The Amazons and the Antichrist:
On the Development of a Variety of Christian Eschatology
James Luberda, University of Connecticut
http://members.aol.com/jamesl4242
This essay represents the preliminary work for a larger project whose ultimate goal is to resolve the processes and purposes by which a people generally identified as "Amazons" became wrapped up in some versions of medieval Christian eschatology. The present study is indebted to the significant achievements of Andrew Runni Anderson, George Cary, and Andrew Colin Gow, all of whom have contributed to the groundwork upon which it rests. It perhaps owes most to Gow's recent book, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, for several of the medieval texts that he analyses for the Red Jews also incorporate Amazons in the same eschatological narrative. Gow does not, however, offer any explanation for the presence of the Amazons, and earlier scholars have paid even less attention to their seemingly anomalous appearance. Further, what little work has been done on the medieval depiction of Amazons principally focusses upon canonical literary texts, and few of them make any mention of the Amazons in conjunction with theological-historical works. Thus, this essay is an initial gesture towards filling in a significant gap in the study of both medieval Amazon representation and the development of a variety of Christian history and eschatology.
The story of the Amazons' developing historical and eschatological roles unfolds with and against another story, well-told by Anderson, commented upon by Cary, and expanded upon by Gow. This story, in various forms, details the conflation of several distinct myths or tales concerning the enclosure of dangerous or undesirable peoples by Alexander the Great, the so-called Ten "Lost" Tribes of Israel, the Biblical destroyers Gog and Magog, and the Antichrist. To detail the steps involved in this transformation would be to poorly rewrite Anderson, Cary, and Gow. It is sufficient to quote Anderson's summary and fill in additional details, including a rough chronology. Anderson provides a "syllogism" to explain the first part of the story:
1. Alexander built the gate in the Caucasus to exclude the barbarians of the north,
called by the general name Scythians.
2. As early as Josephus, (Gog and) Magog were identified with the Scythians and
placed north of the Caucasus.
3. Therefore Alexander built the gate of the Caucasus to exclude Gog and
Magog. (19)
Though all of the elements Anderson mentions appear in the texts of Josephus (written sometime after 70 A.D.), he suggests that this fusion did not occur until after the invasion of the Huns in 395 or later (20).[1][1] The first text in which this new story appears is the Syrian Christian Legend concerning Alexander (c. 514). Sometime in the 12th century, as Gow notes, Gog and Magog become conflated with the Ten Tribes of Israel. It is also in this same century that, in German texts alone, as Gow points out, the Red Jews appear (69). The most developed of these texts detail specific relationships among Gog/Magog, the Ten Tribes, and the Red Jews; they further identify Alexander as a hero for enclosing these peoples, and point out that at the end of time, the Antichrist will come and employ them in the destruction of Christendom.
The story of the Amazons' involvement with this narrative arguably reaches its apex in the 13th century, when they take on an active eschatological role. The Compendium theologicae veritatis, by the Strasbourg Dominican Hugo Ripelin (1210-1268/70), is the earliest text to identify a specific and significant relationship between the Amazons and the barbarian peoples enclosed in the Caspian Mountains, who are to break out and descend upon Christendom at the end of time. It is notable that Hugo's text does not discuss the Amazons as a people, but focusses on the otherwise unnamed Queen of the Amazons, and her role as lord and gatekeeper of the enclosed peoples. As translated by Gow, Hugo writes:
Concerning Gog and Magog some say that they are the Ten Tribes enclosed
within the Caspian Mountains, however in such a way that they might leave if they were permitted; but they are not permitted to do so by the Queen of the Amazons, under whose rule and jurisdiction they live. (74n40)
Hugo goes on to observe that these Jews will be employed by the Antichrist at the end of time. Curiously, he distances himself from the story, making it almost anecdotal; this is very different from the formulations that appear in later texts, in which similar stories are related on narratorial authority.
How did the Amazons come to rule over the future armies of the Antichrist? Indeed, how is it that the Queen's hand alone preserves Western civilization? These questions appear even more puzzling in light of contemporary "literary" depictions of Amazons. The stark contrast between Christine de Pisan's use of the Amazon mythology and other writers' serious rendering of the Amazons as an apocalyptic people is striking, though it is not the only contrasting use. Most literary texts that mention the Amazons make use of them as merely one mythical people among others, and certainly with no real connection to the present day. Indeed, as Abby Kleinbaum traces it in The War Against the Amazons, in medieval literature the Amazons are gradually stripped of their legendary greatness, and are left at best as key agitators in the Trojan war, or marginal figures, as in Chaucer's "Knight's Tale."
But this is the end of our metanarrative; the various representations of the Amazons, Alexander the Great, the Ten Tribes, Gog and Magog, and the Antichrist in medieval, patristic, and, for the Amazons and Alexander, classical texts, weave an unusual fabric of transformed myths, histories, and vague textual and geographical associations made concrete. Before any attempt at understanding of the presence of the Amazons in some medieval eschatological narratives, the materials that compose this fabric require some attention.
It is worth observing at the outset that the majority of the Christian texts under study here share a few common eschatological and historical assumptions. First, they generally "read" Scripture literally, in that their interpretations of Gog and Magog argue for specific, geographically distinct peoples, and their vision of the Antichrist is of a specific, historical figure. In contrast, the church fathers, including Jerome and Augustine, offered allegorical interpretations of these figures from Revelation (Emmerson 85). And as Gow points out, though "learned Biblical exegesis" of the time interpreted Antichrist as a general, nonindividuated entity, "To the broad masses of western Christendom, and to many learned clerks, the Antichrist was a real person who would be born, live and die . . . at the End of Time" (94). That the texts dealt with here demonstrate a preference for literal exegesis will have important implications for later arguments concerning the Amazons' role in them.
