Amazon Moon (3 page)

The warrior women were mentioned in the very first known European story, Homer's
Iliad
, a long account of 54 days near the end of the ten-year Trojan War. In Book III of the epic, King Priam of Troy casually recalls: "I went to Phrygia once, the land of vines and galloping horses, and learnt how numerous the Phrygians are when I saw the armies of Otreus and King Mygdon encamped by the river Sangarius. I was their ally and I bivouacked with them that time, and the Amazons, who fight like men, came up to attack."

But Priam didn't say how the clash ended, and gave no other details. Later, in Book VI, the Trojan warrior Glaucus boasted that his ancestor Bellerophon "killed the Amazons who go to war like men." He says nothing more about the ferocious females.

Homer's chronicle, composed around 800 BCE, ends after Achilles, champion of the besieging forces, kills Hector, chief defender of Troy. More Amazon reports were added by other Greek writers in what is now called the Epic Cycle, eight long sagas telling the whole record of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

Next in the cycle is the
Aithiopis
written around 770 BCE by Arktinos of Miletos. Only fragments of this work survive, but subsequent Greek writers recounted it in detail. His tale begins as a dozen Amazons under Queen Penthesilea arrive at Troy to help the defenders. The female phalanx rides into the fray and mows down numerous Greek attackers. But mighty Achilles rushes across the battlefield to confront Penthesilea. He kills her with a terrible spear thrust through both her and her horse. Then Achilles is overcome by feeling and falls in love with the dying queen. When a fellow Greek warrior ridicules him for it, Achilles rages blindly and kills his comrade.

Most of the Amazon squad died in combat at Troy. Various writers recorded their names as Andro, Androdaira, Bremusa, Clonie, Derimacheia, Derinoe, Evandre, Harmothoe, Otrera and Polemusa.

Another Amazon tale, told by several ancient writers, features an even-stronger killer-hero, Hercules, who was commanded in the ninth of his legendary twelve labors to obtain a renowned belt from the Amazon queen Hippolyte. One account, by Diodorus of Sicily, says that Hercules and a company of warriors sailed to the Black Sea and up the Thermodon River (in what is now northern Turkey), fabled home of the Amazons. Upon finding their city, Hercules demanded the belt, but was refused, and the strongest female fighters lined up to oppose the deadly giant. Diodorus recounts:

"The first to join battle with him was Aella, who had been given this name because of her swiftness, but she found her opponent more agile than herself. The second, Philippis, encountering a mortal blow at the very first conflict, was slain. Then he joined battle with Prothoe, who had been victorious seven times over opponents she had challenged to battle. When she fell, the fourth whom he overcame was known as Eriboea.... The next, Celaeno, Eurybia and Phoebe...were one and all cut down as they stood shoulder to shoulder with each other. After them, Delaneira, Asteria, Marpe, Tecmessa and Alcippe were overcome.... And Hercules, after thus killing the most renowned of the Amazons and forcing the remaining multitude to turn in flight, cut down the greater number of them."

Hercules captured Antiope, sister of the queen, and gave her to King Theseus of Athens as a prize, Diodorus wrote. After the Greek intruders returned home, enraged Amazons from surrounding villages marched on Athens, seeking revenge. "They pitched their camp in what is at present called after them the Amazoneum.... Theseus joined battle with the Amazons and...gained the victory. Of the Amazons who opposed him, some he slew at the time and the rest he drove out of Attica." Antiope, who had been wed by Theseus and bore him a son, joined her husband in fighting against her former comrades, and was killed, Diodorus says. However, other ancient writers gave contradictory accounts.

In the fifth century BCE, the great historian Herodotus wrote: "When the Greeks warred with the Amazons...the story runs that, after their victory on the Thermodon, they sailed away carrying in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take alive; and that out at sea the Amazons set upon the crews and slew them. But they knew nothing of ships, nor how to use rudder or sail or oar...and they were borne at the mercy of waves and wind till they came to the cliffs by the Maeetian Lake." Going ashore, the women captured horses, raided the countryside, and mated with young men, Herodotus wrote.

