In Our Time - The Amazons

Episode Date: April 11, 2013

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Amazons, a tribe of formidable female warriors first described in Greek literature. They appear in the Homeric epics and were described by Herodotus, and featured prominently in the decoration of Greek vases and public buildings. In later centuries, particularly in the Renaissance, the Amazons became a popular theme of literature and art. After the discovery of the New World, the largest river in South America was named the Amazon, since the warlike tribes inhabiting the river's margins reminded Spanish pioneers of the warriors of classical myth.With:Paul Cartledge A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge UniversityChiara Franceschini Teaching Fellow at University College London and an Academic Assistant at the Warburg InstituteCaroline Vout University Senior Lecturer in Classics and Fellow and Director of Studies at Christ's College, Cambridge.Producer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Here, we're Satolla is tapana say, when I'm parhamillaing in life's. Siks, we're also lemmiki, tervetullo. When is not quite, is often even in life's

good. Wauqua, hoolet on cot. Sato.fi. We're back on, weas numbera, five vietta, Arvuxia, pouttelua.

Palkintone X-Peng G-K-Sahcrow, Towsin'omaxe. 10-weekcua' time to retkaider Cove.OGODSC-Phoff, Coutta, Ackx. Don't get to-Gyndiesta. Panchovilla's legendary puberty weekot over,

Klassikovolian kohl-Wodernic, Kovskyi-Kulkerit take-Pull-Hupti. Valitzed Cigner, B-C-RIC-Purker, Smoke Choritso, or the cossi-Succaught-Heler,

soul healer, burgering kielkeen Raikas pancho lemonade. Burger week at Pansovillazza. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk Slash radio 4.

I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1542, a Spanish explorer, Francisco Di Oleana, traveled 800 miles down a massive and uncharted river, the largest in South America. His expedition faced extraordinary dangers and on his return to Spain he told his king, Charles V, that his man had been attacked by a fearsome tribe of female warriors. As a result of this incident, the river was named

the Amazon, in reference to an earlier and celebrated race of warlike women. The Amazons were said to be a nation of female warriors who made frequent appearances in Greek and Roman mythology and art. According to tradition, they lived near the Black Sea and were ruled by a queen called Hippolyta. From the Middle Ages onwards, European writers rediscovered the stories of the Amazons, which feature in the Canterbury Tales, and in Boccacos, de Cameron, as well as numerous famous Renaissance paintings. But where does this tradition come from?

And why did the Amazons prove so fascinating to generations of artists and writers? And is there any hard evidence for their existence? With me to discuss the Amazons are, Paul Cartlids, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University, Kiara Francesca Kine,

teaching fellow at University College London and an academic assistant at the Warwick Institute, and carry about university lecturer University Senior Lecturer in Classics and Fellow and Director of Studies at Christchurch College, Cambridge. Paul Cartlidge, can you tell us, give us a sketch of who the Amazon's

were, were thought to be, and where their thought have come from? Yes, indeed. Well, they appear as early as Greek literature appears. So, in other words, they are a Greek-O-Roman phenomenon. Whatever about their reality, there are no non-Greek or non-Roman sources in antiquity that tell us anything

about if they really were such people. So we start off with Homer and we go all the way through with the main sources, Eeschylus, Herodotus, diodorus, Quintus, Smyrnaeus, right down to Jordanis. I'm rather fond of him. Gibbon was fond of him as well. Sixth century AD who sort of summarises

just about everything that anybody had ever said about them before. So that's the span of over a thousand years. Absolutely. From Homer to Jordan. And they are therefore performing various functions, which I'm sure we're going to be exploring together. But they are not, if you like, marginal in literary or aesthetic terms. They are literally marginal in geographical terms. You correctly mentioned that they're normally located around the Black Sea.

They start off south of it and they move north of it. But actually there's also a tradition, or whatever you like to call it, that they also operated in Libya, North Africa. Now the point of this is they're marginal. So the Greeks... They're marginal to the Roman Empire? Well, first of all the Greeks. So not quite, but then the Romans, of course, conquered the Greeks.

