Arimaspians and Cyclopes The Mythos of

Arimaspians and Cyclopes:
The Mythos of the One-Eyed Man in Greek and Inner Asian Thought
Jonathan Ratcliffe
Monash University.
Abstract
The enduring presence and intercultural value of the motif of the monocular or one-eyed man in
both Greek and Inner Asian mythic traditions are very significant and often ignored aspects of the
interface between these two cultural spheres. In this discussion I will trace the history of this
phenomenon, and by taking a holistic view of all the available material, will attempt to reassemble
this symbols function within multiple cultural frameworks.
I begin with Greek records of the Inner Asian Arimaspians, analyzing them with reference
to the recurrent one-eyed beings in the Inner Asian tradition found in the works of Chinese and
Indian geographers writing about the nomadic peoples of the steppe regions. I also examine
materials from within the bounds of records made by the nomads themselves for instance, the
thirteenth-century CE Secret History of the Mongols (36) and the living Kyrgyz epic Manas.
Lastly, I ask the all-important question whether the most famous mythic monocular beings in
Classical tradition, the Cyclopes, were also formed under similar intercultural influences.
Scholarly Background
Questions regarding the idea that the Greeks drew upon the traditions of neighboring and
preceding cultures such as the Hittites, Egyptians and Phoenicians in the formation of their own
mythological, religious and historical traditions, are in no way a new idea. Several attempts were
made in this area by scholars during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often received
with unnecessarily negative criticism from peers who held preconceived opinions regarding the
uniqueness and separateness of the foundations of Western culture.1 However, in the past thirty
years, the attempt to retrace the origins and intercultural value of Greek myth has made a spirited
return through the efforts of Bernal (1991, 2001, 2011), Burkert (2004), Lane Fox (2008), Morris
(1992, 2001) and others to examine them in a comparative framework. This has been viewed by
some as iconoclastic.2
In spite of this new activity, little has been furthered, it seemds in relation to comparative
For examples of some good early studies of affinities between Greek and Near Eastern myth, see Brown (1898: 203ff)
and Hooke (1933, 1963). See Mondi (1990: 144), Bernal (1991: 410) and Burkert (2004: 3) for the history of
criticism of such methods, their defense and renewal.
2
Cf. comments by Yurco (1996: 98), Morris (1996: 171) and (Baines 1996: 2728) in Black Athena Revisited.
Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Sino-Platonic Papers, 249 (June 2014)
studies of Greek interactions with the nomadic cultures of Inner Asia. Some notable exceptions,
however, are Kingsley in his work (2011) on the Hyperborean (Avar?) sage Abaris and
investigation of possibilities regarding Inner Asian influence on the formation of Pythagorean
philosophy, and Kim (2009, 2013) in his recent holistic re-analyses of Classical and Chinese
concepts of the barbarian, and the Huns/Xiong-nu and their role in the development of early
Medieval Europe. Mention must also be made of the Sarmatian Hypothesis of Littleton and
Malcor (1994) on the similarities between Ossetian and Arthurian myth through Alanic and
Sarmatian presence in Britain and southern France during the Late Roman Empire, and
Andersons (2003) return to this topic with added emphasis on Scythic mythic parallels.
The greatest comparative work on the Greeks and the myths of the nomadic peoples who
roamed the regions between the borders of Mongolia and the Black Sea Region during the
Archaic and Classical periods of Greek history remains Boltons eponymously titled 1962 opus on
the ancient Greek poet, traveler among the nomads, and devotee of the god Apollo, Aristeas of
Proconnesus. This is a very scholarly tome that gives much emphasis to collating and connecting
Greek records of Inner Asian myth with Chinese and Medieval European records. Bolton himself
drew upon the works of many earlier scholars, such as Alfldi (1933), Dodds (1951: 140ff),
Phillips (1955) and Meuli ([1935] 1975 II. 817ff), who had posited highly original ideas in relation
to perceived Inner Asian shamanic elements in Greek ritual and religion, particularly in relation
to the Greek folkloric figures Aristeas, Abaris and Zalmoxis (see Meuli [1935] 1975: II. 81779;
Eliade [1970] 1995: 3183; Burkert 1963: 23540, 1972: 162ff), who were strongly tied to the
Scythic cultures of the Black Sea region that had emerged from the Inner Asian steppes into the
West Asian and Greek cultural spheres during the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE.
Bolton (1962: 12535), comparatively, eschewed all connections between Aristeas and shamanic
traditions, in order to give preference to the idea that Aristeas was a traveler and as such a recipient
of tales from Inner Asian peoples.
Indeed, one of the main reasons that the overlapping of Inner Asian and Classical myth
has not been sufficiently studied during the recent renewals in comparative myth seems to be that
previous comparative efforts often sought their answers to the question of the nature of Inner
Asian myth outside of the Inner Asian context and with little regard to historicity.3 In order to
3
Bremmer (1987: 3450; 2002b: 3339) who is followed and quoted by Von Struckrad (2003: 10616) and S. West
(2004: 5759) in many ways is the leader of the common contemporary view on Greco-Scythic shamanic influence.
These scholars have strongly criticized the ideas of Rohde (1925), Meuli ([1935] 1975: II. 81779) and Dodds (1951:
140ff) for generalizing Greek wonder workers as shamans and for comparing them to figures in Native American,
Finnish, Inuit and other traditions. They also contend that elements such as the migration of souls from bodies and
other shamanic elements are only attested late in relation to figures such as Aristeas and Abaris and never in relation
to the Scythians directly. On the other hand, Kingsley (1994: 18798; 2011) appears to represent the other side of the
dispute at present, building up highly sophisticated, yet often anachronistic and stretched arguments, far more
ambitious than even the works of Meuli ([1935] 1975: II. 81779) and Dodds (1951: 140ff). Regarding the tangled and
fragmentary traditions on Aristeas and Abaris, both Bremmer (1987: 3450; 2002b: 3339) and Kingsley (2011) seem
to deem certain branches valid and invalid historically on mere whim, and it is extremely difficult to deduce if there is
much reasoning in their choices other than to push pre-conceived agendas on this topic. It is also curious to note that
Bremmer (2006: 938) is quite willing to consider the influence of very disparate Near Eastern scapegoat rituals in

remedy that, in this paper I emphasize both the continuity and the evolution of Inner Asian mythic
traditions. I look at the transmission of ideas between cultural spheres through preconceptions and
even mutual misunderstandings in order to offer a broader overview of the issues in question.
Part 1: The Arimaspians
1. Introducing the Arimaspians
Our investigations into the symbol of the monocular man begin fittingly with one of the earliest and
most important meetings between Greek and Inner Asian myth. This is in regard to the
Arimaspians, a people mentioned in the Greek historian Herodotuss c. 450 BCE Histories (III.
115, IV.13), which drew upon the now lost work, (Arimaspian Matters) 4 of the
previously mentioned poet Aristeas of Proconnesus. Under the influence of the god Apollo,
Aristeas is said to have ventured out into the lands the Greeks considered the North beyond
the Scythian nomads as far as the country of a people called the Issedones (IV. 13,16), another
most likely nomadic people,5 who informed him of the many mythic races that lay just beyond
their borders. The Arimaspians are characterized in the fragments of Aristeas we possess as a real
people, rich in livestock, of very noble character, highly war-like and covered with shaggy hair (Hdt.
III.115, IV.13; Tzetz. Chil. VII. 68692) their only truly remarkable characteristic being the
presence of a single eye in the middle of their foreheads.
It is in the third book of the Histories (116) that Herodotus makes his first mention, albeit
a passing one, of the Arimaspians a race of beings deeply connected to tales of the abundance of
gold in the northern parts of Europe, although he appears utterly unconvinced of the existence
of these mythical one-eyed men:
the formation of the Greek golden fleece legend, but adamantly attempts to refute any question of Inner Asian cultural
influence. However, we must admit that Meuli ([1935] 1975: II. 81779, Dodds (1951: 140ff) and Kingsley (2011)
have gone perhaps a little too far by going outside Inner Asia to other supposedly allied cultures in their approaches,
and they could learn much from the famed universalist Eliade ([1951] 1989: 45) who clearly recognized that some
limit (largely Northeast Asia) must be placed on shamanism as a term, lest it become a catch-all for all primitive
religious experience. Bremmer (1987: 3450; 2002b: 3339) and his followers, on the other hand, would simply
appear to be refusing to answer questions of intercultural influence because of the now unpopular stain of
universalism inherent in the older approaches to these matters. In light of these issues, my propositions remain
wholly focused on connections with the steppe cultures of Inner Asia and the Caucasus, with Aristeas as a traveller into
Inner Asia, not limited to the immediate Greco-Scythian cultural region.
It has been suggested that although the work bears the name of Ariamspeia, it may not have been solely centered on
the Arimaspians (Bolton 1962: 25). Similar titles of other Greek works, titles often not bestowed by the author, but by
later generations in relation to a certain memorable topic in the work, would support this, as in the case of Book Ten
of the Iliad coming to be known as the Dolonea, due to the death of the character Dolon in it. As nearly all the
fragments of the available concern the Arimaspians, conclusions could easily go either way.
4
Bolton (1962: 79) claims we shouldnt assume the Issedones were nomads. If not, who were they? A better argument
could be made, ironically, that the Cimmerians werent nomads, as they are granted several cities, beginning with
Homer (Od. XI.16; Strabo VII.3.6) in Classical sources (see 1993: 30ff for more on other Cimmerian
toponyms). As will be shown, the most reasonable identification for the Issedones is the Wu-sun people.

