“Such boldness has she, a woman to slay a man. What odious monster shall I fitly call her?” —Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Many people are unaware that 2,000 years before the Mongols or Huns entered Western consciousness, Europe was once inhabited by native tribes of nomadic horsemen—tribes broadly referred to as “Scythian.” And at a time when the great urban civilizations had severely restricted the roles accessible to women and sequestered them in the home, some women among these nomads had unprecedented autonomy and authority, including the right to fight as warriors—freedoms not widely seen again for another 2500 years. To the ancient Greeks—whose imaginations conjured mostly female monsters—the chaos these Scythian women embodied demanded the invention of a new class of monster to be fought and defeated by their epic heroes: the mythical Amazon. Yet, the permanent establishment of Greek colonies on the shores of ancient Scythia meant this clash of cultures was not merely a mythical battle but an everyday reality.
Excavations have revealed that some 25% of Scythian/Sarmatian women rode horses, carried weapons, and participated in battle. Mirroring them, this society employed a class of male diviners (enaree/anarei, “un-manly”) who engaged in ritual transvestism, a well-documented tradition among practitioners of shamanism and others (I’ll be writing more about them in the future). This purposeful androgyny and the existence of practical niches in which the sexes could perform non-traditional gender roles—or inhabit liminal spaces between strictly defined genders—is a sophisticated construct that is rarely explored and poorly understood. In the modern era, it is likely to become even less understood as empirical research falls victim to gender theory. And because the only textual references we have come via foreign observers or the distortions of their mythology, we can only surmise about the personal, religious, and social underpinnings of these practices from the Scythian perspective.
Hippocrates has left us an account of the initiation rite supposedly undergone by young Amazon women in which their mothers cauterized the right breast with the alleged purpose of selectively strengthening the shoulder and arm for warfare. Physical evidence of this procedure—if it ever occurred—is unlikely to survive in the archeological record. Western historians, steeped in classical notions of idealized beauty, seem universally opposed to the concept of women ritually scarring their breasts or disfiguring any other part of their anatomy, despite widespread ethnographic evidence of similar culturally-sanctioned body modifications among both sexes.
Ancient sources describe the Scythians as a fierce and warlike people. So, the flexible attitude they seem to have had toward women on the battlefield and cross-dressing males performing divination initially seems incongruous. How does one reconcile the disparate elements of this patriarchal, hypermasculine society with its reputation for gender nonconformity and non-standard ideals of feminine beauty?
Throughout my writing, I attempt to understand the culture in which these traditions arose, their broader historical context, and the effects of Greek colonization and Hellenization on the perception of these practices. In this example, I see a relevance for our society’s current fraught and chaotic relationship with “gender”—determining its boundaries, purpose, and under what circumstances it may be transgressed.
The Amazon Myth
She was queen of the Amazons, who dwelt about the river Thermodon, a people great in war; for they cultivated the manly virtues, and if ever they gave birth to children through intercourse with the other sex, they reared the females; and they pinched off the right breasts that they might not be trammelled by them in throwing the javelin, but they kept the left breasts, that they might suckle —Apollodorus, Library, 2.5.9 - ca. 100 CE
Several different accounts about the origins, lives, and exploits of the mythical Amazon tribes exist. Broadly, they share some commonalities that relate to our questions here. According to the myths, a tribe of ferocious women dwelling somewhere around the shores of the Black Sea lived separate from men and perpetuated their kind by mating with neighboring tribes seasonally in orgiastic rites. Keeping only the female offspring, they maimed their male children and returned them home to their fathers, too lame to ever make war. They also mutilated their daughters by removing their right breast so that they could shoot a bow and hurl a javelin unimpeded. These unnatural, aggressive women allegedly lived for combat, hated men, and worshipped Ares, god of war.
In his book Amazons: A Study in Athenian Mythmaking, Wm. Blake Tyrrell delves deeper into the Amazonian myth and the motivations within the Greek—and particularly Athenian—society for creating and perpetuating the myth of these transgressive warrior women. The Amazon, he tells us, is primarily about the vital role of women in the institution of marriage and what happens to a society when it breaks down:
The Amazon myth concerns the specter of daughters who refuse their destiny and fail to make the accepted transition through marriage to wife and motherhood. Amazons are daughters in limbo, neither men nor women nor nubile girls.
