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TheArimaspi (alsoArimaspians,Arimaspos, andArimaspoi;Ancient Greek:Ἀριμασπός,Ἀριμασποί) were a legendary tribe ofone-eyed people of northernScythia who lived in the foothills of theRiphean Mountains, variously identified with theUral Mountains or theCarpathians.[1] All tales of their struggles with the gold-guardinggriffins in theHyperborean lands near the cave ofBoreas, the North Wind (Geskleithron), had their origin in a lost work byAristeas, reported inHerodotus.
The Arimaspi were described byAristeas of Proconnesus in his lost archaic poemArimaspea. Proconnesus is a small island in theSea of Marmora near the mouth of theBlack Sea, well situated for hearing travellers' tales of regions far north of the Black Sea. Aristeas narrates in the course of his poem that he was "wrapt in Bacchic fury" when he travelled to the north and saw the Arimaspians, as reported byHerodotus:
This Aristeas, possessed byPhoibos, visited theIssedones; beyond these (he said) live the one-eyed Arimaspoi, beyond whom are theGrypes that guard gold, and beyond these again theHyperboreoi, 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]
Arimaspi and griffins were historical images associated with the outlands of the north: theAeschylanPrometheus Bound (ca 415 BC?), describing the wanderings ofIo, notes that she is not to pass through the north, among the Arimaspi and griffins, but southward.[3] Herodotus, "Father of History", admits the fantastic allure of the edges of the known world: "The most outlying lands, though, as they enclose and wholly surround all the rest of the world, are likely to have those things which we think the finest and the rarest." (Histories iii.116.1) Ignoring the scepticism of Herodotus,Strabo andPliny'sNatural History perpetuated the stories about the northern people who had a single eye in the center of their foreheads and engaged in stealing gold from thegriffins, causing disagreements between the two groups.
Modern historians speculate on historical identities that may be selectively extracted from the brief account of "Arimaspi". Herodotus recorded a detail recalled fromArimaspea that may have a core in fact: "theIssedones were pushed from their lands by the Arimaspoi, and theScythians by the Issedones" (iv.13.1). The "sp" in the name suggests[citation needed] that it was mediated throughIranian sources to Greek, indeed in Early IranianArimaspi combinesAriama (love) andaspa (horses). Herodotus or his source seems to have understood the Scythian word as a combination of the rootsarima ("one") andspou ("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, theMari.[citation needed]
It has been suggested that the griffins were inferred from the fossilized bones ofProtoceratops.[4]
The brief report of Herodotus seems to be[citation needed] very flimsy ground for making unequivocal statements about the historical background out of which the legend emerged. Notwithstanding these reservations,Tadeusz Sulimirski (1970) claims that the Arimaspi were aSarmatian tribe originating in the upper valley of theRiver Irtysh, whileDmitry Machinsky (1997) associates them with a group ofthree-eyedajna figurines from theMinusinsk Depression, traditionally attributed to theAfanasevo andOkunevo cultures of southernSiberia.[5]
In theMy Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode"The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone", Arimaspi is depicted as a goat-like cyclops monster who had stolen the griffons' golden idol centuries ago, but fell to his demise into a deep trench called the Abysmal Abyss. Later, when Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash descend into the Abyss to retrieve the treasure, they find Arimaspi's skull alongside the lost idol.
As philologists have noted, the struggle between the Arimaspi and the griffins has remarkable similarities toHomer's account of thePygmaioi warring withcranes.Michael Rostovtzeff found a rendering of the subject in theVault of Pygmies nearKerch, a territory that used to have a significant Scythian population.[6] Analogous representations have been discovered as far apart as theVolci of Etruria and the fifthkurgan ofPazyryk.[7] A Hellenistic literary rendering of a battle with uncanny guardian "birds of Ares" is inArgonautica 1.
Cheremisin and Zaporozhchenko (1999), following the methodology ofGeorges Dumézil, attempt to trace parallels inGermanic mythology (Odin and themead of poetry, the eagle stealinggolden apples of eternal youth). They hypothesize that all these stories, Germanic, Scythian, and Greek, reflect aProto-Indo-European belief about the monsters guarding the entrance to theotherworld, 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]
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