The Amazons: wonder-women of the ancient world

Summary

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History Extra Podcast – “The Amazons: Wonder-Women of the Ancient World”

Release Date: September 4, 2025
Host: Dave Musgrove (Immediate Media)
Guest: Professor David Braund (Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Exeter)

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, host Dave Musgrove interviews Professor David Braund, author of Amazons: The History Behind the Legend. Their discussion delves deep into the myth, meaning, and societal functions of the Amazons in ancient Greek culture. Rather than simply reinforcing the classic image of warrior women, the episode unveils the Amazons as complex, multi-dimensional figures embedded in Greek myth, city-building, religion, and gender ideology.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Did Amazons Really Exist? (02:38–06:53)

• Two Definitions of “Amazon”:
  • General: Refers to tough, fighting women—“for sure they did” exist (03:13).
  • Specific (Greek Myth): The mythical race of women as conceived in Greek culture; a foundational trope in Greek art, religion, and storytelling.
• Purpose in Greek Culture:
  • Greeks placed Amazons on temples (notably the Parthenon), vases, and even on three of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
  • “Why on earth are they doing [that]? Why do they want these Amazons there?” (04:42)
• Modern Appropriation:
  Professor Braund is careful to distinguish historical analysis from undermining modern, empowering uses of the Amazon myth.

2. Amazons in Art, Architecture, and Myth (06:53–11:47)

• Presence Across Greek Culture:
  • Amazon imagery is found on major temples—Artemis at Ephesus, Zeus at Olympia, and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
  • These myths are not just about fighting: “Amazons can build temples. They're architects, they're builders, they're fiercely intelligent.” (10:32)
  • Amazon tombs served as city landmarks, e.g., “I'll see you by the Amazon” (10:54).
• Creativity Over Combat:
  • Modern focus on Amazons as fighters is too narrow. Their mythos included city-building, cult creation, and even hints of astronomical knowledge.

3. Origins and Geographical Context of the Amazons (11:47–19:50)

• Ethnic Origins:
  • Often described as Thracian, originating between the lower Danube and northern Aegean.
• Mythic Migration:
  • After their destruction by Heracles, remnants move westward or become refugees on the north coast of the Black Sea (near the Don).
  • Detailed account of integration (not full assimilation) with Scythian society—forming the basis for the so-called “Sauromatian” culture, which is not truly Amazonian.
• A Reflection on Myth vs. Reality:
  • These are “imagined prehistory” stories—used to explain the origins of real societies and customs.

4. Archaeological Evidence? (21:05–22:29)

• Burial Finds:
  • Some graves with women and weapons, but Professor Braund cautions: “You don’t come along and say, ‘Oh, right, there’s a weapon in the grave, therefore the woman in life used weapons.’” (21:51)
  • Such evidence is often overstated and not definitive proof of female warriors.

5. Amazonian Society – What Were They Like? (22:29–27:19)

• Not Just Fighters:
  • Based in agrarian cities, but highly mobile, with a culture built around horses and horse-based fighting.
• Matriarchal Structure:
  • Entirely matriarchal, led by a queen who is always described as “especially beautiful in a kind of statuesque way as well. She has to be tall and remarkable.” (23:25)
• A Double Threat:
  • Dangerous both as warriors and as irresistible women, fulfilling a clear male fantasy: “If they don’t get you with their weaponry, they get you with their feminine prowess, and that’s just as dangerous.” (25:00)
  • Example: Achilles and Penthesileia—“He’s totally disturbed that he’s killed this astounding woman who he should probably be marrying” (26:10).

6. The Amazon as a Male Fantasy and Myth as Social Instruction (27:19–29:25)

• Amazons are a “male fantasy,” but not simply or solely sexual.
• In Greek art, depictions of Amazons are “always quite respectful of women” (27:58), unlike other mythic representations.
• Amazons embody the ideal tension and respect for powerful femininity.

