ever thus that the Italians, like the children of the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed, consumed each other." _J. A. Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy, pages 2-4._ AMALINGS, OR AMALS. The royal race of the ancient Ostragoths, as the Balthi or Balthings were of the Visigoths, both claiming a descent from the gods. AMAZIGH, The. See LIBYANS. AMAZONS. "The Amazons, daughters of Arês and Harmonia, are both early creations, and frequent reproductions, of the ancient epic. ... A nation of courageous, hardy and indefatigable women, dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary intercourse for the purpose of renovating their numbers, and burning out their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow freely,--this was at once a general type stimulating to the fancy of the poet, and a theme eminently popular with his hearers. Nor was it at all repugnant to the faith of the latter--who had no recorded facts to guide them, and no other standard of credibility as to the past except such poetical narratives themselves--to conceive communities of Amazons as having actually existed in anterior time. Accordingly we find these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and universally accepted as past realities. In the Iliad, when Priam wishes to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phrygia, on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the formidable Amazons. When Bellerophon is to be employed on a deadly and perilous undertaking, by those who indirectly wish to procure his death, he is despatched against the Amazons. ... The Argonautic heroes find the Amazons on the river Thermôdon in their expedition along the southern coast of the Euxine. To the same spot Hêrakles goes to attack them, in the performance of the ninth labour imposed upon him by Eurystheus, for the purpose of procuring the girdle of the Amazonian queen, Hippolyte; 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 Antiopê. This injury they avenged by invading Attica ... and penetrated even into Athens itself: where the final battle, hard-fought and at one time doubtful, by which Thêseus crushed them, was fought--in the very heart of the city. Attic antiquaries confidently pointed out the exact position of the two contending armies. ... No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more deeply worked into the national mind of Greece than this invasion and defeat of the Amazons. ... Their proper territory was asserted to be the town and plain of Themiskyra, near the Grecian colony of Amisus, on the river Thermôdon [northern Asia