Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

The ninth labor was to bring the belt of Hippolyte. She was queen of the Amazons, who dwelt about the river Thermodon—a people trained to war, rearing only their daughters and pinching off the right breast so that the javelin arm should not be hindered. Hippolyte wore the belt of Ares as the mark of her supremacy among them. Eurystheus sent Heracles for it because his daughter Admete wanted the prize. Heracles sailed with a band of volunteers in a single ship. At Paros, inhabited by sons of Minos—Eurymedon, Chryses, Nephalion, and Philolaus—two of his companions landed and were killed. In anger Heracles killed the sons of Minos and besieged the rest until the islanders offered two replacements of his choosing. He took aboard Alcaeus and Sthenelus, sons of Androgeus son of Minos, raised the siege, and proceeded to Mysia, where Lycus son of Dascylus entertained him. In a war between Lycus and the Bebryces, Heracles sided with his host, killed many—including King Mygdon, brother of Amycus—and gave conquered land to Lycus, who named it Heraclea. At the harbor of Themiscyra Hippolyte herself came to the ship, asked why he had come, and promised to give him the belt. But Hera, taking the likeness of an Amazon, went among the women saying that the strangers were carrying off the queen. The Amazons charged down on horseback in arms. Seeing them armed, Heracles suspected treachery, killed Hippolyte, stripped her of the belt, fought the rest, and sailed away. He touched at Troy (where the Hesione episode belongs to the same homeward voyage—see the companion entry), then at Aenus (guest of Poltys; he shot Sarpedon, a lewd son of Poseidon, on the beach), gave Thasos—after subduing its Thracians—to the sons of Androgeus, and at Torone killed Polygonus and Telegonus, sons of Proteus, in a wrestling challenge. He brought the belt to Mycenae and gave it to Eurystheus. In this Apollodorean line the queen’s first goodwill is real; the violence is triggered by Hera’s rumor and by Heracles’s misreading of the Amazons’ rush as betrayal. The murder of Hippolyte and the taking of Ares’s belt by force are therefore inseparable from divine deceit, not from an original Amazon refusal.