As ninth labour, Heracles must bring the Belt of the Amazon Queen back to Eurystheus. This labour marks the culminating phase of the inner fire, the fulfilment of a perfect mastery of life, the realization of holiness.
To fully understand this web page, it is recommended to follow the progression given in the tab Greek myths interpretation. This progression follows the spiritual journey.
The method to navigate in the site is given in the Home tab.
Heracles fighting the Amazons – Staatliche Antikensammlungen
On ceramics, the fight that opposed Heracles’ troop to the Amazons was very popular, but one finds no trace of a belt or harness. Heracles’ opponent was an homonymous Andromache «who fights the man» in which we can see a meaning equivalent to that of Paris-Alexandros «who pushes man back»: the only ultimate possibility of the yoga was an annihilation into the impersonal Absolute, and not the divinisation of the body.
The oldest texts insist on the fight and the death of the Amazon queen, then named Antiope, killed by Heracles. The later versions recount a friendly relationship before the deadly fray.
At first, Heracles began to build a friendship with the Amazons and even obtained the belt peacefully before fighting them in a second phase: this progression followed by a reversal indicates that the seeker must first realise a perfect vital control before surpassing it in order to realise a more integral union, a greater perfection, by the liberation from nature’s modes and dualities. By vital control, one has to understand liberation from desire and ego, including control over anger, sexuality, disgust and fear.
This reversal then logically occurs at the same time as the Trojan War, during the first great reversal of the yoga, as the Amazons sided with the Trojan camp.
Apollonios (IIIrd century BC.) is the first to mention Melanippe, Heracles captured Melanippe, the queen’s sister (here called Hippolyte), in an ambush and exchanged her for her «harness».
This version could be telling that this perfect control over the vital can only be obtained through a perfect apprehension of «the shadow». Melanippe, the queen’s sister, is indeed «the black deformed force», Hippolyte’s counterpart «the vital energy from which one liberated oneself». Melanippe indeed represents the restrained vital energy which distorts into a black and destructive energy, for a seeker who nevertheless places purity at the top (the Amazons revere Artemis).
The presence in the myth of this duality as well as the Amazons’ filiation – they are Ares’ daughters – show that the seeker has not yet reached total liberation in the action, beyond dualities.
Some of Pindar’s scholars mention that Melanippe was killed by Telamon «the endurance», Aeacus’ son, while Hippolyte was killed by Heracles: when duality stops, the perverted energy (Melanippe) and the ideal aimed goal (Hippolyte) disappear too, vice as well as virtue.
Diodorus (in the Ist century BC.) completed Apollonios’ tale: a troop of the best warriors was accompanying Heracles in this expedition, including Telamon and Theseus. After the victory, the latter received as spoils of war, an Amazon named Antiope who was the mother of an homonymous Hippolyte, whom Phaidra fell in love with.
Nevertheless, in the oldest tales (Pindar’s and Pherecydes’), Theseus’ expedition against the Amazons was independent from Heracles’.
According to Apollodorus, (between the Ist and IIIrd century AD.), it was on Eurystheus’ daughter’s request, an homonymous Admete «she who is not yet subjected to the yoke», that Heracles had to bring back the harness. On the way, the hero helped king Lycos defeat the Bebryces and their king Mygdon, Amycos’ brother.
Then, during his first meeting with Queen Hippolyte, she promised him her harness. But Hera, disguised as an Amazon, excited the other women by spr