It seems to be that the northern parts of Europe have the most gold, but how it is
acquired, I do not know and cannot clearly say, and though it is said that the oneeyed Arimaspian people steal it from gryphons, I am not convinced that men who
are in all other facets the same as normal people, excepting their monocularity,
exist at all. (Hdt. III.116)6
In relation to terms such as Europe and the North used by Herodotus (III. 116), we
should note, just as Bolton (1962: 11617) points out, that words such as , often taken
literally as northwards in Herodotuss description of the regions beyond the Scythians (I. 103, III.
116; IV.13, 25.2, 147), seem to mean inland rather than a specific compass point. 7 When the
term Northern or European is used, we must be aware that to the Greeks the borders of the
world were highly generalized and included the lands of the Scythians around the Black Sea, as
well as peoples farther into what we would now call the Inner Asian steppe, including those around
the Caspian Sea, which Herodotus (I.203; IV.45) took, like Europe in general, as indeterminably
landlocked (Ruck 1992: 227; Romm 1994: 34; S. West 2002: 439).8
Journeys to and beyond the early Greek trading centers on the Black Sea, which were first
founded during the late seventh century BCE the same period as the arrival of the Inner Asian
Scythians into this region (Boardman 1964: 248; Natho 2010: 44) appear to have been very rare.
In fact Aristeas remains a unique figure in Greek myth and historiography. No one is attested to
have ventured as far as he did into Inner Asia beyond the Black Sea Scythians either before or
after his time, with perhaps the exception of Maes Titianus, Ptolemys source for his Geography
on these regions during the second century CE, conveyed through the work of Marinus of Tyre
(Ptol. Geog. I.11.7, VI.1416; VIII. 24.35). This rarity could merely be due, however, to the
biases and conservative nature of much Classical geography and literature.9 Thus Herodotus (IV.13)
Hdt. III.116: , ,
, . [2]
, All
translations Ratcliffe (2013) unless specified.
6
Cf. the de Slincourt trans. (1973) for the Penguin Classics and the Godley trans. (2012) for the Loeb Classical
Library, in which north is simply assumed.
8
Such approaches to geography as Herodotuss appear to have been thoroughly qualitative and Hellenocentric, with
Anatolia and mainland Greece and Ionia sitting in the center of the world and blessed not only with civilization, but
also an abundant climate (Romm 1994: 4666). Thus, radiating outwards from this center, the world not only becomes
less known to the Greeks, but also generalized as brutish and climatically harsh, until at the very edges of the world,
perfect peoples such as the Hyperboreans (Pind. Pyth. X. 63ff) and Ethiopians (Il. I. 424425, XXIII. 205, Od. I. 22
24) are found free from the corruption of sophisticated civilization and blessed with simple material abundance.
9
This rarity could merely be the conservative bias of the Classical literary tradition, which appears to have preferred to
treat geography as a literary genre through recounting past ventures rather than emphasising ongoing exploration
(Romm 1994: 36). Aristeas, through his gryphons and Arimaspians and later links to Neo-Platonism, as we will see, is
very much a stock literary figure, and very little is added to our knowledge of him by Hellenistic writers, who regularly
chose to cite him and his Northern wonders (eg. Hellanicus, frag. 178b; Plin. H.N. VI.34, VII.174; Strabo VI.3.56).

writes, making reference to Aristeas, the only known source on the subject of the little information
known on the most distant regions:
Aristeas, the son of Castrobius, from Proconnesus (Marmora) tells us in his poem
that seized by Apollo () 10 he journeyed to the country of the
Issedones, and that beyond the Issedones live the one-eyed Arimaspians, and
beyond them the gryphons which guard the gold, and beyond the gryphons the
Hyperboreans whose [land] goes as far as the sea. All of these nations except the
Hyperboreans, beginning with the Arimaspians, are forever at war with their
neighbours; the Issedones were driven out of their land by the Arimaspians, the
Scythians by the Issedones, and the Cimmerians dwelling by the southern sea,
being pressed upon by the Scythians, left behind their own land. In this way this
[account] does not agree with that of the Scythians regarding their county. (Hdt.
IV.13)11
Following this, we should also note that Herodotus (IV.1625) gives a complex list of
mythic and semi-mythic peoples and the number of days journey (eastwards) between each
one, before finally the Issedones are reached. In fact Herodotus (IV.24.2, 25.12) tells us that the
Olbian Greeks regularly traveled as far as the people just before the Issedones a race of
Alexander in 329 BCE fought with and defeated the Saccae or Sythians at the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) and was offered the
daughter of the ruler of the European Scythians in marriage (Arr. Anab. IV.16, 15). Very little is said, however, about
Greek knowledge of Inner Asian steppe cultures at this point, and thereafter the emphasis in the East is on India
and Bactria.
10
This is a very curious term on which much has been said. Boltons (1962: 13240) study concludes that it would
seem to mean divinely inspired wandering and not divine possession wherein the god Phoebus Apollo operated
through Aristeass body. Dowdens (1980: 491) comments on the entranced poet that Aristeas wouldnt have got far
in such a condition are indeed, as Kingsley (2011: 111 n. 15) maintains, quite staggering in their reductive approach
to the subject matter and appear to spring from Judeo-Christian biases in which sobriety and trance are strictly divided.
Bolton (1962: 13234) also notes that Dodds (1951: 162 n. 37), Phillips (1955) and others seem to have difficulty with
the term and even whether Aristeas performed his journey on foot or by flying and thus without going anywhere
physically. In conclusion, the most fitting answer would seem to be Boltons divinely inspired wandering mediated
through Kingsleys comments that such experiences should not be treated as a dualistic either/or of physical versus
spiritual travel. As S. West (2004: 53) says, perhaps we should treat Aristeas like a pilgrim in search of Apollo, or even
his people, the blessed Hyperboreans beyond the North Wind, as Bolton (1962: esp. 179f) also suggested. See also
comments below on the use of flying as a stylistic aspect of Aristeass work.
Hdt. IV. 13: ,
,
, . [2]
, , ,
, ,
. . This account does
not agree with the Scythians account that is found at the start of Herodotuss fourth book (I-VI), in which the
Scythians claim to be the youngest nation in the world, having obviously adopted a new etiological myth.
11

congenitally bald people, but not as far as the Issedones themselves, who are, however, said to
(for certain) (ibid. 25.2) known to live there. This suggests that by Herodotuss time
in the mid-fifth century, areas as far east as the regions between the Pontic and Caspian steppe
were well known by at least some Greek traders (Olbrycht 1998: 79), but that Aristeass
descriptions because they describe the farthest peoples retained a poignant and preferenced
position due to their uniqueness.
2. Dating Aristeas
Dating the period of Aristeas and his journey is a difficult matter, but one of utmost importance in
attempting to reassemble a context for the entrance of the Arimaspians into Greek myth, and, as
will be shown, for the ongoing presence of similar monocular beings in Inner Asian culture. In
order to fix the inception of Aristeass influence on the Greek mindset, Bolton (1962: 6, 8991)
attempted to square hypothetical notions of the already widespread influence from Aristeass
with one of the earliest records of Greco-Scythian art, the c. 575 CE Kelermes Mirror
from Ukraine, a panel of which appears to feature the image of two hirsute men fighting a gryphon
(see Fig. 1). 12 These figures have been largely identified as Greek imaginings of Arimaspians
(Bolton 1962: 89ff; Boardman 1964: 2601; Jacobson 1995: 1835; Baumer 2012: 174).13 Aristeas,
to the contrary, was not necessarily responsible for such imagery and may have lived and flourished
either prior to or following the creation of this artifact.
12
However, we must be aware that debates on the mirrors dating offer extremely diverse periods placing it anywhere
from earlier than 620 BCE to 520 BCE, with little solid evidence either way (cf. Napier 1986: 100; Neghban et al.
1996: 63; Treister 2001: 70, 244; Tillisch 2008: 87).
13
The Kelermes Mirror appears to bear marks of both Ionian and West Asian artistic stylings, as well as archaic period
Scythic motifs such as panthers, bears and other creatures illustrated in a typically Sibero-Scythic manner (Bolton 1962:
36ff; Napier 1986: 100; Negahban et al. 1996: 63; Treister 2001: 70, 244; Tillisch 2008: 87). Gryphomachies (battles
between men and gryphons) appeared widely hereafter on Black Sea vases in the fourth century BCE for the Scythic
market (Boardman 1964: 26061; Gorbounova 1997: 52934; Jacobson 1995: 18385; Baumer 2012: 174).

Fig.1. Kelermes Mirror, Ukraine. Topmost panel featuring gryphomachy

between gryphon and Arimaspians, c. 575 BCE (image: Bolton 1962: 259).
The Suda (s.v. ), drawing most likely on Apollodorus (FGrH 35 T1; S. West 2004:
45), gives Aristeass life as taking place in the same period as that of the Lydian and Persian rulers
Croesus and Cyrus, but equates this with the fiftieth Olympiad (580577 BCE), which is a time far
too early for the figures in question and is most likely a scribal error (Rohde 1925: 328f; Bolton
1962: 126; S. West 2004: 45). The fifty-eighth Olympiad (548545 BCE) has been proposed as a
more reasonable dating, accepted by Meuli ([1935]1977: II. 857) and S. West (2004: 45ff).
Herodotuss (IV.1415) own belief, in contrast, was that Aristeas had lived some 240 (340?)14 years
before the time of his own writing in the mid-fifth century BCE, which would suggest the early
seventh century BCE. In reference to the available chronology, we should also note that according
to Herodotus, following his disappearance, Aristeas is said to have traveled for seven years before
writing the (IV.15). It is also worth mentioning that Aristeas is said to have later
reappeared in the form of a crow, under instruction by Apollo, in Metampontum in Italy, and a
statue was erected to him to there (IV. 15). The proximity of these last events to Herodotuss own
time remains quite unclear, though it would appear they were regarded as recent (S. West 2004:
446).15
14
One text reads 340 years, which appears incorrect. This number can be cross-referenced with other ancient sources
that drew on Herodotus to show that 240 years was indeed the authors belief (Orig. Cels. III.26; Tz. T. 13). Forrest
(1964) suggests that a generational count was used by Herodotus, and that 180 years is the actual period of time. S.
West (2004: 46) finds this ingenious but not convincing.
Rohde (1925: 329) places this at the date c. 434 BCE in one work, and c. 450 ( idem. 1900: 186 n.1) in another.
However, his approach is very literal and relies on an exact 240-year difference between this event and the date at
which Aristeas first lived and the Cimmerian invasion. As literal as Bolton also tends to be, it is worth agreeing with
him (1962: 199 n. 6) that c. 450 less 240 years is indeed far too early for Proconnesus to even exist! Note also the later
belief of Aristeass visit to Croton and Sicily in Italy (Apollon. Mirab. II ap. Bolton 1962: 211; Cic. Verr. II. 4.128; Plut.
Vit. Rom. XXVIII). The appearance of Aristeas in Italy has been linked to Pythagorean reappropriation of him there
15

