Arimaspi

The Arimaspi (also Arimaspians, Arimaspos, and Arimaspoi;

The Arimaspi were described by

This Aristeas, possessed by

Hyperboreoi, whose territory reaches to the sea. Except for the Hyperboreoi, all these nations (and first the Arimaspoi) are always at war with their neighbors.^[2]

Modern historians speculate on historical identities that may be selectively extracted from the brief account of "Arimaspi". Herodotus recorded a detail recalled from Arimaspea that may have a core in fact: "the Issedones were pushed from their lands by the Arimaspoi, and the Scythians by the Issedones" (iv.13.1). The "sp" in the name suggests^{[citation needed]} that it was mediated through Iranian sources to Greek, indeed in Early Iranian Arimaspi combines Ariama (love) and Aspa (horses). Herodotus or his source seems to have understood the Scythian word as a combination of the roots arima ("one") and spou ("eye") and to have created a mythic image to account for it. Similarity of name and location could identify them with the ancestors of the local Uralic people, the Mari.^{[citation needed]}

It has been suggested that the griffins were inferred from the fossilized bones of Protoceratops.^[4]

The brief report of Herodotus seems to be^[

Mythological background

As philologists have noted, the struggle between the Arimaspi and the griffins has remarkable similarities to

Volci of Etruria and the fifth kurgan of Pazyryk.^[7] A Hellenistic literary rendering of a battle with uncanny guardian "birds of Ares" is in Argonautica

1.

Cheremisin and Zaporozhchenko (1999), following the methodology of Georges Dumézil, attempt to trace parallels in Germanic mythology (Odin and the mead of poetry, the eagle stealing golden apples of eternal youth). They hypothesize that all these stories, Germanic, Scythian, and Greek, reflect a Proto-Indo-European belief about the monsters guarding the entrance to the otherworld, who engage in battles with the birds conveying the souls of the newly dead to the otherworld and returning with a variety of precious gifts symbolizing new life.^[8]

See also

• "Hercules and the Griffin", episode 35

References and notes

1. ^ Rival theories in Antiquity variously locating Hyperboreans and Arimaspi are explored by S. Casson, "The Hyperboreans" The Classical Review 34.1/2 (February - March 1920:1–3); Bolton 1962 places them on the upper Irtysh and on the slopes of the Altai.
2. ^ Herodotus 4.13.1
3. ^ J.L. Myres, "The Wanderings of Io: Aeschylus, Prometheus, 707–869", The Classical Review 60.1 (April 1946:2–4).
4. ^ Adrienne Mayor & Michael Heaney, ‘Griffins and Arimaspeans’ in Folklore, Vol. 104, No. 1/2, 1993, pp. 40–66,
5. ^ Machinsky, D. A. Уникальный сакральный центр III - середины I тыс. до н.э. в Хакасско-Минусинской котловине. // Окуневский сборник. St. Petersburg, 1997:3.
6. ^ The 2nd-century BC tomb "shows the battle of human pygmies with a flock of herons". Ukraine: a concise encyclopaedia, Volume 2, s.v. "Kerch"
7. ^ Сheremisin, D. V. & Zaporozhchenko, A. V. "The "Sacred Centres" of Eurasia and the Legend about the Arimaspi and the Griffins". // Итоги изучения скифской эпохи Алтая и сопредельных территорий Archived 2011-09-29 at the Wayback Machine. Barnaul, 1999:228-231.
8. ^ Сheremisin & Zaporozhchenko (1999)

Further reading

• J. D. P. Bolton, 1962. Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962; reprinted 1992)
• T. Sulimirski, 1970. The Sarmatians (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arimaspi.

• "Arimaspi" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 491.
• "Arimaspians"