Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons who dwelt about the river Thermodon, wore the belt of Ares in token of her supremacy over all the rest. To fetch this belt — coveted by Admete, daughter of Eurystheus — Heracles was sent on his ninth labour.1
Hippolyta ruled the Amazons about the river Thermodon, a people great in war who cultivated the manly virtues; chief among them she bore the belt of Ares in token of her superiority over all the rest. When Eurystheus laid the ninth labour upon Heracles, it was because his daughter Admete longed to possess that belt.2
Her birth is given to the war-god himself: Hyginus names her daughter of Mars and Queen Otrera, while Apollonius, telling a kindred Amazon tale, calls her sister Melanippe a daughter of Ares.3
When Heracles came to the Amazons, Hippolyta met him and promised to give him the belt freely. But Hera, in the likeness of an Amazon, went up and down through the multitude crying that the strangers were carrying off the queen. So the Amazons charged in arms; and when Heracles saw them armed he suspected treachery, and killing Hippolyta he stripped her of her belt.4
A gentler tradition spares her: when Melanippe, daughter of Ares, had gone forth and Heracles caught her by ambush, Hippolyta gave him her glistening girdle as her sister's ransom, and he sent the captive away unharmed. Long after, the people of the Mariandyni still recalled Heracles passing through Asia bringing the girdle of warlike Hippolyta.5
A wholly different tradition gives her a death apart from Heracles. At Megara, near the shrine of Pandion, the Megarians showed her tomb shaped like an Amazon's shield: sister of Antiope, she had marched with the Amazons against Athens, and when Theseus overcame them she fled and died of despair — the figure here conflated with the Amazon of the Theseus cycle.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
