunic and leggings of rodent and goatskins, that outfit was worn until the rags fell away. He also declared that the nomads “lived glued to their horses” because their boots were too ill-fitting for walking. The Scythians “wear skins and stitched trousers as protection from the cold,” remarked the Roman poet Ovid with distaste, “and the only part of their body one can see is their face.” Other writers, however, wrote more admiringly of nomad dress. Strabo, for example, praised the soft woolen trousers and tunics dyed with many bright colors and lavish golden belts and headdresses of the Saka (Massagetae).13
Herodotus provides the fullest ancient descriptions of the dress of the myriad Eurasian tribes allied with the Persians in the fifth century BC. Thracians, he noted, wore fox-s kin caps, tunics, colorful woven cloaks (zeirai), and high fawn-s kin boots. Various tribes of Anatolia were clothed in animal skins, brightly dyed tunics, belted robes or zeirai fastened with brooches, high boots, linen breastplates, and flexible helmets of plaited leather strips or of bronze decorated with bulls’ ears and horns (like those on Amazons’ helmets in sixth-century BC vase paintings; see below). The Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians (southern Caspian region), and other Central Asians wore soft felt or woven caps, multicolored long-sleeved, belted woolen or leather tunics, trousers, and great quantities of gold. The Saka-Scythians, reported Herodotus, dressed in similar outfits but with “stiff, pointed turbans.” Many of these costumes are depicted in ancient Assyrian and Mesopotamian reliefs.14
The earliest Amazon scenes suddenly appeared with unprecedented force on black-figure vase paintings in 575-550 BC. More than five hundred vases depicting Amazons survive from this period. In black-figure vase painting, women were distinguished by white skin, a feature that arose because proper Greek women stayed indoors, while the men were out bronzing in the sun, exercising, hunting, and fighting. Ironically, the logic of pale skin for women was inappropriate for Amazons (and
Atalanta), who carried out the same outdoor activities as men, but the artistic convention is helpful for us moderns, allowing us to tell Amazons apart from Scythian men in black-figure paintings, since they often wear similar costumes (Figs. 7.1, 11.1, 18.2, 18.5). A few painters chose to leave Amazons’ skin black, probably to emphasize the women’s manly nature. In this earliest period, Amazons were kitted out like Greek hoplites, in short belted chiton, peplos, or exomis (exposing one breast), greaves (shin-guards), cuirasses (breastplates), crested helmets, round shields, and spears, and they fought on foot. A vase painted by the imaginative and detail-oriented painter Exekias (550-525 BC) shows Penthesilea in a Greek helmet decorated with a tiny griffin ornament; she also wears a belted tunic and full leopard skin.15
The first Amazon archer to wear long sleeves and trousers in a vase painting appears on a black-figure amphora of 575-550 BC. By the end of the sixth century BC, Athenian vase painters began to show Amazons wearing Scythian-Sarmatian-Thracian patterned attire, and several vases depict Amazons with the Thracian zeira (Fig. 12.1). Through trade and travel, the Greeks were becoming increasingly familiar with the diverse but culturally related nomad groups around the Black Sea and beyond whose women and men rode horses and dressed alike. This growing knowledge was reflected in stage plays featuring foreign characters in exotic, richly decorated finery. Notably, the fifth-century BC playwright Euripides remarked that “Amazons’ garments woven with many designs were dedicated by Herakles in the temple of Apollo at Delphi.” After the Persian Wars (480 BC), Amazons, Scythians, and Persians in Greek art wore similar articles of clothing (chapter 17).16
Innovations of red-figure and colored white-ground vase painting allowed extremely detailed decorative possibilities. By 525-500 BC, vase painters were becoming adept in reproducing the flamboyant patterns and textures of Amazon and Scythian wardrobes (Figs. 11.3, 11.4). Amazons appear in a surprising variety of individualized nomad outfits, a result of Greek perceptions of the women’s origins combined with the artists’ and their customers’ enthusiasm for eclectic, unusual fashions. Antiope’s ensemble on a vase painted by Myson (500-480 BC; see fig. 16.2) is visually stunning: a short chiton under a jacket complemented by trousers sewn from two materials, a woven fabric with leopard skin
On the inner thighs. She also wears an earring and a large quiver on a shoulder strap, topped off with a round cap decorated with a palmette. Often several Amazons on a single vase are dressed in different costumes but with recognizable elements of Thracian, Scythian, Persian, and Greek attire (Figs. 5.1, 13.6, 13.7, 18.2).17