7. Amazons: More Than Women With Weapons (29:25–31:25)

• “We shouldn’t see these Amazons as women with weapons.” (29:25)
• They were also agriculturists, political organizers, legislators—a complete society.
• Their capacity to self-govern, create, and maintain order was both fascinating and troubling for patriarchal Greek writers, who “occasionally [were] annoyed… that Amazons could run their own state.” (30:35)

8. Why Did Greek Men Need Amazons in Their Myth? (31:25–36:45)

• Served to explain origins, religious cults, landmarks, and societal values.
• “Origins which have a female element… is a rather neglected part of the story.” (32:09)
• Amazons as mothers, creators, and contributors to Greek culture—a subtle, complex role for women in myth, not just on the battlefield but as essential to life and society.
• Professor Braund argues for a more nuanced understanding of Greek patriarchy: “It’s not quite as black and bleak and miserable negative as many an account would have us think.” (36:29)

9. Quick-Fire Myths Addressed

The “Breast Removal” Myth (36:45–38:22)

• Early Greek writers, like Hellanicus, dismissed this as absurd: “If you cut the breast off a woman, she would die.”
• Not found in art: “If you put an Amazon on your temple, she has two breasts, end of story.” (38:04)
• Practical archery concerns could be solved with a “chest protector.”

Reproduction in a Female-Only Society? (38:22–42:05)

• Myth sidesteps detail: “The beauty of myth, you see, is it doesn’t need to be like some kind of PhD dissertation.”
• Occasionally, stories mention sexual encounters with neighboring peoples or deals to produce children, but “not part of mainline thinking.”
• Some late, rare, and disturbing versions mention disposal or disabling of male offspring, but these are exceptions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Greek depictions of Amazons:

  • “They’re on these three of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We have Amazons, you know—why? What’s it about?” (04:42, Professor David Braund)

• On the richness of the Amazon myth:

  • “There’s been this obsession with, ‘oh, these are women who can fight.’ Well, yes they are…and good for them, that’s fine. But there’s so much more than that.” (10:30, Prof. Braund)

• On the Amazon queen:

  • “The queen is like a sort of supermodel…these Amazons are quite explicitly beautiful in a way that appeals to men. After all, this is a male Greek fantasy…” (23:18, Prof. Braund)

• On Amazons’ dual threat:

  • “They’re dangerous in the sense that they can get you with their spear or their bow…But if they don’t get you with their weaponry, they get you with their feminine prowess, and that’s just as dangerous.” (25:00, Prof. Braund)

• On the purpose of the myth:

  • “Why do Greeks want [Amazons]? Well, I think because they explain so much…why we have this cult about Artemis, how Athens became strong.” (32:00, Prof. Braund)

• On the breast-removal myth:

  • “If you cut the breast off a woman, she would die…If you put an Amazon on your temple, she has two breasts, end of story.” (36:56, 38:04, Prof. Braund)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:38 – Did the Amazons exist? The two “Amazons” and their functions
• 06:53 – Amazons in Greek architecture, pottery, and myth
• 11:47 – Origins: Thrace, Heracles, the Black Sea, and mythic history
• 21:05 – Archaeology: Women and weapons in ancient graves
• 22:29 – Society and culture: Matriarchy, creativity, and the Amazon queen
• 27:19 – Amazons as a Greek male fantasy
• 29:25 – Beyond warriors: The breadth of Amazonian myth and society
• 31:25 – Why the Greeks needed the Amazon myth
• 36:45 – Cutting off a breast: A persistent but unsupported myth
• 38:22 – Reproduction and logic holes in the myth

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is lively, thoughtful, and debunks popular misconceptions by focusing on the multifaceted roles of Amazons in Greek myth and society. Professor Braund repeatedly returns to the complexity and creativity inherent in these mythical women, while highlighting the ways in which the myth served the needs and anxieties of ancient Greek men. The take-home message: the Amazons were far more than mere “warrior women”—they were constructs that let Greek society negotiate questions of gender, creativity, otherness, and power.

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For more, see Professor David Braund’s book, Amazons: The History Behind the Legend.

Transcript

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Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine if you know anything about the Amazons of ancient legend, it will be that they were fearsome female fighters who bravely battled against the male heroes of Greek legend. But according to Professor David Braund, author of Amazon's the History behind the Legend, these figures were far more interesting than just being formidable warrior women. And in today's episode, he explained why to David Musgrove. But before we find out, we need to be clear whether the Amazons even existed at all. So that's the first question that they covered.

