In this week’s New Yorker Josh Rothman writes a whopping good one. As our classmate Galena H. points out: “Herodotus, the Black Sea, Amazons, linguistic remnants of Circassian, and how to advance yourself in academia as a woman studying ancient military societies”, what’s not to like?“The Greeks, of course, were fascinated by the Amazons� sex lives. They came up with all sorts of lurid ideas�that they were single-breasted lesbians who killed their male children, or that they mated once a year with strangers to perpetuate an all-female society, or that an Amazon had to kill a man before she could lose her virginity. The idea was that the Amazons had, in some sense, renounced their femininity. The reality of Amazon family life was different. There seems to have been great diversity in approaches to child rearing: archaeologists have found childrens� skeletons interred with lone men, lone women, and couples. Some groups may have practiced �fosterage�: the exchange of children to cement alliances. The best accounts of �Amazon sex,� meanwhile, suggests that it �was robust, promiscuous. It took place outdoors, outside of marriage, in the summer season, with any man an Amazon cared to mate with.� (Among some groups, �the sign for sex in progress was a quiver hung outside a woman�s wagon.�) You can get a sense of the roundedness of the Amazon life by looking at Amazon names. Mayor worked with a linguist and vase expert to examine some of the words on vases depicting Amazons. Previously, they had been considered �nonsense words,� but they turned out to be �suitable names for male and female Scythian warriors in their own languages, translated for the first time after more than twenty-five hundred years.� These ancient Circassian names include Pkpupes, �worthy of armor�; Kepes, �hot flanks/eager sex�; Barkida, �princess�; and Khasa, �one who heads a council.�
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�In the stories that the Persians and the Egyptians told, they were often attracted to the women they were fighting: their impulse was, we want them on our side, we want them as companions and lovers.� In one of Mayor�s favorite stories, repeated in Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere, �a prince fights a warrior princess; they�re so equally matched that the fight goes on and on, and when they sit down to rest, they fall in love.�The Greeks, by contrast, had a �uniquely dark mythic script: all Amazons must die, no matter how attractive, no matter how heroic.� The Greeks admired the Amazons�Mayor points out that, unlike other enemies of Greece, the Amazons are never represented in Greek art as fleeing from danger or begging for mercy. Lasting romance between a Greek man and an Amazon woman, though, is always portrayed as impossible. �Every Amazon that we hear about in Greek mythology is heroic�heroes who are the equals of the greatest male Greek heroes,� Mayor said. … At the same time, Amazons had a special place in the lives of Greek women. �Amazons were featured everywhere, on women�s pottery, on perfume jars, on jewelry boxes, on sewing equipment. Little girls played with Amazon dolls.� It�s a glimpse, Mayor says, into �a mystery of Greek private life.�
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