Possibly the most direct line through which the Amazons had the potential to become incorporate to eschatological narratives is one that traces the evolution of the various romances and histories of Alexander, whose involvement with the Amazons dates back to Greek sources, and whose role in Jewish and Christian history has ranged from the material to the typological.[2][2] The Amazons, of course, whether studied as myth or material reality, predate Alexander, and according to early Greek historians such as Herodotus, were involved in a number of wars with Greece long before the rise of the infamous Macedonian. Indeed, the Amazons are reported to have encamped almost in the very heart of Athens during a retaliatory attack on the Greeks (Thes. 27. 2). As Kleinbaum observes, the idea that there was "an Amazon attack on Athens, and a costly and hard-earned victory of Athenians over Amazons, was a major component of classical consciousness in Athens as well as elsewhere in Greece" (8). For Isocrates, writing around the same time as Herodotus, the Amazons provided a useful conceit through which he could rouse support for Athenian imperialism, according to Lorna Hardwick; she notes that he enacts "the association of the Amazons with the Scythians and by analogy with the Persians, implying a barbarian threat from the East" (19). From their originary moment up to this point in time, whether historical or mythical, the Amazons were conceived of as a genuine threat and not as a mere aberration or alternative to Greek patriarchy. The Amazons are, as well, the oldest component in the eschatological tableau under study.
Whether these Amazons existed in reality, Greek popular imagination, or both, they remained viable material into and well beyond the time of Alexander. Common to the legends that developed from Alexander's exploits is an encounter between that conqueror of nations and the Amazons. That the historical Alexander actually encountered historical Amazons cannot be determined, of course, as no contemporary accounts of Alexander survive, and the only narratives we do possess were composed centuries later (Pearson v). Of these, Plutarch's Life of Alexander provides a window into early textual debates concerning the validity of the Amazon episode.[3][3] Plutarch cites several earlier writers who dismiss the Amazon-encounter story, including Aristobulus and Ptolemy, as well as others who affirm it, such as Cleitarchus, Onesicritus, and Ister (Hammond, Sources 293). Of the latter, Cleitarchus would appear to be a primary source for the others, and though his writings do not survive, his rendition of the Amazon episode was transmitted through other texts, very likely due to the controversial nature of the material as well as the fact that his telling (which, of course, may be derived from another unknown source) has the Queen of the Amazons trysting with Alexander.
It is worth reflecting upon the meanings of an encounter, especially a sexual one, between the Amazon Queen and Alexander. The implicatures are many, not least of which is the imaginative power of a scene in which the almighty Greek conqueror faces the leader of a people who once threatened the very existence of Greek civilization. Further, that these two powerful leaders should mate, and possibly produce the heir apparent to the world would of necessity provide fodder for speculation. One cannot ignore the issue of sexual conquest, either, especially in light of the Amazons' legendary repudiation of male companionship and Greek patriarchy. As Hardwick observes, one of the more threatening aspects of the Amazons, conceptually, was their "rejection of Greek norms of female behaviour and therefore of social structure" (18). To see their leader defeated, sexually, by the "Great"-est man, would reaffirm Greek values and bring the unruly women under male leadership.
The Amazons posed an especially interesting challenge for these later Greek and Roman historians and biographers of Alexander, many of whose texts reflect a continuing agon over the meaning and reality of an all-female warrior people. While for Herodotus, writing in the 4th century BC, the Amazons were undoubtedly real, later writers were left with a historical record that at best affirmed the debatability of Amazon-Greek interaction. Plutarch affirms the fact that there was indeed a war in which the Amazons were encamped in Athens, though he is skeptical about the ability of women to make the lengthy journey to Greece (Thes. 27.2). Strabo, on the other hand, rejects all of the Amazon tales as myths, going so far as to implicitly deny the Amazons any historical reality whatsoever. His argument is an extension of Plutarch's gender-based skepticism:
. . . who could believe that an army of women, or a city, or a tribe, could ever be
organised without men, and not only be organized, but even make inroads upon
the territory of other people, and not only overpower the peoples near them to the
extent of advancing as far as what is now Ionia, but even send an expedition across the sea as far as Attica? (Geo. 11.5.3)
Strabo expresses his amazement that not only were stories about the Amazons commonly told, but that they are still being transmitted in his own day. He blames Cleitarchus for the Alexander-tryst story and criticizes those historians who repeat it. The more moderate Arrian, in his Anabasis Alexandri, argues that Alexander probably did not encounter the Amazons, and adds that it is unlikely they survived to his time.[4][4] Yet the historian cannot believe the Amazons never existed, "as so many eminent writers have descanted on them," including, of course, Herodotus (Ana. 7.13).
While these Greek classical historians debated the reliability of the tales handed down to them concerning the Amazons and Alexander, several key contemporary Roman historians presented the same material without equivocation or source identification. When considering the transmission of Alexander material into patristic and medieval texts, this acquires significance, as patristic and medieval authors could not (generally) draw directly upon Greek texts; rather, they drew upon Latin Alexander histories such as Quintus Curtius and Justin, both of whom were widely read in the Middle Ages (Cary 16-17). Neither Curtius nor Justin suggest that the Amazon encounter is anything less than historical truth, and according to Hammond, both may be traced back ultimately to the much-maligned Cleitarchus for their Alexander-Amazons material (Three Historians 102, 135). For medieval and patristic authors, then, the tale of Alexander's tryst with the Amazon queen was inherited without the critical material present in Greek accounts of Alexander.
Orosius, the author of the popular and highly influential Seven Books Against the History of the Pagans, drew much of his information concerning Greek history from Justin, and his treatment of the Amazons similarly lacks a critical perspective (Raymond, Introduction 15). He devotes time to identifying their geographical location (a territory near the Caspian Mountains) as well as to discussing their origin and the oft-repeated etymology of their name (39, 63).[5][5] He affirms the Amazon attack following the Peloponnesian war, and retells the story of the Amazon Queen's visit to Alexander (69, 135). He does all of this with credulity, though he does not exceed his classical predecessors in his presentation of the material; what is unusual, however, is the way in which he describes the Amazons at the height of their power:
O grief! The shame of human error! Women, fleeing from their native land, entered overran, and destroyed Europe and Asia, the largest and most powerful sections of the world. For almost a hundred years they kept control of these lands by overthrowing many cities and founding others. (64)
The reason for Orosius' fervid rhetoric may be traced in part to his purpose in writing Seven Books: to retell history from a Christian perspective, and in the process undermine any attachment to pagan beliefs or pagan eras (Raymond, Preface vii). Thus it would serve him well to depict the chaos of the pre-Christian era as marked by barbarian women overtaking the early civilized world. Further, historical accuracy would not have been as great a concern for Orosius as it was for true historians such as Strabo and Arrian, who sought to distinguish between myth and material history; why should he labour over the details of a history he is seeking to undermine?[6][6] Whether or not Orosius truly believed in an era of the Amazons, however, the result is the same: a dramatic account of the Amazons in a text that served as a historical record for later Christian readers and writers, one that further served as the primary source for a key medieval Christian history, Otto of Freising's The Two Cities.
