NOTES

1.  Atalanta’s story: Hesiod Theogony 1287-94; Catalogue of Women, 6th-century BC work attributed to Hesiod; Apollodorus 1.8.2-3; 1.9.16; 3.9.2; Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 1.768-73 (volunteers for the Argo); Hyginus Fabula 185; Diodorus Siculus 4.34 and 4.41-48 (hereafter Diodorus); Aelian Historical Miscellany 13.1 (“fiery gaze”); Ovid Metamorphoses 8.270; 10.560-707; and Pausanias 8.45, among others. Arcadia and Boeotia both claimed Atalanta: see Gantz 1993, 1:33139; and Fowler 2013, 110 (gift of spear to Jason, scholiast on Apollonius Argonautica), and 411. Variants of Atalanta’s myth in ancient Greco-Roman sources and artwork: Boardman 1983 and Barringer 1996, 2001, 2004.

2.  In some versions, the youth who won the race with Atalanta is called Melan-ion. Xenophon On Hunting 1.7 (4th century BC) says he courted Atalanta by carrying out “great labors of love.” Unfortunately, two ancient tragedies, Atalanta by Aeschylus and Sophocles’s Meleager, are lost. Structuralist interpretation of the race: Barringer 1996, 71-75.

3.  Pausanias 8.45-46, 8.35.10, 3.18.15; 3.24.2; 5.19.1 describes many ancient artworks depicting Atalanta; see Philostratus Imagines 15. Atalanta’s “Amazonian torso” and head and the Calydonian Boar are in the National Museum, Athens: Gardner 1906, illustration 170. Atalanta’s similarity to an Amazon noted by Bennett 1912, 60, 75; Tyrrell 1984, 73, 77, 83-84; and discussed in detail by Barringer 1996 (tusk dedications, 54n26) and Barringer 2001 and 2004. The immense tusks displayed at Tegea were most likely those of a prehistoric mammoth, common fossils in Greece.

4.  Boardman 1983, 9-10. Barringer 1996, 51-66; Barringer 2001, 147-71.

5.  Scythians in vase paintings, Vos 1963, 40-52. Dowden 1997, 104. Braund 2005; Barringer 2004, Ivantchik 2006, 219-24. Atalanta dressed as Amazon, Barringer 1996, 55-56, 59-60, 62-67. Early contact, intermarriage, and familiarity: Braund 2005; Mayor, Colarusso, and Saunders 2014.

6.  Minns 1913, 53. Blok 1995, 413, 26-30, 217-19. Some argue that Scythian costumes on archaic Greek vases have nothing to do with foreign ethnicity but are artistic conventions to indicate Greek archers of low status. But this theory deliberately sets aside the question of why Amazons, and Atalanta, are dressed in Scythian attire. The theory maintains that Scythian-costumed figures shown with Atalanta represent Meleager and other young Greek males, ephebes or “junior” heroes, who cross-dress in Amazonian-Scythian-style garb for ritual reasons. In this view, Atalanta herself is playing the role of a young Greek male dressed as a Scythian. But these theories fail to account for conventional heroic and ephebic Greek attire of other young men on the same vases and are hard to reconcile with other features of Atalanta’s life story. See Ivantchik 2006, 198 and 206, 219-24; Osborne 2011, 143-45; Scythian-style dress = Greek ephebes, Lissarrague 1990, 125-49; Shapiro 1983, 111. For counterargument, see Cohen 2012, 471-72. The only literary evidence for the structuralist claim that Greek ephebes dressed as Scythians is a 9th-century AD Byzantine source, Photius, s. v. sunepheboi, saying that people of Elis called their ephebes skuthas. According to Barringer 1996, 6162, Atalanta represents a Greek male ephebe, the Calydonian Boar Hunt myth describes a “perverted Greek male initiatory hunt,” and even the boar itself “hunts like an ephebe.” Atalanta shown with Scythians: Barringer 1996, 51-61; Barringer 2004, 16-17, 19, 23-25.

7.  Atalanta as athlete, erotic scenes, Boardman 1983, 10-14; Barringer 1996, 6770. Embroidered lion figure on red-figure cup by Oltos, 510 BC, Bologna, see Barringer 2001, 163-64 fig 90. Perizoma, Bonfante 1989. Euripides Andromache 597600 claimed that naked Spartan girls wrestled men, but the play is considered anti-Spartan propaganda. Wrestling contests between men and women are very common in nomad traditions, see chapters 22 And 24.

8.  The earliest written mention of this myth, Palaephatus 13 with Stern’s commentary 44-45 (late 4th century BC), maintains that the story arose because they made love in a cave that happened to be the den of a lion and a lioness. Another early Greek account simply implies that their lust changed them into wild animals: Apollodorus 3.9.2. In the 1st century AD, Hyginus (Fabula 185) was the first to say lions could not mate, but his fellow poet Ovid (Met. 10.681-707) said they continued to have sex in the form of lions. Barringer 2001, 151-59.