These possibilities having been stated, the early seventh century BCE date for Aristeas
suggested by Herodotus must perhaps be refuted, as this is too early even for the foundation of
Proconnesus (first quarter of the seventh century BCE) and Greek settlement around the North
Pontic area in general, which appears to have begun only during the last quarter of the seventh
century BCE (Bolton 1962: 127; Ehrhardt 1983: 3840; S. West 2004: 47). Herodotuss dates are
often quite extreme, including his belief that the poets Hesiod and Homer existed some four
hundred years before his own time, and it would seem likely that Herodotus was relying upon tales
from Cyzicus and Proconnesus that had little concept of how much earlier these supposed events
had taken place (S. West 2004: 458).
The only circumstance supporting a date prior to the middle of the sixth century BCE, as is
evinced by the Suda, is that in Herodotuss description (IV.13 cf. 1112), it appears Aristeas
believed, and for that matter was probably quite correct, that the nomadic Cimmerians dwelled in
the steppes near the Caspian Sea prior to their migration into and invasion of Anatolia, which took
place during the early seventh century BCE (Olbrycht 1998: 756, 83, 94).16 The Cimmerians are
first mentioned in Assyrian annals c. 714 BCE as dwelling to the north of the Urartic Empire in
Georgia and Armenia and defeating its ruler Rus. Next they conquered Phrygia and attacked
Cilicia, and their leader Teushpa was killed by the Assyrians under Esarhaddon c. 679678 BCE.
They then defeated the Lydian king Gyges and took Sardis c. 644 CBE before finally being
defeated by Gygess descendant Alyattes c. 636625 BCE, and thereafter appear to have been
absorbed into the local Anatolian population.17
In order to rationalize this, perhaps Aristeas simply made use of older knowledge of these
events, and there is even the possibility that his domino effect catalog of Inner Asian nomadic
tribes displacing one another, from the Arimaspians to the Scythians and Cimmerians, was
possibly as early as the fifth century BCE, the strongest link with Pythagoreanism being his ability to appear in two
places at once also accredited to Pythagoras (Porph. Vit. Pyth. 29; Iamb. Vit. Pyth. 135ff). See Bolton (1962: 142ff)
and Kingsley (2011) on Aristeas and Abaris in Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean thought.
16
The Cimmerians are first attested by Near Eastern sources as dwelling in what is now a place near Colchis (
1993: 49; Ivanik 1993; 1996: 30) never in the northern regions of the Black Sea coast, as Greek sources appear to
have believed. Herodotus (I.103) appears to have conflated Aristeass account of their migration through the Caucasus
with Greek folkloric views that read certain tombs and landmarks in the North Pontic area as connected with the
Cimmerians (cf. Hdt. IV.1112). By the time of Greek settlement in the North Pontic region (the end of the seventh
century BCE onwards), the Cimmerians had already disappeared from history (Olbrycht 1998: 8082). However,
Olbrychts (ibid.) view that this moving of the Cimmerians to the North Pontic region was due to an attempt to locate
the Cimmerians of Homer somewhere would seem to sit in need of proper explanation. Although M. L. West
(2005: 5456) and others (Gladstone 1858: 343; Von Baer 1873: 337; Heubeck 1989: 70) have put forward some
compelling arguments that the Homeric Cimmerians dark homeland in the far north and close proximity to the
underworld in the Odyssey (Hom. Od. XI. 1317) suggests their presence in the Sea of Azov with its gloomy tarpits,
perhaps it should be considered that the Greeks simply knew of Cimmerian presence in Georgia and collapsed it with
that of nomadic peoples further north. See Sworder (2008: 16ff) on the cosmological significance of Homers
placement of the Cimmerians.
17
See Hdt.( I.16; IV.112); Polyaenus (VII.2.1); Diakonoff (1985: 9596, 11619); Olbrycht (1998: 9093) on these
events and chronology.

deliberately assembled to give an overall picture of the etiological history of Inner Asian
movements for his audience.18 Such a catalog may also have been represented in his work from an
aerial perspective, as is suggested by Maximus of Tyres (X.2f, cf. XXXVIII.3c-f) description of
Aristeas flying out of his body to view the entire world below:
The body of the man from Proconnesus lay there breathing, but weakly and close
to death. However, his spirit, having left his body, travelled up into the upper air
like a bird, and having seen everything below: the earth and the sea and the rivers
and cities and the nations of men, and sufferings and the nature of all things, it
again entered his body and woke him, as if it were treating it like an instrument, and
he spoke of each of the things that he had seen and heard in turn. (Max. Tyr.
X.2f)19
As suggested by S. West (2004: 557), this aerial aspect may have been used by the poet
stylistically, through an appeal to his patron Apollo in order to represent these events to his
audience from an omniscient perspective.20 Thus, the could well have been a synthesis
Note the domino catalog in Suda s.v. (including the Herodotean gryphons!) which appears to be an
attempt to conflate the Hyperborean Scythian figure Abaris with the name of the sixth century CE Avars. Kingsleys
(2011) reliance on not noticing that this is a scribal error and belief that there is no cross-reference between these two
pieces of information in order to suggest the existence of Avars in the archaic period is patently absurd. The final
comment in this entry that Abaris and Avars possess the same word structure is apparently a very rare example of
lexical apocope (the loss of final sounds resulting in the nominative singular and accusative plural sharing the same
form), and the term is never found for Avar outside this section and the Suda entry on the Bulgars. Even if the catalog
of domino migrations recorded here is a possible fragment of Priscus (frag. 30), suggesting that fifth-century Greeks
were aware of the Avars (prior to any Avar migration, see Theoph. Sim. Hist. I. 6), this section appears to have been
severely cut down (Mnchen-Helfen 1973: 436), both in the Suda and in Constantine Porpyrogenituss de
Legationibus (p. 74) where it occurs in situ. It is most likely an anachronistic product of a later period, perhaps even of
Porphyrogenitus himself and his scribes, whose connection with both Priscus and the Suda is troubled by his medial
involvement (Cameron 1985: 22223). See Pohl (1998: 18) and Szdeczky-Kardoss (1990: 206) for examples of
soberly noticing this long unrefuted and irrational idea of Abaris = Avar, which appears to begin in modern scholarship
with Latham (1856: 34950) and his siting of the Avars in Antiquity inexplicably in Tobol. Note also that a similar link
between Abaris and Avars was made independent of the Suda in Bonfinis (Decades, p. 11) fifteenth-century attempt
to legitimize M. Corvinus, the king of Hungary, by connecting his ancestry with just about everything in Book IV of
Herodotuss Histories. Kingsley (2011: 92 n. 3) mentions the Suda, Bonfini and Latham as his references, but how
they are supposed to support his argument in any discernable manner remains mystifying.
18
Max. Tyr. X.2f: ,

, , , , , ,
, , , ,
, , , .
19
20
S. West (2004: 55) deftly notes important precursors of this literary omniscience in reference to Apollo and the
Muses, such as the appeal by the Homeric poet in the Iliad (II.484f) to give a proper account during the catalog of
ships; Odysseuss suggestion that Demodocus could only have known of Odysseuss adventures thanks to Apollo ( Od.
VIII.488) and Hesiods (Erg. 662) appeals to the Muses to aid him in describing seafaring, when he knows little of it.
None of this should be taken to indicate that Aristeas just did not make the journey, and rather simply invented it. The

of both older and contemporary information on Inner Asia, much the same as the account from
Herodotus that used Aristeas as well as such works as Hecataeus of Miletuss fifth-century BCE
account of the Scythians (Olbrycht 1998: 74ff). In light of all this, the mid-sixth century BCE would
seem thoroughly appropriate for Aristeas, and, as will be shown, both the mix of Inner Asian and
Greek heritage available to him as a traveler and Greek poet appears to have been synthesized in
his work on the Arimaspians. As will also be considered later in this article, the aerial perspective
and traveling out of the body in Maximus also seems to possess some strong links with Inner Asian
religious traditions; this has already been dealt with by several scholars.
3. Issedones and Scythians on the Arimaspasians
In spite of the fact that Aristeas did not reach the mythic gryphons or Arimaspians themselves,
Herodotus (IV.13,16,26) remains adamant that Aristeas did in fact visit the people called the
Issedones or Issedoi, who spoke of both of these as just beyond their own country. For this reason
it is vital to ask what function the myth of the monocular Arimaspians possessed within the
Issedone culture. The descriptions we have of the cannibalistic Issedonian funerary customs, their
gilding of the skulls of the dead,21 and the equality of their men and women22 in Herodotus (IV.26
27) suggest that they were very much a real people, and one actually visited by Aristeas, in a
journey clearly descibed as out beyond the Scythians of the Black Sea region, into the center of
the Inner Asian steppe heartland.
The Issedones may have in fact been the nomadic Wu-sun people of Chinese records who
dwelt most likely along the Ili River between what is now Dzungaria and Kazakhstan (Tomaschek
1889: cxvi-cxvii; Sitwell 1984: 180),23 though such peoples are only mentioned from the second
matter in question is that of style, and it does not have anything to say regarding questions of Aristeass mystical flight
or traveling. See n. 9 above.
21
This practice should perhaps not be confused with the more widely attested ancient Inner Asian custom of making
cups from the skulls of enemies, found among the Scythians (Plat. Euthyd. 299) and Xiong-nu (Sima Qian Shi Ji 123).
22
We should note that Herodotus (IV.11016) links a myth of cross-breeding between Scythians and Amazons as an
etiological explanation of the war-like nature of the nomadic Sauromatae women. Westberg (1904: 18388) uses this
to suggest that the Issedones were actually Sauromatae. However, warrior women in Inner Asia, both as reality and
myth, may have been far more widely spread than merely the Sauromatae (Bolton 1962: 79). For the presence of such
beings in Indian myths of Inner Asia, see Bhat Sahit XIV. 2127; cf. Plin. H.N. VI.19). We should also note that
Herodotus early in his text says that the Issedones (I.2023) and Messagatae share many customs in common, but this
is not enlarged upon by the writer.
We should note the existence of Issedone Serica and Scythica in Ptolemys Geographia (VI.146; VIII.24.35).
However, whether this naming merely reflected attempts to square information with already existing Greek
geographical conventions going back to Aristeas, or further interactions with the Issedones, remains opaque. Modern
views such as Mayor and Heaneys (1993: 45), in which the Issedones are regarded as the outermost of the Scythians
would seem equally general. Herodotus and Aristeas clearly differentiate the two peoples from one another.
Suggestions that the Issedones were Tibetans, simply due to similarities inherent in the eating of ones deceased
parents (Minns 1913: 104ff), would seem questionable. The idea that they were a Sarmatian tribe is a possibility
(Olbrycht 1998: 74), but that says nothing regarding their location during the seventh or early sixth century BCE.
23
10

