Category: Cult of Aristeas
In the early 5th century BCE, Greek colonists built a sanctuary to Apollo in the central market area of Metapontion, a city on the southeast-facing shore of southern Italy. According to Herodotos writing a couple generations later, this sanctuary featured a statue of Aristeas next to its statue of Apollo, and it was established after Aristeas appeared in the city centuries after his natural life and told its citizens to do so. According to another, more doubtful account from the 2nd century CE, Aristeas also visited and inspired Greek colonists in Sicily to build a sanctuary to him where he was worshiped as a hero.
It is an open question, and an intriguing mystery, whether the establishment of the Metapontine sanctuary and the legend of Aristeas’ visit had anything to do with stories that would later be told about Pythagoras, a legendary sage figure who according to traditions that began to be written down in the 4th century BCE spent the last days of his life in Metapontion at around the same time that the sanctuary was established. But neither of the two texts describing the sanctuary – the second is told by Athenaios – mention Pythagoras, and the only reference to Aristeas’ visit to Metapontion in the poorly preserved Pythagorean literature is the inclusion of Aristeas’ name among a list of Metapontine Pythagoreans included in a 4th century CE book. Nevertheless it is clear that at least by the 4th century BCE Aristeas had been adopted as a revered sage figure by Pythagoreans, who seem to have seen a connection between the Arimaspeia’s story of a soul departing from and re-entering the same body and their own belief that after death souls were reincarnated into other bodies. By the Roman era, stories about Aristeas’ miraculous return to life and travels to Italy appear to have been as well known as the story of his journey to the edge of the world told in the Arimaspeia.
The stone remains of the sanctuary to Apollo in Metapontion where Aristeas was honored
The site of the sanctuary in Metapontion dedicated to Apollo and Aristeas, described by Herodotos and in a story retold by Athenaios, was uncovered during excavations in the 1980s and confidently identified thanks to the…
Votive bronze laurel leaves from the Metapontine sanctuary associated with Aristeas
In the 1980s an ‘enormous number’ of bronze laurel leaves were excavated (De Siena, Metaponto Scoperte, §1.3) from the area of a large stone platform and well, located within the market of Metapontion, confirming to…
Metapontine coins depicting an Apollo statue that probably stood near an Aristeas statue
A series of silver coins issued in Metapontion during the 5th century BCE (images 1-5) depict a statue of Apollo, which is believed to be the one that stood near a statue of Aristeas within…
Herodotos on Aristeas flying to Metapontion 240 years after the Arimaspeia
And these things I know happened to the Metapontines in Italia, two [or three] hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of Aristeas, as I myself gathering in both Prokonnesos and Metapontion discovered. The…
Apollonios the paradoxographer on Aristeas appearing in Sicily
Epimenides the Cretan is said to have been sent off to a country pasture by his father and father’s brothers to bring a sheep back to town. When night overtook him he wandered off the…
Clement of Alexandria on Aristeas as predictor of the future
And even the great Pythagoras was always applying himself to prediction, and Abaris the Hyperborean and Aristaias the Prokonnesian, and Epimenides the Cretan, the one who came to Sparta, and Zoroaster the Mede, and Empedokles…
Athenaios on Metapontine retribution for the looting of Delphi
In the treatise written by Theopompos, About the Treasures Stolen from Delphi, he says: To Chares the Athenian, sixty talents from Lysander. Out of them he provided the Athenians with feasts in the marketplace and…
Origen versus Celsus on Jesus versus Aristeas
Next, miracles have happened everywhere, or in many places, as even [Celsus] on this repeatedly cites Asklepios being a benefactor and foretelling the future to whole cities that were dedicated to him, including Trikka, Epidauros,…
Iamblichos on why Pythagoreans trust in Aristeas
Next, then, let us celebrate in words [Pythagoras’] virtuous deeds no longer in general, but according to the individual virtues. Let us begin first with the gods, as is the custom, and let us try…
Iamblichos including Aristeas among a list of Pythagoreans
Out of all the Pythagoreans so many have been anonymous and unknown, but of those who are known, these are their names: […] Metapontines: […] Aristeas […] Akragantine: Empedokles […] Hyperborean: Abaris […]
Proklos on resurrections, the flight of Kleonymos, and the seizure of Empedotimos
Many other ancient writers collected stories about people seeming to die and then coming to life again, including Demokritos the natural philosopher in his book On Hades. […] For it appears that this death [of…
Claudianus Mamertus on the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul
But since now is not the time for us to examine at greater length this very important matter, I have obviously omitted much here, leaving as much I judge is sufficient for the wise who…
Tzetzes listing the resurrected and the prophetic
Zabareian Lachanas, may you with these luxuriate, more than Kroisos with his treasures, and Midas with his gold, […] more than long-ago, before his changes, high-minded Proteus, and Periklymenos, and both Thetis and Mestra, and…