And so Greek world forms the eastern half of the Roman Empire. But they're part of a common cultural circle of what the Germans call a culture kais. And so the Amazons are on the margins. Wherever they are, they're liminal. Can I ask you about the Greek historian Herodotus? in the 5th century BC. He's called the father of history, and he prided himself on his collecting of evidence.

What evidence did he bring to bear on this? Good question. He didn't speak any language other than his own. So if he is to get access to people who he describes as living north of the Black Sea, north and east, in fact moving east beyond the Taneis, which is the dawn today, he has to speak to either a Greek who speaks the non-Greek languages around there

or a non-Greek who speaks Greek. It isn't necessarily about. We proceed by translations every day now. We do, but I'm just saying that where we're dealing with the people who some believe to be wholly mythical, others believe to be partly mythical, it's quite interesting that he has no doubts that they existed. And so he's quite confident in describing events in their past, whereas some of us might have more reservations about the actuality. He is writing history of the Persian wars.

He sets the background by describing the rise of the Persian Empire, and the two great men. Cyrus the Great founds the Persian Empire. Darius, the Great, as it were, re-founds it. Well, one of Darius's campaigns in his north and west was against people called the Scythians. And the Scythians, it's a very loose term for nomadic peoples who live north of the Black Sea, north and east, towards the Caspian, and they're in. They roam around there, and he was apparently totally unsuccessful against these people. It's within the context of Darius attacking the Scythians.

He talks about Scythians. And in the context of talking about Scythians, he introduces the Amazons. Because in his view, Scythians get together with Amazon women to produce a people called the Sarmatians. Sarmatians who live in this northern... So he's got these Amazons in his sight, and he has no doubt that they existed. And they call, and they are warrior women,

and they have the characteristics which are constantly attributed to them of being repudiating men, hunting, being nomadic, and being a warrior tribe. Absolutely right. And he's got a wonderful story because they don't speak each other's languages, the Scythians and the Amazans. They can communicate only bodily by gesture, and that includes sexual congress. And Herodotus' view is,

why did the Scythians take an interest in these Amazon women who've made their way north from the south of the Black Sea to the north of the Black Sea. Well, they wanted to have children with them. Well, now that's him rationalising why they got together because I don't think the Scythians really would have been particularly interested in producing children.

They might have been interested in having sexual relations with them, but having children is a quite different social phenomenon. But actually it raises the big issue, which is, of course, the Amazons, when we're going to look at them in myth and so on, it's to do with marriage, is absolutely central to the issue. Karivad, what's the significance,

let's keep exploring this. What do you think of their significance in Greek mythology? Well, I mean, as we've already touched on, I think the division between myth and history is very messy. So if you go to somewhere like, I don't know, you go to Athens, you go to the Agararai, you go to one of the most important buildings in the Agarar, the Stoerpoichlet.

On one wall, you've got the Battle of Marathon depicted, a really recent battle. On another wall, you've got the Trojan Wars, on another wall, you've got Amazons. So that's already kind of symptomatic, emblematic of just how messy it is. Well, if we think about, if we go back to your question about how they're significant for Greek mythology, I think that the Greeks are using the sort of amorphous sea of stories that is Greek myth to think about who they are and where they've come from.

And the function of the Amazons is, the Amazons ensure that whatever definition those Greeks come up with, that this is a definition which is about their place in the world. I mean, as Paul has said already, the Amazons are always always always, the edge of that world. So they enable a definition of your world as you want it to be. And the Amazons can shift so they can move from Libya up to Thrace around the edges. Can I ask what you mean by definition? Are you saying that by putting the Amazon on the wall, you've got Marathon, you've got the Trojan wars, which some people doubt the reality. Put it at one side.

And you've got the Amazon of equal value. So are they saying, other Greeks, by doing this saying, we are not like the Amazons? and this is what we are not like. That's why are we putting them there. I think it's both we are not like and sort of worrying about whether or not we're like. And by that, I suppose I mean that the Amazons are always on the edge of the Greek world.

