210 HISTORY OF GREECE. the southern coast of the Euxine. To the same spot Heracles goes to attack them, in the performance of the ninth labor im- posed upon him by Eurystheus, for the purpose of procuring the girdle of the Amazonian queen, Hippolyte; 1 and we are told that they had not yet recovered from the losses sustained in this severe aggression when Theseus also assaulted and defeated them, carrying off their queen, Antiope. a This injury they avenged by invading Attica, an undertaking as Plutarch justly observes) "neither trifling nor feminine," especially if according to the statement of Hellanikus, they crossed the Cimmerian Bosporus on the winter ice, beginning their march from the Asiatic side of the Paulus Maeotis. 3 They overcame all the resistances and dif ficulties of this prodigious march, and penetrated even into Athens itself, where the final battle, hard-fought and at one time doubt- ful, by which Theseus crushed them, was fought in the very 1 Apollon. Khod. ii. 966, 1004; Apollod. ii. 5-9; Diodor. ii. 46; iv. 16. The Amazons were supposed to speak the Thracian language ( Schol. Apoll Rhod. ii. 953), though some authors asserted them to be natives of Libyia, others of JEthiopia (ib. 965). Hellanikus (Frag. 33, ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. iii. 65) said that all the Argonauts had assisted Herakles in this expedition : the fragment of the old epic poem (perhaps the 'Ajitafovto) there quoted mentions Telamon specially. 2 The many diversities in the story respecting Theseus and the Amazon Antiopeare well set forth in Bachet de Meziriac (Commentaires sur Ovide, fcLp.317). Welcker (T)er Epische Cyclus, p. 313) supposes that the ancient epic poem called by Suidas 'A/iofovta, related to the invasion of Attica by the Ama- zons, and that this poem is the same, under another title, as the 'Ar#f of Hegesinous cited by Pausanias : I cannot say that he establishes this con- jecture satisfactorily, but the chapter is well worth consulting. The epic Theseis seems to have given a version of the Amazonian contest in many respects different from that which Plutarch has put together out of the logo- graphers (see Plut. Thes. 28) : it contained a narrative of many unconnect- ed exploits belonging to Theseus, and Aristotle censures it on that account as ill-constructed (Poetic, c. 17). The 'AjUaforfc or 'ApaZoviKu of Onasus can hardly have been (as Heyno supposes, ad Apollod. ii. 5, 9) an epic poem : we may infer from the ration- alizing tendency of the citation from it (Schol. ad Theocrit. xiii. 4G, and Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1207) that it was a work in prose- There was an 'A/faCovic by Possis of Magnesia ("Athenseas, vii. p. 296).
- Plutarch, Theseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents the Amazonf
as having come from the extreme north, when Bcllerophon conquers them.
