Hippolyte’s girdle was said to have been awarded by the war god Ares to the Amazons’ champion fighter. The common English translation “girdle” for Hippolyte’s Belt of Ares, with its connotations of women’s intimate underwear, is “grossly misleading,” as several scholars point out. Hippolyte’s zoster (the Homeric term for war belt) would have been a heavy, richly ornamented piece of armor (something like a massive concho belt) worn over her clothing. Herodotus included descriptions of warriors’ special war belts in his catalog of the golden treasures of Scythia. Archaeologists have unearthed heaps of golden plaques and buckles and leather fighting belts reinforced with gold and bronze plates, some of which belonged to real women who lived and fought in the time of Herodotus and earlier. Hippolyte’s prized belt would have resembled the protective gear worn by real female warriors, like those buried in the kurgans at Ternovoye, Ukraine (Chapters 4, 12, 13).
The genuine Scythian armored and gold-ornamented belts allow us to imagine how the Greeks would have visualized Hippolyte’s zoster, and help to explain the high value and symbolic meaning of the prize that Heracles was seeking for Princess Admete. In antiquity, an article of clothing or equipment was believed to magically transfer the owner’s personal qualities to the wearer. The fabled war belt and other accoutrements possessed by the Best of the Amazons would be powerful trophies indeed.6
Surviving ancient texts and artworks show that there were countless variations of the myth of Hippolyte’s Belt, the Ninth Labor imposed on Heracles. (The Twelve Labors were penalties for murdering his own family when he was driven mad by the goddess Hera.) The Amazon queen’s name also varies, and in some versions the Athenian hero Theseus was among the two dozen or so noble Greek adventurers who joined Heracles’s quest. It is not possible to trace all the twists and turns in the conflicting traditions that explored this earliest “what if” scenario imagining Greeks encountering Amazons for the first time. But the kernel of the tale was always Heracles’s killing of the Amazons’ queen, which set the stage for the Battle for Athens.
Heracles’s exciting battle with the Amazons was the second most popular theme in archaic Greek art (after his struggle with the Nemean Lion). This mythic conflict burst into the artistic repertoire of vase painters in the mid-sixth century BC, but the various oral stories had begun circulating much earlier. Some vase painters labeled dozens of individual Amazons and Greeks by name, providing more clues about alternative traditions. For example, in some scenes painted on pots Andromache (“Manly Fighter”) is the name of the Amazon queen, instead of Hippolyte, whose name ultimately came to be attached to the best-known myth of the fabulous belt won by Heracles. To add to the confusion, some ancient writers call the Amazon leader Antiope or Melanippe.7
In many literary accounts, the encounter between Heracles and Hip-polyte began amicably, then turned brutal through a misunderstanding. Some versions even promise love between equals before the battle erupts. Most of the surviving artistic representations are violent. Yet at least eight red-figure vases seem to explore alternative “what if” scenarios (Fig. 15.1, pl. 7). The painters illustrate a peaceful parley between Hip-polyte and a relaxed, youthful Heracles, with several Amazon guards at ease and the Amazon’s horse calmly grazing. Some idyllic vase scenes even show the pair in the classic courtship iconography: the Amazon queen presenting her belt as a kind of love gift to Heracles, who leans casually on his club in the typical stance of a young lover.8 It seems plausible that the dramatically different versions of their encounter— friendly and hostile—might have reflected peaceable and bellicose early encounters between Greek colonists and Scythians around the Black Sea.