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The girl who refuses her destiny (motherhood) can in Greek antithetical thought only be an antianeira, a female opposed to (anti-) and compared with (anti-) a man (aneir-).
The Amazon represents a challenge to the patriarchal order upon which ancient Greek society was founded and flourished. In a brutal and competitive world, men were expected to become warriors. Women were necessary to produce the next generation of warriors. A woman who disrupted or challenged this order was deemed a threat to society. But an Amazon’s crime is far worse than simply not submitting to her father or producing heirs for her husband.
As Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly notes:
She is already by definition a transgressive figure. When she takes up arms, she colonizes male territory. She is not only potentially a killer but she cannot even be recognized for the dangerous woman she is. A cross-dressed woman warrior is therefore trebly transgressive: she has invaded the male sphere, she has assumed the right to take life, and she has broken the taboo that says biological sex should be visible at all times. The woman killer arouses fear, but the cross-dressed woman killer arouses nothing short of panic.
The Amazon didn’t just diminish, subvert, or threaten the patriarchal order and its power; she assumed it for herself. She didn’t attempt to rule with the feeble tools of femininity; she co-opted masculine tools and used them to usurp power for herself. Ancient men feared the Amazon because she was a stealthier version of themselves, poised to beat them at their own game.
Ancient reports
For I, too, being their ally, was numbered among them on the day when the Amazons came, the peers of men —Homer, Iliad, 3.185 - ca. 700 BCE
It is Homer who, in the Iliad, first mentions Amazons. However, he would have been basing his knowledge on an older oral tradition that continued and expanded through classical writers like Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Isocrates, and beyond, who all made reference to Amazons in their works. Indeed, references to Amazons would break free from the quasi-mythic literary realm to enter recorded history in later centuries, as it did for Ammianus Marcellinus, who considered Amazons a still-living tribe able to be precisely located on a map:
Next, at a considerable distance, are the Amazons, who extend to the Caspian Sea and live about the Tanas, which rises among the crags of Caucasus, flows in a course with many windings, and after separating Europe from Asia vanishes in the standing pools of the Maeotis. —Ammianus Marcellinus, History, (22.8.27) - ca. 390 CE
However, Arrian, in his Anabasis of Alexander, mentions an encounter with women which he thinks are counterfeits: women costumed to look like Amazons long after he believes the original tribe had disappeared. Suppose he is correct; someone went to the trouble of dressing a hundred women to impersonate a lost tribe of mythical people. In that case, it speaks to the cachet the name and image of Amazon held even in their absence. He also notes the curious appearance of their breasts (which were apparently no deterrent to the army nor Alexander):
§ 7.13 THE NISAEAN PLAIN, THE AMAZONS They say that Atropates, the viceroy of Media, gave him a hundred women, saying that they were of the race of Amazons. These had been equipped with the arms of male horsemen, except that they carried axes instead of spears and targets instead of shields. They also say that they had the right breast smaller than the left, and that they exposed it in battle. Alexander dismissed them from the army, that no attempt to violate them might be made by the Macedonians or barbarians; and he ordered them to carry word to their queen that he was coming to her in order to procreate children by her. But this story has been recorded neither by Aristobulus nor Ptolemy, nor any other writer who is a trustworthy authority on such matters. I do not even think that the race of Amazons was surviving at that time; for before Alexander’s time they were not mentioned even by Xenophon, who mentions the Phasians, Colchians, and all the other barbaric races which the Greeks came upon, when they started from Trapezus or before they marched down to Trapezus. They would certainly have fallen in with the Amazons if they were still in existence. However it does not seem to me credible that this race of women was altogether fictitious, because it has been celebrated by so many famous poets.
—Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, 7.13 - ca. 150 CE
However, none of these other authors likely mention a tribe of Amazons because they never existed. At least, not in the way the myths imagine them. Where some expected to find matriarchal communes totally absent of men, we now know they were ordinary tribes of nomadic Scythian and Sarmatian herdsmen among whom just one-quarter of the women took up arms. Visitors to the region may never have seen or noticed such women who, in passing, would have simply blended with other members of their tribe and may even have been mistaken for men based upon their dress. Contrary to the salacious literature, they did not ride around with their naked bosoms exposed for all to see.
