Instead of going to her room to rest at lunchtime, Daniela went back into the Blagen Library, leaving Nicasio and his new friends to socialize. From her now-familiar corner, she continued her perusal of images and texts associated with the enigmatic women warriors, known to appear sporadically in mythology, and surprising often as a popular motif of the ancient world. Her goal was simply review the Amazons specifically as depicted on the earliest ceramic materials, mostly decorative plates and vases, as she had only scratched the surface of their intrigue through statuary and architectural decoration the day before.

Using the Ambrosia online data base available to scholars at the Blagen, she found an overwhelming number of examples of pottery pieces located in museums and private collections. Though it was apparent that painted earthenware recorded much about the lives and customs of the ancient Greeks, the artwork appearing on these functional vessels and platters was also a means of recording much of their myths and legends.

Mostly painted during the centuries leading up to and including the Classical period from around 300 to 500 BCE, Daniela could see that two basic methods evolved in ceramic art, depicting much of human activity during these times. There was a flowering of the human form on ceramics after a long geometric period of design preceding it. She learned that the "Attic Black figure" style stile of ceramic painting consisted of ebony shaded characters meticulously incised off a red layer of painted background, then fired with a glaze in stone kilns. These artists of the day produced stunning effects showing light-footed athletes, running stylistically in competition, as if sharing the same rhythm of strides. The distinctive tradition of Greek gods and goddesses interacting in human form with mortal heroes was also a powerful motif in this early "Black-figure style."

Daniela noticed through her on-screen photos that certain scenes of the period, beginning around 620 BCE, began to show specific themes of battle between female warriors and a Greek heroes. Both of the sexes would be engaged in lethal hand to hand combat. These images, known as Amazonamachia-"war with the Amazons," stuck out in her mind with the same intensity as watching a dramatic scene in a film. The gripping element was that the combatants often fought to the death. There were literally hundreds of these vessels and plates found, catalogued and taken from collections throughout the world. The graceful Amazons engaged in battle had become a popular subject of choice it seemed, often expressing not only the contrast of dark characters against a light ground, but the brute strength of men against the agility and grace of young women.

But it was the more refined, "Attic Red figure" images on clay, rendered on plates, vases, and funerary urns showing up historically around 530 BCE and later, which Daniela noticed brought the intensity and humanity of men and women to life through their more realistic interactions. The artistic process of creation was similar, merely covering the vessel or plate-this time with a black background, and scraping off the design and scenes with finer, sharper implements of the craft. These tools, she learned, were usually an array of blades and fine points. This more careful process magically brought the scenes to life under the artists' incising tools. And here there was vastly more detail, more stylization and extra painted objects and textures. Now the Amazon themes seemed to be in high gear, suggesting that the public was ever more enthralled by their stories.

Abduction, revenge, and brutal scenes where the valiant women gave their all on horseback-only to be defeated once more, were celebrated and immortalized in this simple but elegant medium. A good number of the plates and vases had painted on them a specific scene curious to Daniela-the Amazons attacking soldiers who defended their city of Athens. In such images were engaged larger numbers of characters-the women warriors against well-trained hoplites who aggressively protected their fair city during what seemed to be a celebrated or historical siege.

Daniela noticed also that the earlier style of Amazonamachia showed the Amazons in more Greek-like attire, even though according to the myths and writers who described them in the related reading matter, they were not Greek but haled from the land of nomadic horse tribes to the north and east. On these earlier ceramic piece the Amazons were shown in various positions of action wearing a simple tunic, being bare legged, and riding freely on horseback into their conflicts. Often they were in close combat with the Greek soldiers, and helmeted, as were the men. In a stylized, dramatic fashion they moved gracefully and died heroically. Often their breasts and thighs were bare in the heat of such battle scenes, giving the images a paradoxically erotic quality.

But the later style Daniela observed evolved into more detailed scenes and varying techniques. A three-quarter perspective of living forms-Amazons, Greeks and their horses was employed. Facial expressions, though mild and complacent, could be detected on the countenances of the women in particular. These ceramic paintings showed the females in more exotic dress, looking like true foreigners to their enemies. They now donned ornate leggings, animal motif designs on shields and clothing, and sometimes a tall pointed hat, setting them distinctly apart visually and culturally from their Greek male opponents. In all cases, as Daniela observed earlier in her study of the sculptural mediums-bass relief and freestanding statuary, these women were always rendered as dignified, noble, never triumphant in their small victories and always stoic in their terminal suffering or dying.