Before discussing Otto's reading of Orosius, it is worth examining another, roughly parallel textual genealogy that brings an Alexander-Amazons encounter into medieval circulation. Beginning with Pseudo-Callisthenes in the third century B.C., we can trace the evolution of one form of an Alexander romance that survived well into the medieval era. It is notably different from texts such as Orosius' for two key reasons. First, it is a narrative wholly dedicated to Alexander, and thus provides a level of detail missing in the larger histories; second, in addition to utilizing the aforementioned classical histories and biographies, it draws upon another tradition, one that we might usefully call the epistolary tradition, represented by the first-century B.C. Epistolary Romance of Alexander, which gives the story of Alexander's life and exploits through a series of imaginary letters written by the protagonists. While the historical Alexander is said to have actually exchanged letters with the Persian king Darius (as he does in the romances in question), Pseudo-Callisthenes and the texts derived from it retell a number of Alexander's encounters as epistolary exchanges, including his encounter with the Amazons (Kratz xii).[7][7]
Pseudo-Callisthenes' Greek Romance became available to medieval readers through two translations, over six centuries apart. The first, by Julius Valerius, dated ca. 320, was both popular and influential, though it does not appear to have been a source for any of the later historical texts that discuss Alexander and the Amazons, and would seem to have existed in parallel with them; nevertheless, it is notable if only because it is evidence that tales of Alexander and the Amazons remained in circulation (Kratz xvii). The second translation, both more influential as well as more directly involved in the metanarrative presently under study, was produced by Archpresbyter Leo of Naples ca. 950. His poor translation, while never popular nor widely read, was subsequently revised three times, producing texts known as Recensions J1, J2, and J3 (Kratz xviii). The latter two, dating from the 12th century, proved to be very popular, and though this would be reason enough to mention them, they also incorporate eschatological material from Pseudo-Methodius: Alexander's enclosure of "unclean peoples" with God's assistance. This material itself represents an important stage in the eschatological Alexander metanarrative described earlier, and is of central concern to Anderson and Gow. While the Amazons do not have any direct involvement with that episode as deployed in these texts, both subjects are given equal credibility and treatment, implying that both are part of the same historical-eschatological narrative, a specifically Alexandrian one at that. This shared space is another transitional stage preceding a fully engaged Amazon role in Christian eschatology, one that, as noted, would appear to exist in parallel with the line of texts developing out of Orosius.
It is interesting, then, that J2, sometimes called the "Orosius recension," includes significant extracts from Seven Books (Cary 44). The inclusion of this material, as well as that taken from Pseudo-Methodius, sets this apart from the earlier Alexander romances in the epistolary tradition. While the Alexander romances arguably started out as secular tales, by this point in time they too had taken on the qualities of a Christian history.[8][8] Of course, it is in Orosius that we find for the first time nearly all of the elements under study here, even if they have not yet attained the formulation that finally concerns us: Alexander, the Amazons, a large number of Jews near the Caspian Sea (and near the Amazons), and the Antichrist. Regarding true eschatological concerns, however, Orosius mentions the Antichrist only in passing, and does not venture to discuss the end of history. It is Otto of Freising, in the 12th-century The Two Cities, who takes the work begun by Orosius and turns it into a true Christian history, with the final of the eight books that compose the work dedicated to last things and providing specific details concerning the appearance of the Antichrist.[9][9] In Otto's history, as well, it is the Jews who are identified as being particularly swayed by the Antichrist, though they will ultimately see the error of their ways and undergo conversion (461). Although Otto's rewriting of Orosius does not provide the Amazons a role in its eschatology, their continued presence in this larger Christian narrative provides an additional context for later transformations.
By the 12th-century, then, we have popular Christian texts coming from two distinct Greek/Alexandrian traditions, both of which provide for later eschatological developments involving the Amazons.[10][10] However, they are not the only texts that shape medieval understanding of the Amazons; nor is the Amazon-Alexander episode the only route by which the Amazons could have attained significance in the Christian historical narrative.
Otto, following Orosius, provides the story of the Amazons' origin, and it is worth quoting (as translated by Mierow) in full:
. . . two young princes, Plinius and Scolopecius, who had been driven out of
Scythia with a great following, settled in the territories of Pontus and Cappadocia,
near the river Thermodon. While they were pillaging all the surrounding country
they were destroyed by an ambuscade of the neighboring tribes. Their wives,
deeply moved at once by exile and by this bereavement, and forgetting the frailty
of their sex, killed the males that survived, took up arms, and, seeking marriage
with their neighbors, put to death their boy babies but kept the girls. In this way
the race of Amazons was derived. These women, strange to say, became so
powerful that they ruled almost all Asia and Europe. (142)
The Amazons, then, are accepted by Otto as a breed of Scythians, whose unusual social structure and customs were derived from the combination of trauma and necessity. The notion that the Amazons originate with the Scythians is an ancient one, dating back to Greek legends in the 5th century B.C., and it appears in much the same form as Otto has it in Justin, who, as noted previously, served as a primary source for Orosius (Ivantchik 500).[11][11]
If the Amazons arose from the Scythians, then an informed reader need only take one or two additional steps to connect the Amazons to Gog and Magog, the biblical destroyers of Christendom featured in the eschatological narratives under study. Indeed, we are in fact led back to a point of contention for scholars studying Alexander's Gate, one that has additional resonance in this context. The problem results from two passages in Josephus. In Wars, Josephus names the Scythians as the peoples Alexander intended to close off from the civilized world by means of iron gates at a mountain pass (7.7.4). In Antiquities, he identifies the people of Magog as being identical to those called "Scythians" by the Greeks (1.6.1). The issue, then, is whether or not Josephus and/or those who read him made the connection between the two passages, arriving at the conclusion that Alexander was enclosing Gog and Magog.[12][12] Without addressing the particularities of this debate, it is clear that the materials for connecting the Scythians with Gog and Magog are in place at this early date, and we know that such a connection is made in later texts. In turn, these same materials, taken in conjunction with the Amazon genealogy identified earlier, provide for the possibility that readers of these texts could have made the connections necessary to render the Amazons a splinter people of Gog and Magog, and thus full-fledged members of Christian eschatology; unfortunately, we lack any text that makes this connection explicit.
