The Washington times., 1922-09-24
Hs<e S,lISSI1S See.

Ephesus, in Asia Minor, where
were enacted those soul-trying
scenes when youthful maidens were
forced to choose between Christ and
Diana at the peril of their lives, and
where st. Paul afterward staged the first
great battle for Christianity, and defeated
the idolatrous worshippers of the Pagan
goddess Diana, is yielding to the prying
spade of scientists some of the greatest
secrets of olden days.
But there is one mystery in particular
that these scientists, who are Englishmen,
arc trying to fathom. That is the mys-
terry of the Amazons-those doughty
women warriors, whose warlikc legions
once crept over the hot plains and hills of
Asia Minor and threatened to overturn
the civilization of ancient Athens itself.
These sturdy female soldiers carved IL
lustriouo memorials into the mythology of
the Greeks and one of them-Queen Hip
polyte-was such furious opponent that
the great Hercules alone was able to sub
due her. But very little is known of the
matriarchal government these Amazons
set up in the city which was later to be
known as Ephesus.
In many ways the Amazons had ideas
of womans place in the world far in ad-
vance of the most radical reformers of
the present time. They believed in suf-
ragism-suffragism for women alone.
Their ideas affecting "woman's rights"
were carried so far as to deny any rights
to man, except that of becoming faith
ers of their children. Man had no place
in their households, nor could he hold any
Office, political or military, where they
were concerned.
Together with Androcles, son of the
first King of Athens, early legend credits
the founding of Ephesus to the Amazons.
Here they erected a temple upon whose
stones was afterward built the magn:f
cent "Temple of DIANA" one of the seven
wonders of the world.
They fashioned a religion after their
own feminine hearts and in Diana wor-
shipped a goddess who was the Scoulce
of all life and fertility. In the first
days of this religion it was noted for
the virgin purity which the goddess re-
Uuircd, especially from her priestesses.
But afterward the worship was conducted
with secret and nameless rites.
AS they grew in power the Amazons
slew or gave away all the male children
and eventually, when their numbers re-
came great enough, they undertook exrc-
ditions of war and plunder into Scythia
and Syria and along the coast of Asia
Minor where eventually they came into
contact with the Greeks and Trojans and
fought with Priam and Bellerophon and
other heroes.
There can be no doubt that the Greeks
met these Amazons in battle more than
once, because around them they have en-
twined many legends concerning their own
great heroes and kings, and some of the
Queenly leaders of these warlike female
hordes.
Their greatest sculptor, Phidias, has
chiseled the forms of these warrior
women on many a Greek temple. Even
the potters whose cunning art made them
the real chroniclers and historians of an
Gent times, have pictured Amazons upon
their wonderful vases, and through this
we have some idea of the great respect in
which the Greeks held them as worthy OPP
ponents of their best fighting men.
Herodotus tells their story at great
length, and the world is coming to be-
lieve some of the most astonishing tales
he relates of their prowess.
Notwithstanding all these proofs Of
their existence, history's page is blank
when il comes to recording their origin,
habits of life, how these women contrived
their social relations so as to live in har-
mony with each other-a condition never
before heard of-and how they acquired