Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/244

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212 HISTORY OP GREECE. by the chronologists. 1 Nor did the Athenians stand alone in such a belief. Throughout many other regions of Greece, both Euro- pean and Asiatic, traditions and memorials of the Amazons wer& found. At Megara, at Trrezen, in Laconia near Cape Taenarus, at Chaeroneia in Breotia, and in more than one part of Thessaly, sepulchres or monuments of the Amazons were preserved. The warlike women (it was said), on their way to Attica, had not traversed those countries, without leaving some evidences of their passage. 2 Amongst the Asiatic Greeks the supposed traces of the Amazons were yet more numerous. Their proper territory was asserted to be the town and plain of Themiskyra, near the Grecian colony of Amisus, on the river Thermodon, a region called after their name by Roman historians and geographers. 3 But they were believed to have conquered and occupied in early times a much wider range of territory, extending even to the coast of Ionia and JEolis. Ephesus, Smyrna, Kyme, Myrina, Paphos and Sinope were af- firmed to have been founded and denominated by them. 4 Some Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons in the Menexenus (c. 9), but the passage in the treatise DC Legg. c. ii. p. 804, UKOVUV yap 6% /j.i>dovf Trahaiovf TTTreicr[i.ai, etc. is even a stronger evidence of his own be- lief. And Xenophon in the Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his barbarous enemies to " those which the Amazons carry," evi- dently believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by Mikon and others (Anabas. iv. 4, 10 ; compare ^Eschl. Supplic. 293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 678; Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v. iii. p. 318). How copiously the tale was enlarged upon by the authors of the Atthides, we see in Plutarch, Theseus, 27-28. Hekatseus (ap. Steph. Byz. 'A./ua&veiov ; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352, Di- dot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. ~Bov7(.e^il7}) both treated of the Ama- zons : the latter passage ought to be added to the collection of the Fragments of Xanthus by Didst. 1 Clemens AlexancJr. Stromat, i. p. 336; Marmor Parium, Epoch. 21. 1 Plutarch, Thes. 27-28. Steph. Byz. v. 'A/zafoveZov. Pausan. ii. 32, 8j iii. 25, 2. 3 Phcrekydes ap. Schol. Apollon. Eh. ii. 373-992 ; Justin, ii. 4 ; Strabo, xii. p. 547, QefiiaKvpav, rd TUV J fj.a6vuv oinTjTTipiov ; Diodor. ii. 45-46; Sallust ap. Serr. ad Virgil. JEneid. xi. 659 ; Pompon. Mela, i. 19 ; Plin. H. N. vi. 4. The geography of Quintus Curtius (vi. 4) and of Philostratus (He- roic c. 19) is on this point indefinite, and even inconsistent. F/phor. Fragm. 87, Didot. Strabo, xi. p. 505 ; xiii p. 573 ; xiii. p. 622