9.  Apollodorus 3.9.2, and see Frazer n2 in the Loeb edition for ancient and medieval explanations of the transformation to lions. Latin poets Ovid and Hyginus say that Aphrodite spitefully inflamed the lovers with passion in a sanctuary. Pliny 8.43 on lion lust, jealousy, and interbreeding. Hyginus was the first to claim that lions are “animals to whom the gods deny intercourse,” but Ovid says the pair had sex frequently in the woods in the form of lions. Quotes, Barringer 1996, 76, and fig 23; Barringer 2001, on the erotic meaning of felines, 99-101, 163, 167. Some mythic sources suggest divine pity or poetic appropriateness of their transformation.

10.  “The only females who hunt are those outside the bounds of civilized society, namely. . . Amazons,” Barringer 1996, 59, 62; Barringer 2001, 156-57; and Barringer 2004. Outsider status of Amazons, Hardwick 1990, 17-20, and Lefkowitz 2007, 12. Aelian Historical Miscellany 13.1.

11.  Mayor, Colarusso, and Saunders 2014.

12.  Barringer 2001, 144-47; Vernant 1991, 199-200; Fantham et al. 1994, 85.

Dowden 1997, 122-23. Cf Ballesteros-Pastor 2009 for a bear cult associated with Artemis in Themiscyra, home of the Amazons.

13.  Girls as “wild animals lusting after the life of Artemis,” Stewart 1995, 579, citing Homer Iliad 21.471; Pindar Pythian 9.6; Xenophon Cyropaedia 6.13. Stewart 1998, 120. “The Amazon in her must die,” Dowden 1997, 123. The mythic Amazon represents a woman’s true, free soul, which must be given up or suppressed in patriarchal societies like Greece, according to the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, Burgin 1995.

14.  The Francois Vase as a wedding gift, Atalanta on perfume and unguent jars, nuptial vases, and other women’s ceramics, Barringer 1996, 62-66; Barringer 2001, 143, 159-61, 171; Barringer 2004; on mirrors and jewelry boxes, Boardman 1983, 16-18. Men created vase paintings of women to teach them their place, Tyrrell 1984, 48.

15.  Significantly, Amazons were also favored subjects on vases given as wedding gifts and objects used by Greek women. Outstanding examples are epinetra used while working wool; eg Diosphos Painter, ca 500 BC, Louvre MNC 624: one side is a scene of women weaving in their private quarters; the other side shows three Amazons. Many other examples of such images on women’s objects appear in the following chapters.

16.  See Woodford 2003, ch 17, on finding the keys to unlock mysteries in vase paintings. The “nonsense” inscription between Atalanta and Peleus on the vase (Berlin F 1837) by the Diosphos Painter appears to be Abkhazian for “She of the curly hair.” Colarusso per corr Jan 14-15, 2012; Abkhazian and other Caucasian languages on Greek vase paintings: Mayor, Colarusso, and Saunders 2014. Co-larusso 2002, Saga 83, 364-65.

17.  “Befuddlement,” Barringer 2001, 51-53, 157-58, 167; structuralists J.-P. Ver-nant and P. Vidal-Naquet, see Barringer 2004; and 1996, 61, 62 , 65; Vernant 1991, 199-200. Atalanta’s son was Parthenopaios, one of the Seven Against Thebes; his father is given as Meleager, Melanion, Hippomenes, or Ares. Fowler 2013, 411. Apollodorus 3.9.2.

18.  Later Roman mosaics do show Atalanta hunting on horseback like an Amazon. Atalanta is unlike other mythic virgins, such as Callisto, who resist marriage and are raped and transformed into animals. That moment in Atalanta’s myth would have been during the Centaurs’ attempted rape, but instead Atalanta defends herself, as an Amazon would. Barringer 1996, 60, 66; Herodotus 4.116.2; Apollodorus 1.9.16; Diodorus 4.41.2, 448.5.

19.  The sole exception was Palaephatus, skeptical “myth buster” of the 4th century BC. Rationalizing myths as misunderstandings of natural events, he proposed that male barbarians were mistaken for women because they shaved their beards, tied up their hair, and wore long skirts. But in real life and in Greek art, both Amazons and genuine barbarian horsemen wore trousers, not long skirts. Palaephatus 32, but he contradicted himself at 4, where he identified the Sphinx as an Amazon.

20.  Long before modern archaeological discoveries in Scythia, French scholar Pierre Petit (1685) wrote an illustrated treatise arguing that Amazons of Greek myth really existed.

21.  Pomponius Mela 3.34-35 (ca AD 43).