The Amazons were a nation of warrior women descended from Ares, the god of war, and the naiad Harmonia.The origin of the name "Amazon" is not definitive. Some possibilities are:

 From the Greek word "amazon" meaning "without breast"

 From Sanskrit "Uma-soona" meaning "Uma's children". Uma was a goddess worshipped in India.

 From an Armenian word meaning "moon woman". Artemis, the goddess they worshipped, was the goddeess of the moon as well as the hunt.

The Greeks typically assigned homeland of the Amazons to the outermost limits of the known world. In most of Amazonian mythology, the Amazons came from the area around the Caucasus Range. Their capital was Themiscyra on the bank of the Thermodon River.

Map from http://www.speakeasy.org/~music/history.html

Amazons entered into the corpus of Greek mythology through the 9th labor of Heracles. In this labor, Heracles had to take

the belt or girdle from the Queen of the Amazons, Antiope. To accomplish this task, he brought many men including Theseus to the Amazon country. The men captured the belt, burned the Amazon capital of Thesmiscyra, and kidnapped the Queen's sister, Hippolyta, as a bride for Theseus the King of Athens. After having conquered the Amazons at Thesmiscyra, the Athenian men filled their three ships with Amazonian war captives. The Amazons killed their Greek captors but could not navigate the ships. The three ships landed in Scythian territory, and the Amazons proceded to plunder the land. The Scythian men of the area wishing to marry the Amazons, moved away from their homeland so that their brides could continue to live in their liberated fashion. Herototus in his Histories, attributes the origin of the Sauromatian people to this Scythian-Amazonian union.

The Amazons remaining in the Thermodon area, wishing to avenge the attack by Heracles and Theseus, traveled to Athens and beseiged the city. The Amazon army was formidable, but it suffered an incredible defeat at the hands of the Athenians. Their casualties were so great that the Athenians were able to line one side of a road leading from the citadel to the port of Piraeus with Amazon graves. To commemorate the peace which was eventually created between the two groups, the Athenians built the Horcosium ( or Oath House). However, no modern evidence of this Horcosium exists.

Amazons were said to have aided the Trojans in the battle of Troy. The leader of the Amazon forces, Penthesilea, was killed by Achilles in single combat. When Achilles saw his opponent without her helmet, he fell in love with her and mourned her death.

Alexander the Great was rumored to have had an affair with an Amazon queen. The queen Thalestris, wished to bear a daughter from such a powerful man, and visited him during one of his campaigns in Asia. She stayed with him thirteen days although no child came from this union