Aristeas, 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 wished, departed and returned. He lived in the time of Kroisos and Kyros, in the 50th Olympiad [580-577 BCE]. And this man also wrote a prose Τheogony, in 1000 lines.
Author: Anonymous (or Suidas)
Title of Work: The Souda (or Lexicon)
Location in Work: Α 3900 or s.v. Ἀριστέας
Date of Work: c. 1000 CE
Original Language: Greek (Attic)
Original Text:
Ἀριστέας, Δημοχάριδος ἢ Καυστροβίου, Προικοννήσιος, ἐποποιός· τὰ Ἀριμάσπεια καλούμενα ἔπη· ἔστι δὲ ἱστορία τῶν Ὑπερβορέων Ἀριμασπῶν, βιβλία γ̄. τούτου φαςὶ τὴν ψυχὴν, ὅταν ἐβούλετο, ἐξιέναι καὶ ἐπανιέναι πάλιν. γέγονε δὲ κατὰ Κροῖσον καὶ Κῦρον, Ὀλυμπιάδι ν̄. ἔγραψε δὲ οὗτος καὶ καταλογάδην Θεογονίαν εἰς ἔπη αˍ.
Reference Edition: Adler, Suidae Lexicon
Translation Notes: The word for poet used in describing Aristeas, ἐποποιός, implies a composer of traditional hexameter poetry. Whether to translate this word as ‘epic poet,’ as others have done (Dowden, BNJ 35 T1, 2009; Benedict, Suda Online, 2001), is a difficult judgment call, related to how narrowly or broadly one understands the English term ‘epic.’
Edition Notes: For γ̄ there is an ms. variant η̄ (‘8’, i.e. 744-741 BCE). Rohde (Biographica, 136), followed by Dowden (BNJ 35 T1, 2009), emended to γ̄η̄ (‘58’, i.e. 548-545 BCE), matching modern dating of Kyros’ and Kroisos’ reigns.
Source of Date of Work: Baldwin, Aspects
Commentary:
There is much information here that is unique to this text, albeit all of it doubtful: the purported father Democharis; the prose Theogony attributed to Aristeas; and two ways of dating Aristeas’ life. An older lexicon reported that Pindar dated the related legendary figure of Abaris to the Kyros-Kroisos era (Harpokration s.v. Abaris; BNJ 34 T2).
If the Souda retains the correct number of ‘books’ (i.e. scrolls) that made up the Arimaspeia, and the lengths of those were within the range of lengths of the ‘books’ of the Homeric epics, that would mean the Arimaspeia was about 1200 to 2400 verses in length, and would have required about two to four hours to perform. The mere fact that a record survives of the number of books indicates that ancient bibliographic scholars had access to the Arimaspeia, which confirms that the Arimaspeia was still extant at least into the Hellenistic period, despite transparently tendentious arguments to the contrary by J. D. P. Bolton (Aristeas, 20-27). Impeaching the reliability of later witnesses was crucial to Bolton’s thesis that the Arimaspeia was a realistic account of travel in the flesh (see the commentary to Herodotos’ account of the Arimaspeia’s journey).
Aside from the prose theogony mentioned in this text, another entry in the Souda mentions verse work attributed to ‘Aristeus.’ It’s very doubtful that any genuine texts by the Arimaspeia’s author aside from the Arimaspeia itself were known.
Concordance: EGEP Aristeas T1c; BNJ/FGrH Aristeas (35) T1; EGF Aristeas T3; PEG Aristeas T3; Bolton, Aristeas T&F 11