And they, in some senses, they were for homozyliad. They were before homasiliad. And they're still on the edges of the world by the time you get to Alexander the Great. So, you know, they're knocking to get in. Supposedly the Amazon Queen comes and she visits Alexander, she pays him a visit.

But did the people who did those sculptures think that the Amazons existed? It goes back to Paul's point, a bit yes and a bit no. Do we know that it was a bit yes or a bit no? And they're going to spend all that time on... They do marathon, which must be a big yes, and they do the Trojan Wars and must be quite a yes. What sort of yes is the Amazons are part of us? Well, I think the sources are constantly trying to rationalise, get their heads around.

What did they think? Is there any evidence what they thought then when they did it? Beesie. Well, I mean, Herodotus is as close as you're going to get, really. But I mean, I think for heroes like, I mean, to go back to the Amazons being on the edge of the world and helping the Greeks to define who they are, I mean, it seems to me that to be any hero worth your salt, whether you're Achilles, whether you're Aeis or Ahercules in between, you have to have cultural contact with the Amazons. And it's that contact that somehow enables all of these men to prove their masculinity in a way. way that enables us to then measure them against each other and also measured different enemies against them. I know the Greeks were very interested in how to be a man.

Yeah. But why did this particular contact, in what way, in what particular way, did it help them to prove their masculinity? Well, I think the Amazons aren't just not men. They're also not women or not women of any kind that the Greeks would have recognized. And the Amazons are not excessive. they're not wild and ill-disciplined like centaurs or like satyrs who are these sort of bestial half-horse, half-man creatures

that the Greeks are also defining themselves against in order to define their masculinity. They're not like them. They're not sexually excessive. They're actually a kind of really well-ordered society that have queens in the place of thrusting political men. And there are a society that absolutely denies men, denies marriage, turns its back on marriage, which is, as Paul alluded to before,

the central institution of Greekness. And they turn their back on the Eichos, on the house. And so they basically, they stand absolutely in antithesis to everything that Greek masculinity and Greek culture and Greek societal norms stand for. Except if we go back to the beginning, which again Paul alluded to, you're going to be alluded to all this. Never mind.

You are the alluded to one. It first appears in Homer, the gathering together of the Iliad, from the oral into the world, written tradition, say 8th, 7th century BC, before Herodotus. Now, how does he depict them? And does he define their future by the way he depicts them? Because I think one thing you've missed out, if I might say so, there's a time, is their warrior aspect. I mean, the warrior thing was very important, wasn't it? So in that sense, they were

like the Greeks. Yes. I mean, I think, if we go back to Homer, I mean, you say Homer's description, but I mean, Homer actually doesn't describe the Annesons really at all. They're mentioned in Homer, and they're kind of needed in Homer in order to situate what is a kind of 10 years, well, a moment in a 10 years siege of Troy into a much bigger mythological, historical and geographical framework. So what does he say about them? So he calls the Amazon, they mentioned twice,

and he calls them Amazons, and the adjective that he describes them is anti-anerai, which means, well, what does it mean? A match for men, a kind of the stand-in for men, but also kind of the anti-man, antithesis to men. I mean, it's got like and unlike, which goes back to your point, all rolled into one. And they, you know, when Glaucus, who's Elysian, but actually fighting on the side of Troy, is standing there being asked to talk about his heritage, then actually he talks about a mythological hero of the past and his contact with the Amazons. It's as though the Amazons you need those Amazons in order to kind of work out how to be a warrior, even in Homeric society.

And Kiara Francescini, let's try and dig at it through the word Amosons. We've had a first mention of that, well, more than a mention. Can you just dig a bit further and tell us what people have found out scholars like yourselves of their origin and significance through examining the word? Well, a 7th century AD Christian writer was very influential throughout the Middle Ages and read until the Renaissance. It was called Isidore of Seville. It gives to possible origins of the Greek name Amazon's, of the Greek name, Amazons.