century BCE in connection with the exploration of the western regions undertaken by Zhang
Qian for the Han emperor Wu-di (Sima Qian Shi Ji 1972.3168; Jila 2006: 162).24 However, in
support of such a notion as equating the Issedones and the Wu-sun, the name of the Wu-sun may
have been pronounced as something akin to asmen by the Chinese in antiquity (Zuev 2002: 23),
which may explain the transcription of the name of the Issedones variously as ,
, (Steph. Byz. s. ; cf. Bolton 1962: 184 n. 1) in Greek records. It is
also vital to mention here that the name Wu-sun literally indicates the totemic-sounding
grandsons of the crow in Chinese (Pulleyblank 1970: 156; Hulsew 1979: 215 n. 805), 25 and a
myth of their founder Kun-mos benefaction by a wolf and crow was recorded in relation to the
Wu-sun by Sima Qian (Shi Ji 1972.3168) during Zhang Qians travels among them. Aristeass
curious manifestation in the form of a crow, to travel with Apollo (Hdt. IV.15 cf. Plin. H.N.
VII.174), as mentioned above, and the ongoing patronage of crows and wolves as the sacred
servants of the modern Western Mongol deity Han Hormazd Tenger (Jila 2006: 1638), may link
both myths back to cultural connections with the Wu-sun people.
Just as important is the fact that the other details we possess concerning the Arimaspians
and the influence of Aristeass appear to paint these monocular beings as fearsome
and mighty most likely because these descriptions had come from the Issedones or other
nomads themselves, who we are told migrated because of Arimaspian encroachment on their own
territory (Hdt. IV.13). The earliest extant reference to Arimaspians, besides Herodotus, is in
Aeschyluss contemporary mid-fifth-century BCE Prometheus Bound, which appears to have
made use of the . In it images of Arimaspian herdsmen, their close connection with the
gryphons, and other fearsome wonders of the far north of the world (including its plentiful gold)
are conjured up for poetic effect:
The sharp-toothed,26 unbarking hounds of Zeus,
The gryphons beware them, and also the one-eyed cavalry horde
24
In support of the idea of a Greek having traveled so far, we should note the fact that the Cimmerians in Aristeass
domino effect catalog were said to have lived by a southern sea (Hdt. IV. 13) (often mistranslated as the Black Sea,
which is never called that; cf. the de Slincourt trans. in the Penguin Classics; How and Wells [1912] 1989 ad Hdt.
IV.13.2), which would most likely be the Caspian than any other possibility (Olbrycht 1998: 76). If Boltons (1962: 42
44) suggestions are to be trusted, that Aristeas was responsible for the Scythian origin legend of Colaxis in Herodotus
(IV.57), as is attested by a Scythian rulers name found in Alcman (fr. 1.59) in relation to a horse, then he may have
known the Scythian language well enough to travel with relative ease. Momiglianos (1975: 8) comments that no Greek
would have bothered to learn such languages assumes rather a lot. As Kingsley (2011: 150 n.26) has pointed out, using
the comments of Miller (2004: 132), Proconnesus is on the Black Sea and was synonymous with its reputation as a
multilingual and multi-cultural region famous for generating interpreters. S. Wests (2004: 5460) comments about the
harsh weather of Inner Asia as an argument against Aristeass journey would seem a bit weak at best.
25
Pulleyblanks (1970: 156) suggested reading for their ethnonym is Indo-Iranic term Avin (the horsemen), supported
by Beckwith (2011: 376), and Zuev (2002: 23), comparatively, suggests that asman (Wu-sun) was from an Iranian word
meaning sky, but gives no evidence for this. Rather, regardless of the actual name of the Wu-sun people, asmen
appears at very least a phonetic transcription of the name (Beckwith 2011: 366 n. 12).
26
Liddel and Scott ([1898] 2008: 561 ) give the term here as sharp-toothed, sharp-fanged and note that,
11

Of the Arimaspians, who dwell by the font

Of Ploutons stream, which flows with gold.
Do not approach them. (Aesch. PV. 8036)27
As to the fearsomeness of the Arimaspians, in a passage recorded by the eleventh-century
CE Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes, we also hear the following, in which the Arimaspians are
described as a herding people, rich in animals, rather like Homers Pylian lords in the Iliad (Hom.
Il. IX. 154, 296),28 and quite warlike. Tzetzess fragment appears to be the only new information
from the that is not merely epitomized from Herodotus or Aeschylus concerning the
Arimaspians following the texts destruction (Bowra 1956: 110; Bolton 1962: 89; Skinner 2012:
128).29 From ancient anecdotal evidence this appears to have been around the third century BCE
(Gell. NA. IX. 4. 14; Dion. Hal. Thuc. 23). The fragment reads:
Aristeas says in his :
The Issedones, glorying in their long hair,
Also [say]30 that there are men who neighbour them,
Up above Boreas (the north wind),
Warriors many in number and powerful,
Rich in horses and possessing many herds of cattle.
They have a single eye in the middle of their fair forehead(s),
They are shaggy with hair, and the toughest of all men. (Tzetz. Chil. VII. 68692)31
in relation to a sword, it is also found to mean sharp edged. None of this language suggests that the gryphons of
Aristeas possessed beaks. This will be elaborated below.
Aesch. PV. 8037:
,
,
.
.
27
28
Premonetary animal wealth was held in high regard among the Greeks from early times and as trade progressed was
most likely associated with an antiquated, yet heroic measurement of good fortune and abundance (Austin and VidalNarquet 1981: 196).
29
There is also another major fragment of Aristeas work found in Longinus style-guide On the Sublime (X.4). This is
the description of a terrifying storm at sea, which Longinus contrasts with an episode of Homer (Il. XV.624f) in order
to show the success of the latter and weaknesses of Aristeas. However, this fragment is not entirely relevant for this
discussion.
This is reading the syntactically incomprehensible (them [acc.]) as (they say), as suggested by Bowra (1956:
110) and accepted by Bolton (1962: 89) and Skinner (2012: 128 n. 17).
30
Tz. Chil. VII. 68692:

/
, ,
31
12

In relation to the overall positive description of the Arimaspians in this fragment, we

should particularly note that their foreheads are described as fair (Tz. Chil. VII. 691), which
would appear to be an extremely curious choice of words, given the beings hairiness and
monocularity. As Romm (1994: 6970; 1996: 1278) has suggested on multiple occasions, this
may be an ironic or proto-Cynic use of distant peoples by Aristeas as noble in order to
undermine Greek conceptions of conventional civilization and beauty. This may certainly have
been the case to some extent in estimating how these ideas were received by a Greek audience, but
as to the intention of the Issedones themselves, we must discuss one key suggestion that has been
made regarding the battles between Arimaspians and gryphons and Aristeass and Herodotuss
(IV.13) citations of these Arimaspians as the etiological catalyst for the migration of the Issedones,
Scythians and Cimmerians. This is that the tales told to Aristeas represented a nomadic
mythologizing on the part of the Issedones of distant rumors of the fall of the wealthy Western
Zhou dynasty (827771 BCE) (gold-guarding gryphons) in the early eighth century BCE to
Xianyun (Hsien-yn) and Xi Rong (Hsi-Jung) invaders (mighty Arimaspians) from the Northern
Regions (Vilamjo 1999: 534).32
It should be emphasized here that the Xianyun do not appear to have been pastoral
nomads, but rather are an ethnically indeterminable series of agro-pastoral cultures that fought in
chariots, rather like the late Bronze Age Zhou dynasty itself (Li 2006: 1425; Di Cosmo 1999:
920ff, 2002: 102ff). However, as Di Cosmo (1999: 992) says: their military pressure on the Zhou
borders might be attributed to unrecorded events taking place in the north that set a large number
of people in motion and that may be related to the appearance of pastoral nomads. Thus it may
not be that the Xianyun and the Zhou were directly being mythologized as Arimaspians and
gryphons, but rather that general state formation in the eastern steppes and surrounding China,
seen from the distance and with the lack of complex detail available to the Issedones, led to their
rationalizing the cause as pre-existing monstrosities from Inner Asian folklore and myths of mythic
heroes pillaging riches from monsters. From this we might therefore suggest that the rise of the first
nomadic armies in the Inner Asian steppe, which led to the migrations Aristeas and subsequently
Herodotus recorded, are steeped in the nomadic etiological mythologizing of these events. It is
very difficult in this case to separate historical fact from cultural belief. In a similar way Boltons
(1962: 100f) theory that Aristeas may have mistaken Issedonian tales of the settled, peaceful and
agrarian later Eastern Zhou dynasty for a distant perfect people at the borders of the world in
, .
,
<> , .
32
See Di Cosmo (1999: 920ff) for the best available study on the Xianyun, which links their emergence with that of the
rise of nomadism in Inner Asian pushing them eastward. Minns (1913: 11314) curiously notes that Aristeass journey,
like the later travels of Zemarchus and Maniakh among the Gktrks, and Marco Polo and Carpini to the Mongol
court were undertaken during periods of dominance by nomad confederations, allowing ease of travel through Inner
Asia. Aristeas is merely the first, making his journey during the trade networks of the Scythic confederations of
nomads.
13

Greek thought - the Hyperboreans,33 also highlights the importance of the preconceived values
and beliefs at work when two cultures communicate and attempt to extrapolate historical and
geographical constructs from the others worldview.
At this point we should also consider Heaneys (1993: 54ff) theory that the Arimaspians are
the Almas/Almasty, the hairy, yeti-type wild men widespread throughout living Inner Asian
folklore. Indeed Heaneys (1993: 59) Mongolian etymological backtracking would seem sound:
Arimasp- becomes Almas through the loss of the final p, a letter present in the Turkic and some
Mongolic languages lost before Ancient Mongolian (c. 1000 CE), and transformed into the dental
t, in the Kazakh term for the creature; the r becomes an l; and the medial i is lost. Like
the Arimaspians, the modern Almas/Almasty are indeed often characterized as hairy (Heaney
1993: 56ff). Despite this, Heaney utterly ignores questions of monocularity in relation to these
beings, and it does not seem to be featured as part of the Almas myth. This would seem
particularly crucial for the matter in hand. Rather, there are monocular demons found in Khalkha
and Buriat myth called ada, which are empahtically one-eyed and prey especially on children,
though they are never associated with the Almas to my knowledge.34 Making such direct links as
these between the Arimaspians and Almas also ignores the fact that the Arimaspians appear to
have been regarded by the Issedones with much respect (Tzetz. Chil. VII. 68692). Comparatively
the Almas is regarded as a monster still a name synonymous in modern myth with one who
steals and murders children (Heaney 1993: 54ff). While we cannot deny the possibility that
elements of the Arimaspians, including their name, may have become the basis for the Almas, as
will be shown in Section 5, the ongoing presence of monocular beings in Inner Asian folklore
seems to indicate that other aspects could also survive, and that the evolution of symbols is a
complex and multi-faceted one.35
33
The Hyperboreans indeed already existed before Aristeas, as is evinced by their being mentioned in a seventhcentury Hesiodic fragment (Cata. frag. 40a), and connections with Apollo as their lawgiver in the sixth (Alcaeus fr. 307),
but the development of the Hyperboreans as a blessed and perfect people only seems to come to fruition with Pindars
tenth Pythian Ode (c. 498 BCE), the majority of the material of which seems far too highly original not to warrant
precursors. Curiously, Origen (Cels. III. 26) puts both Herodotus and Pindar on equal footing regarding information
on Aristeas, which would seem to suggest strongly the possibility that there existed during his time solid evidence of
Aristeass influence on Pindars works, such as in reference to the Hyperboreans. From Herodotuss time we should
note that the idea of the Hyperboreans being vegetarians seems to have already existed (Hellanicus fr. 187b), but that
the Scythians seemed to have known nothing of the Hyperboreans (IV.32) suggesting that they were very much a
Greek geographical invention, possibly mediated through Aristeas and Issedonic stories of Chinese agricultural
abundance.
34
The ada are sometimes associated with the diverse selection of infanticidal, shape changing Tibetan monsters called
the gdon (Sarkzi 1992: 137-8 n. 49; Birtalan 2006: 255). None of the gdon seem to be monocular at all (Schwieger
2010: 334). Often the ada are female and sometimes they are also said to have a singular tooth as well (Birtalan 2006:
253), as does the grandmother of monsters in the Buryat Ekhirit-Bulagat Geser cycle (Lrincz 1974: 83). The ada are
seen to come down from the eastern heavens by the Buriats, a region synonymous with malificent forces (Birtalan
2006: 253-5).
35
We should also mention some other fairly weak rationalizations, such as that the Arimaspians were one-eyed
because they were squinting archers, which goes back to classical scholiasts (Eustath. ad. Aesch. PV. Aesch. Comment.
ad Dionysii Pereges V.31). However, the Arimaspians are never explicitly or implicitly connected with use of the bow.
14

