[507] Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the
Amazons as ἄρχουσαι πολλῶν ἔθνων: the whole race, according to
him, was nearly extinguished in their unsuccessful and calamitous
invasion of Attica. Isokratês (Panegyric. t. i. p. 206, Auger)
says the same; also Panathênaic. t. iii. p. 560, Auger; Demosth.
Epitaph, p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar’s notice of the
invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality
(vii. 2, 4) Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons
in the Menexenus (c. 9), but the passage in the treatise De Legg.
c. ii. p. 804,—ἀκούων γὰρ δὴ μύθους παλαιοὺς πέπεισμαι, etc.—is
even a stronger evidence of his own belief. And Xenophon in the
Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his
barbarous enemies to “those which the Amazons carry,” evidently
believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could
have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by
Mikôn and others (Anabas. iv. 4, 10; compare Æschyl. Supplic.
293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 678; Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v.
iii. p. 318).
How copiously the tale was enlarged upon by the authors of the
Atthides, we see in Plutarch, Thêseus, 27-28.
Hekatæus (ap. Steph. Byz. Ἀμαζονεῖον; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352,
Didot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. Βουλεψίη) both treated
of the Amazons: the latter passage ought to be added to the
collection of the Fragments of Xanthus by Didot.
[508] Clemens Alexandr. Stromat, i. p. 336; Marmor Parium, Epoch.
21.
[509] Plutarch, Thês. 27-28. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀμαζονεῖον. Pausan.
ii. 32, 8; iii. 25, 2.
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