Until now, the image of the Amazons that prevailed in classical antiquity has been predominantly interpreted within the framework of gender discourse. However, Amazons have been paradigmatic in all literary and pictorial genres and through all epochs of antiquity as representatives of various contrast in myth and history, including the familiar and alien, self and other, as well as settled and nomadic. As such, they are a part of very generalized alternative worlds in which constructions of the self and images of the other are co-mingled