Slavic Warrior Women, pt. 9: Amage

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 9! Today we’ll discuss Amage, a lesser known Sarmatian queen.

Sarmatians (not at all historically accurate)

Another historical Scythian queen is Amage, who ruled over the Sarmatians during the third or second century _BCE. Although she appears in fewer written sources than Tomyris and is thus even more obscure, she is nevertheless presumed to have been a real person. The main narrative source of information about Amage comes from Polyaenus’s Stratagems, but there is ample archaeological evidence to support the existence of similar women, especially among the Sarmatians, a later Scythian tribe that came to dominate the territory between the Don and Dniepro rivers.^[1] The exact time period Amage ruled over the Sarmatians is contested, but most contemporary scholars posit, based on the events included in her narrative, that she lived during the peak of Sarmatian power in the second century _BCE.^[2] According to Polyaenus, Amage takes over ruling their tribe when she realizes her husband, the king, is a lazy and incompetent drunk. She does not merely work from behind the scenes, as one might expect, but rather, she leads proudly and publicly, evidently without any resistance from her husband. Like Tomyris, despite the existence of a male candidate for leadership, Amage holds all the power. From what Polyaenus describes of her activities, she is a very involved and capable ruler. Her people adore her, and her shining reputation as a wise and dedicated queen extends far beyond the Sarmatians. Even leaders of neighboring Scythian tribes come to her for advice.

In one such instance, the Chersonesus come into conflict with another tribe, which Polyaenus describes only as Scythian. The king of the Chersonesus begs Amage for an alliance against the other Scythians, who keep encroaching on his territory. Agreeing to his request, she sends a message to the offending Scythian king to cease his forays into Chersonesus territory, a message he blatantly disregards. As a result, Amage leads a detachment of skilled cavalry, along with extra horses so they do not have to stop to rest, in a surprise attack against the Scythian king’s encampment. Amage and her cavalry kill every guard, the king himself, and all of the king’s retainers and family except for one young son. Amage installs the son as king and warns him against invading his neighbors, lest he meet the same fate as his father. Whether or not the son complies with Amage’s directive is left undisclosed.

Polyaenus, focusing on the strategic details of Amage’s stealth attack, does not tell us about the rest of her rule. How did her subsequent reign proceed? Did she bear any children? Who succeeded her? Like Tomyris, we know nothing else of her life after this one key event for which she was noteworthy, nor do we know much of the husband from whom she took power. Unlike most other queens remembered by history, however, Amage did not assume leadership upon widowhood, nor did she serve as a regent for an underage son. As far as we know, her husband, however ineffectual of a king he may have been, continued to live. Furthermore, since no mention is made of marital discord, we can only assume he was content to stand aside while Amage handled everything in the kingdom from daily administration to military actions.

Scholars posit that Amage reigned sometime in the third or second century _BCE, which is when the dominant tribe we conceive of as the Scythians started to lose prominence in favor of the expanding Sarmatians.^[3] Interestingly, some have also suggested that the Scythian and Chersonesus kings were Amage’s vassals rather than neighboring kings.^[4] By this interpretation, instead of acting as an ally of the Chersonesus and an invading force to the other Scythian tribe, Amage would have been mediating between two subordinates and then enforcing her commands against a rebellious subject. The Scythian king’s death was not diplomacy by other means, then, but a stern reminder of who was really in charge.

If such extraordinary stories as Tomyris’s defeat of Cyrus or Amage’s surprise attack were based on real people and events, could there be any truth to the literature about the Amazons?^[5] Could Hippolyte, Antiope, Penthesilea, or any other of the 82 Amazons named across Greco-Roman literature trace their origins to real women?^[6] The answer, I would argue, is a resounding yes. Based on the abundant archaeological evidence of warrior women as a staple of Scythian civilization, we know that women fought in wars, led armies, and ruled kingdoms in the Eurasian steppes during the Bronze and Iron Ages, dating back to well before the period we ascribe to the Scythians. Based on the timeline of events in the literature composed about them, the Amazons as a tribe would have existed around the same time the Greeks—or more specifically, the Mycenaeans—were first aware of the barbarian nomads raiding along the periphery of their known world. Situating the Amazons at this early period, sometime between 2000 to 1200 _BCE, would also make their participation in the Trojan War plausible. Excavations at Hissarlik, a Turkish site now widely accepted as the location of Troy, have revealed the city was destroyed at least twice during that same timeframe.^[7] If the Trojan War indeed occurred, why not the Attic War?

Yet, no matter the genre, no matter how much fact may underly the fiction, the narratives of warrior women are not allowed to stand alone in ancient literature. Even historically attested queens like Tomyris and Amage are first introduced by their relation to men, even when those men remain unnamed. Tomyris inherits her position after her husband’s death, and Amage usurps the duties of her incompetent husband. After the warrior queens defeat their immediate foes, their narratives end. They are not permitted to move on to another adventure – that is a fate reserved for men. Similarly, fictional Amazons must ultimately be defeated so that the male heroes can move on to the next battle, the next adventure, the next woman. Since they would have lived well before the Greeks possessed a written language, narratives about individual Amazons would have undergone significant revision prior to being recorded; the biographies of any real women they were inspired by may have ended quite differently than what the Greeks described.

That’s it for Scythians and Amazons. Next installment, we’ll fast forward to medieval literature with a discussion of shieldmaidens and warrior queens of the Viking Age.

Citations:

[1] John Harmatta, Studies on the History of the Sarmatians (Pázmány Peter Tudományegyetemi Görög Filológiai Intėzet, 1950): 11; Ivantchik, “Scythian Kingdom in the Crimea,” 228.

[2] Harmatta, Studies on the History of the Sarmatians, 8.

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] Ibid., 9.

[5] Deligiorgis, “Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetes,” 2.

[6] Chrystal, Women at War, 24.

[7] Thomas and Conant, Trojan War, 37.