A striking Amazonomachy attributed to the Andokides Painter (530 BC; he created the remarkable vase showing Amazons swimming and arming) is filled with unusual details of costume. Some of the Amazons are dressed as archers, others as hoplites with helmets. (One Amazon helmet has bull’s ears and horns like the one in fig. 7.2 And like those Herodotus would describe on nomad warriors about a hundred years later; see chapter 23 For Egyptian examples.) All wear necklaces and some wear earrings. The fringed tunic of a fallen Amazon is richly ornamented with woven bands of animals and geometric designs; her cap has lozenges and dots; her shield bears an eagle device. The Amazon hoplite’s corselet is decorated with rosettes, while her archer companion wears a short chiton with dots and crosses. One Amazon wears a pointed cap of spotted fur; another has a dotted turban.18
A medley of Scythian, Persian, and Greek details appears on the extraordinary drinking cup in the shape of an Amazon huntress riding a white horse with blue eyes (signed by Sotades, mid-fifth century BC, found in Meroe, Sudan; see chapters 11 and 23). The Amazon once held a metal hunting spear. Her quarry, a boar and a lion, crouch in the green grass under her horse. Traces of paint show that her eyes were violet and her white shoes had purple laces and red soles. She wore red trousers, a purple shirt with red dots, and a yellow-and-black leopard skin around her waist. A red quiver with a wave design and a red and violet Greek-style helmet with white crest completed her outfit. The drinking cup portion was decorated with red-figure scenes showing a bearded Persian rider and either a Scythian or an Amazon on foot attacking two Greek hoplites (Plate 2).19
Traces of paint on marble sculptures of Scythians and Amazons reveal that their clothing was exuberantly colorful and patterned, as were the warrior women’s costumes in the large paintings of Amazonomach-ies that once adorned public and private walls in Athens. Those murals no longer exist, but we have descriptions of the most impressive ones by
Several ancient Greek writers. Their details provide evidence of the popularity of scenes from famous Amazonomachy wall paintings, copied by vase painters onto their pots featuring Amazons.20
The artists’ pleasure in representing the sheer variety of Amazons’ athletic poses and eye-catching attire is evident, and the erotic appeal is obvious. In contrast to the ancient writers who disapproved of the way the barbarians’ attire covered up the body, the vase painters seemed to take sensual delight in the ways Scythian-style outfits could reveal the bodies of physically fit, desirable foreign women. In the words of one vase scholar, the Amazons’ thin, transparent chitons and close-fitting tops and trousers “invite [and] tease the male viewer to caress the Amazons’ trim, lithe bodies [with] the eye’s hand.” Whether or not real Scythian clothing was as variegated and sexy as depicted in art, the vase painters seized on the possibilities of fitted Scythian couture to express individuality and sexuality without nudity.21
In effect, the vase painters of Amazons became the first fashion designers. The vast popularity of Amazons in vase paintings means that we have a veritable catalog of sumptuous barbarian women’s fashions as imagined by artists. They dressed the warrior women in body-hugging “unitards” or tunics, short chitons or belted dresses, sometimes over leggings and trousers, often profusely decorated with animals, stars, cross-hatching, dots, circles, stripes, checks, waves, zigzags, and other designs. Some Amazons have patterned zeirai or animal skins, and their hair could be either short or long, either loose or tied back with bands. In paintings and sculpture, pointed or soft Scythian caps with earflaps or ties (kidaris) soon replaced the Greek helmets, and the women wear a variety of belts, baldrics (diagonal straps), corselets, shoulder cords or bands, and crisscrossing leather straps attached to belt loops like those worn by the archer huntress Artemis. (As noted in Chapter 5, these may have served as bosom support.)22
Amazon footgear included soft leather moccasin-l ike shoes, calf-high boots (endromides), or taller laced boots (embades) with scallops or flaps and lined with felt or fur. But there are many artistic examples of barefoot Amazon riders too. According to early travelers, the women of hunting and marauding tribes in the Caucasus and steppes went barefoot in the summer and wore boots in winter; we might imagine that this was the custom in antiquity too. A barefoot long-distance bareback
FiG. 12.2. Barefoot Amazon tying on heel/ankle guards or spurs; her shield, quiver, and bow are suspended above left. Athenian white-ground lekythos (oil flask) from Cyprus, ca. 475425 BC, Inv. A256, Musde de Louvre, Paris. Photo: Hervd Lewandowski. © RMN-Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY.
Rider, however, would risk chafing on the ankles. This might help explain the curious ankle and heel straps with a “stirrup” band under the instep, shown on some Amazons in paintings and sculptures. A vase painting in the Louvre, for example, shows a barefoot Amazon putting on a pair of ankle guards, and other vases depict Amazons with similar heel straps (Fig. 12.2). Some scholars have wondered whether the straps were intended as “spurs” of some sort, but ankle guards are also worn by acrobats and athletes. The straps were most likely worn to support and protect the bare ankle and heel from abrasion injuries or sprains. Their inclusion in Amazon statues and paintings suggests that Greek artists drew on detailed knowledge of gear used by real Scythian horsewomen to equip their imagined Amazons.23
World History