In
The Voyage of Argo
, Apollonius of Rhodes wrote: "The Amazons of the Doeantian plain were by no means gentle, well-conducted folk. They were brutal and aggressive, and their main concern in life was war. War, indeed, was in their blood."

Hellanicus wrote in the fifth century BCE of the "golden-shielded, silver-sworded, man-loving, male-child-slaughtering Amazons." Also in that century, in
Prometheus Bound
, the tragic poet Aeschylus called them “maidens fearless in battle.” He wrote of a hill near Athens "where the Amazons pitched their tents when they came with an army in spite toward Theseus and built towers against this new, lofty-towered city." Long afterward, in
The Life of Theseus
, Plutarch said of the Athens battle: "The fact that they encamped almost in the heart of the city is attested both by the names of the localities there and by the graves of those who fell in battle.... The left wing of the Amazons extended to what is now called the Amazoneum."

In the fourth century BCE, the Athenian orator Lysias wrote: "Long ago there were Amazons, daughters of Ares, who lived along the Thermodon River. They alone, of the peoples around them, were armed with iron, and they were the first to ride horses. With them, because of the inexperience of their enemies, the Amazons slew those who fled and outran those who pursued. They are accounted as men for their high courage, rather than as women for their sex, so much more did they seem to excel men in their spirit."

Many other ancient accounts tell widely varied, sometimes contradictory, Amazon tales. What was the reality behind the extensive written, painted and sculpted record? Did the oppressive male supremacy cause some strong-willed females to rebel, run away, and find their way into a she-clan? Or were the Amazons purely a male myth? Debate roiled endlessly.

Only a smattering of evidence was found through the years. Some early Greek coins bearing Amazon images have been discovered. Some Asia Minor towns claimed that they were founded by Amazons, and some had tombs purported to contain remains of the women warriors. In 1871, amateur German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered buried ruins in northwest Turkey that now are considered the remnants of Troy. A century later, Austrian archeologist Gerhard Poellauer grew convinced that Amazons really existed, and created the nonprofit Amazon Research Network, host of expeditions to lands around the Aegean. In the 1990s, archeologists digging in southern Russian mounds dating back to 600 BCE found female skeletons with armor and weapons. "Seven female graves contained iron swords or daggers, bronze arrowheads, and whetstones to sharpen the weapons,"
Archaeology
magazine reported. "The bowed leg bones of one thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl attest a life on horseback, and a bent arrowhead found in the body cavity of another woman suggested that she had been killed in battle."

But these findings aren't conclusive. Scholars remain divided over whether the Amazons were a male fantasy or whether they actually existed. I cannot find sufficient evidence to cause me to embrace either premise. It seems bizarre that so many Greek writers, sculptors and painters would portray Amazons if there were none. However, the riddle of the Amazons is unanswerable. Unless new archeological discoveries provide proof, the warrior women must remain one of humanity's mysteries.

Carolina's thesis contained hundreds of footnotes. She revised it frequently, with Jack's assistance. He shared her conclusion: that archeological evidence remained too skimpy for a solid answer.

As they edited her manuscript, she eyed him coyly.

"Would you like for me to be a warrior woman, armed like a gladiator? Would that turn you on?"

"God, no. You're already too much for me. I'd become impotent."

Later, under the sheets, she showed him that it hadn't happened yet.

3

Carolina and Jack finished their master's degrees, again with honors. Few of their relatives attended the January commencement, because it was a repetition of their previous graduation a year and a half earlier. Jack's divorced mother, heavy and tense, came. So did Carolina's widowed father and her older brother. After the degree ritual, everyone shared a restaurant dinner and visited the couple's small apartment.

The relatives didn't mention it, but they understood that Jack and Carolina were following the modern American mating track: first lovers, then an exclusive pair, then roommates in an unofficial marriage, and eventually, if their bond is deep and lasting, husband and wife in legal wedlock. Most of American society now approves of this guilt-free progression, although it was reviled as sinful a half-century earlier. In the 1950s, unwed sex was a crime under puritanical "fornication" laws. Hotels and landlords wouldn't rent rooms to such pairs. Other sexual taboos were intense: Birth control devices were illegal in some states. Nudity in movies and magazines was a jail offense. Even sexual language in books was criminalized by church-backed censorship laws. An unmarried girl who became pregnant was disgraced, along with her family. Divorce was hush-hush. But the Sexual Revolution wiped away the old taboos so completely that few Americans today remember them. Live-together lovers like Jack and Carolina have become common in the United States, casually accepted. Morality evolved.

