I purchased this
denarius some than ten years ago and finally got around to doing some research.
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-18873Denarius, minted by son, P Licinius Crassus, ca 54 BC.
Bust of
Venus, right, SC behind
Amazon with
horse, P CRASSVS MF
Seaby,
Licinia 18
There has been significant archeological progress and related historical
work on the amazons in the last ten years. Hundreds of gravesite prove that they were Scythian women who were warriors fully equal to the
men. A fascinating book on the subject is Adrenne Mayor's book The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (
https://www.amazon.com/Amazons-Legends-Warrior-across-Ancient/dp/0691147205/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1505949407&sr=8-1&dpID=51qXILGy8kL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail).
The coin was probably minted to pay the army of
Marcus Licinius Crassus--member of the First Triumvirate--for
his invasion of
Parthia. Crassus, of course, won a dubious place in
history by leading
his army to destruction in the famous battle of
Carrhae in
Parthia in 53, during which he died.
Judging fro
acsearch, numismatists sometimes describe the figure on the
reverse as a presumed male warrior, and other times as a "female figure." I go with amazon.
Parthian armies are certainly not my
area of
military history, but I found this interesting tidbit:
"In about 66 BCE, during the Third Mithradatic War, Pompey’s
Roman army pursued
King Mithradates VI after a crushing defeat in
Pontus to the southern foothills of the Caucasus in ancient
Colchis. In Caucasian Albania and
Iberia, Pompey’s soldiers fought battles against an aggressive coalition of tribes, numbering about 60,000, allied with Mithradates. Plutarch (Pompey 35 and 45) and Appian (Mithradatic Wars 12.15-17) reported that “Amazons” fought alongside the male warriors. Pompey’s soldiers discovered warrior women among the dead with wounds showing they
had fought courageously. Pompey even captured some of these women alive. In
his magnificent triumph of 61 BCE, Pompey paraded
his most illustrious prisoners of war, including a group of Amazons from the southern Caucasus, labeled “queens of the Scythians.” Notably, the Greek-Persian
king Mithradates
had fallen in love with Hypsicratea, a horsewoman archer of an unknown Scythian tribe of the Caucasus region. She
had joined
his cavalry in about 69 BCE. He praised her
courage and battle skills, and she became
his last queen, as confirmed by the discovery of a statue base inscribed with her name near ancient Phanagoria, Taman Peninsula (Mayor, pp. 340-45, 349-53)." (
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/amazons-ii)
The actual quotes from Plutarch's Life of Pompey are:
35: In this battle it is said that there were also Amazons fighting on the
side of the Barbarians, and that they came down from the mountains about the river Thermodon. For when the
Romans were despoiling the Barbarians after the battle, they came upon Amazonian shields and buskins; but no body of a woman was seen. The Amazons inhabit the parts of the Caucasus mountains that reach down to the Hyrcanian Sea, and they do not
border on the Albani, but Gelae and Leges dwell between. With these peoples, who meet them by the river Thermodon, they consort for two months every year; then they go away and live by themselves.
45:
His triumph
had such a magnitude that, although it was distributed over two days,
still the time would not suffice, but much of what
had been prepared could not find a place in the spectacle, enough to dignify and adorn another triumphal procession. . . . The
captives led in triumph, besides the chief pirates, were the son of Tigranes the
Armenian with
his wife and daughter, Zosime, a wife of
King Tigranes himself, Aristobulus,
king of the Jews, a sister and five children of Mithridates, Scythian women, and hostages given by the Iberians, by the Albanians, and by the
king of
Commagene; there were also very many trophies, equal in number to all the battles in which Pompey
had been victorious either in person or in the persons of
his lieutenants. (
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/…/…/plutarch/lives/pompey*.html)
I could not find a specific reference to amazons in Appian's
history beyond the participation of Scythians.
I have no idea how well sourced this is, but Historical Women: Powerful Women of
Persia (
http://www.persepolis.nu), asserts that
Parthia had an extensive
history of women as
military leaders and soldiers.
As to the coin, it represents a depiction of a female cavalry soldier
engraved only ten years after Pompey's forces fought amazons, and I think it is reasonable to conclude that it represents a fairly accurate depiction. It certainly resembles the reconstruction of a Scythian woman in battle here:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/516928863449959236/Our engraver may have intended
his reverse to show the troops something that they could expect to
face during the campaign. Whatever the intention, I am pleased to own a
contemporary depiction of an amazon.
