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Updated: June 13, 2025
Is this not our dream, the dream of all lovers of the beautiful, under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put into his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the beauty that Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the Thermodon"; the beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the cathedrals of Seville and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at Granada, the beauty of Louis XIV. at Versailles, the beauty of the Alps, and that of this Limagne in which I stand?
Such were the sad predictions uttered by the Pythian priestess, and this old oracle cited out of the Sibyl's verses: The battle on Thermodon that shall be Safe at a distance I desire to see, Far, like an eagle, watching in the air. Conquered shall weep, and conqueror perish there. This Thermodon, they say, is a little rivulet here in our country in Chaeronea, running into the Cephisus.
But when they had made frequent incursions with their cavalry, and had advanced as far Themiscyra, and the plains of the Thermodon, merely laying waste the country before them, they began to find fault with Lucullus, asking "why he took so many towns by surrender, and never one by storm, which might enrich them with the plunder? and now, forsooth, leaving Amisus behind, a rich and wealthy city, of easy conquest, if closely besieged, he will carry us into the Tibarenian and Chaldean wilderness, to fight with Mithridates."
In this battle it is said that Amazons also fought on the side of the barbarians, and that they had come down hither from the mountains about the river Thermodon. For after the battle, when the Romans were stripping the barbarians, they found Amazonian shields and boots, but no body of a woman was seen.
Onward from thence the bend of a huge and towering cape reaches out from the land, next Thermodon at its mouth flows into a quiet bay at the Themiscyreian headland, after wandering through a broad continent.
The Roman army had advanced with their cavalry and carried their incursions as far as Themiskyra and the plains on the Thermodon, without doing more than wasting and ravaging the country, when the men began to blame Lucullus for peaceably gaining over all the cities, and they complained that he had not taken a single city by storm, nor given them an opportunity of enriching themselves by plunder.
"But there are women who lead the same lives as men," cried Atossa. "There are the Amazons who live on the shores of the Thermodon in Themiscyra, and at Comana on the Iris; they have waged great wars, and even to this day wear men's armor." "Who told you this?" "My old nurse, Stephanion, whom my father brought a captive from Sinope to Pasargadae." "But I can teach you better," said Nitetis.
The chief residence of the Amazons is placed in the plains of Themiscyra on the Thermodon in Cappadocia. Plutarch in his confused notions of geography appears to consider the Thermodon as a Caucasian river. He also places them near the Leges, a name which resembles that of the Lesghians, one of the present warlike tribes of the Caucasus.
Yet Duris says that this Thermodon was no river, but that some of the soldiers, as they were pitching their tents and digging trenches about them, found a small stone statue, which, by the inscription, appeared to be the figure of Thermodon, carrying a wounded Amazon in his arms; and that there was another oracle current about it, as follows:
With great judgment he has chosen the moment when the Amazons are driven back by the Greeks over the river Thermodon: the battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is carried to the highest pitch.
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