Shooting a bow
And as for their children, they mutilated both the legs and the arms of the males, incapacitating them in this way for the demands of war, and in the case of the females they seared the right breast that it might not project when their bodies matured and be in the way; and it is for this reason that the nation of the Amazons received the appellation it bears —Diodorus Siculus, Library 1-7, 2.45.1 - ca. 49 BCE
One of the most potent and persistent hypotheses posited for Amazonian breast negation has been that breasts can be cumbersome, inconvenient appendages (which I will not dispute) that limit the full functioning of the female form in athletic and martial pursuits. The theory goes awry in claiming the elimination of a boob freed up that area for the full draw of a bowstring. This is the kind of statement made by someone who has never drawn or fired a bow.
As a practitioner of traditional archery, I can attest that tits are not a major impediment to archery, not even large ones (they’re a nuisance in other ways, for sure.) If they somehow became an issue, it’s obviously much easier to belt them down with some kind of undergarment than surgically remove them. Since these women were also riding horses, I assume they were already wearing some such prehistoric sports bra, as riding a horse without proper support is excruciating, which I can attest to as a lifelong equestrienne. And taking one’s jugs out before heading into battle, as has been fancifully suggested, seems plain ludicrous. So, the theory that Amazons deleted a breast to facilitate their archery or javelin throwing is likely false. I say “likely” because it’s possible some women sincerely believed it enabled their use of weapons, in the same way some women think chopping off their toes facilitates their ability to wear shoes. People often believe and do senseless things despite evidence from reality.
Some find it curious that Herodotus talks at length about Amazons but never mentions their mammaries. Herodotus usually reveled in the peculiarities he encountered during his travels, including this cringe-inducing detail about the way mares (female horses) were milked in Scythia by playing the poor beasts like a set of bagpipes:
They take blow-pipes of bone just like flutes, and these they insert into the vagina of the mare and blow with their mouths, and others milk while they blow: and they say that they do this because the veins of the mare are thus filled, being blown out, and so the udder is let down. — Herodotus, Histories, 4.2 - ca. 430 BCE
Yet, not a word on the anomaly of Amazonian breasts. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It could be he never saw an Amazon and was limited by the information given him by his informants for whom the boob detail may not have been known or noteworthy. And we have to consider that hooters generally weren’t as big a deal to everyone in the ancient world as they are in ours—maybe he was a leg man.
Of course, the destruction of the breast could be a total fabrication to make the Amazons appear more savage and unholy than even the original myths painted them. What could be more unfeminine, dangerous, and contrary to the duties and virtues of womankind and motherhood than a creature that willfully destroys the life-giving source of her offspring’s nourishment? Who maims her most valuable male children? Amazons are the photographic negative of everything a good Greek woman should be—perhaps by design. Are they modeled on real women, a simple cautionary tale, or a little of both? We just don’t know.
If they didn’t do it, where did the idea come from?
Circa 490 BCE, Hellanikos of Lesbos believed the word “amazon” had a Greek origin and reverse-engineered an etymology from a (without) – mastos (breast) from a – mazos. Adrienne Mayor believes this false folk etymology is the source of the myth about the single-breasted state of Amazons: a Greek historian invented a bizarre derivation for a foreign word, then concocted an even more outlandish story to justify it.
I suppose it’s possible. Greeks were fond of inventing etymologies for random words. But they were usually relevant to the subject, not pulled from left field. I’m just imagining the thought process that, given all other possibilities, makes the leap: “a-mastos —> a-mazos might mean “without breast”… then from among all the possibilities, decides it obviously means they’re a tribe of women who melt babies’ boobies….
But what provoked such a strange etymology in the first place? There must be a reason for highlighting this specific detail about this particular tribe no one in their audiences would ever encounter. Either it is based on fact or designed to shock the conscience deliberately. The ancient Greek imagination was forever conjuring foils which, by their stark contrast, could set off the brilliance of their ideals. In his introduction to Amazons, Tyrrell explains this dynamic succinctly:
The cultural ideal, the adult male warrior, depended upon the imperative that boys became warriors and fathers, and girls became wives and mothers of sons. The genesis of the Amazon myth is the reversal of that imperative: Amazons go to war and refuse to become mothers of sons.
They represent not just a bizarro version of the ideal world, but perhaps its most chaotic, nightmarish version, where all the norms and structures on which society is founded have been mocked and inverted. Nowhere is that monstrous inversion more clearly demonstrated than with the sacrifice of a nurturing breast for the antithetical purpose of bearing arms.
