![]() ![]() ![]() The author of a now lost epic poem from archaic Greece depicted Penthesilea, an Amazon queen, leading her troops to the defence of Troy. Herodotus wasn’t the first Greek man to fall under the Amazons’ spell. The notion of female power was both alluring and scary for Greek and Roman men, judging by the treatment of the Amazon legend in their writing. ![]() Herodotus shows the Amazons acting peaceably, even amorously in a sexual rendezvous with neighbouring Scythians, but he also mentions a Scythian name for the tribe that suggests a darker side: Oiorpata or ‘man-killers’. He had learned the legends of the women warriors on a trip to the southern outskirts of their territory – the region the Greeks called Scythia, the vast steppe lands to the north and east of the Black Sea. ‘W e wield bows and arrows, throw javelins and ride horses we know nothing of woman-ly tasks,’ the Amazons said of themselves, according to Herodotus. ![]()
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