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There are many different accounts of the
history of the Amazons. Here are a few of the ones Themiscyra
draws it's history from.
You can read Themiscryan History at our Scrolls.
View the Themiscyra timeline.
From "101
Amazons"
members.tripod.com/~ancient_history/101amazons
(The site closed so I removed the link. Sorry! Below is the
history of Lysippe from that site.) Lysippe. Queen of the Amazons. Her reign predates the reign
of the Queens of Themiskyra.
She ruled in an area north of the Black Sea, where flowed the
Amazon River. She had a son, Tanais, whose virginity and worship
of Artemis offended Aphrodite, who found him very attractive. In
revenge for his spurning of all her attempts to have him lose
his prized virginity, she cursed him to know lust, for no one
else but his own mother. Lysippe apparently had no time to learn
of the problem, since Tanais promptly drowned himself in the
Amazon River.
She renamed the river Tanais, and consulted her oracles who
told her to leave the area, lest the ghost of Tanais return to
her as an evil spirit. Lysippe at once picked up and marched her
people around the enormous Black Sea to its south-central
coastal area, where they found a river called Thermodon and
settled on its banks. There, the nation split into three tribes,
and each formed a separate city; Lysippe's tribe formed
Themiskyra, and conquered the land all the way back to the
Tanais.
With the spoils of war she built temples to Ares and Artemis
Tauropolis, whose bloody worship she may have founded (Artemis
Tauropolis being the Greek version of the goddess Taurica Dea
who was worshipped with particularly bloody and brutal rituals
of human and animal sacrifice on the island of Tauris in the
Black Sea. Iphigenia, who had been saved by Artemis when her
father Agamemnon attempted to sacrifice her for a favorable wind
with which to reach Troy and take back Helen, became a favorite
of Artemis, who made her a high priestess of this Tauropolitan
cult of human sacrifice. The cult spread to Sparta via Artemis
Orthia, where young people were flogged mercilessly as a form of
worship. The worship carried to Aricia in Italy, and apparently
Hippolytus, son of Theseus and Antiope/Hippolyte, attempted to
revive it for Athens).
The history of our tribe of Themiscyra is based on
the above tale of Lysippe. Our founder, Queen Celosia, and her
Regent, Medea, were the daughters of Lysippe. When the great Queen
died, the pair moved south along the Thermodon to it's current
site.
You can read more about it at the Ria
Istoria site, and through our timeline.
If you seek more knowledge about Amazons and their role in history
and legend, try our links page.
This brief
history below was gathered from the website Aeolus's XENA: Warrior
Princess Page. Many thanks.
Amazons originated from a region in the Caucasus
Mountains. They moved to an area around the Thermadon River and
founded their first city, Themiscyra. The females of the tribe
dominated what males there were.
Greek mythology claims amazons to be the
descendents of Ares, the God of War. They have been depicted as
wielding silver axes and shields made of gold. They were feared
warriors, and only the most brave and daring of Greek heroes, such
as Hercules, Achilles, and Theseus, would attempt to fight them.
In governing the tribe, there have been accounts
of two queens. One queen for defense and another for domestic
affairs. In order for the Amazon race to survive, the warriors
mated with the neighboring tribe of men. Any male children were
either sent to their fathers or killed, and female offspring were
kept as future Amazons.
Herodotus, the "father of history" and
5th century BC historian, tells of a battle between the Greeks and
Amazons. The Amazons were defeated, and the Greeks took many
Amazon captives aboard their ships to sell as slaves. On the
voyage home, the Amazons overthrew their captors. However, a storm
set the ship off course and on to the nearby shores, where the
Amazons encountered a race known as the Scythians. After a period
of fighting, the two armies made peace, and eventually their
offspring came to be know as the Sarmatians.
From The Norton
Book of Travel
Excerpt from Sir John Mandeville
Next to Chaldea is the land of Amazon, which we
call the Maiden Land or the Land of Women; no man lives there,
only women. This is not because, as some say, no man can live
there, but because the women will not allow men to rule the
kingdom.
There was once a king in the land called
Colopheus, and there were once men living there as they do
elsewhere. It so happened that this king went to war with the King
of Scythia, and was slain with all his great men in battle with
his enemy. And when the Queen and the other ladies of that land
heard that the King and the lords were slain, they marshaled
themselves with one accord and armed themselves well.
They took a great army of women and slaughtered
all the men left among them. And since that time they will never
let a man live with them more than seven days, will they allow a
boy child to be brought up among them. But when they want to have
the company of man, they go to that side of their country where
their lovers live, stay with them eight or nine days and then go
home again. If any of them bears a child and it is a son, they
keep it until it can speak and walk and eat by itself and then
they send it to the father -- or they kill it.
The queen is always chosen by election, for they
choose the woman who is the best fighter. These women are noble
and wise warriors; and therefore neighboring realms hire them to
help in their wars.
The Norton Book of Travel Edited by Paul Fussell
From Edith
Hamilton's Mythology
Aeschylus calls them "The warring Amazons,
men-haters." They were a nation of women, all warriors. They
were supposed to live around the Caucasus and their chief city was
Themiscryra (yet another spelling). Curiously enough, they
inspired artists to make statues and pictures of them far more
than poets to write about them. Familiar though they are to us
there are few stories about them. They invaded Lycia and were
repulsed by Belerophon. the invaded Phrygia when Priam was young,
and Attica when Theseus was King. He had carried off their Queen,
Penthesilea, according to a story not in the Iliad, told by
Pausanias. He says that she was killed by Achilles, who mourned
for her as she lay dead, so young and so beautiful. |
