This is an old revision of the document!
Greek theater tends to follow a simple evolution beginning with the gods in Greek mythology in Eumenides (472 BCE), gods and mortals in Medea (431 BCE), Oedipus Rex (429 BCE), Herakles (416 BCE), to eventually plays solely about mortals in plays like Lysistrata or Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE). It seems only natural that playwrights such as Aristophanes and Sophocles would start to tackle the more controversial aspects of society, such as sex and politics, in both comedies and tragedies.
The relevance to female archetypes in Greek mythology lies in the fact that the female characters tend to come out of the theater moreso than the mythology. By and large Amazons don't really appear in the mythology at all, and much of what we do know about them comes from Homer's Illiad and various iterations of Hercules. Penisthelia