We should also note that Herodotus himself gives quite an interesting, albeit most likely
untrustworthy etymology for the Arimaspians, 36 though its context may have some useful
repercussions. Following a description of the Issedone culture (Hdt. IV.26.2), we hear regarding
what lies beyond their territory:
But as to is what is north of them, it is the Issedones who tell the tales of one-eyed
men and the gryphons that guard the gold. The Scythians have passed them on to
the rest of us, and thus we call the one-eyed men by the Scythian name
Arimaspians arima being the Scythian word for one and spu the word for eye.
(Hdt. IV.27) 37
The question of Scythian knowledge of such beings and the application of the Arimaspian
name to them, is very intriguing, because, although, as Bolton (1962: 7) suggests, by the fifth
century BCE, the Greeks may well have introduced the Arimaspians to the Scythians through
artistic works such as the previously mentioned Greco-Scythian Kelermes Mirror, there is a
profound discrepancy between the artistic and literary versions of the Arimaspian and the gryphon.
The most important fact is that the Arimaspians are never represented as monocular in Greek or
Greco-Scythic art not even in a single instance 38 and this facet is of course the matter in
question regarding Herodotuss claim that the Scythians spoke about the Arimaspians and their
single eye and passed this on emphatically removing the uniqueness of Aristeass encounter with
the Issedones as the single source for this information. In defense of the reliability of the
Another is the rather amusing notion that they were miners with lamps on their helmets (Phillips 1955: 17374;
Bolton 1962: 8385). Lastly there are the utterly unconvincing attempts to connect the tiny rodent, the jerboa, with the
gryphon because of its tendencies to excavate gold-rich dust (Minns 1913: 6, 113). Most recently Heaney has been
quoted in an article in 2010 (Vergano USA Today, 16/08/2010), following the discovery of evidence of a new hominid
species from Inner Asia that was contemporary with both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, as positing the view that
the Almas could be the remainder of folk memories of such creatures. This would seem an incredibly long time for
such folk memories to survive, compared with human tendencies to animate nature with humanoid monsters. Either
way the symbol of monocularity is still being ignored.
Other suggestions are the supposedly Mongolian rm dk (Laufer 1908: 452), which is not Mongolian at all, and
appears, in fact, to be Orkhon Trkic, and affinities with the Afghan tribal name Arimaspi (Tomaschek 1889: 755),
which means wild horses. Bailey (1979: 8) and Marquart (1905: 9092) claim that their name means lone-horse.
See Pirart (1998: 23960) and Vilamjo (1999: 49 n. 12) for full listings of etymological arguments.
36
Hdt. IV. 27: ,

: ,
:
, .
37
38
I have checked all known images of Arimaspians in Greek art available. As Bolton (1962: 5) claims, they are never
monocular, but tend to be represented as generic Scythian warriors engaged in combat with the gryphons. See note
below on the Cyclopes sharing in this same absence of monocularity in art. The absence of such an important bodily
peculiarity as this may be connected with the same phenomenon as the fact that the Amazons are never illustrated in
art with only a single breast, the Greek etymology being a-mazon (without a breast), due to a hyperdeveloped Greek
sense of form in the visual arts (Paglia 1990: 77).
15

information available to Herodotus regarding Scythic beliefs, we should note that other legendary
peoples mentioned by Aristeas and then cited by Herodotus (IV.32), such as the Hyperboreans,
also found in the Aristean catalog of distant peoples, are stated to have been utterly unknown to
the Scythians. Thus there is a possibility that the Arimaspians or one eyed-beings of a similar sort
may have been more widely known than as the result of a single meeting between Aristeas and the
distant Issedones. This will be discussed in detail in relation to the complex of Scythian and
Thracian cultures in relation to the Cyclopes in the second half of this study.
4. The Gryphon and Its Complexity
First, however, in order to deepen our understanding of the role of the Arimaspians among the
Issedones, Scythians, and Greeks, we must also discuss the intercultural value of their nemesis, the
gryphon, and the difficulties implicit in unraveling its nature and development from multiple
perspectives.
The gryphon is perhaps one of the most curious folkloric images of antiquity. We may
indeed note the existence of gryphon-type eagle-headed quadrupeds with small wings in
Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician and Mycenaean art from the fourth millennium BCE
onwards sometimes lying in repose, sometimes being hunted, and sometimes illustrated in single
combat with a heroic human figure (Goldman 1960: 31928; Bolton 1962: 87ff). Some of these
eagle-gryphon figures even appear in early Scythic art, most likely due to trade with Persia and
Western Asia (Phillips 1955: Mayor 1993: 45f, 2001: 23). However, the gryphon that was to
develop among the Greeks in connection with the Black Sea region and Scythic nomads dwelling
there from the late seventh century BCE onwards, is a thoroughly different entity, which, while
drawing upon aspects of the Near Eastern gryphon figure, remain unique in that they possessed
pointed ears and a curved eagles beak (Phillips 1955: 172; Bolton 1962: 87ff; Mayor 1991: 16ff;
1993: 45f, 2001: 23f).39
This imagining of the Greco-Scythian eagle-gryphon appears to have been a creation of
Ionian artists trading along the Black Sea region, such as we see with the previously mentioned
Kelermes mirror. In attempting to appeal to a Scythic audience, the artists employed the image of
the gryphon, presumed to be Scythic, perhaps through the stories (similar to those told to Aristeas
by the Issedones) passed on by Scythic peoples from around the Black Sea. Thus the images were
envisioned as Scythic, but through a Greek cultural lens. Following this the gryphon enjoyed a long
history of reappropriation across the steppe, not as a beast shown in combat with men, as the
Greeks tended to employ it, but as a beast pictured attacking animals such as elk. This imagery can
be found even as far away as Mongolia among the Xiong-nu by the first century CE (Phillips 1955:
Even the term gryphon or Greek is open to debate. It could be a term cognate with English grab and
similar Old Persian grab- or it could have already been an existing Near Eastern term for gryphon-type creatures with
their origins in the Hebrew cherub (Bolton 1962: 89ff). We cannot know whether the Issedones called their monster
this, whether they possessed a name similar to pre-existing Near Eastern monsters already termed gryphons, or even
whether the term was of Near Eastern origin and the monsters of the Issedones were merely labeled under this term
by the Greeks without regard to the original Issedone term.
39
16

172; Bolton 1962: 94; Ishjamts 1999: 1601). Interactions with the Greeks and the manufacture of
luxury Greco-Scythian art most likely instituted the symbol of the Greek gryphon as a mark of
elites in Inner Asia, since they were buried with that image. Such intercultural developments as
these are what Burkert (2004: 4) describes aptly in his studies of Greek and Near Eastern myth as
progress through misunderstanding the process by which cultures interacted and borrowed
from one another through the lens of their own preconceptions.
To examine the nature of the original gold-guarding creatures labeled gryphons by Aristeas,
however, we must return to the description of this beast in our early literary sources on the
, in which they are described merely as sharp-mouthed dog-like quadrupeds without
any discernible birdlike features (Aesch. PV. 8036). Liddell and Scott ([1898] 2008: 561) give the
term used for their maws as sharp-toothed, sharp-fanged, and there is no reference to the
possession of beaks, as translators often imagine (Smyth 1926; Vellacott [1961] 2003).40 For that
matter, while wings are common in artistic representations of all forms of gryphons, due to a basis
in Near Eastern artistic influence, the monster described to Aristeas, and known to such writers as
Herodotus and Aeschylus through the , was perhaps a slightly different entity.
At this point we should seriously consider the main thesis put forward by Mayor (1991,
1993, 1994, 2001: 1632), that the gryphon in Inner Asian lore has its basis in dinosaur skeletons,
especially those of the beaked protoceratopians, common throughout the gold-rich Altai regions of
Mongolia and Siberia. However, while the protoceratopians are indeed perhaps the closest one
might come to finding any kind of beaked quadruped in nature, the obvious assumption is that the
original Issedone animal was beaked, which our sources do not attest. Beaks, wings, pointed ears,
and descriptions of weaving nests of gold on the ground in which the animal protected its eggs, are
found in literary records only much later, after centuries of exposure to the birdlike artistic
imaginings of the gryphon in art (Paus. I.24.6; Plin. H.N. VI.34, VII.174; Ael. Hist. An. IV.27),
long after the destruction of the work of Aristeas, around the third century BCE, as mentioned
above.
These later gryphons are epitomized in Aelians (IV.27) telling description of the beast, in
his own words, exactly as the artists describe it, when he writes of a witness who saw the creature
in Bactria; Pliny (Plin. H.N. VI.34, VII.174) and Strabo (XV.1.57) appear also to draw upon
Hellenistic geographers who had moved the creature towards India in their own descriptions of the
gryphon. This appears to have been the period at which more avine facets came to be added to the
animal in literature. We should note the Indian gryphons of Philostratus (Vit. Apoll. III.48), which
do not have wings, but instead skin flaps which allow these predatory quadrupeds to jump long
distances. This suggests that there was a dissonance in the ancient world when it came to conflating
the literary and artistic images of this creature. The finding of protoceratopian skeletons in the
Altai region near preserved nests of fossilized eggs and gold deposits, and similarities to some
extent between protoceratopians frills and the gryphons wings in art have given Mayors (1991:
Cf. the same term used for the gadfly that bothers Io on her wanderings at line 674 in Prometheus Bound. In
Aristophaness Birds (244) the term is also used to describe a biting fly. In Euripides (Suppl. 1206) it is used to
describe the edge of a sword.
40
17

