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1 - Aristeas of Prokonnesos

from Part I - Archaic Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2024

D. Graham J. Shipley
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
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Summary

This chapter presents new, annotated translations of the principal testimonia and fragments of Aristeas of Prokonnesos (archaic period), arranged as six extracts. His lost Arimaspeia, in three books of epic hexameters, told of his journey beyond the Black Sea in the company of Apollo and, some said, in the form of a bird or a disembodied soul. It took him to the Issedones, who told of peoples beyond them: the dangerous, one-eyed Arimaspoi, at war with gold-guarding griffins; the unreachable Hyperboreans, prominent in the mythical geography of the Greeks. The detailed chapter introduction examines Aristeas’ grounding in the Greek experience of the Black Sea, his wider importance across the colonial Greek world, including the far west, and his relationship to Pythagoreanism and Orphism in those parts. Scepticism about Aristeas developed much later; but he is best viewed as a respectable aristocrat from a respected polis (city-state).

Type
Chapter
Information
Geographers of the Ancient Greek World
Selected Texts in Translation
, pp. 109 - 119
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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