In his chapter about languages, people and kingdoms, it talks before about biblical people like Jews and others, and then it goes to the Chithians, and it says that the wives of the Chithians founded the kingdom of the Amazons. and Amazon's are called like this either because they live together without men and the etymology would be related to AMA which means together and zone or something like that

meaning living or that they are called Amazon's because they had burned their right breast in order to be more free to throw arrows from a in Greek meaning without and

mazos or something like that meaning breast. So they cut off their right breath in order to bows and arrows to expedite execution of enemies. Exactly. And of course Isidore wasn't he hadn't this Christian writer

he hadn't a critical approach to etymology of course but nonetheless in these two etymologies you may find two of the main characters of the Amazon soft, or at least how they were depicted in classical times and post-classical times, meaning their aggressivity, the fact that they were warriors and the fact that they were living apart from men.

And about this living apart from men, there were various variations. What do you have to say about the obvious problem of an all-female? tribe group, whatever we've got to call it, which is reproduction. What do we know or what do we think we know? Because the two seem to be fused or merged or fudged about that. Yes. As Paul and Kerry has already touched upon, there were speculations about their relationship with men and different variations. According, there were, on one hand, they are depicted as more aggressive towards men

and on the other hand as more peaceful, so to speak. According, for example, to a epitome of history written under the Roman Empire, by an author that was resuming other histories of the past, Justin, it was called, they lived completely separately apart from men. They just met with them for the purpose of reproduction, and of course if a boy was born, he would have been killed because boys are not useful. But if it was a girl, she would have been educated to the customs of the Amazons. There are other variations saying that the boys were given back to the man.

But if you look at Herodotus again, the story is different. It's a more sort of intermarriage in which after some regular meetings, Finally, they settled together, more or less. And there are also even later more variation at the time of reporting stories related to Alexander the Great. That actually they were living in two different regions, separated, divided by a big river. And this goes through all the Middle Ages, especially there was a famous text that was very much read, written in the 12th century, but also re-elaborated in the following centuries attributed to a sort of legendary king, the Prestor John. Prestor John was a legendary king of Oriental lands

who would have written a letter to the Byzantine Empire in the 12th century, describing his kingdom in which there were many fantastic things, including the Amazons, of course, and he describes the Amazon living on an island in the middle of a huge river, and the men were living on the other side of the river. The men couldn't visit them, only the Amazons could decide to go and visit the men and to stay with them for a couple of weeks. It's certainly been, they've certainly been a missmaking machine one way or another, and historical maker machine.

Paul Cartlidge, one of the best known Amazon's in Greek myth was Pentheselia. What's her significance? Right, there are two ways of spelling her. One is the way you pronounce. The other is Penthesilea. Which are you going to choose? I'm a pen Thessilea, man.

I love Penthesilea. Here I am stumbling over it. It's more of a flow. I'll go with Pentheselaya now. Okay, great. Well, in your intro you mentioned Hippolyta, who is, of course, the one that Heracles had to go after to get her girdle. Well, now, she happens, Penthesilea, to be a cis of Hippolyta.

How convenient. Now, this is the way myth-making goes. But she is the one. Carrie mentioned that they get caught up in the Trojan wars. And, of course, this is after the main event, which you get in the Iliad and the death of Hector and so on. She rolls up, and Achilles is still alive. And he takes her on. And then various...

By which you mean, they engage in mortal combat. They engage in mortal combat. And various versions are that he either fell in love with her after he'd killed her. And so there is representation of him tenderly holding her after he has killed her. There is a wonderful vase in the British Museum which shows their eyes locked. He's about to kill her. He's on the point of killing her, literally the point. and their eyes meet.

And so one version which that probably represents is that he fell in love with her as he killed her. So death and sex and love and everything mixed together. It's a fantastic myth. But Pentheselaya is the most sort of vigorously represented of all the individually named Amazons. She's the daughter of Ari's god of war. So she is warlike by birth.

