After the Iliad…
Sources and Influences

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Ancient Greek Pottery

Painted on an amphora from the 6th Century BCE, Achilles and Penthesileia, the Achaean warrior and the Queen of the Amazons, engage in single combat. As they fight, they lock eyes and fall in love.

Unfortunately for the star-crossed couple, their love at first sight becomes love at last sight, as Achilles had already landed a killing blow. His beloved dies in his arms by his own hand.

This image outlives the text that inspired it, the ancient story of a band of warrior women fighting on the side of Troy in an 8th Century BCE epic poem called the Aethiopis of Arctinus, which also featured the story of black soldiers joining the war from Ethiopia and the death of Achilles, possibly by an arrow to his vulnerable heel. This was the story that once followed after Homer’s Iliad so closely that some manuscripts of the Iliad teased the Aethiopis, sequel-bait style, with the ending line, “Then came the Amazon, daughter of great-souled Ares, the slayer of men.”

For ancient audiences familiar with the entire Epic Cycle, the Trojan War was the known-world spanning epic of a ten-year war involving male and female fighters from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The loss of the Aethiopis and other works narrowed the scope of that epic to what we see in Homer; seven weeks within a regional conflict and one veteran’s homeward journey. It also narrowed the diversity of warriors on the battlefield, erasing women and soldiers of color.

But although the rest of the story has been obscured for thousands of years, hints and clues remain on pottery and in traditions preserved by later authors.

The Posthomerica

The earliest and most detailed still-extant story of the Amazons at Troy is contained within the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna, tentatively dated to the 2nd/3rd/4th-ish Century CE, which provides a bridge between the end of the Iliad and the start of the Odyssey.

Quintus claimed to hail from Roman-occupied Anatolia, near the ruins of Troy, and had access either to the Aethiopis or to sources and traditions derived from it, which he used to craft a work described by classics scholar Edith Hall as “the fall of Troy as directed by Quentin Tarantino” for its celebration of violence.

In the opening book of the Posthomerica, Queen Penthesileia and her companions arrive at Troy from the Asian steppes in the tenth year of the Trojan War, soon after the funerals of Patroclus and Hector.

The Amazons bolster Troy’s army, introduce new military tactics, and boost Trojan morale in the wake of their prior demoralizing losses. Penthesileia presents as a complex figure with a tragic backstory and literal demons on her heels. Her mother, the former queen, had been an ally of King Priam’s during his adventuring days, and there’s an implication that Priam may have been Penthesileia’s biological father, although she’s claimed by Ares.

The battlefield prowess of Penthesileia and her Amazons inspires some women of Troy to stage an armed uprising. Meanwhile, a romantic subplot sees Achilles and Penthesileia on a collision course as mortal enemies who fall in love on the battlefield, with the ensuing tragedy of one slaying the other, as depicted on ancient pottery. All through the story, gods clash and manipulate both sides of the conflict to puff up their divine egos and advance their mysterious agendas.

Medieval Interpretations

Over a thousand years separate the Epic Cycle edition of the Aethiopis from the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna. Over a thousand years separate the writing of the Posthomerica from its 15th Century rediscovery in an Italian monastery. In the centuries since then, the story has found new life and new interpretations.

Medieval folk tales reimagined Queen Penthesileia as a lady knight in armor, with all the heraldry of an imagined Amazon nation. In the ensuing centuries, the Trojans had become identified with the founding of Rome, and their Amazon allies were now regarded as sympathetic loyalists to a lost cause that was later redeemed by history.

New traditions evolved, including a romantic connection between Penthesileia and Hector, the Amazon queen’s chivalrous quest to avenge her lover’s death by slaying Achilles, her own eventual death at the hands of Neoptolomus, and an honorable burial on the banks of the Thermodon River. Examples in this genre include City of Ladies (1405) by Christine de Pizan and the Troy Book (1420) of John Lydgate.

Modern Interpretations

A German translation of the Posthomerica inspired playwright Heinrich von Kleist’s 1808 stage play, “Penthesilea,” in which Penthesilea and Achilles fall in love at first sight, and something of a courtship ensues, but miscommunications and wacky hijinks ruin any chance these two warriors may have had for a healthy relationship. Ultimately, Penthesilea kills Achilles and feasts on his raw flesh, then in a bout of remorse, literally wills herself to death.

British poet and dramatist Laurence Binyon set the battle between Achilles and Penthesileia to iambic pentameter in his “Penthesilea” (1905). This sparked interest in the story among English-speaking audiences, leading to the first English-language translation of the Posthomerica to be published in 1913.

Internet-Age Legacy

In 1995, when Jeff Bezos founded an internet company that was originally envisioned as the world’s largest bookstore, he chose the name “Amazon” to represent the entirety of human literary tradition. 

Bezos’s biographer suggests that the businessman was thinking of the South American river and its prominence before Apple in any alphabetized listing of companies. But possibly, in the back of his mind, Bezos was also honoring Penthesileia and the Amazon story that’s been lost and found, told and retold, for thousands of years.