Two more Amazons

I completed two more Bad Squiddo Amazons yesterday and varnished them, with a degree of trepidation after what happened to the previous two.

The figure on the right with the owl is an older Bad Squiddo figure, but she fits quite nicely into the Amazon theme, seeing as the owl was a common symbol of the goddess Athena. She makes quite a nice Shaman, I think, or maybe a rustic priestess of the Goddess. The origin of the association of the owl with Athena is unclear and a number of ideas co-exist. The anthropologist and archeologist Marijas Gimbutas, considered a controversial figure (mainly for her feminist interpretations of the past) suggests an origin going back to the Neolithic Period in Europe before the arrival of Indo-European-speaking peoples. 

The figure on the left looks quite like she could serve as a Roman female gladiator, which were a real thing, although the evidence for them is not large. They were sometimes described as "Amazons", which is perfect in this context. The Emperor Domitian is said to have put on Games features battles with Amazons.

There was a class of gladiator (or gladiatrix here) known as dimachaeri, meaning "carrying two knives or blades" in Greek, and these could easily have been siccae, a curve-bladed sword associated with Illyrians, Dacians and Thracians. I think that is appropriate for an Amazon.