Carrie, Caravard, another much written about Amazon Queen was Hippolyta. Can we learn something about her? Hippolyta is excellent for thinking about just how messy Greek myth is, really. I mean, Hippolyta is the, again, sister of Princess Salaia, a daughter of Ares, famed for having a belt, a kind of baldric, sort of, in some senses, a sort of safety blanket-cum status symbol. but cut to Hercules, who's one of the most sort of important heroes in Greece, and Hercules is in the process of doing his 12 labours, you know, walking up the ladder towards immortality.

As penitence for killing his six children. And it's penitence for killing his children, exactly. And he's working for King Eurystheus, whose daughter happens to really want. Surprise, surprise, Hippolyta's belt. She's heard all about it. She really wants it. It's kind of, you know, I don't know whether this is because she's a kind of wild girl wanting some sort of chastity belt. it's all struck me as being rather odd. But anyway, Hercules goes off and gets the belt.

There are various versions of the story, some of which suggest that this was all quite peaceful, others suggest it really wasn't, and in some Hippolyta dies. However, Hercules is such a great hero at this point, that other heroes are needing to muscle in, and as Athens invests more and more heavily in the representation of Theseus,

to the extent that in the 5th century, they bring Theseus as bones back to Athens. What they think of as Thetius is moving. Yeah, exactly. You know, there's your myth, history point, writ large, I think. I mean, it, they, Thesias then sort of starts to feature in that same myth. So Thesius accompanies Hercules, off to the Amazons.

And in the process, while Hercules is dealing with Hippolyta, Thesius basically kidnaps Antiopi, who's a third sis, and supposedly takes her back to Athens to be his wife. Hippolyta then gets terribly crossed. because her sister's been abducted. It's this rape, basically. So she goes after the sister. There's a big war.

And in those versions of the story, Hippolyta eventually escapes and ends up in Meghara where Paus claims he sees her too. In other versions of the story, and this is my last version, Hippolyta actually winds up herself, married to Theseus,

and she's the mother of Hippolytus, the boy that Euripides makes famous, the boy who actually isn't really anything like a Greek boy because he spurns sex entirely and kind of is wedded to Artemis into chastity like a good Amazon's son should be. Right. I'm reeling from all this. But so on we go.

There is time and enough. Right. Kiara, can you just, Amazon's depicted in literature and art through the centuries, as you mentioned in your opening remarks. Can you, from this, assemble a consistent notion of their appearance? Amazon is start to appear in Greek art. No, not when they will say that first. At about the 7th century and they remain before Christ, of course,

and they remain an important subject in the antiquity and in the modern time. In all this long period, which is a very long one, their appearance in their very general terms doesn't change enormously. In the sense that they're always depicted as beautiful woman, as a start, and they differ from normal women only for their habits and customs. And on this there are variations, of course, all over the centuries. At the beginning, in the very early period, they are represented similarly to Greek warriors. And they have a shield, they have a spear, a spear, and helmet.

They have a tunic that may be longer or shorter. Shorter, it's more similar to the athletes of the Greek times. But fairly soon they also start to acquire sort of exotic features, barbaric in the terms of the Greeks, in the sense that they start to wear sort of jumpsuits with long sleeves and long trousers and sort of exotic weapons like the act. that was not so typical for Greek warriors perhaps

and a particular shield that was different. So this idea that they were barbarians, that they were different from the Greeks, it starts to be represented. However, we have two main important features in art that are starting to appear at the time of the great period of Athens in the 5th century. And these are the...

exposed breast, which is not present at the very beginning, but it's something appearing later, and the fact that they are riding horses, which is also not present at the very beginning of their iconography, but starts to be represented later. Of course, during the medieval period, they are dressed in medieval clothes, like contemporary warriors,

to recover their Renaissance, their antique classical dress in the Renaissance. Paul Cartilage, they've often associated in Greek mythology with... You were very amused by all that. I was. You were? With half men and half horse, the centaurs. Yes.