Obviously, an entire society in which women behave like the mythical Amazons could not survive. This fear seems to haunt the myth-makers as if this lifestyle were a contagion that might infect good and decent women and entice them away from the home and their duties as wives and mothers. The purpose of the myth, as far as we can tell, may have been to not only cajole women into accepting their responsibility within the social order but to legitimize, if need be, the forceful sequestration of women to their roles. It says: Heroes of old knew what to do when confronted with wayward women. Did ordinary fathers, brothers, husbands, etc.? These stories may have served as guides.
If they did it, why?
Hippocrates (460 – c. 370 BCE) is very explicit about his understanding of the Amazonian reasoning behind the breast-removal practice. Contrary to Diodorus, he is very clear that neutralizing the breast, in their minds, will divert strength to the shoulder, which will enable the women to shoot their bows and throw their javelins with greater force. While the science underlying this theory is highly questionable, there is a coldly calculated, rational intention behind the radical modification of their bodies: the women want to overcome their physical disadvantage and become more powerful warriors.
XVII. Such is the condition of the inhabitants of Asia. And in Europe is a Scythian race, dwelling round Lake Maeotis, which differs from the other races. Their name is Sauromatae. Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterise it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm. -Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places
Hippocrates never disputes the existence of these warrior women or the value of this operation. Over time, historians have challenged whether women would actually undergo such a procedure, that one could survive such an operation, or whether Hippocrates’ and his successors’ accounts were accurate or factual. Few, to my knowledge, have considered the possibility that it might be based in reality. But what if it was?
Bruce Lincoln, who has considered the question of female rites of initiation and body modification in Emerging from the Chrysalis, as well as Amazon rites, specifically in Death, War, and Sacrifice, has one of the most thoughtful analyses I’ve encountered:
Although it is often said elsewhere that this debreasting was done so that in maturity Amazons might be able to draw bowstrings unimpeded across their chests, the passage I have quoted offers a different explanation, one that is less narrowly pragmatic in character. For it is said that they cauterize the breast—and we will have to return and consider why this particular method of debreasting was specified—“so that its full growth is destroyed, and it surrenders [ekdidonai] all its strength and fullness to the right shoulder and arm.” A breast is thus negated for the benefit of the arm, a soft bodily member for one that is hard, and one that is weak, nurturant, and sustaining of life for one that is strong, martial, and—in martial contexts—a bringer of death. In short, a member that is considered to be categorically female is sacrificed to augment the power of one that is similarly regarded as categorically male.
In neutralizing a feminine characteristic or member, the woman selectively masculinizes a consequent part, sacrificing the weak for the strong. But Hippocrates is careful to note something about this transference. He claims that all the “strength and bulk” of the breast are diverted to the shoulder and arm, which implies that the breast possesses its own kind of strength or power which can be converted in this way. The sacrifice of the breast becomes both a magical transmutation of the woman into the warrior and a pragmatic exchange of the nurturant for the destructive.
Evidence from other cultures
In the interest of comparison, it’s important to note that this practice as described by Hippocrates does not exist in a mythological vacuum. Breast suppression is an actual practice that takes many forms in different parts of the world to this day.
Most notably for our purposes is a practice known as “breast ironing,” in which a heated implement is applied to a developing breast to arrest its growth. Another form of the procedure is done by essentially rolling, pulverizing, and flattening the breast tissue with stones until it is destroyed. Tribes throughout Africa, and especially Central Africa, have been known to perform this modification on young girls beginning to show signs of puberty. It is intended to suppress signs of sexual development in young girls to prevent premature and unwanted sexual attention from men, early pregnancy, and child marriage in cultures where such things are prevalent and preclude girls from attaining education and work opportunities. While such modifications are extreme and carry potential risks and permanent damage, their practitioners clearly believe the benefits to the girls’ future prospects outweigh the costs.
It seems unlikely that Hippocrates simply invented the idea for this practice in the 5th c. BCE to explain an etymology he heard about Amazons. It seems rather more likely that he was aware of the procedure. Either the people he called Amazons practiced it, or reports of it from further afield suggested a viable method for the breast suppression he believed them to perform.