[Professor David Braund]

Well, it's a really good question. It's obviously in many ways fundamental, though I have to say I think it's also a dead end, really. In English, there are two ways that we use the word Amazons. There's a general way to mean women who fight Maybe stand up for themselves, who are kind of tough, probably. And if you want to know whether they existed in the ancient world, for sure they did. There were women who certainly went hunting, used weapons in that kind of way, and almost certainly also in pitched battles at times and without any doubt when their city's under attack or whatever. And very occasionally somebody quite famous in the ancient world gets killed by a woman. My favourite example is a king, Pyrrhus, who's a descendant of Alexander the Great. He finds himself breaking into a Greek city and an old lady on a roof manages to hit him on the head with a roof tile and, and naturally kill him. So Amazons in that sort of general way? Absolutely. The second way in which Amazons is used in English is something far more specific. And it's that second way that I'm most interested in, namely the Amazons of Greek culture, as I call them, because they are created by Greek thought very early. They are there as soon as we start to get Greek texts, Greek ideas and astonishingly perhaps Greek buildings. So when a state from time to time takes the really big decision to build one of these great big public buildings, a massive temple like the Parthenon, for example, cost an absolute fortune in the middle of the fifth century, what do they do? They put Amazons across a large part of it on the western side and we have to say, well, on earth are they doing. Why do they want these amazons there? That's 5th century. That's going on actually before as well, you know, through the Archaic period. We tend to think that Greek history begins somewhere around 700 B.C. and from the get go we start to find Amazons all over the place at the same time. Amazons on things like vases. We have a lot of vases from the ancient world and it's a slightly weird subject, vases, but again, you have to ask yourself, why are they putting images of Amazons on their pottery? Why do they want it at their parties? Why do they want it at their drinking sessions? What's it for, as it were? Why have an Amazon? Why not put something else on? And you know, the book explains all of that, I hope. Why are they there all the time? You know, they're on these three of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We have Amazons, you know, why, what's it about? One sort of footnote, if I may, Dave. I think it's important for me to say that the book isn't meant to be in any way derogatory or polemical with regard to some of the modern uses of the idea of Amazons. You know, for some people, especially women, Amazons have become really quite important as a support, particularly in times of difficulty. So I believe in Poland, for example, there's an organization for women who've had breast surgery, and they've linked their experiences and difficulties and maybe positive outcomes to this whole set of myths about Amazons that now I write about some of that. But I don't wish to undermine what they're doing with Amazons. The joy of ancient myth is that you can take it and run with it in whichever way you want. My goal isn't to affect that sort of thing. My goal is to say, what are people thinking in, say, the 6th, 5th, 4th centuries BC? What are they actually thinking about Amazons? Why are Amazons socially important in the realities of Greek history? That's the kind of reality I'm talking about.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

Okay, well, let's interrogate that a bit. But one thing I just wanted to pick up on. So Amazons, in your description there, they basically suffuse culture. They're everywhere. They're in text, they're in pottery, they're in sculpture. You said they're on three of the ancient wonders of the world. Where are they?

[Professor David Braund]

