AMAZONS. 
1 ^ 
thoir grouin], and aggrandize themselves without theni, they killed 
all whofii liight or chance had saved from the fury of the Sarmatiansi 
and for ever renounced marriage, which they now considered as an 
inguj)}Vortable slavery. But as they could only secure the duration 
of their new kingdom by propagation, they made a law to go every 
)ear to the frontiers, to invite the men to come to them. 
All those whom age rendered fit for propagation, and were willing to 
serve the state by breeding girls, did not go at the same lime in 
search of men ; for Hippocrates mentions it as a law among the 
Amazons, that in order to obtain a right to promote the multiplica- 
tion of the species, a young Amazon must first have contributed 
to its destruction ; nor was she thought worthy of giving birth t6 
children, till she had killed three men. If from this commerce they 
brought forth girls, they educated them ; but with respect to boys, 
if we may believe Justin, they strangled them at their birth. 
According to Diodorus Siculus, they twisted their legs and arms, 
so as to render them unfit for military exercises ; but Quintus Curtius 
I’hilostratus, and Jordarus, say that the less savage sent them to their 
fathers. It is probable that at first, when their fury against the men 
was carried to the greatest height, they killed their boys ; that when 
their fury abated, and most of the mothers were filled with horror at 
depriving the little creatures of the lives they had first received from, 
them, they fulfilled the first duties of a mother, but, to prevent their 
causing a revolution in the state, maimed them in such a manner as 
to render them incapable of war, and employed them in the mean 
offices which these warlike women thought beneath them ; in short, 
that when their conquests had confirmed their power, their ferocity 
subsiding, they entered into political engagements with their neigh- 
bours, and the number of males they had preserved becoming bur- 
densome, they, at the desire of those who rendered them pregnant* 
sent them the boys, and continued still to keep the girls. 
As soon as the age of the girls permitted, they took off the right 
breasts, that they might draw the bow with the greater force. The 
common opinion is, that they burnt that breast, by applying to it, at 
eight yeats of age, a hot brazen instrument, which insensibly dried 
up the fibres and glands. Some think, that when the part w'as formed, 
they got rid of it by amputation ; some again, with greater proba- 
blity, assert that they employed no violent measures; but, by a conti- 
nual compression of that part from infancy, prevented its growth, at 
least so far as to hinder its ever being incommodious in war. 
Plutarch, treating of the Amazons, in his Life of Theseus, considers 
the accounts concerning them as partly fabulous and partly true. He 
gives accounts of a battle which had been fought hetw'een the Athe-' 
nians and the Amazons at Athens; and relates some particulars 
which had been recorded by an ancient waiter named Clidemus. He 
says that the left wing of the Amazons moved tow'ards the place whicff 
is yet called Amazofiium, and the right to that place called Pryse, 
near Charyssa, upon which the Athenians, issuing from behind the 
temple of the Muses, fell upon them ; and that this is true, the graves 
of those that were slain, to be seen in the streets that lead to the gate 
Piraica, by the temple of the hero Chalcodne, was a sufficient prooL 
