A Hellenistic Greek depiction of Amazons

#amazons

This fragment of a #hellenistic era (BCE 300) vessel shows Amazons in a mixture of Costumes. The Queen Hippolyte appears to wearing Greek boots and a tunic over an Eastern style shirt. The Male figure is  Heracles. Note also the expanded color range with at least three or four slip colors, ochre, white, black and red. Remember the Greeks and Romans used polished clay slips not overglaze.

Amazons and Athletes and Actors?

#amazons #actors #athletes #theatre #ceramics

Let's take a closer artifact at an artifact I showed you before!

I previously showed you this image as an example of a hybrid of Greek and Scythian clothing on an Amazon but I'ld like you to consider something else. This is a perfume / scented oil flask described as probably belonging to a young man for carrying to the gymnasium and applying after his workout.

BUT WHY AN AMAZON? 

Is it just possible some upper class women were experimenting with wearing non Athenian clothes say for horse or chariot riding. Could some Sarmatian or Scythian women actually have been wearing such outfits on the streets of Athens? Was this flask and other similar items actually sold to Athenian women who wondered about Amazons? Could there have been a women's gym in Athens? Perhaps attached to a woman only bath? Open to non Athenians if they were women temple guardians?

A final possibility is that this is the actual equivalent of "pinup" art. This could actually be a young male actor dressed as an Amazon from a play. While traditional dramas used masked actors perhaps sometimes the performers were unmasked for other types of theatre events?

Amazons are Classical !

With the JLA movie out now lets take a look at some Classical depictions of Amazons.

The Greeks seem to have kept changing their minds sometimes showing them as wearing male Greek armour and sometimes as Central Asian nomads or in blends of both.

The use of Scythians as city guardsmen in Athens and possibly other cities seems to have influenced this. I wonder if perhaps some of the men brought their sisters with them and the sisters wee employed as temple guardians.

Hellenistic historians firmly believed there were Amazons.

Here's an image from 500 BCE

Now One from 470bce

Note shes wearing  greek style torso armour over trousers and a shirt!

420 BCE the full scythian / sarmatian look !

300 BCE back to blended costumes.

I'll take a closer more detailed look at these works one by one over the next posts.