Disparity between art and text
Amazons begin to appear in Greek art as far back as the 8th c. BCE, which is, coincidentally, the time when nomadic Scythians migrated into the Pontic Steppe, and Greeks began establishing colonies along the northern Black Sea shores. This culture shock clearly left an impression on the Greek psyche. Yet despite their fascination with the breast question, ancient Greeks never showed Amazons with anything less than a full complement of bosoms. Greek art’s focus on their notions of ideal beauty, proportion, and symmetry almost precludes the idea of faithfully portraying a woman minus a melon. While Greek art does show hideous monsters like gorgons, Amazons are not typical monsters. Despite their threatening nature, and the ostensible purpose of the myth to warn against them, we are repeatedly told in the accompanying literature that they were beautiful, and famous heroes like Achilles, Herakles, and Theseus were attracted to or even fell in love with them. It becomes difficult to reconcile their alleged disfigurement with the erotic stories attached to them and their depiction in works of art. So, which was it? Were they hideously disfigured monsters or seductive sirens?
The art takes another surprising approach. According to Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art, 1763–68)1
Their look is serious, blended with an expression of pain or sorrow, for all these statues depict them as having a wound to the breast. . . . The gaze of the Amazons is neither warlike nor fierce, but serious, even more so than that of Pallas is wont to be.
Very often, Greek art shows a degree of restraint and respect when depicting Amazons. Though often doomed in their battle scenes, the women are attributed heroic status and allowed a sense of dignity and serene stoicism.
Scythian/Sarmatian art did not depict the human form very often, so images of Scythians and, therefore, Amazons come almost exclusively via the outside world. To my knowledge, there is only one image of an Amazon that lacks a breast.
Here, what appears to be a female warrior turns to give a “Parthian Shot” over her horse’s tail. The hand drawing the bowstring clearly withdraws to a void where her right breast would typically be. Is this just an incidental quirk of the design by the sculptor or a deliberate omission?
Interestingly, while not Amazons, the figure below from the Hindu world shows no compunction about displaying “lopsidedness,” as Mayor terms it. Other cultures were not so squeamish about bodily asymmetry, as we see in the Indian figure of the Ardhanarishvara (or ardhanari), a combined form of the Hindu deity Shiva and his consort Parvati. Joined down the center, the figure symbolizes the non-duality of the divine, the cosmic unity of opposites, and the inseparability of male and female principles in creation.
In the realm of (male) fantasy
Raging Penthesilea leads the file of Amazons, with crescent shields, and shines out among her thousands, her golden girdle fastened beneath her exposed breasts, a virgin warrior daring to fight with men —Virgil, Aeneid, 1.464 - ca. 19 BCE
As noted above, the Greeks almost universally portray the Amazons as beautiful women. Whether fighting, dying, or frolicking, they are frequently depicted in the nude or with their breasts exposed. Their provocative sexuality—or what is imagined of it—is a blank screen for the passionate projections of both men and women who desire to cast them as wanton sex goddesses, fierce dominatrixes, feminist precursors, emasculating harpies.
Nevertheless, writers like Adrienne Mayor want us to know how shocked and disgusted she is with the practice. How “lopsided,” “deformed,” and “mutilated” these women would have been if they did such a horrific thing, which they absolutely did not because no sane woman ever would! Gross! And, of course, nobody in our society ever modifies or mutilates their bodies or genitals in disturbing or incomprehensible ways. But that’s, like, totally different, and besides, we’re not supposed to talk about that because radical tolerance is our new national religion. The most essential thing in any civilized society is that its members aim to be fuckable. Symmetrical. Flawless.
Mayor notes how:
Philostratus [a 3rd c. CE sophist] argued that real-life Amazons love their children but do not nurse them because the practice results in mollycoddled children and saggy breasts, undesirable traits in their warrior culture.
How, exactly, would a 3rd c. CE sophist know what was desirable in an ancient woman’s warrior culture? And specifically, how the fuck would he know they frowned upon their own “saggy breasts”? Did he ever interview an Amazon? Did she explain this warrior imperative to him? Going out on a Freudian limb here, I’m guessing he’s the one who took some exception to droopy boobs, and projected this displeasure onto the myth. With so little evidence to go on, he could make the Amazons anything he wanted, and he decided, probably while fondling himself, they definitely would not have flaccid funbags. Not on his watch!