There's one on the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. That's a really important one because the cult of Artemis was the main religious cult of Amazons in theory and in practice, the cults themselves trace their origins quite explicitly to foundations and early actions by Amazons. Now, as well as Artemis and so forth, we have the great gold and ivory statue, huge thing. I mean, absolutely massive and therefore, of course, extraordinarily expensive statue done by Phidias, who was really arguably the best sculptor of the ancient world. And it's very, very thoroughly decorated and part of the throne. Amongst all the other myths and so forth, which are in most ways very sort of constructive myths, you might say. We have a battle between Greeks, Greek men and Amazons. And you have to say to yourself, well, why did they decide to do that then? And the question becomes even sharper when we read that, at least by the slightly later period. I mean, this is an early thing. This is done in the 5th century BC, we know, some centuries later, about the 2nd century AD. By that time there were great boards, partly to control movement near the statue, which had on them the famous. The single, I think, most famous Amazon incident, which is the duel, as we like to call it, between Achilles and Penthesileia, who is often seen as the last of the great Amazon Queens, that's what one of the ancients calls her. And I think it's a reasonable formulation. So why do we have in the temple of Zeus at Olympia, again, arguably, like Artemis in Ephesus, actually one of the very few, small cluster, really important temples. Why do we have Amazons fighting Greeks? What. What's the power of that? The third one, and finally is on the mausoleum, as we call it, at Halicarnassus. And there again, we're in Western Turkey, of course, modern Bodrum. There's not much to see there now, a few bits and pieces. There's Amazons all over this thing. Again, a huge tomb. And what one notices with Amazons and images of Amazons is that they're very often connected with tombs. There's a reason for that, which I seek to expound on and explain in the book. They're everywhere on tombs. Their own Amazon tombs become landmarks. So, for example, in Athens, in a work of Plato, one of the characters says, I'll see you by the Amazon. And what he means is, the tomb of an Amazon in the kind of cityscape of Athens by one of the gates. These Amazons, as I say, particularly in death, have a significance. And of course, we have to bear in mind that from the point of view of the archaic, classical and Hellenistic periods in Greek history, Amazons are part of this mythical past, which was back way when, before our cities were created. And what we find is that Amazons are very often in their being creative, creating cities, creating cults, as of Artemis at Ephesus. And I feel that one of my problems with the state of play of modern literature is that that creativity of Amazons has really hardly been looked at at all. There's been this obsession with, oh, these are women who can fight. Well, yes, they are, and, you know, good for them, that's fine. But there's so much more than that. And I think focus on the fighting aspect has taken. Taken away so much else that they can do. You know, Amazons can build temples. They're architects, they're builders, they're fiercely intelligent in the stories we have of them, fiercely intelligent. There are signs of Amazon astronomy in the images of Amazons. They have all these potentialities and we're saying, oh, well, did they really exist? Were there women fighting? Well, yes, but this has just got so much to it. And this is part of actual Greek culture, which we know a lot about, especially in Athens.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

So this is great. We've already got some nuance. And clearly I'm going to ask you those basic Questions as well. But when and where were the Amazons said to come from? And where were they supposed to live in these stories that you've been describing?

[Professor David Braund]

Well, there's a kind of story of all of that as well. In ethnic terms, they are sometimes described as Thracian. They're never described as anything else. Now, that puts them somewhere between the lower Danube in Eastern Europe, what is now sort of Romania, Bulgaria, somewhere between all of that, down to the northern coast of the Aegean Sea in what's now northern Greece, you know, Thessaloniki and Abthera around there. Thassils, they're in that sort of chunk of land originally, but for reasons never quite explained, they don't stay there. They come from there. And actually a lot of other peoples are said to come from there. The Greeks had this sense that Thrace is a place that just generates population. Now in the final stage of their story, unfortunately they get smashed because although the Amazons are very good at warfare, they can really stand up for themselves, they can defend themselves. Because after all, the whole, the whole story of Amazon makes no sense if they can't defend themselves. You know, the warfare side of their activities is a necessity. This is the ancient world. And if you can't defend yourself, you've gone. So that's a kind of basic to their story. They're based there until various Greek heroes come along and do them harm. And usually the classic destruction of this world of the Amazons in Themyscira over there on what's the southeast Black Sea coast and the Inter hinterland, this wetland there, that was done by Heracles. Heracles smashed up their society, a society based on cities. In fact, they're often imagined as nomads, which is simply wrong. They can look a bit like it because they spend a lot of time with their horses. They fight from horseback quite often, but they're city based. They have three cities in fact. They get destroyed basically by Heracles. And the ones who get away go off in different directions. The main direction was to go westwards, maybe trying to get back to Thrace. They go back to Ephesus and start creating cults and cities there. So after Heracles smashes the place up, a lot of the remnants make their way towards Izmir, the coast of western coast of Turkey. And a few probably in this same story are shipped out to be taken back to Greece as slaves. But as we've seen, they're a tough lot. And so what happens is they take over the ships. But although they know a lot of Stuff they don't know much about ships, and so they can take over the ships and the men are presumably killed, thrown overboard or whatever, and the women can't actually work the ships. So the tide takes them, casts them up on the north coast of the Black Sea, somewhere near the delta of the Don. In fact, this is just above the Black Sea and what's now the Sea of Azov, the Myotis, as they called it in the ancient world. And there, obviously, they've got a bit of a problem. They're refugees, they have very limited equipment. What they could get on the ships, I suppose, three ships, we're told. And they struggle, but they're resourceful, fiercely intelligent, as I've said, and they really know horses. So the first thing they do is start trying to find some horses they can steal. This leads to conflict with some of the locals, inevitably. And the locals who are called Scythians, they're a pastoralist people, basically. It's important to know that they're to the west of the Don, and they start looking at the bodies of those Amazons who've been killed, and they think, what on earth is this? Who are these people? We've never seen them before. And as was usual in the ancient world, you know, if you kill somebody, you take all their armor and stuff. And as they started taking the armor and that off the dead Amazon women, they thought, my God, these are women. And yet they can fight, they're strong. And the leaders of the Scythians, who think they're being very clever, they say, aha, we can use these strong women. What fantastic breeding stock. We can get our lads paired up with them. We'll have some really super grandkids or whatever. And so that's the plan. And so the body of young Scythian men are sent out to track these mysterious women. And as the story goes, they kind of get to know the Amazons and the Amazons who, you know, they know they're in a difficult situation, they're not unhappy about this. And so relationships are formed between some of the young Scythian men and some of the Amazon women. And at that point, the Amazons very cleverly say to them, hey, look, you know, we can't. We can't come back to live in your world with these. It's just not us. The women of Scythia, what do they do? They sit in wagons all the time, knitting, basically. We don't do that. We're out and about. We like being on horseback, for example, which in itself is Quite controversial in the ancient world for a woman. The result of that is they gradually, gradually persuade the Scythian boys to go home, get what they can from their parents, and then to leave with them and cross over the Don to the east of the Don, in what's now South Russia, and there to create a new society, which they do. And when we hear this story, we finally get to the punchline, which is, this is how it comes about, that it's a bit like, you know, going back some generations, I guess, Rudyard Kipling, you know, just so stories, you know, this is how the leopard got its spots or whatever. Well, the women of that area now, they will go to war. Sometimes they like to go out riding about with their husbands. This is not an Amazon society. It's quite important, this, because it gets misrepresented all the time. This is not an Amazon society. They're called sauromations. And it's a society where the women are far more out and about than they would be in a normal Greek society. But at the same time, they're not like Amazons. You know, they have equalish relationships with husbands. There may be a queen, there may be a king. It's a world which maybe strikes a more kind of modern note really, in terms of human relationships. So when ancient writers said, hang on a minute, these Sauromatians up there in South Russia, how do they come to have this society? Oh, well, it's because when Heracles went smashed up their kingdom tried to take some Amazons back, the Amazons went, and so there's Amazon blood. So it was explained that the Saromatian society is rooted in Amazons, but. But they're not Amazon's. It's a story which has its highs and it has its lows, and of a society which existed and ceased to exist before historical time. It's part of a world of imagined prehistory.