There is another genealogy for the Amazons that also, curiously enough, is offered by Orosius, though he does not recognize it as such. In discussing the Amazons' rampage, he explains that their success is "not to be imputed to the utter worthlessness of men," for the men of that time, "who are at present called Goths," united forces and invaded Roman territories (64). He later clarifies that the Goths are "those men whose wives had destroyed the greater part of the earth with measureless slaughter," i.e. the Amazons (65). This difference, concerning whether the Amazons are to be described as originating from Scythians or Goths, while not significant by itself, does provide for a relationship between the "Goths" and Amazons, whatever Orosius takes the former to mean.[13][13] The importance of this relationship may be seen in a later text that cites this variant origin: William of Jumièges' Histoire des Normandes, an 11th-century composition dedicated to William the Conqueror. As Kleinbaum observes, William has Magog (son of Japhet, son of Noah) providing the last syllable of his name for the title of the Gothic race (50). He goes on to say that the Goths are originally from the island of Scanza, and that they later left the island, branched out, and formed the peoples of Denmark and Scythia. These "Scythian Goths," in turn, spawned the Amazons when their men went off on an extended campaign, neglecting their wives.
With this text, we can see an earlier chain of references appear again with only minor differences: the Amazons come from a people, in this case the Goths, who can be traced back to Magog and can therefore be identified with the Biblical destroyers of Revelation. The problem with both of these lines of reasoning, of course, is the same as that faced by the scholars of Alexander's Gate: lacking the necessary evidence, a case can only be made for the possibility of these relationships, visible to a modern reader's eye, being so to readers of earlier centuries. None of the texts under study provide any clear evidence that the Amazons achieved an eschatological role by virtue of their connection to another people, Goth or Scythian. The closest we come to an argument is to observe that an understanding of the Amazons as the powerful female race derived from another identified with Magog could lead to the hierarchical arrangement of the Queen of the Amazons as leader or keeper of the enclosed peoples, as depicted in some texts.[14][14] However, this is problematic, for these texts identify Gog and Magog as Jewish peoples, which would seem to suggest that Gog and Magog are no longer identified with the historic barbarian peoples of the east, unless we are to believe that they too were Jewish, which would have the odd effect of making the Amazons Jewish as well.[15][15] Of course, this would imply a kind of reading back into earlier texts that is characteristic of true scholarship, and which would not appear to be the purpose behind these texts.[16][16]
The genealogy of the Amazons, then, provides an interesting if as yet unproven route into eschatological narratives. A third approach that brings the Amazons into contact with Christian eschatology is one that Anderson and Gow apply in their studies of the formation of the Alexander-and-the-Ten-Tribes conflation: the pattern of geographical and/or textual proximity.
Anderson observes that in Orosius the "erupting" (erupturos) overpopulated Jews near the Caspian sea appear within the text just after a passage on Alexander, and concludes that "The close [textual] proximity of Alexander and the Jews deported to Hyrcania can hardly fail to be significant because of the profound influence exerted by Orosius," citing Roger Bacon's use of this passage as evidence (63-4). Gow in turn cites Anderson's observation approvingly, adding that "The close [geographical] association between the Ten Tribes and the peoples enclosed in the area of the Caspian Sea was, therefore, firmly established in patristic precedent" (37). To this it may be added here that Orosius establishes the land of the Amazons as the territory near the Caspian Sea and Mountains, providing them with the kind of geographical "close association" with the Ten Tribes Gow describes (39).
Whether one attributes it to frontier mentality or to the very real experience of eastern barbarian invaders, the mere socio-historical existence of a geographical locus of Otherness is likely to serve as an attractor, drawing towards and gradually incorporating those nearest it, something suggested by Gow's observation.[17][17] Anderson, on the other hand, pursues what might be called the textual arm of the argument for geographical proximity, for textual representations have frequently placed the Amazons, Alexander, and Jews in close textual proximity as well. Thus, not only do they share a conceptual geographical relation, but the reader or hearer of such texts also experiences a relation, sometimes reflective of the former, in time. Returning to Orosius, it is notable that not only does the passage concerning the deported Jews immediately follow on the heels of one characterizing Alexander as "a veritable whirlpool of evils," but only eleven brief chapters later in the same book appears a reference to Alexander's tryst with the Amazon Queen. The three subjects run together in close textual proximity in a developing Alexandrian narrative, and it is not too much to suggest that such closeness without distinction could lend itself to later revisions in which the three are more tightly knit together. In a similar fashion, the appearance of the Amazons in the Armenian Pseudo-Callisthenes is immediately followed by Alexander's discovery of a host of wild peoples on the bank of the Atlas River, including "dog-headed men" and headless men with their eyes and mouths on their chests, as well as "those who burrowed holes, wild creatures who lived under the earth" (146). Adding to this the fact that Alexander has only traveled a day between the Amazons and these more exotic figures, it is again not an unlikely outcome that the two groups should be fused in the minds of an audience, at least to the degree that the Amazons become one of many wild peoples with whom Alexander dealt.
Without implying any direct relation, we have what amounts to a concatenation of the above textual associations in Godfrey of Viterbo's 12th-century Pantheon, where he lists in short order the peoples (and creatures) Alexander has conquered just before a discussion of the Hebraeorum populos: Amazons, lions, unicorns, and dragons. Concerning the passage that immediately follows, Gow observes that Godfrey "brought Gog and Magog into close association with the Ten Tribes: Alexander walled up the former, who are cannibals, and the descendants of the disobedient and idolatrous Israelites" (45).[18][18] With the Pantheon, while the Amazons have been de-emphasized, we have what amounts to a direct statement that these subjects (the Amazons, the Ten Tribes, Gog and Magog, and Alexander) "belong together." Not coincidentally, we are less than a century away from the first text in this study to employ the Amazons in an active eschatological role, Hugo Ripelin's Compendium.