In their artistic portrayals, Amazons are depicted heroically and often erotically, emphasizing their femininity, their forms, their beauty, and often with their breast(s) revealed. While the myths were designed to repulse, the image couldn’t help but arouse. Edgy, dangerous, forbidden, dark, and sexy, they were meant to be bad girls but, paradoxically, showing them as anything other than alluring would have spoiled the appeal—for both men and women. Because it seems women enjoyed the Amazon aesthetic as well, and the exotic, rebellious female turns up on perfume bottles and cosmetic jars. Which somewhat contradicts the message the myth is trying to sell.
There was, of course, a market for Amazon porn, though none of these paintings survive.
There was also an even darker side. One of the more disturbing developments in the Amazonian art trend were the many scenes in literature and art reveling in violence against Amazons.
§ 4.3 Achilles found Penthesilea among the cavalry and, hurling his spear, hit the mark. Then — no trouble now that she was wounded — he seized her by the hair and pulled her off her horse. Her followers, seeing her fallen, became disheartened and took to flight. We pursued and cut down those who were unable to reach the gates before they closed; nevertheless, we abstained from touching the women because of their sex. Then we returned, all of us victors, our enemies slain. Finding Penthesilea still half-alive, we marveled at her brazen boldness. Almost immediately a meeting was held to determine her fate, and it was decided to throw her, while still alive enough to have feeling, either into the river to drown or out for the dogs to tear apart, for she had transgressed the bounds of nature and her sex. Achilles favored just letting her die and then giving her burial. Diomedes, however, prevailed: going around, he asked everyone what to do and won a unanimous vote in favor of drowning. Accordingly, dragging her by the feet, he dumped her into the Scamander. It goes without saying that this was a very cruel and barbarous act. But thus the queen of the Amazons having lost the forces she had brought to aid Priam, died in a way that befitted her foolhardy character. —Dictys Cretensis, The Trojan War.
Something about the Greek mind relished the image of the wayward, dangerous woman brought low—put back in her place. Early Amazon traditions surrounding the heroes Theseus and Herakles relied heavily on rape. One late tradition even has Achilles engage in necrophilia with Penthiseilea’s corpse.
But there is also an element of tenderness and beauty in many of the stories and artworks, demonstrating something deeply conflicted in the psyche regarding the Amazon. They are supposed to be the antithesis of the proper woman: monstrous, malevolent, and unnatural in every way. Good men know they should steer clear of them, resist them, or even kill them to preserve the proper order upon which their civilization depends. Yet there seems to be something irresistible about them as well. Something that inspires passion, love, admiration, and even pity:
Then over her with scornful laugh [Achilles] the son of Peleus vaunted : ‘In the dust lie there a prey to teeth of dogs, to ravens’ beaks, thou wretched thing! Who cozened thee to come forth against me? And thoughtest thou to fare home from the war alive, to bear with thee right royal gifts from Priamos the old king, thy guerdon for slain Argives? Ha, ’twas not the Immortals who inspired thee with this thought, who know that I of heroes mightiest am, the Danaans’ light of safety, but a woe to Trojans and to thee, O evil-starred! Nay, but it was the darkness-shrouded Fates and thine own folly of soul that pricked thee on to leave the works of women, and to fare to war, from which strong men shrink shuddering back.’
So spake he, and his ashen spear the son of Peleus drew from that swift horse, and from Penthesileia in death’s agony. Then steed and rider gasped their lives away slain by one spear. Now from her head he plucked the helmet splendour-flashing like the beams of the great sun, or Zeus’ own glory-light. Then, there as fallen in dust and blood she lay, rose, like the breaking of the dawn, to view ’neath dainty-pencilled brows a lovely face, lovely in death. The Argives thronged around, and all they saw and marvelled, for she seemed like an Immortal. In her armour there upon the earth she lay, and seemed the Child of Zeus, the tireless Huntress Artemis sleeping, what time her feet forwearied are with following lions with her flying shafts over the hills far-stretching.
She was made a wonder of beauty even in her death by Aphrodite glorious-crowned, the Bride of [Ares] the strong War-god, to the end that he, the son of noble Peleus, might be pierced with the sharp arrow of repentant love. The warriors gazed, and in their hearts they prayed that fair and sweet like her their wives might seem, laid on the bed of love, when home they won. Yea, and Akhilleus’ very heart was wrung with love’s remorse to have slain a thing so sweet, who might have borne her home, his queenly bride, to chariot-glorious Phthia; for she was flawless, a very daughter of the Gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair. —Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy Book 1, 4th C A.D.
