Slavic Warrior Women, pt. 6: Antiope

Link to full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy: Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore: https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787

Time for Slavic Warrior Women, part 6! Today we’ll talk about Antiope, an Amazon who is often confused for Hippolyte because of the overlap in their respective narratives...and overlap that, incidentally, traces all the way back to their earliest portrayals in Greek literature.

Abduction of Antiope by Theseus

Although she is not as famous as Hippolyte owing to her omission from Shakespeare’s comedy, Antiope nevertheless remains one of the more recognizable Amazons for her role in the Attic War. However, one of the key areas of contention muddling the differentiation between Hippolyte and Antiope regards the Greek hero Theseus. Some authors attribute the role of Theseus’s Amazon wife to Hippolyte, as previously discussed, but more often the role is attributed to Antiope. According to Plutarch’s Theseus as well as Hegias and Pindar, as related by Pausanias in Description of Greece, along with several other authors, Antiope is the Amazon who accompanies Theseus back to Greece after Heracles retrieves Hippolyte’s war-belt.^[1] Since most sources cite Antiope as Theseus’s wife and since Hippolyte’s primary association remains with Heracles’s ninth labor and the treaty that ended the Attic War, for the sake of clarity, going forward I will assume that the proper Amazon who married Theseus is Antiope.

In a narrative that Plutarch attributes to Menecrates in Theseus, rather than accompanying Heracles on his venture, Theseus sails to Themiscyra long after Heracles’s venture had concluded. Similar to Apollodorus’s version, relations between the Amazons and the Greeks are at first congenial before they devolve into conflict. Antiope, pleased at the prospect of male company, brings gifts aboard the Greek ship, but Theseus repays her friendly overtures by kidnapping her. Upon the return journey to Greece, one of Theseus’s young Athenian companions falls desperately in love with the Amazon. She gently rebuffs his advances and, in the spirit of diplomacy, does not tell Theseus of the incident. However, the young Athenian is so distraught by her rejection that he commits suicide. Theseus learns of the situation after the fact. Remembering an oracle given to him at Delphi that he should found a city when he is filled with the most grief, he establishes a city there and names it in honor of the deceased youth.^[2] 

Shortly after they arrive at Greece, Antiope bears Theseus a son, Hippolytus.^[3] However, despite the seeming domesticity of marriage and motherhood, Antiope does not cease being a warrior when she arrives at Greece. Her refusal to lay down her Amazon mantle links her legacy to the Attic War, the outline of which is largely consistent regardless of the name of Theseus’s Amazon wife. The Amazons invade Attica to either recover or avenge their sister, possibly with the support of other Scythian tribes, but after several bloody months, they retreat. Yet, while Hippolyte sometimes survives the war, Antiope never does. Some versions place her fighting alongside the Greeks, while other versions have her leading the Amazon army. In either case, Antiope dies, fittingly for an Amazon, in battle, and Theseus subsequently expels the rest of the Amazons from Greece.^[4] 

Though the myth of Amazons murdering their male offspring originated in antiquity and persists in popular imagination, Antiope’s son lives to adulthood. Yet, even this son of an Amazon still meets an unfortunate fate as a result of his parentage. To honor his mother’s legacy, Hippolytus worships Artemis, the chaste goddess of the hunt. In Euripides’s play Hippolytus, the titular character’s devotion to chastity infuriates Aphrodite, the goddess of love and lust.^[5] Through the interference of the jealous deity, Hippolytus’s stepmother Phaedra falls in love with him. When he refuses to indulge her romantic advances, she commits suicide, leaving a note behind with a false accusation of rape. Finding the note, Theseus exiles his son Hippolytus, who is then fatally wounded when his chariot crashes as he flees. By honoring his Amazon heritage, Hippolytus ensures he will share the Amazon’s doom.

The intertwining of Hippolyte and Antiope’s narratives as well as the conflicting details within each likely stems from the method by which their narratives were preserved as well as who did the preserving. Since their stories would have existed in oral tradition centuries before being written down, the surviving versions likely retain only the essence of the originals, especially since we only receive one side of the story. As Scythians, the Amazons would not have had a written language, so they could not record their own version of events. Instead, we must rely on the Ancient Greeks and later, Romans, who rehashed Greek texts. In relaying narratives about Amazons, these authors had an agenda: to glorify their own heroes. Despite Plutarch’s assumptions that the Attic War was a genuine event and that Hippolyte, Antiope, and Hippolytus were real people, many of the authors who first wrote about the Amazons did so under the assumption that they were merely myth, a fabrication of their ancestors’ imaginations meant to make their heroes seem more heroic by defeating barbarian female foes. Nevertheless, no matter how heroic or admirable individual Amazons might be, they remained subversive foreigners, and they had to be treated accordingly. Their otherness would not permit them to be victorious in the end.^[6]

That’s it for Antiope. Next installment, we’ll discuss my personal favorite Amazon, who fell defending Troy: Penthesilea!

Citations:

[1] Pausanias, Helládos Periḗgēsis, 1.2.1.

[2] Plutarch, “Theseus,” Bíoi, 26.4-5.

[3] The name ‘Hippolytus’ might at first glance seem to support the version where Hippolyte is his mother, but since Hippolyte and Antiope are sisters, it is equally as credible that he could have been named after a beloved aunt. Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.5.3; Euripides, Hippolytus.

[4] Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, E.1.16.

[5] In Euripides’s version, Hippolyte rather than Antiope was the Amazon who married Theseus, but as stated previously, more often his mother is Antiope. Less fantastical versions of Hippolytus’s biography omit Aphrodite’s involvement, yet the plot of the myth is otherwise unchanged, with his devotion to Artemis cited as the reason for his rejection of his stepmother’s advancements, and thus, the reason for his death.

[6] Penrose, Postcolonial Amazons, 7.