The geographical angle would, at first, appear to be unproblematic; as cited previously, as early as Orosius both a large Jewish population and the Amazons have been located in close proximity to the Caspian Sea, encouraging later imaginative conjunctions of the two. Yet going back to Josephus, he records that Shalamanaser, King of Assyria, transplanted the Ten Tribes to Media (Ant. 9.14.1). Further, Josephus has Alexander acknowledging Media (as well as Babylon) as being home to Jews when he promises that the Jews living there will be able to enjoy their own laws (Ant. 11.8.5). Anderson offers an explanation for this geographical variance by suggesting that a variant Alexander narrative, one in which he does not merely wall up the "unclean peoples," but routs them somewhere to shut them in, provides the structural material for shifting the Ten Tribes from Media to Caspia (50).[19][19] However, Anderson says that this variant narrative is unique to Pseudo-Methodius, which, even assuming the most favorable dating on both sides, follows Orosius by at least two centuries. In lieu of Anderson's hypothesis, we may look again at the passage internal to Orosius, in which he explains that Ochus, King of Persia (Artaxerxes III), was responsible for forcing the Jews to migrate to Hyrcania near the Caspian Sea, a shift contemporaneous with Alexander's era (118). Although it is unclear in the text as to where these Jews are coming from, this nonetheless provides an explanation for the relocation more timely than that offered by Anderson; given Orosius' significant impact upon later Christian writers, it also explains why Josephus' location of the Ten Tribes does not persist.
This shift notwithstanding, the Amazons have at least one link to Media as well, although it appears in Arrian, and is rather indirect. It occurs in the context of Arrian's discourse on the historicity of the Amazons, and is in fact the reason for that digression: he recounts that the satrap of Media offered Alexander a hundred women, claiming that they were "of the Amazons" (Ana. 7.13.2). The encounter ends with Alexander sending the women away with notice that he will come to their Queen to get children by her. Arrian, of course, disputes the validity of the tale, arguing that if Amazon-like women were indeed presented to Alexander, they were probably other barbarian women merely dressed as Amazons.[20][20] However, this abbreviated episode does imply a variant geography in which the Amazons would be suitably located for the satrap of Media to capture a number of them for Alexander. Of course, the competing Cleitarchian narrative (as cited by Strabo) has the Amazon Queen going to Alexander from the Caspian Gates, the location that both the Amazons and the Ten Tribes come to occupy in the eschatological narratives (Geo. 11.5.4). Nonetheless, given that the Amazons were said to have ruled much of Asia at some point, it is reasonable to observe that they could readily have been placed anywhere within that space, including Media.
The point of these observations concerning the placement of the Ten Tribes and the Amazons in locations other than the lands of the Caspian Sea is twofold: first, to note that geographical arguments for the conjunction of the Amazons and the Ten Tribes are not wholly reliant upon the idea that both appear in Caspia, as both have been sited together (although independently) in other lands; second, to support the observation that the increasingly common feature of later texts locating these and other questionable or monstrous races together in Caspia implies that certain geographical locations, however a product of social over material reality, served as attractors, providing a space for locating any threat to Christendom. That this kind of thinking actually took place is borne out in at least one case, Heinrich of Neustadt's Gottes Zukunft (c. 1300).[21][21] In this text, the Antichrist is given the following speech, as quoted and translated by Gow:
I am powerful and mighty,
and Caspia, the enclosed country,
is entirely in my hands.
The Red Jews, the people of Gog,
the Amazons and Magog,
and whoever else Heaven may have placed there
must serve my power: (5547-5553)
Here we have an explicit statement of geography as eschatological determinant, one that even provides for the later inclusion of any additional peoples who should find their way there.[22][22]
Amazon Eschatology Achieved
Hugo Ripelin's Compendium Theologicae Veritatis (13th c.), as noted at the beginning, is the first text under review to explicitly provide the Amazons with an eschatological role. Quoting Gow's translation again:
Concerning Gog and Magog some say that they are the Ten Tribes enclosed
within the Caspian Mountains, however in such a way that they might leave if they were permitted; but they are not permitted to do so by the Queen of the Amazons, under whose rule and jurisdiction they live. (74n40)
Having resolved three routes (Alexander, genealogy, and proximity) through which the Amazons could have been worked into this eschatological framework, we are now in a better position to begin to understand why the Amazons are present in Hugo's description of the peoples enclosed in Caspia as well as the Queen's peculiar role as their keeper. Further, if, as Gow suggests, Hugo's text is the source for eschatological references to Amazons in later texts such as the aforementioned Gottes Zukunft, we have grounds for understanding permutations of Hugo's formulation.
There is not sufficient space here to offer any extensive exploration of the relationships among the texts incorporating Amazons into an eschatological framework, except in a few cases; this is a necessary future step, as such an exploration could yield important results regarding the evolution of the Amazons' role. The fact that the majority of the texts here involve both the Amazons and the Red Jews and are Germanic in origin, though due in part to a reliance on Gow's extensive scholarship, also suggests either a common source text or a particular cultural or intellectual affinity between the two ideas in a specific time and place. Not all of the texts cited by Gow for usage of the term "Red Jews" also employ Amazons, however; nor is the reverse true in all cases, as Hugo's text demonstrates. On the other hand, the majority of the following texts locate the Amazons, the Ten Tribes, and/or Gog and Magog in Caspia, and almost all of them mention Alexander and his act of enclosure.
