[505] Plutarch, Thêseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents the Amazons as having come from the extreme north, when Bellerophôn conquers them.
[506] Plutarch, Thêseus, 27-28; Pausan. i. 2, 4; Plato, Axiochus, c. 2; Harpocratiôn, v. Ἀμαζονεῖον; Aristophan. Lysistrat. 678, with the Scholia. Æschyl. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons assaulted the citadel from the Areiopagus:—
Πάγον τ᾽ Ἄρειον τόνδ᾽, Ἀμαζόνων ἕδραν Σκηνάς τ᾽, ὅτ᾽ ἦλθον Θησέως κατὰ φθόνον Στρατηλατοῦσαι, καὶ πόλιν νεόπτολιν Τήνδ᾽ ὑψίπυργον ἀντεπύργωσάν ποτε.
No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more deeply worked into the national mind of Greece than this invasion and defeat of the Amazons. It was not only a constant theme of the logographers, but was also familiarly appealed to by the popular orators along with Marathôn and Salamis, among those antique exploits of which their fellow-citizens might justly be proud. It formed a part of the retrospective faith of Herodotus, Lysias, Plato and Isokratês,[507] and the exact date of the event was settled by the chronologists.[508] Nor did the Athenians stand alone in such a belief. Throughout many other regions of Greece, both European and Asiatic, traditions and memorials of the Amazons were found. At Megara, at Trœzen, in Laconia near Cape Tænarus, at Chæroneia in Bœôtia, 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.[509]
[507] Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the Amazons as ἄρχουσαι πολλῶν ἔθνων: the whole race, according to him, was nearly extinguished in their unsuccessful and calamitous invasion of Attica. Isokratês (Panegyric. t. i. p. 206, Auger) says the same; also Panathênaic. t. iii. p. 560, Auger; Demosth. Epitaph, p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar’s notice of the invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality (vii. 2, 4) Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons in the Menexenus (c. 9), but the passage in the treatise De Legg. c. ii. p. 804,—ἀκούων γὰρ δὴ μύθους παλαιοὺς πέπεισμαι, etc.—is even a stronger evidence of his own belief. And Xenophon in the Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his barbarous enemies to “those which the Amazons carry,” evidently believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by Mikôn and others (Anabas. iv. 4, 10; compare Æschyl. Supplic. 293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 678; Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v. iii. p. 318).