The Amazons – “Women the Peers of Men”

            It is not a stretch to say that Homer’s Iliad displays women as inferior to men. Brises is categorized as a mere “prize” (1.195) when being fought over by Agamemnon and Achilles, Aphrodite, the goddess, is wounded by a mere mortal, Diomedes (5.361-370), and Hera is only successful in deceiving Zeus when she seduces him (14.153-360), surely not a hard task as Zeus is widely known for his philandering ways. However, there is one group of women that form the exception to this rule of female inferiority within the Iliad – the Amazons. Homer even refers to the Amazons as “women the peers of men” (6.192). It struck me as extremely odd that Homer would flat out admit that the Amazons were equal to men, when he spends the majority of his epic subjugating women and goddesses alike. What is it about the Amazons that they were unquestionably equal to men? This question is extremely difficult to answer by merely relying on the text of the Iliad itself, as the Amazons are only mention twice throughout the course of the poem (“The Amazons in Greek Legend” Evinity Publishing). The first reference is a complete indirect reference during the catalog of ships (2.930), and the second is the one line that describe the Amazons as the peers of men. It is not until the Aethiopis, the five books that follow the Iliad, which was the work of Arktinos of Miletos, that an elaborate story of the Amazons came to light. It is in this story that we learn of the Amazons’ valor, strength, and fighting skills, which would explain the reason why Amazons were considered the “peers of men” (“Penthesileia” Theoi Greek Mythology). I do not think that it was a mistake that Homer only mentioned the Amazons twice throughout his entire epic, indeed had he included direct references to their valor and fighting abilities even once throughout the poem, which he does not, the inferiority of women that he worked so hard to construe throughout the Iliad would be lost.  

Works Cited

“Penthesileia.” Theoi Greek Mythology. Ed. Aaron Atsma. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.

“The Amazons in Greek Legend.” Internet Sacred Text Archive. Evinity Publishing Inc., 2011.

Web. 3 Dec. 2014.