 |
| Attic Greece Neck Amphora - Herakles battling Amazons ca. 520 BC glazed terracotta Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Attic Greece Skyphos - Amazon mounted on Lion and confronting a Monster ca. 510-500 BC glazed terracotta Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
 |
| Attic Greece Neck Amphora - Herakles battling an Amazon ca. 500 BC glazed terracotta Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Attic Greece Volute Krater - Mounted Amazons ca. 500 BC glazed terracotta Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
AMAZONS – A mythical nation of women-warriors, whose headquarters are placed by early Greek legend in Themiscyra on the Thermodon on the southern shore of the Euxine. In later accounts they also appear on the Caucasus and on the Don, where the nation called Sauromatæ was supposed to have sprung from their union with the Scythians. They suffered no men among them; the sons born of their intercourse with neighbouring nations they either killed or sent back to their fathers; the girls they brought up to be warriors, burning the right breast off for the better handling of their bow. Their chief deities were said to be Ares and the Taurian Artemis. Even in Homer they are represented as making long marches into Asiatic territory; an army of them invading Lycia is cut to pieces by Bellerophon; Priam, then in his youth, hastens to help the Phrygians against them. They gained a firm footing in Greek song and story through the Arctinus of Miletus, in whose poem their queen Penthesilea, daughter of Ares, as Priam's ally, presses hard on the Greeks, till she is slain by Achilles. After that they become a favourite subject with poets and artists, and a new crop of fable sprang up: Heracles wars against them, to win the girdle of their queen Hippolyta; Theseus carries off her sister Antiope, they in revenge burst into Attica, encamp on the Areopagus of Athens, and are pacified by Antiope's mediation, or, according to another version, beaten in a great battle. Grave-mounds supposed to cover the bones of Amazons were shown near Megara, and in Euboea and Thessaly. In works of art the Amazons were represented as martial maids, though always with two breasts, and usually on horseback; sometimes in Scythian dress (a tight fur tunic, with a cloak of many folds over it, and a kind of Phrygian cap), sometimes in Grecian (a Dorian tunic tucked up and the right shoulder bare), armed with a half-moon shield, two-edged axe, spear, bow, and quiver, etc.
– Oskar Seyffert, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature, and Art (1882)
 |
| Attic Greece Oinochoe - Mounted Amazon and Kneeling Warrior ca. 480 BC glazed terracotta Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Attic Greece Volute Krater - Battle of Greeks and Amazons ca. 450 BC glazed terracotta Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Attic Greece Rhyton - Mounted Amazon ca. 425-400 BC painted and glazed terracotta Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
 |
| Attic Greece Neck Amphora - Battle of Greeks and Amazons ca. 400 BC glazed terracotta Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Greek Culture in South Italy Statuettes of Amazons ca. 300-280 BC painted terracotta Princeton University Art Museum |
 |
| Greek Culture in South Italy Statuette of Amazon ca. 300-200 BC terracotta Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
 |
| Ancient Rome Head of Amazon from the Villa of Papyri, Herculaneum late 1st century BC bronze Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples |
 |
| Ancient Rome Head of Fallen Amazon late 1st century BC - early 1st century AD marble Musei Capitolini, Rome |
 |
| Ancient Rome Bust of Amazon 1st century AD bronze Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Ancient Rome Parade Mask of Amazon 2nd century AD bronze British Museum |