It was Theseus’s kidnapping of Antiope that ignited the war. When Queen Orithyia returned to Pontus from her war campaigns, Mela-nippe described the murder of Hippolyte by Heracles and Antiope’s abduction. Enraged by these acts of aggression, Orithyia requested aid from Sagylus, a Scythian chieftain north of the Black Sea. She told Sa-gylus that the Amazons of Pontus “were of Scythian origin,” that long ago, “after their husbands had been massacred, the women had taken up arms and proved by their valor that Scythian women were as spirited as their men.” She explained her reasons for waging war on Athens. “Stirred by national pride,” Sagylus agreed to help his long-lost countrywomen. He designated his son Panasagoras to head a large contingent of mounted Scythian warriors to join Orithyia’s forces. Diodorus’s account is briefer but essentially the same: “The Scythians joined forces with the Amazons and thus an impressive army was assembled, led by the Amazons.” This story, preserved by Justin and Diodorus (and Isocrates, below), shows that the Greeks identified Amazons as Scythians and that another Scythian tribe joined the Amazons’ war on Athens.4
One route to Greece from Pontus would have the Amazons traveling west across Anatolia, crossing the Sea of Marmara into Thrace, and then heading south to Attica. (An alternative route, discussed below, had the Amazons invading from the north.) As they set off, their leaders would have stopped at tiny Amazon Island, the site of the massive black boulder and the altar to Cybele, sacred to the Amazons. It was the custom of the Amazon queens to sacrifice horses here before going to war. Several Greek vase paintings of Amazons at altars may have illustrated the women’s preparations for invading Athens (chapter 10).
From Thrace, the Amazons advanced south through Thessaly, Boeo-tia, and Attica. In some accounts, the Amazons sent a message from a camp in Attica outside Athens to Theseus, requesting that he return Hippolyte’s Belt of Ares and release Antiope. He refused. Breaching Athens’s walls, the Amazons surrounded the city and prevented anyone inside from leaving or receiving supplies. Seizing the high ground, the women’s army swarmed over the rocky crag directly across from the Acropolis, Athens’s citadel. Here they pitched their tents and sacrificed to Ares. Their campsite later came to be called the Amazoneum (“Shrine of the Amazons”), and the craggy hill is still called the Areopagus, “Rock of Ares.” The tragedian Aeschylus even pictured the Amazons erecting “lofty towers on their new citadel to rival those built by Theseus.” That presents an unrealistic image for nomads, but Aeschylus intended to evoke the grave danger their siege posed to Athens.5
For seven days there was a standoff. In this emergency, Theseus consulted an oracle. The oracle’s advice was to sacrifice to Phobus, a detail that further underscores the Athenians’ desperate situation. The god Phobus was the personification of fear, terror, and military rout. We can imagine Theseus, like the Seven Against Thebes sacrificing to Fear in Aeschylus’s tragedy, cutting the throat of a bull over a black shield and plunging his hands into the gore, asking the god to lift the paralysis that gripped the Athenians, and to sow panic among the Amazon army.6
The next morning, Theseus ordered the first assault on the entrenched Amazons. It was late summer, the beginning of the new year for the Greeks. Plutarch points out that the Athenians later commemorated the day of this attack with an annual festival in the month they named Boedromion, which means “Running in answer to a cry for help.” This is a realistic seasonal detail, indicating that the Amazons began their march in winter, setting out for a four-month summer campaign in Greece and intending to return home before next winter. (The month of Boedromion and the god of fear Phobus converge again, in a later historical battle pitting outnumbered Greeks against a powerful barbarian army. In 331 BC, Alexander the Great may well have had Theseus’s desperation in mind when, in the month of Boedromion, the Macedonian army faced Darius’s imposing Persian forces at Gaugamela. On the eve of that battle, Alexander sacrificed to Phobus, praying to rout the Persians. Against all odds, Alexander won and King Darius fled in terror from the battlefield.)7
The detailed plan of the four-month-long Battle for Athens provided by the historian Cleidemus was imaginary. But it does tell us that the Athenians pictured the furious fighting and the crucial turning points taking place around many familiar landmarks in their city. According to the story, the Amazon forces extended from the Areopagus to the vicinity of the Pnyx. Meanwhile, Theseus gathered a contingent of Athenian warriors on the Hill of the Muses (Philopappus Hill) south of the Pnyx. From here they attacked the Amazon flank near the Pnyx. In the savage fighting the Greeks suffered very heavy casualties. The Amazons routed the Greeks, forcing them into the narrow space between the Acropolis and the Areopagus, and killing many Athenians near the Cave of the Furies at the base of the Areopagus.
The difficult topography of the battle differed markedly from the classic Greek hoplite battles, which took place on level ground. The rough terrain was a disadvantage to the Greeks, who were accustomed to facing an opposing army of hoplite warriors with exactly the same armor and arms and in the same close order formations possible on a level plain. The copies of the great shield of Athena in the Parthenon show the Greeks and Amazons fighting in a rocky, steep landscape around the Acropolis and Areopagus. Many vase painters also took care
Map 17.1. The mythic Battle for Athens. The Amazons took positions on the Areopagus and Hill of the Nymphs. The Athenians attacked from their positions at the Lyceum, Ardettus Hill, Palladium, and Hill of the Muses. Walls and structures are added for orientation in the topography of Athens. Map © Michele Angel.
To depict the uneven ground with stony outcrops, hills, and trees in their illustrations of the combat (see fig. 13.7). Several spectacular vase paintings bring the tumult to life, showing numerous named combatants embroiled in battle and duels, with gushing blood, staggering wounded, contorted corpses, broken spears, abandoned equipment, and even arrows whizzing overhead. Notably, in these Athenian battle scenes the Greeks are often outnumbered by the Amazons.8
The Amazons held the upper hand in the intense fighting that raged on the hillsides and the fields around the Pnyx and Areopagus. Theseus’s men still held three strongholds east of the Acropolis: the military training grounds at the Lyceum outside the Diochares Gate; the Ardettus Hill beyond the Ilissus stream; and the Palladium (a sanctuary of Athena) southeast of the Acropolis. The tide began to turn in favor of the Athenians as the Greeks rushed out from these three points to clash with the Amazons. The Greeks drove them back to their camp, killing great numbers of the women warriors. After three more months of violent struggle, the Athenians finally gained the advantage and the Amazons capitulated.
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