Theseus and the Amazons
Theseus joined his friend Heracles (Hercules) in a battle in the land of the Amazons, in which he captured the Amazon Antiope and took her as his wife. The Amazons later invaded Athens in an attempt to free her but were defeated. Many variants of this myth existed in antiquity, and versions have become conflated over time. According to some mythographers, Theseus married not Antiope but her sister, Queen Hippolyta. Either Hippolyta fell in love with him or, when the Amazons sent him gifts of friendship, Theseus invited their queen aboard his ship and simply set sail with her.
       When the Amazons came to Athens to retake Theseus’s hostage, a battle was fought in the area between the Pnyx and the Acropolis. Theseus and his forces were victorious, and Hippolyta (or Antiope) withdrew to Megara, where she died. His wife (either Hippolyta or Antiope) later bore him a son, Hippolytus, and then died. Another version of the myth maintains that Theseus captured, his wife in the battle on the Pnyx. According to another tale, Hippolytus was born before the Amazons stormed the Pnyx and fought valiantly by his mother’s side.
       In some myths, in a version often repeated in postclassical treatments, Theseus’s battle with the Amazons was linked with Heracles’ ninth Labor, his quest for the girdle (belt) of Hippolyta.
      
       Classical Sources. Diodorus Siculus, Biblioteca 2.5.9,4-16.1— 4. Apollodorus, Biblioteca Ei.16-17. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, “Theseus” 26-27. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.2.1, 1.41.7, 2.32.9, 5.11.4, 5.11.7. Hyginus, Fabulae 30, 241. Justinus, Historiae Philippae 1.5.18-24.
      
      See also Amazons; Heracles, Labors of, Girdle of Hippolyta; Theseus, at Athens.