Setting the question of the Red Jews aside, Hugo's text does offer an important detail, observed above, that is replicated in a number of later texts, including two that are contemporaneous with each other and appear within a few decades of the Compendium: Heinrich of Neustadt's Gottes Zukunft and the Reinfried von Braunschweig, both dated ca. 1300. All three of these texts establish a relationship between the enclosed peoples and the Amazons such that the Queen alone determines whether and when they are to come out. There is, certainly, enough material to justify the presence of the Amazons in this context; the question is: why this particular, rather feudal relationship? One answer lies in a detail pulled from Orosius, one that has support from Josephus as well: the Jews in question do not "belong" where they are, as they were driven against their will, whether by Ochus (in Orosius) or Shalmaneser (in Josephus), to their present location. These deported Jews have no land of their own, and would thus be squatters or tenants on whatever land they came to populate. In this case, the reasoning may have been that the Amazons were in Caspia before the Jews, were historically powerful as attested by numerous sources, and would therefore of necessity rule over whatever peoples shared their lands. Such is the argument presented in the later Middle English translation of Mandeville's Travels (14th c.) quoted in Gow: "And also yee schulle understonde that the Iewes han no propre lond of hire owne for to dwellen inne in alle the world, but only that lond betwene the mountaynes. And yit thei yelden tribute for that lond to the queen of Amazoine . . ." (348). These radically displaced Jews would be forced to engage in some kind of relationship with the peoples around them if only to get permission to establish a home, however temporary.[23][23]
Both Gottes Zukunft and Reinfried von Braunschweig offer a more extended treatment of the eschatological material than Hugo; that both append notably similar epithets to the Amazon queen ("of great and glorious fame," "above all others most venerable," respectively) where Hugo's text does not suggests that either contra Gow Hugo's text is not the immediate predecessor to these texts, implying a common, probably intermediary source text, or that one of these texts sources from the other, although appearing almost contemporaneous to it. Of course, this seeming parallel could be merely coincidental, or a product of other textual or contextual influences; nonetheless, as the Amazons are in this light an uncommon subject, it is more likely that both authors were drawing from one of the select texts that incorporated the Amazons into this eschatological narrative.
Supporting, perhaps, a case for Reinfried drawing upon Gottes Zukunft, there appears what would seem to be an extremely bizarre permutation of the Amazon-inflected eschatology in the former: the Amazon Queen is identified as "the first / at the end of earthly time / to worship the damnable Antichrist" (trans. Gow 198-9). These lines immediately follow the aforementioned epithet; in contrast, at the same place in Gottes Zukunft, the author treats his audience to a spurious etymology of the name "Amazons," glossing it as "in the land of the maidens" as translated by Gow (199). There is no suggestion that the Queen has any particular relationship to the Antichrist, nor, in turn, does the gloss appear in Reinfried.
Reinfried's addition is especially peculiar in light of an idea that had acquired a good deal of currency by this point in time: that the Antichrist, when he appeared, would be received by the Jews as their Messiah. The conflation of these two figures implies, for Christians, that the Jews would be the first to follow the Antichrist, and provided them with an additional role at the end of time. As Gow describes the climate: "Twelfth-century vernacular literary and exegetical texts express the idea that the despised Jews would play a major role as the servants, supporters and troops of the Antichrist when he came to devastate Christendom" (94). It would seem perverse to impose yet another dimension to the hierarchy appearing in Hugo, one specifically establishing the Queen as the first to follow the Antichrist. The materials for this transformation are, however, in place in Gottes Zukunft, as the Amazons are listed among the peoples of Caspia, all of whom must serve the Antichrist. Yet Heinrich does not take this relationship between the Amazons and the Antichrist any further than that loose association; indeed, he would almost seem to have forgotten it in the remainder of his narrative. The author of Reinfried would appear to have taken this association and pushed it to its logical conclusion, even subduing the tone of the glorifying epithet he opted to retain. The Amazon Queen's new role may be read as the result of efforts by the author of Reinfried to reconcile the dissonant note struck by the intersection of multiple and not wholly compatible narratives, specifically those relating to Amazon rule over the Jews, and to the Jews receiving the Antichrist as their Messiah. As there appears to be no constraint actually specifying that the Jews would be the first to worship the Antichrist, the author of Reinfried worked out a reasonable compromise that retained the Jews' subordinate relationship to both the Amazon Queen and the Antichrist and also established an appropriate relationship between the latter figures.[24][24]
Texts following Hugo's Compendium, Gottes Zukunft, and Reinfried von Braunschweig demonstrate that the Amazons' newfound eschatological role retained currency, even as the narrative underwent additional changes. For example, a much later text, Der Antichrist und die fünfzehn Zeichen (ca. 1450) cites Hugo's Compendium as a source, though it incorporates an "emissary" of the Antichrist who preaches to the Queen of the Amazons and the Red Jews, with apparent success, as the author later relates that the Queen does in fact join the Antichrist, though not (apparently) as the leader of the Jews. At the least, this serves as a useful after-the-fact explanation for why the Queen of the Amazons would be interested in the Antichrist, aside from the geographical-eschatological argument traced to Gottes Zukunft; in this case, she is a willing convert. As late as 1525, we have Der Nollhart, which specifies that the Queen of the Amazons will come to the Antichrist with many Jews who mistake him for their Messiah, though there is no indication that the Amazon Queen has any special relationship to him. Fortalicium Fidei, by Alphonsus a Spina, "which appeared in at least seven editions in Germany between 1471 and 1525," brings in the Great Khan of Cathay, who guards the Jews in conjunction with the Queen of the Amazons until the arrival of the Antichrist (Gow 123). In sum, once the Amazons made their way into this particular eschatological narrative, they flourished, and became a living part of Christian history, past, present, and future.
Conclusion
The majority of the texts under study reflect, as noted, a marked preference in their authors (and audiences) for literal readings of scripture, when indeed it was consulted; Gog, Magog, and the Antichrist are all envisioned as real and specific entities who will appear and enact the apocalypse to come at the end of time. This appeal to "concrete things," as opposed to the symbolic meanings current with high theology, may explain in part why the Amazons found such a congenial home in these texts. Such minds are not inclined to entertain the "merely mythological," nor would be reluctant to believe in living Amazons, a mildly exotic people as compared to the cannibalistic hordes of Gog and Magog. Text and world take on a nearly one-to-one correspondence in this kind of exegesis. It is important to keep in mind that there is a significant distinction between these texts and the approach they embody and the symbolically- and analogically-oriented thinking of most patristic authors and true theologians. This difference may explain why the Amazons could have been represented here as terrifying, apocalyptic peoples, yet to Chaucer and Boccacio been no more real or important than centaurs, or any of a host of other mythical, unreal entities. This would also provide for the difference between the scepticism of the Greek historians, who interrogated the texts handed to them, and the generally uncritical compilers who produced these eschatological narratives.