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[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

We'll get onto what Amazonian society is and was in a second, but I'm just gonna pick up on in your book you say there has been a powerful urge to locate armed women in simple reality. So just when you're thinking about Sivia and the Saramashins, it Is there any actual archaeological evidence that's been found that in any way backs up this story?

[Professor David Braund]

Well, not really. What you do have, and it's usually overstated, you do have some burials which may well be burials of women, which have, say, arrows in them as part of the grave goods, occasionally a bow. There's one single case where there's a burial which again, might be a female burial. It's within a complex of burials. A cuirass, a great sort of breastplate was found there. And okay, that might be a female burial, but there's a huge body of scholarship which tries to work out how to read grave goods like this. You know, you don't come along and say, oh, oh, right, there's a weapon in the grave, therefore the woman in life used weapons. Well, I'm sorry, maybe they did, but the fact that the weapon is there doesn't necessarily tell you a great deal.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

Can we talk about Amazon society, please? So tell me what I'm getting wrong here. So this is a matriarchal society predicated on cities to start with, but then moves perhaps into horseback life afterwards.

[Professor David Braund]

Can I interrupt you there, Dave? Actually, sorry. They're in cities, but they're horseback based. Anyway, so these are cities. That's often in the ancient world, which are kind of agrarian cities. Okay, maybe we should call them towns. Yeah.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

Societies principally of women.

[Professor David Braund]

Yeah, very much.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

And militaristic, but also, as you said, creative. And that's the bit that maybe is undercooked. What else is going on in these societies? Are they entirely matriarchal?