And how come they were... The horses, the connection now. How come... Well, it's partly the connection, but also the wildness and also the problem with marriage. Carrie mentioned that they're often associated with Amazon's mentally, and also actually literally in some temples, you get in the same representational program,

both centaurs and Amazon. the most famous of which, of course, is the Parthenon. You go to the British Museum and you'll see centaurs in metapes. You go and look at the freeze and you'll find bits of amazons. So centaurs are good to think with. They can be wholly positive. Achilles, though he was pretty wild, was supposedly educated up to a certain point by a centaur,

a man called Chiron. own. On the other hand, if you like, the normal, the default view of Greeks of centaurs was negative because not only are they bestial in the literal sense, they're half horse, half man, but their manos are, they leave something to be desired. In other words, they cannot keep their male member in their pants, as it were. So they go to weddings, not simply to celebrate the union of Pileus and Thetis who happen to be Achilles' parents, but to have a bust up

with whoever's there. And there happened to be a local people called the Lapiths who are Greeks, and they include a mate of Theseus, so we get nice connection with Athens and so on. And there's a huge punch-up, and this is the absolute sort of bog standard example of how not to behave at a wedding.

You do not get drunk, so drunk, that you try to rape the female guests at that wedding. Right. Thank you very much for that piece of information. We are richer for it. Carriva. The Amazon influence were very largely great, but it filtered through to Roman writers,

particularly Virgil, who is enormously important as you all know as a Roman writer. Can you briefly tell us about him? Yeah, I mean, I should perhaps say at first that quite a lot of what we've been talking about so far is obviously based on Roman literature or rather, I mean, Diodorus Siculus already, you know, writing in the first century B, Z. Writing in Greek. I mean, these are Greek authors writing under the Roman Empire, Plutarch is a main source. But as far as

Latin, Roman authors, Latin authors are concerned. Yes, I mean, Virgil is somebody that talks about Camilla, who's Queen of the Bolski, in very Amazonian terms. But Camilla is sort of a woman that we look up to admire, she's beautiful, she's in some senses, I mean she's Italian, she's proto kind of, she's a sort of wife in the making as well as being a warrior. So the

sort of concept of the Amazon is shifting by the time you get to the Roman period and there's much more emphasis on the eroticism. And actually the story that Paul was talking about about Pentheselae and Achilles is a story really that we know from Latin literature. We know it from Perpurgis, we know it

from Quintus of Smyrna, who's writing in the third century AD. And, I mean, Roman visual culture is similarly interested in that moment. It's not to say it's not an erotic moment already on the pot in the British Museum that Paul was talking about. It clearly is their eyes lock. Her skin is white. He's helmeted. He's a dark presence looming over her.

I mean, anyone that denies the eroticism there is mad, especially when you consider that you've got Dionysus, the god of wine and of the symposium on the other side. but by the time you get to the Roman world you go to somewhere like Aphrodisias which is in Asia Minor which is a Greek city but a Greek city that's really trying

very hard to foster a relationship with the centre of Rome and there you get Pentheselaia and you get Achilles represented in a very tender way but next to on the same building as sculptures which show Nero

conquering Armenia and Claudia's conquering Britannia in ways which pick up the Amazon motif but make it violently sexual. Keara Francescini, can we take that on a bit? The Amazon's were popular subjects as has been, we'll use it alluded again, it's quite a nice word for this time more.

We alluded to once. Can you tell us a little bit more about how often and how well they were depicted on Greek vases and on freezes and so on. Yes. It's already been mentioned by both Poland,

Kerry, in the Greek Athenians vases in the 6th and the 5th century, they were very much, very often depicted and vases were used in the context of social

context, so to speak, we have Hercules fighting not always the same Amazon. It's quite interesting that on vases we have almost 60 names recorded. It means that they were very popular these ladies

because there is the name in script that is not just Pentezile which is the main one and Apolitre but many others and of course I would stress again the theme of love. There is even a painter that modernly

has been called the Pentesilea painter of Greek basis of course it's a modern definition but since there is such a beautiful cap representing Achilles and Pentezilea having this sort of emotional relationship, which continues through,

