Greek Amazons Coloring Pages
Welcome to my collection of Greek Amazon coloring pages.
The Amazons were a nation of women warriors who lived at the edge of the world the Greeks knew, up near the Black Sea, and they raised their daughters to ride horses and shoot from the saddle. Every myth comes down to us in a pile of different versions, and the old storytellers never did agree with each other, so what you'll find here is the telling I loved sharing with my girls.
Jump to: Meet the Amazons | The First Queens | Hippolyte and the Golden Belt | The March on Athens | The Amazons at Troy | About the Amazons
Meet the Amazons
An Amazon learned to ride about as early as she learned to walk, and by the time she was grown she could shoot a bow from the back of a galloping horse. The Greeks, who thought of themselves as pretty good with a bow, found the incredible skill of the Amazon women unnerving.
(Out in the tall grass beside the Thermodon River, a young Amazon trainee has gone flat and still, waiting for whatever she's after to wander past.)
Some Amazons rode into battle with a trained eagle instead of a dog, loosing it ahead of them to scout the ground before a hunt or a fight.
It would take many years of training together for the eagle companion to be ready to go into battle with an Amazon warrior. Often, the Amazon was a young girl when she would first claim an egg and begin the training.
Even the fiercest warrior gets an afternoon off. After a long ride and hours of practice with the bow, this one has stretched out in the wildflowers with her shield and her spear beside her, near enough to grab if she needs them.
The Amazons started training before they could walk. And whether you're playing soccer, walking to school or training for battle, it's nice to stop in a field and pick dandelions!
Ares, Father of the Amazon Queens
Ares was the god of war, and the Amazon queens were his daughters. Other gods looked after music or the harvest or the sea, but Ares liked the noise of a battlefield, and the Greeks said his daughters never once backed down from anything.
Artemis, Patron of the Amazons
Artemis hunted the wild country with her own band of companions and answered to nobody, which made her exactly the right goddess for the Amazons. They honoured her as their patron.
The First Queens
Otrera, the First Queen
The first Amazon Queen was Otrera, the wife of Ares... the one who turned a scattering of brave female horse riders into a nation with a capital city of its own. Her Amazon daughters Hippolyte, Antiope and Penthesilea each ended up with a story of their own, which you can read further down this page.
Otrera built the first little temple to Artemis at Ephesus, out where Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, could hear her. Centuries later a huge marble temple stood on that same ground, and people counted it among the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Hippolyte and the Golden Belt
One morning a Greek ship came up on the shore near Themiskyra, the Amazon capital, and the man who climbed out of it was Herakles, the strongest man in Greece. He'd been given twelve impossible jobs to do, and the ninth was waiting right in front of him: bring home the golden belt of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons. Her father Ares had given her that belt as a sign that she was the finest warrior of her people.
Hippolyte heard him out anyway, and she was still thinking it over when the trouble started. Hera had hated Herakles his whole life, and she slipped into the crowd wearing the face of an Amazon and started shouting that the Greeks had come to carry off the queen.
Hera, in her jealousy, started a fight that would spell the end for many brave Amazons (and I normally like Hera! I'm very disappointed in her right now).
Aella, the Whirlwind
The first Amazon to believe Hera and attack Herakles was Aella, whose name means whirlwind, and she had certainly earned it. She came at him with a javelin in each hand, in and gone again before anybody could work out where she'd got to, and for a good while she had the better of him. Herakles was stronger than any man alive, though, and the fight went badly for her at the end of it.
Alcippe, the Huntress
Alcippe was a huntress who'd promised Artemis she would never marry, and she came into the fight right behind Aella. She fought bravely and tried to keep a distance from Herakles, relying on her skill with the bow... but in the end she lost to him as well.
Melanippe, Sister of the Queen
Melanippe was Hippolyte's sister and the best rider in an army of very good riders, the one who could twist all the way round in the saddle and shoot backward at a full gallop. But, despite her skill she could be overconfident.
Herakles caught her in the middle of the fighting and held on to her, and that was the end for the Amazons... Hippolyte handed over the golden belt in return for her sister's safety. Herakles, confused about how his request had turned into a fight so quickly, gratefully accepted the belt and sailed for home with it... and the Amazons got Melanippe back. It's a strange way for a battle to finish and there are other sadder endings in some versions of the story... but this is the ending the Greeks liked best.
