The image of fierce, all-female Amazons — barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom — has endured from the days of ancient Greece. But were they more than myth?

Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar in classics and in the history and philosophy of science at Stanford University, dissects the Amazonian legend in a discussion of her wide-ranging, deeply researched book. Unearthing long-buried evidence, she sifts fact from fiction in showing how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. Not only the Greeks were enchanted; Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures were featured in tales from ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China.

Mayor visited the Library in 2010 to discuss her biography of ruthless Mithradates VI of Pontus,The Poison King, which was a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award.