[Professor David Braund]

They are entirely matriarchal, yes. They have a queen. And the thing that gets left out Incidentally, let's not lose this detail. The queen is like a sort of supermodel. You know, these Amazons are quite explicitly beautiful in a way that appeals to men. After all, this is a male Greek fantasy we're dealing with here, ultimately. And these are women who can fight and who are stunningly beautiful. Now, part of the problem with that is that they have to be women in their prime. So we hear nothing about almost nothing about young Amazon women. We hear absolutely nothing about older Amazon women. They're, as it were, women in their prime and in Greek terms, ripe for marriage, or at least sex, depending on your perspective. Usually marriage is the thing that's focused on, actually, and the production of legal children. It's very important. But the queen is not going to be, as it were, late Queen Victoria. I mean, you will say to me, well, why not? How not? Do they kill her or something? No. The nature of myth is that you often don't have to answer those, as it were, real world questions. The myth is that the woman who is queen is especially beautiful in a kind of statuesque way as well. She has to be tall and remarkable. They fulfill a particular kind of male fantasy as being dangerous on two levels. They're dangerous in the sense that they can get you with their spear or their bow or whatever. They're serious warriors. And some Greeks are actually killed by them. Although usually the Greeks will win. The Greek men will win because the fantasy doesn't work if they get completely beaten. You know, they have to kind of come through and win. But if they don't get you with their weaponry, they get you with their feminine prowess, and that's just as dangerous. So I referred earlier on, I think, to Achilles and Penthesileia, where after the Iliad breaks off in Homer's account of the Trojan War, while the city is still there, Hector has died and Troy needs a new champion to lead the fight against the besieging Greeks. Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, turns up. And the duel, as we call it, isn't really a duel. Achilles simply kills everybody. Nobody can stand five minutes against Achilles. So it's no shame when the Amazon queen, as the new champion of Troy, rolls up, faces Achilles and is immediately killed. You know, no shame in her. It's what happens to everybody. Now as she's dying, however, Achilles looks into her eyes and is totally captivated. He's totally lost. And he thinks to himself, what have I done? I've killed this astounding woman who I actually should probably be marrying or something. And he's totally disturbed by this. And he's so disturbed that when one of the other Greeks makes some sort of sarcastic remark to him, he turns and kills the guy on the spot. So Amazons have these kind of double threat. You have to be. And the message to young Greeks, part of the reason why all of this appears in their vases and so forth, is if you want to be a hero, not enough just to go out and kill people and be military and all of that, you also have to have a really strong grip on yourself so that if you suffer what Achilles suffers, you kill the Amazon and you look at her eyes, you can resist that. You aren't destabilized by that. You can go on being heroic if you like.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

So what you're talking about here, and you've said it a couple of times, is basically the depiction we've got of Amazons is a male fantasy.

[Professor David Braund]

It's a male fantasy. And I think again, there's a model here for the young Athenian male, not only at the level of warrior, but also at the level of. Of young male, dealing with young women in one way or another. This is taking us right into Athenian society. And I think that's why young men, in their gatherings, their drinking parties and all the rest of it have picture upon picture of Amazons in one way or another. And I should say, always quite respectful of women. A lot of ancient vases can be really quite sort of offensive, you know, rude. You might say, no, not for Amazons. They're treated very nicely, always with respect.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

So that's interesting because I was going to ask you, is it too simple to say they're a sexual fantasy? And it sounds like that maybe is too simplistic.

[Professor David Braund]

It is a bit, but I think it's true. But they're a sexual fantasy in a kind of nice way. These are special women who need to be treated correctly. You don't treat them badly or roughly or whatever. Now, you know, one can make all sorts of comments about, you know, is that a way to think at all? And what do we do? And all the rest of it. But in the thinking of the ancient Greek of the 5th century BC, that's where we're at. And I think it's important to understand that. And I've already said, you know, these Amazons are huge in terms of creating things, including some of the key religious cults of this world, you know, so there's a kind of strange element of religion going on, together with all the sexual stuff, together with all the military stuff. And as we've been talking, I think. I hope it's become clear that the military stuff is important. But it's by no means all the story. I don't really feel it's as much.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

As half the story you've said in the book. And this is a really nice phrase. I think this kind of sums up a bit about what you're saying is we shouldn't see these Amazons as women with weapons. Tell me about that.

