ABSTRACT
As the women's movement debates its own cultural feminism, it seems appropriate to reconsider that ideology's signal motif — the image of the Amazon. However feminists choose to recover the tradition, it seems essential to examine its first political uses. Contemporary commentators may argue for the actual existence of the warring tribes, or simply for the importance of the myth as a postulate of female power in Antiquity. This chapter considers the historical construction of the myth of the warrior women by the Greeks. It argues that the Amazons are introduced into myth not as an independent force but as the vanquished opponents of heroes credited with the establishment and protection of the Athenian state - its founding fathers, so to speak. The chapter discusses the myth within the context of Athenian misogyny, where it may have functioned as a justification of that culture's radical subordination of women. It explores the contemporary appropriation of the myth by feminists.