1641; 1993: 4066; 1994: 5358, 2001: 1632) theories much credence in both palaeontological
circles and popular culture. 41 However, this still assumes that the avine qualities ascribed to the
beast by artists and writers at a later date were possessed originally by Aristeass and the Issedones
animal. In short, Mayor is fundamentally dependent upon the gryphon as depicted by Near
Eastern-based artistic tradition, without due attention to textual history. We should also recall that
the evidence we possess, from the Classical geographers, poets, historians and collectors of folklore,
was very much centered on the already existing available information within the Greek cultural
sphere, and has very little to say in relation to the myths of the Scythians or Inner Asian nomadic
peoples following Herodotuss time.42 Thus it would seem most reasonable to conclude that it was
the gryphon of the visual arts and its conflation with the wonder-tales of India that informed the
later literary gryphons more than the works of Aristeas through Aeschylus or Herodotus. If we
possessed more fragments of Aristeass work or knowledge of ancient Inner Asian monsters, then
reassembling the original monster Inner Asian monster dubbed gryphon and its context would
be a far easier task. Mayor (1993: 45ff) has deftly noted the strange images of unknown
quadrupeds on the tattooed nomad ruler buried at Pazyryk in the Altai region (fifth c. BCE), and
she has suggested that such creatures are the best available option for the mythic creatures
described to Aristeas from within the framework of contemporary Inner Asian myth. If there was
more information available then perhaps it would be possible to make other suggestions.For now,
however, we are not able to say much more on this, other than it appears to have acted as a foil for
the Arimaspians, and perhaps even a metaphor for the difficulty involved in pillaging and
procuring gold, such as in the etiological aspects of the Xian-yun theory discussed above, rather
than necessarily through the direct act of having to mine it.43
41
For example see: Dodson (1996: 23034); Eberthart (2002: 21617); American Museum of Natural
History:http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/mythic-creatures/land-creatures-of-the-earth/griffin-bones.
Some exceptions include Plutarchs myth of Scilurus and his sons (Mor. 174f, 511c), and Pompeius Troguss origin
myth of the royal Scythians (Just. Epit. II.4), though these may have only been retellings from earlier works we no
longer possess. Lucian, however, gives us a curious instance in his dialogue Toxaris (17, 4250), in which a Scythian
informs the Athenian Mnesippus of a number of Scythian tales very much like Greek ones. Although these could be
taken to be an invention on Lucians part, scholars have remarked that one of the stories, concerning a cheated lover
helped out by two friends and the recovering of a stolen princess, appears very similar to an episode in the Georgian
Knight in Panthers Skin (Anderson 2003: 2123, App. IV). To the contrary, even when Ovid was exiled to Tomis
and supposedly learned the Getic language (Ex Pont. IV. 13. 1722), his descriptions of Getic and Scythic culture are
somewhat generic and hearken back to standard classical motifs such as comparing the Getae to Laestrygonians and
anachronistic over-usage of the term Scythian (Ex Pont. I.1.79, IV. 10. 2123; Gaertner 2005: 18), and have even
provoked conspiratorial suggestions that he never was exiled to Scythia at all due to the somewhat unrealistic nature
of his description of these cultures (Sorley 1956: 37). Rather we should realize that Ovid merely kept himself to the
pre-existing literary idiom on Northern peoples. The term Scythian remained anachronistically in use until
Byzantine times (cf. Theo. Simo. Hist. VII.8.4 = Avars; Maur. Strat. p. 116= Avars, Bulgars; C. Porph. De Admin.
XIII.25, XLIII.2; LIII.126, 129 = Bulgars, Khazars, Trks), further cementing the backward-looking attitudes of the
Classical tradition to their nomad neighbours.
42
43
Cf. Bartsch 1987 for the history of the gryphon and the Arimaspian battle as a metaphor for gold mining.
18

5. Monocular Beings in Inner Asian Myth

In order to make sense of the legacy of the gryphons and Arimaspians in myth, I would like,
following the intimations begun by Alfldi (1933), Phillips (1955), Bolton (1962) and others, to
look to the presence of similar beings in the myths of Inner Asia, their symbolic function and
narrative context. To undertake such an exploration as this, it is vital to describe the history of the
peoples dwelling in the Inner Asian steppe from antiquity to modern times and their interrelations.
It is generally accepted by scholars that the majority of the peoples who, at the dawn of the
iron age in the steppe regions stretching between the borders of Mongolia and the Black Sea (c.
800 BCE), took up nomadic lifeways based around stock raising and cavalry warfare were
ethnically Indo-Iranian (Abetekov and Yusupov 1994: 28; Nicols 2011: 178; Stark 2012: 10626),
known as Scythic peoples to the Greek cultural sphere and through similar networks of
interconnected nomads further east under the names Sai, Sakya and Sak. Many clear parallels
may be seen between these Indo-Iranian peoples and subsequent Inner Asian nomads regarding
ways of life, cosmology and myth, following their penetration into Mongolia c. 500 BCE and the
emergence and expansion of clearly Turkic-Mongolianspeaking peoples thereafter in the first
millennium BCE.44
This said, we should begin with the theories of Alfldi (1933) that Aristeass gryphons
represented the thunder-producing dragon guardians of the golden mountain at the center of the
world, and the Arimaspians infernal one-eyed beings guarding the underworld in Siberian, Trkic
and Mongolian cosmology. Alfldis (1933) views, based largely on nineteenth-century
anthropological records, were taken up by Meuli ([1935] 1975: II. 8539) and Phillips (1955: 161
177), who saw the Arimaspians as mythic beings retained in Inner Asian folklore - primarily of
cosmological and symbolic value in the sacred geography of the shamans journeys to other worlds.
These scholars applied such views to Aristeas, particularly through Maximus of Tyres previously
mentioned description of the poet leaving his body and traveling by flying. This implied that
Aristeas was deeply indebted to Inner Asian religious practices of flying to other worlds, which he
received via his meetings with Inner Asian peoples and may have partaken in himself, and that this
is reflected in the writing of his Arimaspian poem.
In order to begin bridguing this gap between antiquity and the records with which Alfldi
(1933) and others worked, the figure of the monocular Duwa Soqur (Blind Duwa), found in the
thirteenth-century CE medieval Mongolian Monqol-un Niua Tobaan (Secret History of the
Mongols) must be mentioned. This figure has already been linked to other myths of monocular
beings by several scholars (Finch 1994: 12; Kingsley 2011: 92 n. 2), but very little has been said
44
On similarities in the cosmology and ritual of the Scythians described at Hdt. IV.73f with later peoples: Meuli ([1935]
1975: II. 866ff, Eliade ([1951] 1989: 266, 27274). On the recurring presence of deer goddesses and the retention of
archaic traditions: Jacobson (1993). On Southwest Asian influence on the cosmology of Siberian and Mongol peoples:
Skrynnikova (2002, 2004). On shamans and arrows: Kingsley (2011 passim esp. Notes). On the enduring
authoritarian symbolism of the wolf and bundled rods: Ratcliffe (2013a: ch. 2, 4, 5). Von Stuckrads (2003: 10616)
belief that due to the length of time it would not be possible for anything to have survived of Inner Asian religious
traditions from antiquity to the middle ages or present is clearly ignoring the evidence. This has been well noticed by
Kingsley (2011: 111).
19

on it. Duwa Soqur is a curious case, as, prior to the diffusion of The Secret History in the West it
had already been suggested by Alfldi (1933: 5567) that monocular ancestral beings were most
likely once great figures in mythology among Turks, Mongols and Tibetans (cf. Phillips 1955:
174) a conclusion in some ways now long vindicated. The Secret History of the Mongols is a
unique repository of medieval Turkic-Mongolian myth with few of the biases of transcription by an
outside audience (Rossabi 2012: 3; Onon 2001: 17) especially its first chapter, which appears to
draw on diverse mythic sources in order to legitimize the later descent and more historical
episodes in relation to Chingis Khan (de Rachewiltz 2004: xxxiv-v). Regarding the earliest ancestors
of the Mongols, following Brte Cin (Blue Wolf) and Qoai Maral (Beautiful Doe), we read:
(3)Toroqolin Bayan had two sons: Duwa Soqur (The Blind) and Dobun Mergen
(The Expert). (4) Duwa Soqur had a single eye in the middle of his forehead and
could see places three days journey away. (5) One day Duwa Soqur went up
Burqan Qaldun Mountain with his brother Dobun Mergen. When Duwa Soqur
looked out from the top of Burqan Qaldun Mountain he saw a group of people
coming towards the Tnggelik Stream. (6) Duwa Soqur said: Among those
travellers there is a beautiful young woman travelling seated at the front of the cart.
If she is not yet any mans wife, I will ask for her for you, my brother Dobun
Mergen, and make her your wife. And having said this he sent his younger brother
Dobun Mergen to see her.45
Duwa Soqur, like the Arimaspians, is uniquely described as bearing a single eye in the
middle of his forehead. This allows him to look down off Mount Burqan Qaldun to see distances
three days journey away to find his brother a wife, and by this act he gives rise to the Mongol
people (7ff). It is possible to suggest here that Burqan Qaldun may be as fulfilling the role of a
cosmic world mountain representing the universe at this point in the text. Much of the action in
the Secret History seems to be based around it (1145), and it echoes similar central mountains,
such as the sacred tken yi of the Gktrk civilisation in Mongolia (sixth-eighth c. CE), the
repeated Ice Mountain (Muz Tag) in the heavily pagan fifteenth-century Kitai-Uyghur Turfanian
Oguz Kagan manuscript (15, 21; Ratcliffe 2013b: 145), and world mountains in later living
Mongolian epics and shamanic journeys (Eliade [1951] 1989: 26667; Roux 1993: 32728).46 Thus
45
SHM. 36: [3.2b]Toroqolin-nu kn Duwa-soqor Dobun-mergen qoyar blee [4.3a] Duwa-soqor manglai
dumda qaqa nidt qurban nerit qaar-a qaraqu blee [5.3b] niken dr Duwa-soqor Dobun-mergen de-lebeen Burqan-qaldun deere qarba Duwa-soqor Burqan-qaldun deeree qarau Tnggelik-qoroqan huruu niken
blk irgen new orou ayisuqu-yi qarau eu [6.4a] glern tede new ayisuqun irgen-n dotora niken qarautai
tergen- lige-de niken kin sayin byy gn-ne ese kteksen bes Dobun-mergen de-deen imada quyuya
kee [4b] Dobun-mergen de-yen ere ilebe. Text: Ligeti (1971). Translation: Ratcliffe (2013).
46
Holmberg (1927: 342) and Bolton (1962: 9798) both believe that the source of the cosmic world mountain is
India; indeed, names such as Sumer/Sumber among the modern Turkic-Mongolian peoples would suggest the Hindu
Mount Meru. However, this could merely be an upper layer to much older and more widely-spread traditions, such as
are described by Eliade ([1951] 1989: 26669) in relation to Indo-European peoples and their influence on the
20