[Professor David Braund]

These are women who can use weapons occasionally. We're told also that there were Amazons who didn't really like all the weapons stuff and preferred to do other things. Might well, for example, be involved in ploughing fields and agricultural tasks, which had to be done in Amazon society. And the myth was always a bit vague about how that would operate. But they are a community. They're an organization with a queen, which is a very respectable thing to have in ancient Greek thought. So that's fine. Monarch is good, as it were. We tend to focus on Athenian democracy. But that's actually quite unusual. A monarchy is more frequent, by and large, and oligarchy too. And the thing that really interested ancient Greek writers and occasionally annoyed them was the idea that Amazons could run their own state. So they had a whole political side, if you like, and could create laws. We hear very little about their laws, but they can create luls too. Now, that's what actually makes Amazon special to a Greek. They're subtle, they're intelligent, they are successful warriors until they meet one of these unbeatable Greek heroes, or at least a Greek community which is likely to beat them. They're really good. What's interesting for an ancient Greek is that you have women who can organize themselves. And the military side is simply necessary because without it, you'll be crushed by your neighbors. Also worth noting that from time to time, in the Trojan example is a good one. Amazons are quite capable of hooking up with male powers.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

What I'm hearing here is basically this is a myth created by men in a patriarchal society in ancient Greece. A myth that they kind of needed for certain reasons and also to have some element of other, some enemy that they can attach their myths to. Why were they important to the men of ancient Greece?

[Professor David Braund]

Well, it's always hard to know how these myths develop, you know, especially where in this case it's already baked in when we get our first texts, you know, they're already there in Homer, and not just once. Why do Greeks want them? Well, I think because they explain so much, they Explain a great deal about why the world is as it is, why we have this, for example, cult about Artemis, how it came about, that Athens city, for example, became strong. Each city, I should stress, tends to have its own take on Amazons. Why it is that there's a hill over there. Oh, well, there's an Amazon buried under that. And that becomes a focus of power in all sorts of ways. So there are many reasons why you might want Amazons. And as you rightly said, this is a patriarchal society. And in these patriarchal societies, and I think this is general throughout the Greek world, what you have are you have a desire to have origins which have a female element. Maybe partly because, you know, women are mothers. I think that played in with that. The idea of amazons as mothers is again, a rather neglected part of the story. Theseus marries an Amazon who dies fighting beside him to protect Athens against other amazons. And she has a son for Theseus who is there and brought up by Theseus after she dies. So there's this sense of women, is being generative women as being part of a general creativity, which I think is part of that Amazon creativity. It's a little bit hard to kind of pin it down in a sort of a rather mundane bit of English sentence, if you like. But these ideas are there and they form a soup, which is an important soup in terms of dealing with big questions that everybody cares about. I care about. I'm sure you do, in one way or another, questions of life and death. And women have given life very often through dying, because amazons have short lives. They're in their prime permanently. They then die where under normal circumstances, as it were, in a Greek city, we would expect them to be marrying somebody. That would be, as it were, the normative path. That's what Greeks would expect to happen. But that doesn't happen. These are going to be women who die on the battlefield. And again, another. Another kind of echo which we've got to catch here is that for women, of course, giving birth in the ancient world, it's really dangerous business. A lot of women die in childbirth. I see in all this something really positive, by and large, when we talk about Greek society, we talk about it as being patriarchal and it is no doubt about it. But I think we have over egged. We've overdone the kind of nastiness of that. Sure, plenty. Plenty to be unhappy about, plenty to complain, revile. But within these Greek notions of women, there's a lot that's potentially also positive about women. You Know, the creativity, the intelligence, the subtlety. And I think those are things which we should hang on to. Women are there in the story. It might be patriarchal, it is patriarchal, but we don't imagine a world without women or where women are simply there to be beaten on. You know, women are there doing big important things. And I don't think that's really been registered enough actually, right across. I mean, this is a big claim. I say this in all modesty, I guess. Women are there in the story and this is telling us that however patriarchal it might be, these are men with wives, with daughters, priestesses. These are women who actually count. And there's an acknowledgment of that and those skills and potentialities of women, which again go way beyond battle because men can do that. What men can't do is give birth, you know, so those things I think need to be acknowledged a lot more in general treatments of sort of Greek social history which are on the whole about, you know, women having a hard time and the poorer women in particular did have a hard time and, you know, such it was. But it's not quite as black and bleak and miserable negative as many an account would have us think.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

So interesting. A couple of quick fire ones before we finish. Just be like super quick. This idea that the Amazons cut off one of their breasts to be better archers, what's that about?

