As to its origin, the unanimous tradition of antiquity is that it was founded by the Amazons, This legend had probably been mentioned in some of the ancient epic poems before it was alluded to by Pindar;(1624) and that it was also preserved on the spot appears from the celebrated contest of Phidias, Polycleitus, and other artists, to make statues of Amazons for the Ephesian temple: lately also a sarcophagus was found near Ephesus representing the battle of the Amazons.(1625) The traditions respecting the foundation of the cities of Smyrna, Cume, Myrlea, Myrina, Æolis, Priene, Mytilene, and Pitane also make mention of the Amazons.(1626) With respect to the meaning of Amazons, it has rightly (in my opinion) been supposed that the idea of them was suggested by the sight of the innumerable female slaves (ἱερόδουλοι) who were employed about the temples of Asia Minor.(1627) According to Callimachus also the Amazons danced to the sound of the pipe round the statue which had been newly raised on the trunk of an elm-tree. It is also stated as an historical fact, that, even in the times of the Ionians, women of the Amazon race dwelt round the temple;(1628) although virgins only were permitted to enter the sanctuary itself.(1629) It appears therefore that the goddess upon whom these Amazons attended, being represented as a beneficent and nourishing deity, was likewise supposed to have the attributes of war and destruction; a double and opposite character, which we have traced in other branches of the worship of Artemis. As to the native country of the Amazons, who were supposed to have founded this worship, it does not seem to have been Phrygia, as they are stated in the Iliad to have come from the east of the Sangarius, and to have fought with the Phrygians.(1630) The Syrians, however, bordered on that people: and Pindar, who says that the Amazons led the Syrian army,(1631) fully coincides with those who fix their origin on the banks of the Thermodon, Chadesius and Lycastus along the coast of Themiscyra.(1632) The striking agreement of several authors in this statement, and its singular precision, render it of double importance. And what country could have been more probably the native place of the Ephesian Artemis, as well as of the warlike Hierodulæ, than Cappadocia; where there were, in the historical age, large numbers of sacred slaves, both male and female; where also there was an elementary religion, with frantic rites, and the principal divinity was at the same time a _Bellona_ and a _Magna Mater_?