government and laws, joining with them Hermus, one of the nobility
of Athens, from whom a place in the city is called the House of
Hermus; though by an error in the accent it has been taken for the
House of Hermes, or Mercury, and the honor that was designed to
the hero, transferred to the god.

This was the origin and cause of the Amazonian invasion of Attica,
which would seem to have been no slight or womanish enterprise.
For it is impossible that they should have placed their camp in
the very city, and joined battle close by the Pnyx and the hill
called Museum, unless, having first conquered the country round
about, they had thus with impunity advanced to the city. That they
made so long a journey by land, and passed the Cimmerian Bosphorus
when frozen, as Hellanicus writes, is difficult to be believed.
That they encamped all but in the city is certain, and may be
sufficiently confirmed by the names that the places thereabout yet
retain, and the graves and the monuments of those that fell the
battle. Both armies being in sight, there was a long pause and
doubt on each side which should give the first onset; at last
Theseus, having sacrificed to Fear, in obedience to the command of
an oracle he had received, gave them battle, in which action a
great number of the Amazons were slain. At length, after four
months, a peace was concluded between them by the mediation of
Hippolyta (for so this historian calls the Amazon whom Theseus
married, and not Antiope), though others write that she was slain
with a dart by Molpadia, while fighting by Theseus's side, and
that the pillar which stands by the temple of Olympian Earth was
erected to her honor. Nor is it to be wondered at, that in events
of such antiquity, history should be in disorder. This is as much
as is worth telling concerning the Amazons.