There is still, of course, a great deal of work to be done to fully realize the larger purposes behind the present effort. The aforementioned limitations concerning the texts selected for review must be eliminated; Gow must become merely the first cause, and not a primary source. This alone can resolve whether or not the Amazon eschatology is truly of German provenance, or whether it may have originated elsewhere. Such additional work will ideally explain, if the correspondence between texts containing both Amazons and Red Jews remains unique, why these two ideas appeared to be particularly suited to each other. Further, the letter of Prester John and Mandeville's book must be incorporated into the evolutionary scheme; both offer additional contexts in which representations of the Amazons underwent alteration, and indeed became incorporate to additional narratives not found in other texts. Both are also very popular and very influential medieval documents. Finally, it would be of interest to trace how late the Amazon eschatologies remain current.
Among other sources in need of consideration are the cartographical, as in Scott D. Westrem's article "Against Gog and Magog," for though he mentions many maps that bear legends regarding the Ten Tribes and Gog and Magog, he does not indicate whether or not the Amazons ever appear on these maps in connection with them. There are also illustrated books such as Der Antichrist (Strasbourg, 1480), which contains several images of the Queen of the Amazons with the Red Jews and the Antichrist. These visually rendered interpretations of the Amazons could provide additional clues as to how they were understood by their authors and audiences, what people were supposed to imagine when they contemplated the Amazons at the End of Time.
Ultimately, the eschatological narratives that incorporate Amazons provide interesting material for studying, diachronically, the processes by which an ancient myth belonging to a very different society and culture retained meaning through a series of reinterpretations; in addition, the contemporary and differing representations and reinterpretations of this same myth, some of which are arguably closer in spirit and matter to the original figuration, provide for a synchronic evaluation of the stratified narratives and interpretive frameworks within a given culture. In short, these eschatological Amazons have given us a lot of explaining to do, and this essay has attempted to provide some of the necessary tools to begin.
Addendum: Well into the writing
of this essay, I came across Vincent DiMarco's "The Amazons and the End of
the World," an essay in Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration
and Imagination, ed. Scott D. Westrem, New York: Garland, 1991. His essay and mine
cover substantially the same territory, and even share (some) structural and
stylistic qualities. However, after briefly reviewing his essay, I proceeded to
continue with my work independently for several reasons, two of which are
suited for mention here: 1) Although we had arrived at some similar
conclusions, and shared several key sources, my research proved to offer some
substantially different textual approaches and the use of a fair amount of
additional material that significantly altered the substance and direction of
my work; 2) While the present essay suffers from a great deal of compression,
and indicates where a much additional work needs to be done, DiMarco's essay is
even more compressed, to the point that even when he and I are in agreement,
his arguments are much harder to follow and lack the necessary, perhaps tedious
groundwork to reach fairly well-reasoned conclusions. As an example of the
latter difficulty, DiMarco does in fact address a few of the illustrations of
the Amazon Queen and the Antichrist, very briefly and without much explanation
as to their relation to textual representations or their particular place
within the larger chronology established in the present essay. In contrast, I
do not attempt to incorporate these illustrations at all, as a proper treatment
would require a substantial investment not suitable here. While I respect his
efforts, and he has provided me with some additional resources, I stand by the
claim that mine is a more effective and thorough study.
James Luberda, December 1999
[1][1]Anderson makes an important point here that is relevant to the study of the Amazons; he suggests that even though the source material for the synthesis appears within the same text (though not particularly close together), it does not mean that the connection was actually made by any of its readers, or that if it were made, that it attained general currency. Many of the texts that contain references to both Amazons and eschatological material do not establish explicit relationships between the two, even though to a modern eye several might readily be implicit. There is no way to be certain, save through other texts, how a particular text was read in its time.
[2][2]See Ian Michael's article for a useful examinations of the problems of Alexander typology as related to the Gog-Magog enclosure episode.
[3][3]To refer to "the" Amazon episode is, of course, misleading. Depending on the author, the details of Alexander's encounter with the Amazon queen vary; in some cases Alexander goes to visit her, in others, the reverse.
[4][4]Arrian's version of the story (which he repudiates) actually has the satrap of Media presenting a hundred women to Alexander whom he claims are Amazons; Alexander's response is to send them away, that they will not suffer abuse from the Macedonians, and he tells them to let their queen know that he will visit her in order to get children by her (Ana. 7.13). This is a curious variation on the usual Queen-visits-Alexander narrative, and merits further study.
[5][5]Regarding the etymology of "Amazon": it is often claimed to be derived from the Greek word for breast, thus: "a-mazon" = "without breast", from the traditional notion that the Amazons removed one breast in order to enhance their skill at archery. As concerns their origin, however, more will be observed later.
[6][6]It is interesting to note that while Strabo could not believe in the Amazons as a successful warrior people, because to do so would be the same as saying that "the men of those times were women and that the women were men," Orosius informs his readers that the success of the Amazons is "not to be imputed to the utter worthlessness of men," and cites the ancestors of the Goths as a contemporary barbarian male force (Geo. 11.5.3, 64). Though Orosius could not have been responding to a direct reading of Strabo, it is nonetheless a curiosity.
[7][7]This revision of Alexander's Amazon exploits is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is that in majority of these accounts (one exception: the 15th c. Prose Life of Alexander), Alexander and the Amazon Queen do not have a sexual liaison; indeed, they never meet. Rather, the episode concerns Alexander's arrival upon the Amazon border, and his request for a tribute, which is resolved into the service of Amazon troops under his command. The letters sent by the Amazon Queen are in and of themselves a curious read, as they provide a very detailed depiction of Amazon culture, social structure, and customs, specifics not found in the usual historical sources. The individual details, as well as the arrangement made between Alexander and the Amazons concerning tribute, vary by text (i.e. a surviving Armenian manuscript from the 14th century, which Albert Wolohojian argues is nearly unchanged from a 5th-century Armenian translation of Pseudo-Callisthenes, has the Amazons paying a yearly sum of gold in addition to an immediate 100 horsemen) (8-10). This variation would seem to demand a kind of textual-anthropological study as well as a more conventional source/variation study, both of which are beyond the scope of the present review.
