This 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, and their minds in the deep,
surely often holding loving hands up to the gods,
praying with their guts foully throwing up.
Author: Aristeas of Prokonnesos (or pseudonymous)
Title of Work: the Arimaspeia
Location in Work: 10.4 (Halliwell)
Date of Work: c. 625 BCE
Original Language: Greek (Ionic)
Original Text:
θαῦμ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τοῦτο μέγα φρεσὶν ἡμετέρῃισιν. ἄνδρες ὕδωρ ναίουσιν ἀπὸ χθονὸς ἐν πελάγεσσι· δύστηνοί τινές εἰσιν, ἔχουσι γὰρ ἔργα πονηρά· ὄμματ’ ἐν ἄστροισι, ψυχὴν δ’ ἐνὶ πόντῳ ἔχουσιν. ἦ που πολλὰ θεοῖσι φίλας ἀνὰ χεῖρας ἔχοντες εὔχονται σπλάγχνοισι κακῶς ἀναβαλλομένοισι.
Reference Edition: Halliwell, Pseudo-Longinus
Edition Notes: The fourth line is badly off meter, but there is no point trying to repair it. The sense is probably still close to the original.
Commentary:
This excerpt is obviously in the voice of one of the inland people that Aristeas encountered on his journey, likely one of the Issedones, who we know spoke with Aristeas from another verbatim excerpt and a comment by Herodotos. The speaker is explaining why from his inland people’s perspective the Greek way of life is shockingly awful and abhorrent. This passage is probably part of a longer exchange in which both Aristeas and his interlocutor express shock and revulsion at each other's customs and ways of living.
This excerpt was preserved in a book of literary criticism known as On the Sublime by a writer and tutor on Greek rhetoric to Roman elites of the 1st or early 2nd century CE, whose name is unknown but came to be known as pseudo-Longinus due to a mistaken attribution in the manuscript tradition. Ironically this writer quoted the Arimaspeia as a negative example of a text that was meant to be frightening but failed. The writer introduced the excerpt from the Arimaspeia with a single sentence:
ὁ μὲν γὰρ τὰ Ἀριμάσπεια ποιήσας ἐκεῖνα οἴεται δεινά·
For the one who made the Arimaspeian [verses] thinks these are fearful:
And after the excerpt, ‘pseudo-Longinus’ added:
παντὶ οἶμαι δῆλον ὡς πλέον ἄνθος ἔχει τὰ λεγόμενα ἢ δέος.
I think it is obvious to everyone that these words are full of flower and not fearful.
Concordance: EGEP Aristeas F9; BNJ Aristeas (35) F7; EGF Aristeas F1; PEG Aristeas F11; Bolton, Aristeas T&F 5; Bowra, Fragment