Category: Author and poem
This category includes verbatim excerpts plus most references to the work or its author (the ‘testimonia’ that traditionally accompany a collection of fragments of a lost work). Note however that stories of Aristeas making supernatural appearances after his natural life are included instead in the Cult of Aristeas category.
Herodotos introduces the Arimaspeia with language that suggests the poem had a first-person narrator who named himself as Aristeas of Prokonnesos in the poem, just as the Theogony’s narrator introduces himself as Hesiod. Aristeas of Prokonnesos was probably a poetic persona, not a real person or actual author of the Arimaspeia.
The poem was referred to in Greek as ‘the Arimaspeian verses,’ sometimes shortened to ‘the Arimaspeians’ (with ‘verses’ implied). In English the title has traditionally been rendered as a stand-alone noun, spelled variously as ‘Arimaspia’ (Latinized), ‘Arimaspea’ (from Ionic Greek) or ‘Arimaspeia’ (from Attic Greek). The latter is chosen here as most standard. The syllable ‘mas’ is accented.
The Arimaspeia was considered to be among the oldest works of Greek literature. While Herodotos thought the Arimaspeia was younger than the Homeric epics, Strabo and the early Christian writer Tatian believed the Arimaspeia was older.
This collection proposes that the Arimaspeia was composed in the second half of the 7th century BCE for the following reasons: it mentioned events that occurred in or by the first half of that century; it is not known to have mentioned Assyria, which dominated the Near East in the early and middle 7th century; and it appears to have included the accurate name of a South Caucasian Skythian king active in the 670s BCE, which would not likely have been available to a 6th century BCE Greek oral poet.
The Souda’s mention of the number of books of the Arimaspeia proves that the poem was extant in the Hellenistic period when bibliographic scholarship started. According to Dionysios of Halikarnassos, a contemporary of Augustus, the Arimaspeia was still extant in his time. Two accounts of the late 2nd century CE by Maximus of Tyre (here and here) preserve considerable unique detail about the Arimaspeia, suggesting he had access either to the full book or a detailed summary. But a false claim from around the same time by Aulus Gellius that he found a copy in Italy, belied by his obvious borrowing from Pliny the Elder, suggests such a find would have been very unexpected.
We have no way of knowing for certain when new copies of the Arimaspeia stopped being made, or when the last copy was lost. But it seems clear that the Arimaspeia was never copied from the more ancient medium of scrolls to the more modern medium of codices, a process that began in the 1st century CE. By the time interest in ancient literature revived in medieval Constantinople, the 12th century classicist Ioannis Tzetzes was able to find only a small number of excerpted lines.
Six lines of the Arimaspeia: ‘Issedoi’ describing Arimasps
Posted in Arimasps, Author and poem, Issedones[So say] the Issedoi, glorying in their flowing hair, that there are men sharing a border above them, near Boreas, many and very brave warriors, rich in horses, of many sheep, of many cows. And…
Six lines of the Arimaspeia: a landlubber abhors the Greek way of life
Posted in Author and poem, EthnographyThis also is a great shock for us in our hearts: men live on water, away from land, amidst the sea. Unhappy are they, for their work is oppressive. Their sights are in the stars,…
Herodotos on Aristeas’ account of his journey
Posted in Arimasps, Author and poem, Eastern Sea, Extracorporeal travel, Griffins, Hyperboreans, Issedones, Kimmerians, Seizure and possession, SkythiansAnd Aristeas son of Kaustrobios, a man of Prokonnesos, composed verses saying he reached the Issedones while seized by Apollo; and dwelling above the Issedones, the one-eyed Arimasps-men; and above them, the gold-guarding griffins; and…
Herodotos citing oral tradition on Aristeas’ journey
Posted in Author and poem, Deathlessness, Extracorporeal travelAnd having said where Aristeas was from, I’ll tell the story I was hearing about him at Prokonnesos and Kyzikos. For they say that Aristeas, who was not of a lesser family among his townsmen,…
Herodotos claims Aristeas traveled no further than the Issedones
Posted in Author and poem, Extracorporeal travel, IssedonesAnd 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…
Dionysios on Aristeas’ extant but doubted early history
Posted in Author and poemAnd about those [virtues] that all the historians before Thoukydides possessed, and those they grasped only slightly, taking them up from the earliest [historians], […] not even those that are preserved does everyone trust to…
Strabo on Aristeas as Homer’s tutor
Posted in Author and poemAnd some say [Kreophylos] was Homer’s tutor, and others [that it was] not him, but Aristeas of Prokonnesos.
Strabo calling Aristeas a wizard or charlatan
Posted in Author and poem, Deathlessness, Extracorporeal travelAlong the coasting voyage from Parion to Priapos are the ancient Prokonnesos and present Prokonnessos […] Aristeas the poet of the so-called Arimaspeian verses is from there, a man [who was a] goēs if anyone…
Pliny citing Aristeas as a source for his Natural History
Posted in Author and poemBook VII contains […]. From the authors: […]. Foreign [authors]: Herodotos, Aristeas, Baiton, Isigonos, Krates, Agatharchides, Kalliphanes, Aristotle, Nymphodoros, Apollonides, Phylarchos, Damon, Megasthenes, Ktesias, Tauron, Eudoxos, Onesikritos, Kleitarchos, Douris, Artemidoros, Hippokrates the medic, Asklepiades the…
A Roman writer on Aristeas’ fame
Posted in Author and poemBut then, now, and for all time, Aristeas lives. And later someone will remember me, I say. For Sappho said it very beautifully, and Hesiod even more beautifully: fame never completely perishes, as many people…
Tatian counting Aristeas among writers older than Homer
Posted in Author and poemBut in regard to my present point, Ι am most anxious to make it absolutely clear that Moses is not οnly older than Homer but is older even than the writers before him: Linos, Philammon,…
Gellius claiming he found a copy of the Arimaspeia
Posted in Author and poemWhen I was returning from Greece to Italy and had come to Brundisium, after disembarking I was strolling about in that famous port, which Quintus Ennius called praepes, or ‘propitious,’ using an epithet that is…
The Souda on Aristeas’ life and works
Posted in Arimasps, Author and poem, Extracorporeal travel, HyperboreansAristeas, son of Democharis or of Kaustrobios, from Prokonnesos, a poet. [He wrote] the verses called Arimaspeian, and it is a story of the Hyperborean Arimasps, 3 books. They say that his soul, whenever it…
The Souda on Aristeas’ poetry mislabeled as Peisander’s
Posted in Author and poemPeisander, son of Peison and Aristaichma, a Kamirian from Rhodes … His poems: a Herakleia in 2 books; it is the deeds of Herakles; in it he first gave Herakles a club. The rest of…