[Professor David Braund]

Well, already fairly early on in the ancient world, there were Greek writers saying, you've got to get serious about this, this is absurd. A writer called hellanicus, writing about 400 BC, so, you know, classical period, he says, look, if you cut the breast off a woman, she would die. So they didn't do that, did they? And so there's a lot of speculation about maybe some kind of cauterization, but nobody really buys into that very much either. And I actually went to speak to sports people about this and the fact is that very often when women throw something or shoot an arrow or whatever, their breasts can actually condition the way in which they throw. But that can be got over by training and so forth. And it can also be got over by, especially with archery, by a simple thing called a chest protector. You don't have to cut a breast off, you simply wear a bit of padding. It's not an important part of the myth. If you look at art, you will never find a one breasted Amazon, Never. Which tells me that although there may have been all kinds of tales and stories and fantasies about that, it's not part of if you like mainline thinking. If you put an Amazon on your temple, she has two breasts, end of story.

[Interviewer Dave Musgrove]

Okay, we'll put that one in the box and then the other one. We talked about sort of the real world problems of explaining the myths and how they were quite loose in the way they explained. One of the things that they did try and explain, I think, is what men were supposed to be doing in these matriarchal societies, I. E. How. How they were supposed to reproduce. What was the logic there? How did they explain it?

[Professor David Braund]

The key thing to stress before answering your question is that by and large, they didn't. The beauty of myth, you see, is it doesn't need to be like some kind of PhD dissertation. It doesn't have to cover all the angles. Myth just parachutes in and out as suits. And with Amazons, we've got Ares, father of the Amazons. Well, great. So does that mean the Amazons are all somehow children of Aries? And how do Amazons then reproduce? Does Aries have sex with his own children or what? Well, there's no indication of that. Myth just doesn't go that way. It's not of interest. Now, of course, there are also going to be Greeks who say, well, hang on, that's not entirely satisfactory, is it? It may be the myth's got hole in it, but what are we going to put in that hole? You know, we want to have something to say about this. And there are a whole list. And it gets longer and longer and more and more strange as you go later, which is quite interesting about what Amazons do in terms of producing children. Essentially, the sort of bones of the thing are that Amazons are said to do a deal with neighboring peoples and they sometimes meet them by a river, they go up a mountain and have sort of three weeks of sex with them or something, and then produce children. Now, again, that, like the breast story, it's good that you put them together. Actually, it seems not to be part of mainline thinking. It certainly doesn't seem to show up in public art in any way, or even private art, actually. You don't tend to see Amazons having sex with anybody on the pots and everything. So when children are born again, there are later accounts where the male children are separated out. They're sometimes just left out, or they're left in a specific place with instructions to the fathers to come and get them. Sometimes that's a whole society of men who conveniently live next door or a whole range of possibilities. The nastiest I found is where it's a work of a medical writer who's a specialist in joints and he's writing about joints. And he says, of course there are those who say, and he says, mythically, mythologusin is the Greek word. They tell myth that the Amazon women, if they produce male children, they deliberately dislocate their joints so that they're not going to be in a position to take over the state and they're going to be given probably very basic things to do as sort of disabled Amazon children, deliberately disabled. And that's one of the very, very few kind of disturbing and nasty tales that we hear about Amazons and Amazon society. Normally they're operating on this kind of epic level of great battles and sort of heroes and all of that. And again, I think it tells you that this is something which is, as it were, off piste, that the mainline story just doesn't go there.

[Podcast Narrator / Advertiser]

That was Professor David Braund, Emeritus professor of Classics at the University of Exeter. His book Amazon's the History behind the Legend is on sale now. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Lewis Dobbs. Build a polished wardrobe that shows you. Stay you wherever you go with Mack weldon. Use code MAC25 for 25 off your first order of $125 or [e-mail].

[TJ Watt / Greg Jenner]

Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, host of youf're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast from the BBC that takes history seriously. Each week I'm joined by a comedian and an expert historian to learn and laugh about the past. In our all new season, we cover unique areas of history that your school lessons may have missed. From getting ready in the Renaissance era to the Kellogg brothers. Listen to youo're Dead to Me Now. Wherever you get your podcasts.