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On The Subject Of Amazons

Amazons have been a popular theme with the creative talents at Renaissance. They sure stand out in the memory, but just how many appearances in all the seasons of both shows have there been? Here's a quick roundup:

Hercules
"Hercules and the Amazon Women" (first or second movie) but in NO other episode of Hercules prior to the appearance of Ephiny and Xenon in the recent fourth season installment "Prodigal Sister".

Xena
"Hooves and Harlots" Season 1/Episode 10
"Is There a Doctor in the House" 1/24
"The Quest" 2/13
"A Necessary Evil" 2/14
and an upcoming third season episode again featuring Ephiny.

This is my best record at this time, though all the second season has not yet been show here in Aus. Seven appearances in total is not much when you think about it, and it's testimony to the strength of performance given in each instance that such a proportionally small part of the overall cannon can be so memorable.

But who are these Amazons? A typical encyclopedia definition is: "A mythical race of female warriors dwelling in Asia Minor, encountered by Hercules in his travels." That's very little to go on, and in various retellings and translations of the Ancient Greek texts you can start to see a much broader picture.

In the shows the Amazons have been modified and adjusted in certain ways. They are, by implication, in Greece, though their homelands seem to have been both north and south of the Black Sea (though it's hard to tell little details like time and distance traveled in either show!) Indeed Amazon tribes, clans and "queendoms" were spread throughout the region: in an early militaristic phase the god Dionysus is said to have fought both in partnership with and subsequently against Amazons holding territory in Egypt!

Relations with males is another point of debate. While references agree that Amazons procreated by seeking sex with male outsiders, male offspring are another matter. One reference states that "males were exposed at birth," which suggests male infants were abandoned to die, as unwanted. Another reference states that male offspring were mutilated by the breaking of their limbs, so as to cripple them for life and doom them to menial service as slaves and servants, and prohibit them ever becoming sufficiently physical to challenge their female dominators.

This aspect is certainly not addressed in any installment of the show, seen to date in Australia at least, and is likely the kind of material the producers would choose to leave alone. Certainly, with both the Hercules movie and the resolution of the impending war between Melosa's Amazons and Tildas' centaurs, some degree of "normalization" of inter-gender relations has been implicit. Ei. they may be an independent warrior sisterhood/state but they don't "need" to hate males perhaps as much as previously.

Similarly, the characteristic aspect of female ritual self-mutilation has also (and for totally obvious reasons) been discounted on screen. There is always reason to suspect that it was a denigrating Greek embroiderment on the ways of a race they considered "abnormal," and the notion can certainly be challenged that mastectomy would in any way facilitate better use of a bow. (The very name Amazon may be translated as "breastless ones.") Also, given that the Amazon queendoms stretched for hundreds of miles in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, and represented at least eight entire cities, and that amongst so many there would be a high mortality rate from radical tissue loss in the age before antiseptic surgery, the tradition is one which may well have been suspect from a totally practical standpoint. I am sure viewers of both genders agree that the Amazons are far more aesthetically pleasing and frankly credible as "whole" women, rather than as prosthetic-makeup amputees.

While acknowledging that Amazons were great and fierce warriors, Greek stories seem to feature Amazons as losers, or if they win it's only with Greek male help. In the original labors of Hercules, when charged with bringing back the golden girdle off Queen Hippolyte, Hera so organized circumstances that Hercules killed the queen more or less on sight. While Dionysus may have sallied forth to war in partnership with an Amazon army, he also fought against the same tribes when circumstances altered, and his victory in each case was attributed to his Olympian personage. However, an Amazon army is said to have taken and held Troy for a time when Priam was a child.

Probably the greatest Amazon exploit followed the visit of Theseus of Athens to the Amazon capital of Themiscyra, by the River Thermodon, on the western shores of the Black Sea, and well toward Phrygia. Theseus greeted Queen Antiope aboard his ship and abducted her, sailing away instantly. Her sister Oreithyia concluded a treaty with the Schythians and lead a vast army of horse soldiers through Trace and Macedonia, down through Thessaly, and invaded Attica. The campaign waged on the site of the present city of Athens is said to have lasted for four months and, according to one record, ended in an armistice.

Another account records the Amazons as soundly defeated, their few survivors withdrawing and dying from grief and despair at Megara, by the Bosphorus. Antiope is recorded as having ended her days in typical Greek tragedy fashion, having come to love Theseus, yet never having been his legal wife, and that when he took another wife years later her Amazon pride would not let her tolerate the slight, and she fought to the death against Theseus and his cronies.

One would think such a widespread empire of associated tribes and clans was sure to have left an indelible mark on the world, and indeed we have the record of the Greek heritage. But if the question becomes one of whether Amazons were mythical or factual, it remains that so "abnormal" a society by Greek standards, as well as those of the following Christian and Muslim epochs, may have been expunged from the historical record with great thoroughness so as not to leave a "bad example" for later generations. It is tantalizing to imagine that somewhere in Turkey, in the Ukraine and Kazak, as well as perhaps Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria, there still lie unrecognized archaeological remains that might one day rehabilitate the Amazon legend, as Schliemann's persistent investigations at Hissarlik did for Troy.

Food for thought? Happy Tomb-Raiding,

Whitesword

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