Alfldis ideas concerning the shamanic centering of the gryphomachy (battle with gryphons)
around the divine mountain and the placement of monocular beings as a ritual geographical trope
there may be echoed in the Duwqa Soqur episode.47 Perhaps Duwa Soqur even played the role of
a guardian ancestral spirit in Mongol Era beliefs, though we are lacking further information to
confirm this beyond the role he plays in the text we possess. However, like the Arimaspians and
the infernal guardians of the underworld, and now seen in relation to Duwa Soqur, the function of
such monocular beings is primarily a spatial one. In this their nature as positive or negative entities
is defined through their positioning in relation to primordial and distant symbolic geography.
To this Mongol period context and the geographical importance attached to monocular
beings we should add Ukrainian tales of the edinookie, a whole race of one-eyed people from
across the sea, to whom the Tatars (Mongols) sold their slaves and who fattened them up, killed
them and ate them ( 1858: I. 8789; trans. Reynolds in Bolton 1962: 83). Here we may
note that the emphasis is placed, as with the Arimaspians, on the remoteness of such beings, which
are never met with but exist on the fringes of the world as others and come to be known through
the tales of Inner Asian story-tellers.48
Similarly, we should also note the presence of another group of proverbially distant oneeyed beings in the form of the negative and monstrous inhabitants of a castle belonging to the
enemies of the eponymous hero in the living Manas epic of Kyrgyzstan. In this context, once again
the dwelling of one-eyed beings just beyond the conventional borders of the world is emphasized,
suggesting it as an important trope in Inner Asian concepts of remoteness, otherness and
monstrosity, where they are grouped together with similar mythic entities:
these Kyrgyz reside [with] the Tyrgaut and the castle of the Iron Arrow, of the
house of Chingiz, with his metal-armed soldiers. Also, dragon-headed and dog-
peoples of Siberia and Mongolia.

We should also note, as Onon (2001: 21) suggests, that soqur in this context does not mean blind (as clearly the
character is the opposite!) but rather simply emphatically one-eyed. It would seem wrong here to bring up questions of
solar symbolism in relation to the far-seeing Duwa Soqur on the top of the world mountain, which while inviting, have
long plagued interpretation of the Polyphemus blinding episode.
47
48
Another thing we should note is the misnomer of there being an ogre-blinding tale found among the Mongols
(Bolton 1962: 194 n. 12). This idea goes back as far as Frazer (1921: App. XIII 452ff), who is actually referring to the
blinding of the one-eyed monster Tepegz in the sixteenth-century CE Azerbaijani Oguz Trkic Qitab-i Dede Qorqut
(8 pp.14050), though we have some knowledge that such a story was found among the Azerbaijani Oguz as far back
as the fourteenth century CE in Egyptian records (Lewis 1974: 21). The pattern of ogre blinding tales is found only
in Western Eurasia and is not found at all among the Mongols or peoples of Western Turkistan, except perhaps in the
Tibetan Ge-sar Khan tradition and its Mongolian textual descrendants (Hummel 1998: 65-68). See discussion on
Frazer (1921) and the Cyclopes below. In the Buryat Ekhirit-Bulagat variant of Geser there is an episode in which the
hero claims that he is going to heal the monster Danyal Sharas eye and then blinds it (Lrincz 1975: 83), similar to
many European folktales (Fraser 1921), yet the monster is not monocular. Strootman (2013: 24446) has recently
pointed out that the story of Tepegz and that of the giant met with by Sinbad in A Thousand and One Nights most
likely represent an inheritance from Greek literature.
21

headed and one-eyed people and wizards and magicians live there. Dragons serve
as guards and wolves as messengers.49
To carry out our broad-based approach, we must also discuss the presence of one-eyed
beings in the records of both Chinese and Indian geographers in relation to the Inner Asian steppe
world beyond their borders. These most likely reflect the views that the peoples of the steppe
would themselves have given, upon being asked by geographers and traders about the most distant
regions. This is the way the Issedonian and Scythian tales of the distant wonders of the North
came to appear in the works of Aristeas and Herodotus and it would seem that a similar situation
has taken place in other locations around the rim of Inner Asia.
For example, in the first century BCE, in Shan Hai Jing and later Chinese geographical
updatings of the text, we find monocular men ascribed to the far northern regions both within
(XII. p. 145) and beyond (VIII. p. 121) the northern borders. In these locations they are
positioned beside dog-men (XII p. 121; cf. XVII p. 187) and one-legged men (XII p. 121), which
would seem to echo many of the wonders described by Classical geographers of the East listed in
Strabo (VII.3.56). Within the literature of India, in the Mahbharta (II. 38, 51), we find oneeyed men (and also three-eyed and one-legged men) as well as gold excavated by ants, piplika
(II.52).50 In the Bhat Sahit (XIV. 2127), we find one-eyed men, Amazons and dog-headed
men ascribed to the regions north of India. These would also appear to echo both Chinese and
Greek accounts of similar wonders of the Amazons, dog-headed men and similar gold-ants (Hdt.
IV. 105119; Strabo II.1.9, XV.1.5558; Bolton 1962: 7983; White 1991: 913, 11820; Mair
1998).51 The uncanny convergences on the part of Indic, Classical and Chinese geographers in
49
This source comes from the altraicist website beutel.narod.ru/write/manas.htm. Other available collections of Manas
legends such as Orozbakovs (1999) edition and Kmkulkzs doctoral project at http://www.silkroad.com/folklore/manas/manasintro.html do not contain this episode. However, we should be aware that as Manas is
a living oral epic tradition, versions often differ greatly from one another in content, and given the present lack of
scholarship on the epic in the west, further comment remains difficult.
50
Bremmers (1987: 3637) idea that the gryphons excavation of gold in Herodotus is simply the author reusing the
story of stealing gold from giant ants in India (Hdt. III.1035), seems irrational, as gold excavation by gryphons is not
attested until Pliny (H.N. X.70.136; VII.2.10) and Aelian (Hist. An. IV.27), which may have indeed taken this from
the ant-gold story. Moreover, while ant-gold stories are found within the Mhabharta (II.52), giant ants are attested in
the far north of the world in the Chinese geographers during the third century BCE ( Chu Tzu 9/4b ap. Hawkes 1959:
104) and the term ant-gold is found in Dariuss Susa inscription in conjunction with India (Woodthorpe-Tarn [1951]
2010: 297) and is also connected by Megasthenes (ap. Strabo XV.1.57; Arr. Ind. XV. 5) with Dardistan. The notion
that such ant-gold stories arose from confusion with the Mongol tribal name Shiraigol (Mong. ant [??]) tribe (Laufer
1908: 429; Bolton 1962: 81), which appears to be a eighteenth to nineteenth-century CE () confederation of the
Sarig-Yugars in Gansu and Tibet (and not Mongols!) (Roerich 1943: 297), is perhaps more than a little weak.
Nevertheless the tale may have its origins in Inner Asian myth as is attested by Mongolian and Tibetan stories, which
Bremmer (1987: 3637, 2002b: 33) strangely admits as reasonable, compared with his usual cynicism on the Greeks
and Inner Asia. However, these stories could also be the result of Indic influence. India remains the hub for ant-gold
stories.
51
It is curious to note that Megasthenes (ap. Strabo XV.1.57) describes a race of monocular dog-men dwelling in the
22

relation to the wondrous entities of Inner Asia would seem to suggest that many of these entities
most likely sprung from the cosmological and geographical beliefs of the nomadic peoples of Inner
Asia themselves, who roamed between the edges of the settled cultures that recorded them. At very
least such peoples appear to have played a major part in the diffusion of such myths across Eurasia.
We should also recall from the Manas fragment given above the coordination of dog-headed men
with monocular beings as associated geographical tropes from within the living traditions of Inner
Asia, suggesting a strong continuity of such ideas.
We must now consider how the motif of monocularity came to be so regularly
reappropriated in Inner Asian myth, from the Arimaspians onwards, and the overall consequences
of such beings distant geographical associations. One key suggestion that can be made is that
shamanic signposts indicating geographical concepts of travel, monstrous forces and the ends of
the world came together and regularly reinforced one another as a trope of otherness. Thus in
some cases monocular entities are represented as positive or mighty like the Arimaspians or Duwa
Soqur, in others as thoroughly negative: their usage comes to be defined by their link with the
quality of the geographical point to which such numinous beings are appended. As Eliade ([1951]
1989: 50910) says, on the process by which the shaman constructs geography for his or her
community:
The lands that the shaman sees and the personages that he meets during his ecstatic
journey in the beyond are minutely described by the shaman himself, during or
after his trance. The unknown and terrifying world of death assumes form; is
organized in accordance with particular patterns; finally it displays a structure and,
in the course of time, becomes familiar and acceptable. In turn the supernatural
inhabitants of the world of death become visible; they show a form, display a
personality, even a biographythe accounts of the shamans ecstatic journeys
contribute to spiritualizing the world of the dead, at the same time they enrich it
with wonderful forms and figures.
In relation to this we should also note Benavides (1998: 189ff) comments to the effect that
in pre-modern cultures concepts of symbolic, sacred and actual nature and geography are
completely integrated. It would seem almost impossible to split the differences between concepts
of space in epic, shamanic journeys and habitually believed cosmology by non-shamans among the
Inner Asian peoples of antiquity, the Middle Ages and even ongoing beliefs still extant at present
among the peoples of Siberia, Mongolia and Central Asia. One overlaps onto the other and forms
what might be called a continuum of spatial myth. Thus, although symbols such as the
monocular man and their functions may change in time and between different groups with
succeeding reappropriations, as we can see from Aristeass description of the North received
from the Issedones, to the other examples given, what we appear to have is in no way anything
definable through the dichotomy of sacred and profane space that litters the interpretations of
western religious and geographical traditions. In the same way arguing over whether Aristeas aerial
far north of India, which would seem to combine these two key Inner Asian mythemes.
23

