Amongst the Asiatic Greeks the supposed traces of the Amazons were yet more numerous. Their proper territory was asserted to be the town and plain of Themiskyra, near the Grecian colony of Amisus, on the river Thermôdôn, a region called, after their name by Roman historians and geographers.[510] But they were believed to have conquered and occupied in early times a much wider range of territory, extending even to the coast of Iônia and Æolis. Ephesus, Smyrna, Kymê, Myrina, Paphos and Sinopê were affirmed to have been founded and denominated by them.[511] Some authors placed them in Libya or Ethiopia; and when the Pontic Greeks on the north-western shore of the Euxine had become acquainted with the hardy and daring character of the Sarmatian maidens,—who were obliged to have slain each an enemy in battle as the condition of obtaining a husband, and who artificially prevented the growth of the right breast during childhood,—they could imagine no more satisfactory mode of accounting for such attributes than by deducing the Sarmatians from a colony of vagrant Amazons, expelled by the Grecian heroes from their territory on the Thermôdôn.[512] Pindar ascribed the first establishment of the memorable temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the Amazons. And Pausanias explains in part the preëminence which this temple enjoyed over every other in Greece by the widely diffused renown of its female founders,[513] respecting whom he observes (with perfect truth, if we admit the historical character of the old epic), that women possess an unparalleled force of resolution in resisting adverse events, since the Amazons, after having been first roughly handled by Hêraklês and then completely defeated by Thêseus, could yet find courage to play so conspicuous a part in the defence of Troy against the Grecian besiegers.[514] [510] Pherekydês ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rh. ii. 373-992; Justin, ii. 4; Strabo, xii. p. 547, Θεμίσκυραν, τὸ τῶν Ἀμαζόνων οἰκητήριον; Diodôr. ii. 45-46; Sallust ap. Serv. ad Virgil. Æneid. xi. 659; Pompon. Mela, i. 19; Plin. H. N. vi. 4. The geography of Quintus Curtius (vi. 4) and of Philostratus (Heroic c. 19) is on this point indefinite, and even inconsistent. [511] Ephor. Fragm. 87, Didot. Strabo, xi. p. 505; xiii p. 573; xiii. p. 622. Pausan. iv. 31, 6; vii. 2. 4. Tacit. Ann. iii. 61. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 965. The derivation of the name Sinopê from an Amazon was given by Hekatæus (Fragm. 352). Themiskyra also had one of the Amazons for its eponymus (Appian, Bell. Mithridat. 78).