The Amazonian queen Penthesilea is one of Mary Beard’s top five powerful women in ancient Greece and Rome
She is shown on this storage jar, wearing a leopard skin and a crested helmet, captured just at the moment she is killed by the mythical hero Achilles.
The Amazons were a wild race of warrior women, and women only, who were believed by the Greeks to live somewhere on the northern borders of the Greek world.
They were entirely mythical, but were still capable of striking fear into the hearts of Greek men, always representing a potentially deadly threat to male civilisation.
This 6th-century BC pot shows Achilles plunging his spear into Penthesilea’s throat, a stream of blood gushing from the wound. According to myth, at the moment Penthesilea died, she and Achilles fell in love.
Storage jar showing Achilles killing the Amazon queen, Penthesilea. Attica (Greece), c. 530 BC. Read more: http://ow.ly/eQay50NbRgF