It became clear to Daniela that the overarching theme in all the frozen tableaus involving these mysterious women on vases, and dating back some three-thousand years, was that they were always shown as defeated in their efforts against men. Only in a few rare examples could a valiant Amazon warrior be seen temporarily getting the upper hand in her brutal conflict with a male. The overall outcome of these tableaus was always a crushing defeat for them. Yet it could be seen that the combatant women, even while on horseback, deftly wielded swords, battle axes, and the ever-deadly bow and arrow, as skillfully as their Greek counterparts.

Questions arose in Daniela's mind as she scrutinized these females riding or running into battle against such deadly odds to passionately preserve their autonomy. What was it in their psychic nature that compelled them to fight so rigorously and collectively against men? And why was the Greek popular perception of them so positive, thematically heroic in their own right-yet so consistent in wishing them vanquished in all cases? Seeing these women through the light of her own limited experiences, and awareness of history, Daniela had no problem understanding the enmity females can sometimes have for men. And yet the choice of these sisters to live completely apart, engaging in combat against them to the death in every case, remained perplexing.

Her interest since coming to Greece and seeing these graceful characters in ceramic or stone, symbolically engaged in the timeless war of the sexes, intrigued Daniela even more profoundly that day while alone. She could identify with them at times almost completely in her angst regarding Nicasio and all the men she had ever known in one way or another. And yet she still treasured the moments of affection she had shared with her own father as a girl and indeed the love and physical pleasure she felt with Nicasio over the past five years.

As she viewed screen after screen of these motifs, she also began to ponder more intensely the archaeological find Nicasio and his professor had been so consumed over back on the California coast. What could it be that so motivated Nicasio and his respected mentor of history concerning these women-as it now impacted all of their lives? And what could this discovery possibly mean to the ongoing study of these women?

Never having been bit by the bug of academic research-or any scientific enquiry before, Daniela now felt a certain new passion for wanting to know more about this lost time and place for heroic females-the women who now spoke to her so passionately through their images in art. She felt her own restless nature could be found in them-riding gracefully, twisting in the heat of assault, falling and remounting to ride on, carrying their dignity about them into a dispassionate and unknown future.

Daniela's trip to Athens had now linked the Amazons to her in some visceral way. She deeply admired their stance, their efforts. And she mourned those she witnessed in the throes of death, depicted silently on the surface of vases or carved in bas-relief sculpture.

Whether it was the long, sleepless night, or the feeling of being so far from home, Daniela had begun also to feel deeply grieved for these symbolic sisters of hers that afternoon. Could their timeless battle ever be won? Was it a useless and impossible cause for all women to live apart, asserting themselves with such pure independence? Of all the impassioned battlefields of heroism she had seen that day-scenes played out before her in the synthesis of real and mythical imagery, there was a specific iconic moment which had spoken to her the loudest. It was a dramatic pas de deux shown over and over on these earthenware canvases.

The theme was the bold Amazon queen-Penthesilea, after fighting valiantly alongside her defeated sisters and while supporting the Trojans at the battle of Troy. The gripping image so central to the myth, was when Achilles, the Greek champion in single-handed combat, finally spears the quintessential queen-mortally wounding her in the chest. As so common in these images, the moment is frozen when Achilles reaches down to remove her helmet at the moment of her death. The time-honored legend explains that Achilles, upon seeing how beautiful his opponent was, and reflecting upon her impassioned efforts to defeat him, fell instantly in love with her and wept uncontrollably amid his peers on the battlefield.

Daniela looked at no less than thirty different versions of this inscribed motif-"Penthesilea's death at the hands of Achilles, the Greek champion." Each rendition had the essence of the moment, captured by various unknown artists of their times. And each for some significant reason wanted to impart the same emotion, the same transcendent sentiment, which, by the late afternoon had moved the novice researcher to her own disconsolate tears.

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