Amazons

The idea of the Amazons is one of the most romantic and resonant in all antiquity. The Greeks were fascinated by the notion of a race of fierce female fighters: pitiless battles between the Athenians and Amazons echo through the Archaic period. In his vibrant new book, David Braund shows how these lithe warriors captivated moderns as well as ancients, unleashing, with their deadly arrows, a myth so powerful that from the medieval and Renaissance eras to the present it held its recipients spellbound. Deftly traversing art, literature and culture, he discusses Homers Penthesilea, combative sister of Hippolyta the Amazon Queen, cut down by Achilles beneath the walls of Troy. He examines Herodotus andoktrones - killers of men - situated in the region bordering Scythia (Crimea) in Sarmatia; Aeschylus Scythian Amazons; and those placed by other classical writers in Pontus by the shores of the Euxine Sea. He then explores portrayals by Virgil, Chaucer, Ariosto and Mary Renault - who writes lyrically of the Amazons as muscular moon-maids of Artemis. Finally, he looks at the basis of the legend in history, locating in recent archaeology a reality as surprising and evocative as any fiction told through story or myth.