[Footnote A:  The law of the Amazons commanded them to wage war as told them by the oracle of Mars.  The prisoners were brought to the Feast of Roses and wedded by their captors.  After a certain time they were sent back to their homes.  All male children of the tribe were put to death.]

In a renewal of her personal contest, regardless of the common cause, and in her special quest of a chosen husband, Penthesilea has broken the sacred law.

The flight now follows of the Amazon hosts.  When the two combatants meet in the shock of lances, the Queen falls in the dust; her pallor is reflected in Achilles’ face.  Leaping from his horse, he bends o’er her, calls her by names, and woos life back into her frame.  Her faithful maids, whom she has forbidden to harm Achilles, lead her away.  And here begins the seeming madness of the Queen when she confesses her love.  For a moment she yields to her people’s demands, but the sight of the rose-wreaths kindles her rage anew.  Prothoe defends her in these lines: 

    “Of life the highest blessing she attempted. 
    Grazing she almost grasped.  Her hands now fail her
    For any other lesser goal to reach.”

In the last part of the scene the Queen falls more and deeper into madness.  It is only in a too literal spirit that one will find an oblique meaning,—­by too great readiness to discover it.  In reality there seems to be an intense conflict of opposite emotions in the heroine:  the pure woman’s love, without sense of self; and the wild overpowering greed of achievement.  Between these grinding stones she wears her heart away.  A false interpretation of decadent theme comes from regarding the two emotions as mingled, instead of alternating in a struggle.

Achilles advances, having flung away his armor.  Prothoe persuades him to leave the Queen, when she awakes, in the delusion that she has conquered and that he is the captive.  Thus when she beholds the hero, she breaks forth into the supreme moment of exaltation and of frenzied triumph.  The main love scene follows: 

Penthesilea tells Achilles the whole story of the Amazons, the conquest of the original tribe, the rising of the wives of the murdered warriors against the conquerors; the destruction of the right breast (A-mazon); the dedication of the “brides of Mars” to war and love in one.  In seeking out Achilles the Queen has broken the law.  But here again appears the double symbolic idea:  Achilles meant to the heroine not love alone, but the overwhelming conquest, the great achievement of her life.

The first feeling of Penthesilea, when disillusioned, is of revulsive anger at a kind of betrayal.  The Amazons recover ground in a wild desire to save their Queen, and they do rescue her, after a parting scene of the lovers.  But Penthesilea curses the triumph that snatches her away; the high priestess rebukes her, sets her free of her royal duties, to follow her love if she will.  The Queen is driven from one mood to another, of devoted love, burning ambition and mortal despair.