Sunday, 28 June 2020

The Last Amazon .....

... which sounds like it ought to be the title of a novel, but it isn't.


She is the Queen of my Bad Squiddo Amazons, and obviously her name is Hippolyta. In Greek mythology, Hippolyta was the daughter of the god Ares and Otrera. Otrera was the creator and first Queen of the Amazons. 

Below is a side view of her. The name Hippolyta can be translated as something like "She who let loose the horses". Her girdle (actually a kind of belt and not an undergarment) was the subject of the Ninth Labour of Heracles. In that legend, she was slain by Heracles. Miraculously, perhaps, she also pops up in the legends of Theseus of Athens, where she becomes his wife, leading to the Attic War, when her sister and successor as Queen, Penthesilea led the Amazons to attack Athens, and Hippolyta is killed in battle. Other variations of this story also exist. In some of those other versions different daughters of Ares and Otrera are named as the Amazon who ran off with Theseus.

Mary Renault tells her own version of Theseus and Hippolyta in her novel "The Bull From The Sea". It is a book I fell in love with as a teenager.


Here she is again from the other side. I really like her bronze arm armour and armoured glove. She clearly couldn't use a two-handed axe with a shield, but she would still need protection in battle, so this armour seems appropriate.


I have used the same violet/lavender colour for her cloak, which you can see below. This view shows the one thing that I think I've done wrong with this figure, and that is miss the unsightly blob of ink on the lower part of her cloak. I only noticed it after the varnish had dried, which is a pain. I may have to go back and do some remedial work to minimise it.


3 comments:

  1. What game are you going to use your Amazons in? I'd have that figure in a shot if it had a sword rather than an axe. Or it might look good with a spear.

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    1. Of Gods and Mortals, I think. I have the rules, so I think they will work.

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