As the two roamed the university campus, they saw another sign of far-reaching change: More than half of students now are female, heading for degrees that bring good-paying careers and still more freedom from the dependency that once was the lot of American women. Further cultural transformation is occurring.

"Look at the hundreds of girls everywhere," Carolina observed one day. "Males are outnumbered on campus. I was lucky to rope you in."

"No," Jack said sincerely, "I was the lucky one."

Both were accepted as doctoral candidates, and their lives changed. Classroom study was replaced by independent research and field work. They applied jointly for their first professional assignment: junior archeologists at a University Consortium dig in Thrace, the northeast tip of Greece. They were accepted and felt excited by the prospect of genuine scientific work. They closed their apartment, sold most of their belongings at a yard sale, stored their prized books and a few personal things in a friend's basement, then boarded a jet for the long overnight flight to Greece.

At Athens International Airport, they were met by their leader, Dr. Chichester, a craggy British professor whose weatherbeaten face looked as if he always was squinting into the sun. He helped stow their luggage in a Land Rover labeled "University Consortium Archeology Team" in English, Greek and Turkish. During the all-day drive northward, the professor outlined the project: An international group—he, along with four Greek students, plus two from Turkey and a chunky German postgraduate named Olga—was excavating the remains of a 400 BCE home east of Xanthe, retrieving mostly pottery fragments and bits of long-ago jewelry.

Dr. Chichester explained that the pottery was from the red-figure period in Greece's heyday of clay-baking, around 500 BCE, when elaborate painted scenes under the glaze were more lifelike than silhouettes of the earlier black-figure period. The vases and urns being unearthed were broken, but the fragments were in good condition, fitting together well. Most of the paintings displayed nude lovers or fighting warriors.

"Sex and violence intrigued ancient Greeks, just like modern Americans," Carolina observed.

In late afternoon they arrived on location. Dr. Chichester drove to the dig and introduced them to their fellow diggers, who were finishing for the day. He also introduced Zanos, a burly town policeman paid by the Consortium to keep vandals out of the Xanthe dig at night. Zanos was in his parked car, waiting to begin duty. Then the professor took them to their inn, where they had been registered as husband and wife, since this portion of Greece remained more prim than the urban south.

The following weeks were exhilarating for Carolina and Jack: sweaty digging and sifting for relics all day, then hurrying home to happy nights together. One afternoon, ten feet down in the hardened earth, the team found a pot with a common 500 BCE scene: Greek soldiers combatting Amazons. It was similar to hundreds like it on display in many museums. That night in bed, Carolina raised the old debate over whether Amazons had existed or were male fantasies.

"It's hard to believe that so many depictions would have been created if the fighter women never lived."

"Yes," Jack concurred, "but why has no direct evidence been found?"

As usual, they reached no conclusion as they sank asleep together.

The following weekend, Dr. Chichester returned to Consortium headquarters in Athens and others of the team departed for a three-day holiday. Jack and Carolina were in the mobile field office at the dig site, completing reports. The phone rang. It was Chichester with news from the Turkish antiquities ministry. Two hundred miles east of Thrace, in Turkey's old Thermodon Valley, a highway construction crew had found a buried skeleton with an engraved shield.

"The highway department roped off the spot and sent the 'dozers to work a hundred yards farther down the right-of-way," the professor said. "They posted a watchman. They can't stop the road project for long, but they're holding it until the Consortium gets someone there for a look."

As Jack scribbled notes, Chichester continued: "You and Carolina are the only ones on duty, and the closest. It's a long drive. Take the camper and the Consortium credit card, and a set of tools and two cameras and some crates for whatever you find. You won't need passports at the border crossing, but take your archeologist visas."