Following this episode, Theristes chides Achilles (“Ha, woman-mad art thou, and thy soul lusts for this thing, as she were some lady wise in household ways…”) for falling in love with the beautiful Amazon; Achilles flies into a rage, kills him, and buries Penthesilea with all due honors and respect.
Modification Hypocrisy
Supposing for the moment that the Amazon breast story is true, is it historically so strange or perverse? Female body modifications are a worldwide phenomenon and take place for several reasons, the majority of them deemed to enhance beauty and social status. A mere handful of examples include corsets which deform the spine and ribs and displace the internal organs, shoes that deform the feet and surgeries to repair, remodel or remove toes to better accommodate high-fashion shoes, cosmetic surgery of every kind, foot-binding, neck stretching, insertion of plugs and disks into lips, earlobes, and nose, tattooing, piercing, scarification, depilation, breast ironing, tooth filing, artificial cranial deformation, and various forms of genital modification for both religious and aesthetic purposes.
A list of men’s modifications would include similar practices and some additions.
These just scratch the surface of alterations humans do and have done to themselves over our long history to enhance both their appearance and their social prestige—some also carry spiritual significance. Many have been discontinued in the modern era, and some have been revived. And not all of them are exclusive to remote tribal cultures. Some of the most brutal and damaging deformations have been central to the fashionable expression of high culture, status, and beauty in complex cultures both East and West into the modern era. For examples, see William Henry Flower’s somewhat archaic Fashion in Deformity.
And, of course, there are various “gender surgeries,” including “top” surgeries, i.e. double mastectomies, among both adult women and minors desiring to electively remove their healthy breasts.
Some of these modifications are more extreme than others. Some are deemed barbaric, some labeled “traditions,” while some are praised as expressions of individuality or augments of personal beauty and status. All are coerced to some degree by the society or in-group to which the practice and the individual belongs. Modification is certainly not unique to any demographic, culture, or era.
Why did I choose to give my protagonist this trait despite sketchy evidence?
Something an ex once said prompted me to want to write about this specifically. Somehow during one of our conversations, we got on the subject of an actress who chose to have a double mastectomy when she learned of a genetic condition that predisposed her to breast cancer. He said of her undergoing the surgery that her life was basically over anyway, so what was the point? I thought this was a deeply unfair statement and asked if he was suggesting that she would have been better off dead? I argued that many actresses have boob jobs anyway, she could afford the best reconstructive surgery, no one in her audience would be able to tell, and none of them would ever encounter her breasts in person anyway. What difference was it to anyone? The difference, he said, was that he would never be able to see her the same way again. Essentially, she was already dead to him. And it wasn’t just him because he’d talked about it with friends and co-workers, and they’d all expressed the same sentiment. This wasn’t an uncommon view. Needless to say, I was shocked to hear this but sadly not surprised. That encapsulated her value to the world as a woman. Without that pristine aura of feminine beauty and sexuality, she was now useless in the world’s eyes. She existed to fulfill a fantasy, and when the fantasy faded, so did she.
And lest one think it is solely a male opinion, female authors and academics like the ones referenced above seem to feel the same way. No reasonable woman would voluntarily diminish her sexual appeal; she’d become untouchable. Truly monstrous. Valueless in our society because, as we all know, despite the heady claims of feminism, women still draw their self-worth from the validation of others—especially their ability to inspire boners.
That disturbed me so much that I had to see if I could create a character who could transcend that sentiment. Maybe not for all men, but at least for another character in the book. I had to make a case for at least one Amazon.
I’m certainly not an advocate for body modification. But there is a double standard when it comes to the outrage we express over various forms of modification, and even what is labeled “mutilation” versus “body art,” “cosmetic surgery,” and most shocking of all, perhaps, “gender surgery,” particularly for minors.
While this skull probably looks quite alien to us (a little like the Coneheads from vintage SNL), this striking modification, created by binding the head in infancy, was an unmistakable sign of high status in the Hun society in which it was practiced. Other communities in contact with them, like the Alans (descendants of the Sarmatians), emulated the practice, and cultures across the globe, from Asia to South America performed artificial cranial deformation like this. Personally, it creeps me out. But members of those societies obviously saw this a something special, and probably beautiful.
