1. The Nart sagas, myths, legends are translated from Circassian, Abaza, Abkhaz, Ubykh, languages of the northwest Caucasus, the crossroads of numerous ethnic and language groups of antiquity. This extract is a condensed version of Saga 26, translated by Colarusso 2002, 129-31; Amezan is also known as Lady Nart Sana. See also Hunt 2012.
2. Quintus of Smyrna Fall of Troy 1.657-70. Arimaspea, Bolton 1962. Magnes of Smyrna: Nicolaus of Damascus FGrHist 90 F62, probably drawing on Xanthos of Sardis. Evidence for independent Amazon (Amazonis) epic, West 2011, 17, 21n24, 41, 69-71, 123, 147, 179, 428-30; Fowler 2013, 289-91. Scythian folklore, Ivantchik 2006, 216; Skrzhinskaya 1982; Barringer 2004; Blok 1995, 413-14. Most translations of classical sources are adapted from Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) unless otherwise noted.
3. Braund 2005; Tsetskhladze 2011.
4. Rolle 2011, 120.
5. Tyrrell 1984, 25.
6. Earliest skyth root words in Greek literature appear in post-Homeric Theog-nid lyric corpus, ca 6th century BC, Theog. 8.29; s. v. Liddell and Scott. Militant nomad women were the “historical core” of the Amazon myth, Tyrrell 1984, 24.
7. Amazones antianeirai twice in Homer Iliad 3.189; 6.186; Trooiai eg 3.384. Blok 1995, 156, 159, 164, 167, 171.
8. Amazons and men on same side, Bothmer 1957, 27, 79, 108, 113; Shapiro 1983, 111.
9. to Richard Martin for helpful discussion and the Deianeira example.
10. Risch 1974, 24e; see Blok 1995, 159, 166. Herodotus speaks, for example, of Phoinikes andres for the Phoenician people. Zografou 1972, 132-34: antianeirai and antandros were originally ethnonyms or toponyms.
11. Quotes, Blok 1995, 167; 155-77, on semantic ambiguities of the epic formula. Herodotus 4.
12. On the shift to “hostility” and chronology, Blok 1995, 177-85.
13. Homer Iliad 3.182-90; 6.171-87. Hardwick 1990, 15-18. Stewart 1995, 57680, for the Greeks, “virginity” = unmarried, rather than a technical physical state, and did not preclude sexual activity. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 415 and 720. Herodotus 4.110. Pomponius Mela 3.35. Diodorus 3.53: after virgins had served their stint in the army, they had children and served as tribal leaders while the menfolk cared for offspring. Hippocrates Airs, Waters, Places 17, Gera 1997, 90: married women with children usually stopped riding to war except during unusual threat to the tribe. Baumeister and Mendoza 2011.
14. Lesbian identification with Amazons began in the early 20th century, with Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (Burgin 1995), Natalie Clifford Barney, Pensees d’une Amazone (1920), and Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey (1974). Hellanikos FGrHist 323a F 17c. Alcippe: Diodorus 4.16.3. Sinope: Orosius 1.15-16. Orithyia: Justin 2.4.
15. The art historian shall remain anonymous; another recent declaration of the nonexistence of Amazons is Fowler 2013, 86.
16. Amazons were first explained as vestiges of a defeated prehistoric matriarchy by Swiss anthropologist J. Bachofen in 1861, see Bennett 1912 and Eller 2011; Osborne 1997 surveys the matriarchy-patriarchy-Amazons debate. Lefkowitz 2007, 3-13, and Stewart 1995, 572-80, summarize the many meanings assigned to Amazons. Stewart’s own theory relates Amazons to Greek male anxieties about “wild” unwed females, foreign brides in Athens, and the Persian threat in the 5th century BC. More interpretations of Amazons, Vernant 1991; Barringer 1996; Dowden 1997; Dubois 1991 (paired with Centaurs as enemies of civilization); Tyrrell 1984, 76-77 (refuse women’s “destiny of motherhood”); Fowler 2013, 541 (“un-women”); and Hartog 1988 (inverted mirror of Greek culture).
17. Bonfante 2011, 17. Boardman 2002, 160-62.
18. Quotes, Dowden 1997, 117, 119-24, 168, on “the uses of a dead Amazon.” He argues that ritual killing of mythic Amazons “reincorporated” liminal “militant” Greek virgins into “normal society.” Amazons “always defeated or married or both”: Barringer 1996, 60, 65. Cf Langdon 2001: early Amazons of myth embodied “warrior codes of honor” but Amazons’ function was to serve, along with frightening Gorgons, in young boys’ initiation rites. “Setting out to defeat womanish or feeble” adversaries would diminish male heroic status, notes Hardwick 1990, 32. She suggests that Greek men cleverly enhanced their own military status by portraying Amazons as powerful antagonists.
19. Amazons overcome men, Cohen 2000, 101-2. Amazons’ behavior and gestures on vase paintings, McNiven 2000, 79 and nn25-26. Amazons in Greek art: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC).
20. Homeric ideal of the “beautiful death” in battle promising eternal glory for the hero, Cohen 2000, 98, 102-3, 106. Marconi 2004, 35. Blok 1995, 174-75. Nart Saga 1, Colarusso 2002, 11-12. Amazons as foreign heroines, Hardwick 1990; Vlassopoulos 2013, 167-78. Perhaps the greatest Greek “heroes” are best thought of as “antiheroes.” Nudity as costume for Greek male heroes, Bonfante 1989; Cohen 2000, 9-31.
21. Hector dies heroically, but he is not Greek. Patroclus, companion of Achilles, dies heroically but is not considered a great hero of the first rank.
22. Calyx-krater from Vulci, 330 BC, Turmuca Painter, Paris, Cabinet des Me-dailles et Antiques, BNF no 920. Andromache: Beazley, Etruscan Vase Painting 9, 136, pl 31, 2. Dorymache: I. Krauskopf in Amazonen 2010, 46. The ghost of Patro-clus, bandaged and cloaked, appears in frescoes of the Etruscan Francois Tomb in Vulci of the same period; Bonfante 1989, 565. to Jean Turfa and Ingrid Krauskopf for discussion of this vase. Independent Etruscan women: Theopompus of Chios Histories 43, FGrHist F 204 (Athenaeus 517d-518a).
23. Weingarten 2013.
24. Vlassopoulos 2013, 167, is the most recent reiteration of this Hellenocentric assumption; the second quote is from Hardwick 1990, 15.
25. Iranian religious scholars’ claims cited and refuted by Talattof 2000, 52-54.
26. Eg Dubois 1991; Tyrell 1984; Dowden 1997; Stewart 1995 and 1998.
27. Two Amazon dolls signed by Maecius (1st-2nd centuries AD) are in the Louvre; another Amazon doll was found in Troy. Terra-cotta dolls, Merker 2000, 57, 101, see C160-C162 for other Amazon dolls. The mold-made dolls, colored with white slip, have detailed hairstyles and headdresses. Some have painted-on costumes;
Others were clothed with removable garments. Many of the figurines have articulated arms and legs attached with wire. Minns 1913, 369, describes similar articulated dolls in Scythian graves.
World History