apart from the public friezes, even in tombs, in Roman times, the Romans were depicting Greek meets on their tombs, on their sarcophagi, and Achilles and Pentezilea again appear there. There is the battle, and there is the moment of emotional closeness between the two in the moment

in which Achilles is embracing Pentezilea. And goes through right to the Renaissance with increasing ferocity in the case of Rubin? Yes, because the interest of Renaissance artist for the Amazon

starts from the ancient statues, the ancient reliefs, including sarcophagi, that they could see in Rome. So, for example, guides to antiquities in Rome, for example, there is one written by a Bolognese writer

describes a statues of an Amazon on a horse. And we know from that they were able to recognize the identity of the Amazons. And from the antiquarian interest... I want to get to the Renaissance. I really... Yeah, they started to develop also a new vision of the Amazons. It's quite interesting that among all the gods and myths that we have in art,

the Amazons are not the most depicted, but we have very great painters doing them, for example, Rubens. Yeah, Rubens is, yes, he does them in an extraordinary... for that time, realistic and unleashed way. Paul Cartlidge, we come to a point that would interest a lot of listeners, I think, because you've been talking about myths and you're a myth man yourself,

although you don't really believe that myth is the, as it were, encapsulation of what is really a historical fact transmitted in a different way. You think that myth is myth, and invention of myth is an invention on itself. Nevertheless, recently, graves have been discovered,

well, 3040 years ago, in which we have in a good appropriate place around the Greek Empire with women with their armour, no children, no goods, no men, women in their armour a great number of them. In the fifth century BC, I think it was. When do you think that might, just might, be a small indicator that there could be a sliver of scholastic truth in the notion that they perhaps or potentially existed.

I tread carefully because I tread on your eggs here. Well, you rightly call me a myth man in the sense that I'm very interested in mythology and I am also, by and large, quite hard line on believing that the Greeks are capable of inventing from whole cloth. In other words, they don't need reality to take off from. But it is the case that in a very wide circle from Moldova through South Russia, Ukraine, up as far as Siberia, there are these Coorgams, as the Russian call them, huge tumuli under which are buried, actually not usually just one but several. And certainly you're right that these, between about the 6th and the 3rd century,

so Herodotus's period, BC, you find these, yes, one would call them, I think, warrior tombs. In other words, women buried with military equipment. So bows and arrows, typically also knives, daggers. And the suggestion therefore has been raised that these women actually were the ultimate, if you like, basis of this sort of notion of women warriors. But of course they're living with men. These aren't women entirely apart from men. How do you know they're living with men? Well, because as I say, they are not normally found in their own burial tumuli.

They are found with men. They have their own graves about in some regions of this very large area. north of the Black Sea up as far as Siberia, as many as 20% in some concentrations are female. But that's not to say, you know, the other 80% are male. So they're minority, but they exist. That's the point. And you could say it takes only one.

It takes a Greek speaking Scythian or a Scythian-speaking Greek to tell Herodotus that these women exist. And then you get a sort of corroboration of the basis of the myth. Karayvah, what do you give, what credence do you give to this archaeological discovery? Well, I mean, I would tend to agree with Paul. And I think that even if you go back into antiquity and you think about the tombs of the Amazons that hark from that time, I mean, you know, we go to Athens and they were performing sacrifices to Amazons.

But then we've already mentioned Theseus as bones. We could talk about Arrestes as bones. we could talk about the fact that you go to any Greek sanctuary and you've got things like fossils of giants and skeletons of tritons and all sorts of things. And these are real in some senses, but whether or not they are, I mean, the stories that are told about them

inevitably turn them into something ontologically quite different. And you have a view? About the existence of the Amazons, the most interesting thing, I cannot, it's to look at how during all this long period, especially in the modern times, there were still qualms about

and questions about the existence of Amazon's in the new world again. So it means that this line of borderline between myth and history is a very resistant, is a very strong idea that it's something that,

And in the modern time there is another value. It's because the ancient we're talking about the Amazons that they must be true. So it's multi-level, multi-layered sort of quest about the truth in this case, I think. Do you ever summing up of this little episode in the conversation? I was hoping we could go on to... It's a new world. But no, I mean...