Several monumental marble reliefs depicted Heracles brutally overpowering Hippolyte. The famous relief from the Greek Temple of Hera at Selinus (Sicily), for example, shows him grabbing her head and stepping on her foot, about to deliver a fatal sword blow (Fig. 15.2). Other statues of Amazons clashing with Heracles were described by ancient Greek and Roman authors. Miraculously, fragments of these ancient statues have survived and can be identified by modern archaeologists. At the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, for example, in about AD 170, the Greek travel writer Pausanias viewed ancient sculptures of Heracles’s Twelve Labors. One showed the hero stripping the Belt of Ares from the fallen Hippolyte. Pieces of those marbles were recovered by French archaeologists in 1829 and now reside in the Louvre. In Pausanias’s time, the sumptuous chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Zeus created by the famous sculptor Phidias in the fifth century BC still dominated the interior of the temple. Zeus was seated on a cedar-wood throne inlaid with gold, ebony, ivory, and gems. Pausanias examined the colorful paintings and reliefs on the great throne: one panel depicted twenty-nine Greeks led by Heracles and Theseus in hand-to-hand combat with twenty-nine Amazons. Pausanias also marveled at a very ancient statue of Heracles reaching out to grasp the belt of an Amazon on horseback, created by Aristocles the Elder of Kydonia in the sixth century BC. Archaeologists discovered the pedestal of this lost statue in the temple ruins in 1876.9
The earliest recognizable image of an Amazon in Greek art appears on a small painted terra-cotta shield made in about 700 BC. Heinrich Schliemann excavated pieces of this shattered object in 1884-85 from the ruins of the citadel at Tiryns. More painted fragments came to light in 1926. The puzzle was finally pieced together about ten years later. The crude geometric-style painting features five warriors. The two central combatants are male and female. The bearded Greek warrior holds a sword and grasps the plumed helmet of the woman warrior, who brandishes a spear. On a smaller scale, a pair of male and female warriors face off beside a dying male warrior prone on the ground with a spear in his back. The women are identifiable by their smooth cheeks, breasts, and long skirts (a convention for distinguishing women from men before white skin was used by black-figure vase painters). In keeping with the belief that Amazons were the equals of men, this archaic Amazonomachy from Tiryns shows the two Amazons holding their own, even winning. The only mortally wounded figure is the Greek warrior.
Tiryns, where this artifact came to light, was the mythic home of Heracles, and of King Eurystheus and Princess Admete who demanded Hippolyte’s belt. Does this oldest picture of Amazons illustrate the myth of Heracles’s expedition against the Amazons.? Mythic, literary, and archaeological evidence suggests that it might. The votive shield of local clay was found among other dedications to Hera at Tiryns, which was the center of her ancient cult in the Argolid. Hera was the goddess who opposed Heracles, and Princess Admete was a priestess of Hera. One late version of the Hippolyte myth even claims that Admete sailed to Themiscyra with Heracles to make sure he obtained the prize. Was there once a tale in which it was Admete, the priestess of Hera, rather than the goddess herself, who disguised herself as an Amazon and goaded Hippolyte’s women into attacking Heracles.?
According to the mythographers, Heracles returned to Tiryns and dedicated Hippolyte’s belt in Hera’s temple. The Athenian playwright Euripides stated that in his day (420 BC) Hippolyte’s golden belt and her gold-spangled cape could still be admired in the majestic Temple of Hera near Tiryns. That temple was first built in about 700 BC, the same time that the votive shield was made in Tiryns. A relic displayed as Hippolyte’s belt in the fifth century BC might have been a real Scythian-made war belt embellished with gold plates, or a facsimile of one. Hippolyte’s “gold-s pangled cape” calls to mind the tunics and cloaks decorated with thousands of golden appliques found in Scythian burials.10
At Tiryns, where the archaic votive shield showing Greeks fighting Amazons was found, other archaeological artifacts are thought to point to initiation rites in which young Greek boys overcame terrifying opponents, perhaps masked Gorgons or other alien adversaries, to prove their bravery. Art historian Susan Langdon proposes that ritual contests at Tiryns may have featured stories or performances of battles with Amazons to mark graduation to adulthood. According to Langdon, this theory explains Hera’s involvement in the myth of Heracles and the rites of passage. Perhaps her harassment of Heracles was a guise for the goddess’s religious role as a strict helper of young Greek “heroes” who proved their mettle and worthiness by ritual contests with menacing figures.11
That theory is speculative. But Amazonomachy narratives like the battle for Hippolyte’s belt certainly demonstrated the ancient Greek belief that truly noble victories could be attained only when true equals were pitted against one another in single combat. The many artistic depictions of suspenseful conflicts between well-matched Greek warriors and foreign female fighters reinforced the idea that Amazon heroines were worthy adversaries for Greek heroes.
The myth did not end with the death of Hippolyte at the hands of Heracles and his men, of course. A host of questions arose, inspiring more mythic episodes. We already know that Heracles presented Hippolyte’s battle-axe to Queen Omphale of Lydia (Chapter 13). We also learned what became of the Amazons who were taken prisoner—they were marooned on the northern Black Sea coast, fell in with some Scythian youths, and founded the Sarmatians (Chapter 3). The myth’s sequels focus on the other Amazon survivors of the Greek attack. How would Antiope fare in Athens.?
World History
