Sacred Texts  Women 

The Amazons by Guy Cadogan Rothery [1910]

With all of the oceans of ink spilled over subjects such as Atlantis, Bigfoot and UFOs, not to mention the pop culture awareness created by the Xena, Warrior Princess TV series, I find it surprising that there are so few books devoted to the Amazons. The legend of the Amazons is amazingly consistent across three continents, even though actual documentary proof seems elusive. In particular, the Athenians were most insistent about the historical reality of a nation of all-women warriors; their legends described a prehistoric conflict with the Amazons as one of their finest hours. Although later the Amazons became just another map-filling imaginary creature alongside Centaurs, Cyclops, and Giants, Greek legend gives many fine-grained details about the geography, history and anthropology of the Amazon nation. It would be most interesting to see if any of these can be verified using modern techniques.

J. B. Hare