Yes, you're uncomfortable with this archaeological discovery in a little way. Is that right? It's nothing like that. Right, the new world. The naming of the river Amazon after the Amosons found Kari. After the explorer thought he'd found Amazon tribes and therefore the river was namely.

Yeah, I mean, Amazons are talked about a lot by explorers at this time or rather by their chroniclers. And it sort of makes sense. I mean, you know, if you think hard about what they're reading and you think hard about Spain as being the sort of hub that's sending these guys out, you know, they're reading the Alexander

Romance has been translated into Spanish, you know, and there's a Spanish version of it already in the 13th century. Obviously, they've got epitomies of ancient texts that they're looking at. They're also looking at Marco Polo's accounts of his travels, and he talks about coming into contact with women and islands of women. And then there are sort of romances being written at the start of the 16th century, which also talk about islands of women. So when Christopher Columbus goes off, at the end of the 15th,

century, you know, he's looking for islands of women. You know, that's what you, that's what going to the edge of the world means. And, you know, sure enough, when he gets there, he hears all sorts of stories about these, as you would expect. Now, what makes Oryana different is that when he goes off there in 1542, his chronicler, the friar that's with him, actually says that they saw some, right? They didn't just hear stories about them. They actually have a privileged visual encounter with some of these so-called amazons, these women that they term amazons, these warrior women. And you actually get a visual, physical description. They're huge and they're white. And Paul, that happens again later in parallel in Africa.

Yeah, there's an extraordinary society called Dahome in West Africa between the 17th and 19th century. An American wrote a book about them fairly recently, and he called them the Amazons of Black Sabata. Now, of course, my ears pricked up at Sparta. And the point is the warrior nature of these regiments of women, rising to as many as 6,000, I'm told, in the end of the 19th century. They were generated by the various kings of Dahomey, who recruited them among his wives, partly voluntary, partly compulsory,

and they fought in parallel with the men. So they had separate regiments of men and women warriors. They didn't, of course, fight on horseback. But it's a purely modern term. to apply the term Amazon's to them. They didn't think of themselves as Amazon's. Do you see it filtering through to modern contemporary culture, the idea of the idea or myth based on the Amazons?

I think that through literature and art until today, we see two main streams. On one hand, there is the barbaric idea of the warrior and on the other hand there is the domesticated Amazon. We can see this in the... literature with accounts of travels on the other side on courtly literature there is also the image of the virtuous Amazon that is not any more aggressive. He's just a virtuous lady. And this goes through the centuries in representations of queens on the horse, riding horses. Now the

notion of the Amazon's here is completely faded the ancient one. It's just this memory of a woman on a horse, maybe with an armor, etc. So these two lines. or maybe today we have still some representations of them, like in video games, for example, when you have strong warriors. On the other hand, the images of, I don't know, celebrities on the horseback, on riding a horse, women that can be... I think that's right, but I think we need to be a little bit careful about trivialising it too much.

I mean, if you think about the fact that Gaddafi's bodyguard are called, often by the West, are called Amazons, these women. that surrounded him. And I think if we were having this conversation in South America, then actually the Amazon might be quite a positive. We might identify quite strongly, and I don't know enough about South American literature to know, but I would imagine that they do identify in the same way that if we went back to antiquity, we would find that for all that the Greeks are constructing the Amazon as the ultimate other, you know, there are places in the Greek world which are constructing the Amazons as their forebears, you know, and they've got

tombs to prove it. So, you know. Last word, Paul? Well, can I mention Zina, Warrior Princess? I don't know how much time we've got left. You can do it, Paul. A TV series in the States

it spun off from legendary journeys of Heracles and she peers up with a lady called Gabrielle who is initiated into a tribe of Amazon's. So I thought you should know that. Thank you, Paul Gardledge. Carriva, Chiarna Francescini.

That was terrific. I thought. Next week, the Putney Debate, 1647, perhaps the beginning of a democracy in this country. Thanks for listening. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.uk slash radio 4.