Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/243

 INVASION OF ATTICA BY THE AMAZONS. 21 1 heart of the city. Attic antiquaries confidently pointed out the exact position of the two contending armies : the left wing of the Amazons rested upon the spot occupied by the commemorative monument called the Amazoneion; the right wing touched the Pnyx, the place in which the public assemblies of the Athenian democracy were afterwards held. The details and fluctuations of the combat, as well as the final triumph and consequent truce, were recounted by these authors with as complete faith and as much circumstantiality as those of the battle of Platasa by Herod- otus. The sepulchral edifice called the Amazoneion, the tomb or pillar of Antiope near the western gate of the city the spot called the Horkomosion near the temple of Theseus even the hill of Areiopagus itself, and the sacrifices which it was custom- ary to offer to the Amazons at the periodical festival of the The- seia were all so many religious mementos of this victory; l which was moreover a favorite subject of art both with the sculptor and the painter, at Athens as well as in other parts of Greece. No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more deeply worked into the national mind of Greece than this inva- sion 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 Marathon 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 Isokrates, 2 and the exact date of the event was settled 1 Plutarch, Theseus, 27-28; Pausan. i. 2, 4; Plato, Axiochus, c. 2; Har- pocration, v. 'Afta&velov; Aristophan. Lysistrat. 678, with the Scholia. JE>s- chyl. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons assaulted the citadel from the Areiopagus : TLuyov T' 'Apeiov rovS 'Afta^ovuv ISpav 2j?vaf r or' ^Ai?oj> Qqaeuc Kara &6vov ^TpaTtjXarovffai, Kal itoKiv vEomokiv Tf/v6' v-^'iTTvpyov avreirvpyuaav irore. 9 Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the Amazons as dp- I'ovaat TroAAwv E-&VUV : the whole race, according to him, was nearly extin- guished in their unsuccessful and calamitous invasion of Attica. Isokrates (Panegyric, t. i. p. 206, Auger) says the same; also Panathenaic, t. iii. p. 560, Auger; Demosth. Epitaph, p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar's no- tice of the invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality (vii. 2,4)