For the brush-footed butterfly genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

, see Marpesia (butterfly)

Marpesia (butterfly)

Marpesia is a butterfly genus in the family Nymphalidae.-Species:*Marpesia berania *Marpesia chiron *Marpesia corinna *Marpesia corita...

.

In ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 and Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 legendary history, Marpesia (Greek: Μαρπησία "Snatcher"; sometimes wrongly spelled Marthesia) was Queen of the Amazons

Amazons

The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...

 with Lampedo

Lampedo

Lampedo is an Amazon queen mentioned in Roman historiography. She ruled with her sister Marpesia...

 ("burning torch"), her sister, as a co-ruler. They ruled with Hippo ("horse") after the death of Lysippe

Lysippe

Lysippe is the name of several different women in Greek mythology:* Lysippe, daughter of Thespius and Megamede. She bore Heracles a son, Erasippus.* Lysippe, the Amazon mother of the river god Tanais....

.

Marpesia was one of the rulers who helped establish the Greek city of Ephesus

Ephesus

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...

. She also established a city in the Caucasus Mountains

Caucasus Mountains

The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region .The Caucasus Mountains includes:* the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and* the Lesser Caucasus Mountains....

 referred to as the Rock of Marpesia or the Marpesian Cliff. Alexander the Great sometime later built gates there which were called the Caspian Gates. This was an area on the Thermodon River in Cappadocia

Cappadocia

Cappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia, largely in Nevşehir Province.In the time of Herodotus, the Cappadocians were reported as occupying the whole region from Mount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine...

. Marpesia and Lampedo extended the Amazon influence to Europe and greater Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

, becoming an object of terror to that part of the world.

Marpesia was succeeded by her daughters Orithyia and Antiope

Antiope

Antiope can mean:* Greek mythology** Antiope , sister of Hippolyte kidnapped by Theseus, during Heracles' ninth labour** Antiope by Zeus, associated with the mythology of Thebes, Greece...

 (some sources add Synope) after she was killed in battle during a sudden invasion by Asian barbarians.

In Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

’s Famous Women

De mulieribus claris

De mulieribus claris is a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, first published in 1374. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature...

, a chapter is dedicated to Lampedo and Marpesia.