Welcker (Der Epische Cyclus, p. 313) supposes that the ancient epic poem called by Suidas Ἀμαζόνια, related to the invasion of Attica by the Amazons, and that this poem is the same, under another title, as the Ἀτθὶς of Hegesinous cited by Pausanias: I cannot say that he establishes this conjecture satisfactorily, but the chapter is well worth consulting. The epic Thêsêis seems to have given a version of the Amazonian contest in many respects different from that which Plutarch has put together out of the logographers (see Plut. Thês. 28): it contained a narrative of many unconnected exploits belonging to Thêseus, and Aristotle censures it on that account as ill-constructed (Poetic. c. 17). The Ἀμαζονὶς or Ἀμαζονικὰ of Onasus can hardly have been (as Heyne supposes, ad Apollod. ii. 5, 9) an epic poem: we may infer from the rationalizing tendency of the citation from it (Schol. ad Theocrit. xiii. 46, and Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 1207) that it was a work in prose. There was an Ἀμαζονὶς by Possis of Magnêsia (Athenæus, vii. p. 296). [505] Plutarch, Thêseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents the Amazons as having come from the extreme north, when Bellerophôn conquers them. [506] Plutarch, Thêseus, 27-28; Pausan. i. 2, 4; Plato, Axiochus, c. 2; Harpocratiôn, v. Ἀμαζονεῖον; Aristophan. Lysistrat. 678, with the Scholia. Æschyl. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons assaulted the citadel from the Areiopagus:— Πάγον τ᾽ Ἄρειον τόνδ᾽, Ἀμαζόνων ἕδραν Σκηνάς τ᾽, ὅτ᾽ ἦλθον Θησέως κατὰ φθόνον Στρατηλατοῦσαι, καὶ πόλιν νεόπτολιν Τήνδ᾽ ὑψίπυργον ἀντεπύργωσάν ποτε. 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. It was not only a constant theme of the logographers, but was also familiarly appealed to by the popular orators along with Marathôn 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 Isokratês,[507] and the exact date of the event was settled by the chronologists.[508] Nor did the Athenians stand alone in such a belief. Throughout many other regions of Greece, both European and Asiatic, traditions and memorials of the Amazons were found. At Megara, at Trœzen, in Laconia near Cape Tænarus, at Chæroneia in Bœôtia, and in more than one part of Thessaly, sepulchres or monuments of the Amazons were preserved. The warlike women (it was said), on their way to Attica, had not traversed those countries, without leaving some evidences of their passage.[509]