Note 507 — Chapter XI · ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES.

Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the Amazons as ἄρχουσαι πολλῶν ἔθνων: the whole race, according to him, was nearly extinguished in their unsuccessful and calamitous invasion of Attica. Isokratês (Panegyric. t. i. p. 206, Auger) says the same; also Panathênaic. t. iii. p. 560, Auger; Demosth. Epitaph, p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar’s notice of the invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality (vii. 2, 4) Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons in the Menexenus (c. 9), but the passage in the treatise De Legg. c. ii. p. 804,—ἀκούων γὰρ δὴ μύθους παλαιοὺς πέπεισμαι, etc.—is even a stronger evidence of his own belief. And Xenophon in the Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his barbarous enemies to “those which the Amazons carry,” evidently believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by Mikôn and others (Anabas. iv. 4, 10; compare Æschyl. Supplic. 293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 678; Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v. iii. p. 318).

How copiously the tale was enlarged upon by the authors of the Atthides, we see in Plutarch, Thêseus, 27-28.

Hekatæus (ap. Steph. Byz. Ἀμαζονεῖον; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352, Didot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. Βουλεψίη) both treated of the Amazons: the latter passage ought to be added to the collection of the Fragments of Xanthus by Didot.