Most such dramatic modifications are status symbols, therefore viewed as beauty enhancements and markers of social prestige. Outside of their social context, it is difficult for foreigners to understand the significance they hold or acquire the taste to appreciate how they are perceived from inside the culture. Likewise, we’ll never know what native Scythian men and women thought about warrior women’s breasts. If high-status women indeed modified their breasts in accordance with some martial purpose or belief system, it’s possible their society had a specific view of what that meant and a distinct appreciation for how it looked. Our mundane standards of beauty simply don’t apply. We don’t have to understand or like it. We just have to understand they they may have.
Why are we so invested?
They are all preternatural creatures, who are gradually removed by the gods and heroes from the material world; it is almost as if these poetic works alluded to the fact that dream and truth, reality and illusion had been at odds with each other for a long time before things could order themselves into ideas and assume definite and durable forms. The task of the heroes was to banish preternatural creatures and illusions in order to establish order, light, and truth around them. The Sphinx threw from the rock anyone who could not solve her riddle. . . . It was not enough for Bellerophon to have overcome the Chimera, the plague of the country, he also had to defy the enemies of Iobates, the valorous Solymi, and the Amazons. —Karl Philipp Moritz, Götterlehre (On Greek Mythology, 1791)
Mythical Amazons terrified ancient people, and they continue to disturb us. Perhaps for many of the same reasons. As the self-proclaimed inheritors of classical civilization and the torchbearers for its values (for now, anyway), we in the West carry the traditions, the ideals, and the anxieties of our predecessors in our cultural DNA. For the most part, this has served our civilization well, regardless of the detractors of the West.
However, not all ancient values stand the test of time. Some of those due for evolution have been the antiquated views about women's intellectual and moral inferiority and the notion that physical perfection is equal to spiritual perfection. Yet, despite acknowledging these things as objectively false, we still cling to them unconsciously.
When the academic community that writes articles and books denouncing the Amazon debreasting on moral and aesthetic grounds is the very same community celebrating (or failing to condemn) certain other extreme forms of body modification, particularly among young women, one has to wonder where their intellectual objectivity has gone? All culture is subjective, and we’re under no obligation to approve or disapprove of any practice, ancient or modern, that we encounter in the world. But, it is disingenuous to get squeamish about an Amazon breast when actual body modification has been happening—is happening—to women in our own culture, not in the name of empowering them but of objectifying them further. How dare these critics be so appalled by what imaginary women may or may not have done to imaginary breasts in the distant past but not at least be equally dismayed by what real women do to themselves in the present?
Every age reinvents the Amazons in their own image—in the image of their own desires and anxieties. Entire articles and books can and have been written on this topic alone. What the Greeks and successive ages have thought about Amazons is a mirror to their minds more so than a window to any historical culture. But warrior women did exist on the steppe, and they had desires and anxieties of their own. Will we ever disentangle those from all the others, or are we doomed to forever understand them through the lens of their fascinated Greek observers and the agenda of their myth-making?
Neither a matriarchal utopia nor a hotbed of radical feminism, the Amazons were not a tribe at all. They were female members of nomad tribes who also participated in physical combat, which, though remarkable in any age, was not magical or mythical. It seems, instead, to have been both prestigious and practical. In a violent climate, warrior elites—clans associated with high-status combat roles—could include women who might engage in raiding, defense of the camps, or even active warfare.
The persistent failure of modern scholars—both male and female—to recognize and evaluate women as more than sexual objects and their equation of female selfhood with perfect bodies—including perfect breasts—is especially unfortunate, given the number of women today who elect to surgically remove theirs to prolong their lives. We should be more sympathetic to the Amazon if only because we might one day be in her boots.
Why are the extreme measures taken in the name of beauty, sexuality, and gender expression considered empowering, but those taken for control over one’s sexuality, status, and social role disempowering, unattractive, and even monstrous? To my mind, this speaks to the continued assumption of women—even among modern, allegedly enlightened people—to be the vessels of others’ desires rather than as agents of their own.
The question is not whether actual or hypothetical ancient women sacrificed a breast to enhance their own status, power, autonomy, or strength, but whether we in the modern era believe these things are less worthy assets to women than their sexual and aesthetic appeal.
Did they or didn’t they? From the ancient Greeks to the present day, the answer is less important than why it matters so much to us.
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