Amazons

Stepping out of the uni-sex barber shop, with a haircut that would presumably look okay in three or four days, I had a sudden insight. I wouldn't call it a moment of epiphany. That concept is best reserved for moments of monumental awareness. This was just a snippet that is of local or idiosyncratic significance, without the arrogant presumption of universal appeal. I had long suspected that what we don't understand we tend to either glorify or villify. In most cases, I know, the truth lies somewhere on the spectrum between glory and villainy. Somehow, I sensed that I was getting to a place of comprehension but did recognize that I was not quite there yet.

What I hadn't realized about folktales, mythology and the like, is that often these tales are told not to tell but are told because the teller has a burning desire to reveal something best left in disguise. In a need-to-tell situation, the telling often tells more about the teller than the tale does about the subject. Therein lies the possibility of a new interpretation of an old tale.

So if you have been delving into the glories of the Greek gods and their heroic adventures against the Amazons, you could very well have been looking in the wrong place. The truth may lie closer to heart and hearth than most of us dare envision.

When the Greeks wrote about the amazing Amazons, they were not telling tales about Amazons per se, they were telling tales about wives in general and what it meant to be married in Ancient Greece. The Amazons lived not among the Greeks but on the very edge of the Greek world where conjecture, intrigue and mystery could be stated to abound without fear of recourse. About Amazons, Homer and his ilk could say what they wanted. About Greek wives, I think that circumspection would prevail lest domestic tranquility be immeasurably disturbed.

Perhaps the ancient Greeks created Amazons in order to send messages to their wives or maybe just in an attempt to understand them. The Amazons were not women; they were of a gender that transcended womanhood. Therefore the teller of a tale about the Amazons could not be said to have spoken directly to the women of his household. Heavens no! But at the same time, it wouldn't have taken too much skill at reading between the lines to fathom just what was at stake here. As a precaution, it was the Greek gods who slew the first Amazons for Greek gods were more powerful and more foolhardy than the average Greek male citizen could ever aspire to be.

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