[8][8]As Bernard McGinn describes it: "Alexander himself was transformed from a pagan king into a worshipper and agent of the true God, and, in the Pseudo-Methodius, to the ancestor of the Roman (that is, Byzantine) emperor and prototype of the Last World Emperor" (91). See Reinink for a detailed analysis of Pseudo-Methodius' concept of history.
[9][9]Concerning the Amazons, Otto follows Orosius almost exactly, though he does acknowledge the notion of a powerful nation of women is rather odd to him: "These women [Amazons], strange to say, became so powerful that they ruled almost all of Asia and Europe" (trans. Mierow 142).
[10][10]In addition to the Alexander romances and the histories of Orosius and Otto, there are two other important texts that provide a Christian context for Amazon reinterpretation: the infamous letter of Prester John, and Mandeville's Travels. However, both present a number of difficulties not suitable for resolution here; not least of which is the difficulty in resolving which of the many extant versions of each drew upon which sources. As both also appear relatively late in comparison with the other source texts under study, they are not essential to the present review. Nevertheless, they do belong to the project of which this essay is only a part.
[11][11]Herodotus, curiously, distinguishes the Amazons from the Scythians, and in fact has them interact and produce another race between them, the Sauromatians.
[12][12]Gow summarizes the arguments of Anderson (the synthesis was not made by the time of Josephus) and Pfister (it had to be, and dates to an earlier Jewish legend) and, curiously, lets the issue drop after admitting both positions have merit (24).
[13][13]It is interesting to note that this is not among the material Otto borrowed from Orosius, though it immediately follows the passage cited earlier concerning the Amazons.
[14][14]Reinfried von Braunschweig, Gottes Zukunft by Heinrich of Neustadt, and Hugo of Ripelin's Compendium theologicae veritatis (as cited earlier).
[15][15]This could be a fruitful line of inquiry. The following loose associations come to mind: an Armenian translation of Pseudo-Callisthenes' Alexander romance says that the Amazon women "exceed in size and beauty all other women" (trans. Wolohojian 145). One version of the letter of Prester John, as translated by Robert Silverberg, reads that Jewish women "are the most beautiful and passionate in the world" (145). Finally, as noted by Bernard Hamilton, among Prester John's subjects are "the Amazons, the Pygmies, and the Ten Lost Tribes, all of whom are shut off by the stony river Sambatyon, which was presumably not a barrier to a Christian king who was not sabbath-observant" (178). Setting aside the pygmies, the only immediate explanation for the Amazons' inability to cross the Sambatyon is that they too are Sabbath-observant, i.e. Jewish! Indeed, at the very least, one may make a case for the fact that at least some Amazons had to speak Hebrew, if one goes by the versions of Mandeville that insist the Ten Tribes speak nothing but, yet are ruled by and pay tribute to the Amazon Queen. This would not be the first time the Amazons' religion has come into question; the Book of the Infante Dom Pedro of Portugal, Who Traveled Over the Four Parts of the World (a Spanish work first printed at Seville in 1515; original late 15th c.) identifies the Amazons as Christian women under Prester John (Silverberg 227). All of this only makes clear how much additional work needs to be done in this area.
[16][16]Indeed, although it is not a part of their respective projects, neither Gow nor Anderson address what happens to "conventional" historic renderings of Gog and Magog (such as William of Jumièges') after Gog and Magog are fused with the Ten Tribes. It might be profitable to examine these and other texts for any sort of dissonance generated by the potential repercussions of these conflations. There may be more "scholarly" theological texts that attempt to deal with these in a critical fashion, in much the same way as Vincent of Beauvais, Hugh of St. Cher, and Hugo a Novo Castro all produced texts that reject literal interpretations of Gog and Magog as particular peoples (as observed by Gow 56-58)
[17][17]The quotable Anderson: "The legend of Alexander's Gate and of the enclosed nations is in reality the story of the frontier in sublimated mythologized form" (8).
[18][18]This could be a case in which the genealogical argument for the Amazons' presence might carry special weight, as the Amazons in this context seem to be less a specific people with whom Alexander trafficked, but rather one of the many wild and "unclean" peoples often described as of or descended from the Scythians and/or Goths. Certainly, they do not seem to be the same Amazons as taken from Orosius or the Alexander romances (save the noted textual association in Pseudo-Callisthenes).
[19][19]Although, curiously, Josephus has Alexander's Gate under the rule of the king of Hyrcania, who permits the Alans (Scythians) to pass through it to plunder Media (Wars 7.7.4).
[20][20]This is a point worthy of further exploration; what was "Amazon dress," and how would Atropates (the satrap of Media) have known what it consisted of, much less Alexander been able to recognize it himself?
[21][21]Another text that would appear to support the geographical argument is Prester John's letter, which, even in its earliest form, groups the Ten Tribes, the Amazons, and the Pygmies together as his subjects in a shared geographical location that, though not clearly identified, is not Caspia. Unfortunately, the letter presents too many difficulties to be readily worked into the present study in any more detail.
[22][22]Given Gow's assessment of Gottes Zukunft as a compilation drawn from a "multiplicity of not necessarily concordant sources," the geographical argument may have been the easiest way for the author to reconcile complex, even competing religious and historical narratives (202).
[23][23]This has an interesting parallel in the historical relationship between the Jews and another leader: they were, in theory, owed imperial protection because of their status as Reichskammerknechte (Gow: "serfs pertaining to the Emperor") (2).
[24][24]There is another striking feature of Reinfried's description of the Amazon Queen's relationship to the Antichrist appearing later in the same passage; it observes that she will be the first "to worship the damnable Antichrist / as the Lord God / and to offer him her assistance / as the Jews and heathens will likewise do" (italics mine, Gow 198-9). Although it would be foolish to suggest that a complete and coherent theology is operating behind the assumptions and claims of this text, it is nonetheless odd that the Amazon Queen would appear to suffer the same fate as the Jews, mistaking the false Messiah for the true. See also n13 above.
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