The March on Athens
Herakles wasn't the only Greek hero to come calling on the Amazons, and the next one was even more painful for the Amazons.
Antiope, the Archer Theseus Carried Off
Antiope was another of Otrera's daughters, and she was the archer the other Amazons stopped to watch. She could find a mark the rest of them could barely see and put an arrow through it from a moving horse, and she'd been doing it since she was a toddler.
Theseus, the hero of Athens, sailed to the Amazon coast and carried her off across the sea, a very long way from the Thermodon River and everyone she knew. Her sisters were not about to leave her in Athens. The whole Amazon army marched the entire distance, which took months, and camped on a hill right beside the city. The fighting that followed became so famous that (real life) Greek sculptors were still carving it into temple walls generations afterwards, the Parthenon included.
Antiope was lost somewhere in the middle of that battle, and her sisters never did get her home. They never quite recovered from the loss.
Molpadia, Who Went Straight at Theseus
Molpadia wasn't pleased when her sister fell. She was tall and strong... a javelin in one hand and a crescent-shaped shield strapped to her other arm.
She chased after Theseus, the king of Athens, and challenged him in front of his entire city. Despite her strength and skill, she didn't survive it.
Long after the war was over the Athenians still kept her grave inside their walls and still knew her name.
The Amazons at Troy
Penthesilea, the Queen at Troy
Years later the Greeks were camped outside Troy, Hector was dead and the Trojans had nearly given up hope, and then an Amazon army came down from the Thermodon to fight on their side. Penthesilea rode at the head of it. She was Otrera's youngest daughter and Hippolyte's sister and the greatest of any Amazon warrior alive or dead.
She fought so well in front of Troy that the Trojans started to believe they might win the whole war, and then Achilles came out to meet her.
Achilles was the best fighter the Greeks had and she was the best the Amazons had. Regret wasn't something he was known for, but when Achilles looked down at Penthesilea's face after their fight he was sorry he had defeated her.
Clonia, Amazon Soldier
Penthesilea didn't ride to Troy on her own. A whole band of Amazons came with her, and Clonia was one of them... always at the front of the fight, she was no one special... she wore a plain helmet with a round wooden shield and a wooden spear.
No gods as parents, no golden belt, no famous duels, no temple wall carved in her honour. Just an ordinary soldier.
The Amazons like Clonia who fought the Greeks were mostly soldiers like her, and the Greeks thought enough of her to remember her name.
As do I.
About the Amazons
The Amazons were a legendary nation of women warriors in Greek mythology, and the Greeks told their stories for hundreds of years, and from Xena warrior princess to Wonder Woman, we still tell their tales!
Herakles sailed to their capital for the golden belt. Theseus carried Antiope away to Athens, and the Amazon army marched after her. Penthesilea led her warriors to the walls of Troy where they almost turned the tide of the war.
Greek artists painted them in short tunics and trousers and soft pointed caps, dressed like the horse-riding peoples who lived north of the Black Sea, because those were the riders the Greeks had in mind. Out in that same stretch of country, archaeologists have found the graves of women buried with their bows and their horses, which means that somewhere behind all these stories from myth and legend were real women who rode out and came home and were buried with the things they loved.
if you've made it this far *hugs*... you're reading the writing of a real life 6 foot tall grandma who loves Amazons and I need to share this last little tidbit with you.
Some tales don't talk about Otrera as the first queen of the Amazons... instead the talk about sisters who started things together (and we know there were actually some type of real warrior women in the area, so it's difficult to tell where reality ends and mythology begins.
I tend to think the sisters give an inkling of the true story... a group of women that led women and trained them to fight in a world where that wasn't the norm... but who knows!). Because "sisters... are doin' it for themselves!"
Marpesia and Lampedo, the Conquering Queens
Otrera wasn't the only Amazon queen in stories... some replace her with sisters (which for Amazons, seems fitting)... keeping in mind these are all stories from myth and legend! These are less popular in the stories but I include them here because I think the idea of Amazon sisters is cool.
Marpesia and Lampedo were sisters who stories say shared the crown, and they worked out a neat arrangement between themselves. One sister would take half the army out to win new land across Asia Minor while the other stayed home with the rest and guarded the homeland, and when they'd had enough they swapped. It held together for years. Marpesia was killed on one of those long campaigns, a long way from home, and her daughter Orithyia picked up the crown and carried on.
