"According to the mythological Greek Alexander Romance, Queen Thalestris of the Amazons brought 300 women to Alexander the Great, and she stayed with him for 13 days and nights in the hope that the great warrior would father a daughter by her."
But this is to be only fiction.
I think that Queen Thalestris is Bagoas, the Persian eunuch who was lover of Alexander the Great.
Curiously, the story of amazon queen immediately came after the claim of that Bagoas became a sexual lover of Alexander.
"...Bagoas was a eunuch exceptional in beauty with whom Darius was intimate and with whom Alexander would later be intimate... " (Quintus Curtius Rufus)
And Bagoas was very dear to Alexander (perquam Alexandro cordi esse).
Also, Plutarch also considers that Bagoas was lover (eromen) of Alexander, but about that the queen of the Amazons came to see him (Alexander), as most writers say - this is a fiction.
I think that Bagoas went to Alexander with an army of Scythian eunuchs, who looked like females. Bagoas asked the king to have mercy upon Nabarzanes, and Alexander granted his request, and then he fell in love with Bagoas. Alexander and Bagoas held together 13 or 20 love nights (honeymoon?). And then resumed their campaign forward.
Quintus Curtius reports that " ... Alexander the Great's filled palace, attended by herds of eunuchs, also accustomed to being used like women." Perhaps it was the warriors-eunuchs of Bagoas?
But authors mistake them for woman-amazons.
It means that Thalestris is not a female, but a male, the eunuch whom ancient authors mistook for a woman.
According to Palaephatus (IV-III century B.C.)
"This is my view of the Amazons, that they were not women who waged war, but barbarian men, and that they wore clothing which extended over their feet, like that of the Thrakian women, and that they bound their hair in hair-bands and shaved of their beards like ..." And that is why they were called women by their opponents. The Amazons were a people that excelled in fighting. But fighting was never for women; nor is it so anywhere today."
I suppose that Amazons are the Scythians (Iranians), the tribe in northern lands of ancient Persian empire.
According to Herodotus' report, among the Scythians there were many eunuchs, the enarei (enaree - effeminate), who spoke with high-pitched voice and were engaged in female works; many of them were shamans. Scythian shamanism involved religious ecstasy through the use of entheogens; they had no temples and worshipped the forces of nature.
"An Enaree or Enarei was a Scythian shamans; described as effeminate or androgynous. Scythian shamanism involved religious ecstasy through the use of entheogens; they had no temples and worshipped the forces of nature."
"The Scythians had no temples, or altars or religious images, and evidently no priests. It is known that the northern nomads including the Scythians practiced Shamanism in their religion: they used shamans to deal with the world of spirits and gave advice to the kings and chiefs. Being superstitious people, they believed in witchcraft, magic and the power of amulets. The most highly honoured of the Scythian shamans came from certain specific families. They are effeminate males called 'enarees' - meant 'men-women' or 'halfmen'. They spoke with high-pitched voices and wore women's clothes."
Also, enaree or enaria mean 'unmanly'.
Art by Deva
