Ἀριστέης. H. confirms his own view against the Scyths, who claimed autochthony, by a reference to the Ἀριμάσπεα of Aristeas; the latter, however, makes the pressure of invasion come from the Issedones, i. e. from the north-east (not the east as H.). Aristeas seems to have embodied in this poem the earliest knowledge obtained by the settlers on the North Pontic shore. He is placed by H. (15. 1) in the first half of the seventh century, but Suidas makes him a contemporary of Croesus. This date is accepted in Pauly (s. v.), because his poem explained the Cimmerian invasion; but this fact is consistent with the early date. There is no need to deny his historic reality (as Crusius in Rosch. i. 2814), but his story has obviously been affected by cult stories of Apollo. For him cf. Pindar, fr. 271. His poem had perished by the time of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Thuc. 23; vi. 864), but Tzetzes (Chil. vii. 690-1) quotes some lines supposed to be from it (as to the Arimaspi): “ἀφνειοὺς ἵπποισι, πολύρρηνας, πολυβούτας, ὀφθαλμὸν δ᾽ ἕν᾽ ἕκαστος ἔχει χαρίεντι μετώπῳ.” ποιέων. H. emphasizes the poetic character of Aristeas. Cf. φοιβόλαμπτος. γρῦπας. The ‘griffins’ are combined with the Arimaspi also by Aeschylus (P. V. 802-4), who calls them ὀξύστομοι Ζηνὸς ἀκραγεῖς κύνες. Two types of them may be distinguished; the more common has the head and wings of an eagle, the body of a lion; this type may be Hittite, but is found in Egypt as early as the eighteenth dynasty, and in prehistoric Greece (Perrot et Chipiez, vi. 831); the other type, the winged lion, is Chaldaean. This symbol was combined in Greek art, from the fifth century onwards, with the story here told by H. from Aristeas; in this story we have probably a double of that of the ‘ants’ (iii. 102), i. e. it is a traveller's tale as to the dangers of gold-getting in Central Asia. The wide diffusion of this combination in later Greek art is good evidence of the popularity of H.'s work. Ctesias (Ind. 12, p. 250) transports the griffins to the north of India, and substitutes them for the ‘ants’ of H. (u. s.); it is characteristic of him that he describes them in detail, with ‘white wings, red breast’, &c. For the whole subject of ‘griffins’ cf. Furtwängler in Rosch. Lex. i. 1742 seq. The gold of Central Asia is of course a fact, and the Arimaspi may well be a nomad tribe of Central Asia, who affirmed that their gold was derived from great deserts, e. g. that of Gobi; they may be the ancestors of the Turks and the Huns. They were credited with one eye as a mark of their wildness, on the analogy of the Cyclops; Strabo (21) puts the matter the other way and makes Homer ‘borrow’ the Cyclops from Scythia. Others see in them a purely fictitious people, a wild counterpart of the mild Hyperboreans. The name is explained by some ‘dwellers in the deserts’ (Rosch. s. v.), but Müllenhof (iii. 106) makes it ‘having docile horses’. Pauly, ii. 827, translates it ‘owners of wild horses’. H.'s etymology is no doubt that of the people of Olbia. It is to the credit of H. that he does not believe in the ‘one-eyed’ (iii. 116. 2), and that he avoids such foolish rationalization as that of Eustathius, who said (G. G. M. ii. 223) the Arimaspi had one eye smaller than the other, because, being archers, they were continually closing one eye to shoot. The whole legend is familiar in Milton's
πλὴν Ὑπερβορέων: because the Hyperboreans lived in perpetual peace. For them cf. 32 nn.“As when a gryphon through the wilderness
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold.
”(P. L. ii. 943-7.)
