And as for the land that this account has begun to talk about, no one knows exactly what there is above it, for truly I am able to find no one who claims to know by seeing with his own eyes. For not even Aristeas, that one I made a little mention of earlier, not even he in his own verses said he went beyond the Issedones. Rather, the things further up he was telling from hearsay: he said the Issedones were telling these things. But as much and of what sorts we were able to arrive at through hearsay, exactly to the farthest extent, all will be told.
Author: Herodotos
Title of Work: Histories
Location in Work: 4.16
Date of Work: c. 420 BCE
Original Language: Greek (Ionic)
Original Text:
τῆς δὲ γῆς τῆς πέρι ὅδε ὁ λόγος ὅρμηται λέγεσθαι, οὐδεὶς οἶδε ἀτρεκέως ὃ τι τὸ κατύπερθε ἐστί· οὐδενὸς γὰρ δὴ αὐτόπτεω εἰδέναι φαμένου δύναμαι πυθέσθαι· οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδὲ Ἀριστέης, τοῦ περ ὀλίγῳ πρότερον τούτων μνήμην ἐποιεύμην, οὐδὲ οὗτος προσωτέρω Ἰσσηδόνων αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖσι ἔπεσι ποιέων ἔφησε ἀπικέσθαι, ἀλλὰ τὰ κατύπερθε ἔλεγε ἀκοῇ, φὰς Ἰσσηδόνας εἶναι τοὺς ταῦτα λέγοντας. ἀλλ᾽ ὅσον μὲν ἡμεῖς ἀτρεκέως ἐπὶ μακρότατον οἷοί τε ἐγενόμεθα ἀκοῇ ἐξικέσθαι, πᾶν εἰρήσεται.
Reference Edition: Wilson, Herodoti Historiae
Translation Notes: Herodotos uses the term κατύπερθε, literally ‘above,’ to mean ‘further inland from,’ which were synonymous in Greek geography because the earth was conceived of as tending upland from the sea (as seen in the title Ἀνάβασις, ‘The Ascent,’ applied to Xenophon’s journey to Mesopotamia and Alexander’s to India).
Source of Date of Work: Herodotos 9.73.3
Commentary:
In the first sentence of this text, Herodotos is referring to the region north of the Black Sea, now southern Ukraine, which he began to describe in the first part of this book (4.1-7) and is about to continue describing (from 4.17). The regions ’above’ it, about which only hearsay was known, are the regions further north and northeast, i.e. what is now northern Ukraine, Russia and Siberia.
Herodotos’ statement that in the Arimaspeia the Issedones described what lay above them is confirmed by a brief excerpt of the Arimaspeia in which the Issedones describe the Arimasps. But Herodotos’ claim that in the Arimaspeia Aristeas traveled no further than the Issedones is directly contradicted by Maximus of Tyre, who wrote that Aristeas claimed his soul traveled to Hyperborea.
Stopping at the Issedones would be expected if Aristeas were traveling in the flesh, given that Arimasps and griffins were in the way of going further, not to mention the exceedingly high Rhipai mountains (to come in this collection). But most evidence supports a conclusion that the Arimaspeia told a story of an out-of-body flight: see the commentary to Herodotos’ account of the Arimaspeia’s journey.
It’s possible the Arimaspeia wasn’t completely clear about how Aristeas learned of what lay beyond the Issedones, and Herodotos and Maximus each differently interpreted an ambiguous text. In the above-mentioned excerpt of the Arimaspeia in which the Arimasps were described, the text switches from indirect speech, apparently attributed to the Issedones, to what could be interpreted either as direct speech of the Issedones or as narrative voice (see the Edition Notes to that excerpt).
But it seems also possible that Herodotos simply twisted or ignorantly misreported the contents of the Arimaspeia to fit with his rationalization that Aristeas traveled in the flesh. In another story that Herodotos told and attributed to oral tradition, Aristeas appeared dead and then disappeared, but was spotted alive near Kyzikos, and then returned home after seven years, suggesting he made a long journey in the flesh.
It might be relevant that Herodotos’ description of another important early poem, the Kypria, similarly conflicts with that of another writer: according to Herodotos (2.117), the epic of the Trojan war’s beginnings didn’t include any story of Paris and Helen traveling in the eastern Mediterranean, but a summary of the Kypria attributed to Proklos does include such a story (West, Epic Fragments, 12-13 and 67-81).
Concordance: EGEP Aristeas F2; BNJ Aristeas (35) F2 part 2; EGF Aristeas F3b; PEG Aristeas F3; Bolton, Aristeas T&F 2