Amazons of Black Sparta, 2nd Edition: The Women Warriors of DahomeyThe only thoroughly documented Amazons in world history are the women warriors of Dahomey, an eighteenth and nineteenth century Western African kingdom. Once dubbed a 'small black Sparta,' residents of Dahomey shared with the Spartans an intense militarism and sense of collectivism. Moreover, the women of both kingdoms prided themselves on bodies hardened from childhood by rigorous physical exercise. But Spartan women kept in shape to breed male