flight makes him a shaman or simply that he was influenced by Inner Asian beliefs in his artistic
or religous methods becomes an unnecessary task.
In light of this, we can see that Aristeas, in the writing of his epic poem, most likely
combined elements of Inner Asian religious practice such as a flight out of the body and sacred
geographical signposts, with elements already available in Greek epic, discussed above, such as
aerial omniscience, for the audiences benefit via an appeal to his deity, Apollo. Most likely he was
a traveler and Apollonian devotee in search of divine learning, who partook in the religious
traditions of several cultures and then only later created a work suited to the knowledge and
traditions of a Greek audience. We may see this in the unexplained attribution of the gryphons to
Zeus (Aesch. PV. 803) by Aeschylus, and the similarity of language in descriptions of Arimaspian
and Homeric animal wealth (Tzetz. Chil. VII. 68692; Hom. Il. IX. 154, 296). However, while in
the Classical tradition Aristeass one-eyed Arimaspians have remained a peculiarity, as we have
seen, within the cultures of Inner Asia this motif has been retained and reshaped for different uses
over the centuries and is still living today to inhabit the edges of the world with its otherness.
Part 2: The Cyclopes
1. Cyclopes and Arimaspians
The Arimaspians having been scrutinized, I would now like to turn to the Cyclopes and questions
of their interrelations with the Arimaspians and other Inner Asian monocular beings. The story of
the Greek hero Odysseuss tricking and blinding the one-eyed giant Polyphemus in Homers
Odyssey is perhaps one of the best known myths in the entire Classical canon. Polyphemus, a
Cyclops, however, is but one of an entire race of beings described by Homer a cannibal people
(Hom. Od. IX.289ff), who though caring and diligent herdsmen (IX.218222, 308310), are
denigrated for their lack of laws, technological backwardness and ignorance of farming. This is in
spite of the abundant climatic conditions in which they live (IX.107132). What sort of culture or
cultures they may have had their basis in is a matter open to debate perhaps a nomadic herding
people from Inner Asia dwelling around the Black Sea coast and has not been the target of
much academic research, which has tended to center merely on endless symbolic readings of the
monster Polyphemuss blinding.
Further, questions regarding the multiple branches of Cyclopes in Greek tradition the
trio of smithing beings in Hesiods Theogony (139146) and the well-spread cult of Thracian
Cyclopean builders (Bacchyl. frag 11; Strabo VII.25.5, VIII. 6.2, 11; Paus. I.42.2, II.2.1; Schol. ad
Eurip. Orest. 966) must also be investigated, as little work has been furthered in relation to the
links between these beings.52 Since the Hellenistic period these other forms of Cyclopes have been
conflated with Homers Cyclopes (Call. Hymn to Artemis III. 46; Virg. Georg. I. 47172; Verg.
Aen. VIII. 41820), when in fact the only true similarity between them would seem to be that they
52
Mondi (1983), Heubeck (1989), Bremmer (2002a) are perhaps the only exceptions to this I am aware of. Their ideas
will be discussed extensively in this article.
24

all possess the same name. This in itself may simply have been an easy way for the Greeks to
rationalize the presence of multiple occurrences of one-eyed beings in the myths of their neighbors.
As will be shown, the closest available cultural connection in relation to these other branches of
Cyclopes is the world North of Greece the complex of Thracian and Inner Asian cultures that
had come together during the seventh century BCE just as the Greeks were beginning to interact
with such peoples through trade and exploration.
In defense of the idea of a possible interrelationship between the Arimaspians and
Cyclopes, it appears that during antiquity this was certainly the case perceived by the Classical
historians and poets. Strabo for instance suggests:
Perhaps Homer also borrowed his idea of the one-eyed Cyclopes from the history
of Scythia; for it is reported that the Arimaspians are a one-eyed people a people
whom Aristeas of Proconnesus has made known in his Arimaspian Epic. (Strabo I.
2.10)53
In connection with this, he further offers: Some say that he (Creopphylus) was the teacher of
Homer, but others that it was Aristeas of Proconnesus (Strabo. XIV.1.18).54Gellius less explicitly
states: Moreover, the poets say that there are men under this region of the sky who possess a
single eye in the middle of their face, who are called Arimaspi, which means that they are Cyclopes
(Gell. N.A. IX. 4.6).55
It has also been suggested that the language of the Cyclops Polyphemuss lament to Galatea
in the Alexandrian tradition, which focuses on the ugliness of his single eye and (woolly,
shaggy) nature (Theoc. Id. XI.50; Ov. Met. XIII. 846; Philostr. Imag. II.18.3) drew upon the
(woolly, shaggy) nature of the Arimaspians as its source (Bolton 1962: 195). This is not a
feature ascribed by Homer or even Euripides to the Cyclopes. The heavily bearded illustration of
Polyphemus at the late fourth century BCE Etruscan Tomb of Orcus in Italy, which was originally
mistaken for the demon Orcus (Spivey and Squire 2011: 127), may also belong to this tradition of
transferring the characteristic of hairiness from the Arimaspians to the Cyclopes.
Such information as this, while suggesting that recognitions and interplay between these
races of monocular beings certainly occurred within the bounds of the Classical tradition, has
largely been discarded without second thought by Classicists (S. West 2004: 45; Skinner 2013: 162
n. 1; Mandzuka 2013: 276). This is of course owing to the perceived impossibility of squaring the
early date and prioritized sanctity of the Homeric tradition with the historically dislocated and
fragmentary figure of Aristeas.
However, we must be aware that just as the name of Homer represents a term not
Strabo I.2.10: :
, .
53
54
Strabo XIV.1.18: , .
Gell. N.A. IX. 4.6: item esse homines sub eadem regione caeli unum oculum in frontis medio habentes, qui
appellantur Arimaspi, qua fuisse facie Cyclopas poetae ferunt.
55
25

attested before the sixth century BCE (Graziosi 2002: 91f), one which was applied to a long oral
tradition with perhaps some bases in the Mycenaean period (Tomlinson 2002: 32), equally due to
its long history the Homeric society cannot be assigned to any single period (Coldstream 1977:
18). We should also be aware that the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and Odyssey, were not
codified until the end of the seventh century BCE and may refer to seventh-century events such as
the fall of Babylon (688 BCE) and Egyptian Thebes (663 BCE) (Burkert 1976; M. L. West 1995),
and most likely did not come to mainland Greece from Ionia in fixed form before the mid-sixth
century BCE (Nagy 1992: esp. 52).
In light of this, we must recall that it is in the broad period between the late seventh and
early sixth centuries BCE that Aristeas most likely made his journeys to the Issedones a period
in which the frontiers of Ionian Greek exploration were the northern and eastern edges of the
Black Sea (Tsetskhladze 1998; Solovyov 2001), where nomadic peoples of Inner Asian origin,
such as the Scythians, were dwelling. As will be shown, the episodes of the wandering of the hero
Odysseus in the Odyssey of Homer and the quest of the Argonauts for the Golden Fleece have
many strong themes in common with this period and with the new Greek geographical and
commercial frontier. This will allow us to propose some new theories regarding the introduction of
the Arimaspians and Cyclopes into Greek myth during this key period.
2. The Society of the Cyclopes
It is imperative to note that Homers Cyclopes, not even Polyphemus, are never referred to as oneeyed. This would seem quite a curious thing, as since Euripidess fifth-century BCE satyr-play The
Cyclops, this has been assumed to be the case,56 though we should be aware that at least one Greek
commentator, the satirist Accius, called to attention Homers apparent exclusion of what was later
taken as common fact.57 As will be shown, the monocularity of the Cyclopes most likely stems from
the influence of other beings in Greek mythic tradition also called Cyclopes that are
emphatically one-eyed and bear strong connections to the Black Sea region, and the nomadic
peoples of Inner Asia. Rather, with Homer, we appear to have a description of a primitive culture,
which has been adjoined to the story of blinding the monster Polyphemus, which is much older
than the cultural description which accompanies it. We should then begin with the earliest material,
Euripidess fifth-century BCE satyr play Cyclops mentions clearly at line 20 the fact that Polyphemus has a single eye.
Also from the fifth century, a satyr cup is found that is most likely the earliest example of a monocular Cyclops in art.
The satyr-play tradition may in fact have been the earliest clear example of a monocular Polyphemus at all (Mondi
1983: 33 n. 59).
56
Aul. Gell. N.A. III.XI.5: Accius autem in primo Didascalico levibus admodum argumentis utiturDe Cyclope
itidem, inquit, vel maxime quod unoculus fuit, rem tam insignem non praeterisset, nisi aeque prioris Hesiodi
carminibus invulgatum esset. = And Accius, in his first lesson makes use of comedic logic on the Cyclops he says
57
that if the fact that it was one-eyed had not been so commonly known due to Hesiod existing before Homer, he would
not have left out such an important thing as this. The ideas that Hesiod was older than Homer, and that Hesiod and
Homer were contemporaries were often argued about among the Greeks and is of no concern here, but see Graziosi
(2002) for the best available discussion on this tradition.
26

with the details given by Homer regarding the Cyclopean society, and then discuss Polyphemus the
blinded ogre, in relation to this cultural context. Odysseus says:
And next we came to the land of the Cyclopes, a fierce lawless people who never
use their hands to tend plants or to plough, but just leave it all to the immortal gods.
The crops they need spring up unsown and untilled, wheat and barley and vines
with full clusters that swell with the rain from heaven to make wine. The Cyclopes
possess no congregations for making laws, nor any established customs, but live in
hollow caves in the high mountains, and each metes out laws to his own children
and women, but not to others. (IX. 105115)58
We also have a further description of the land of the Cyclopes following this. The country is:
Perpetually unsown and untilled, free from men, supporting only bleating goats.
The Cyclopes have no crimson-prowed ships; they have no shipwrights to build
oared vessels that could allow them to sail across the sea to visit foreign towns and
cultures. Such builders would have made the island into a fine place for them. It is
in no way a meagre country, but capable of yielding all crops at the right time of
year. (IX. 123131)59
In light of this we may see what appears to be perhaps the earliest anthropological study,
albeit a very negative one, in western literature. The Cyclopes are pitied for their backwardness and
Hom. Od. IX. 10515:
:

,
,
,
,
, .
,

, .
59
Hom. Od. IX. 123131:

, .
,
,
,
,
:
.
, .
58
27

inattentiveness to what the Greeks regarded as the very markers of culture: farming, sailing and
political organisation. However, this impious attitude of the Cyclopes juxtaposed with the natural
abundance of their lands60 has strangely not led to very much discussion beyond suggestions of
them simply as generic noble savages conflated together with an archetypal Ogre Tale (Kirk
1962: 236) in the form of Polyphemuss blinding.
Before we come to questions of the Ogre tale, in order to make sense of the civilization
of the Cyclopes we should note what appear to be some very keen parallels within the bounds of
not only Homer but also the Argonautica cycle in relation to their description. Although the
earliest full version of the Argonautic legend we possess is that of the Hellenistic poet Apollonius
Rhodius, in the Classics there is a long history of debate on the existence of an Ur-Argonautica,
contemporary to the period of the Odysseys composition and sharing with it several key narrative
structures based around seventh-century BCE Greek explorations in the Black Sea region
(Heubek 1989; Danek 1998; M. L. West 2005).61
For example, besides the Cyclopes, the other famous gigantic, flesh-eating herding race in
the Odyssey is that of the Laestrygonians who attack and eat Odysseuss men when these land in
their kingdom (Hom. Od. X. 81133). As M. L. West (2005: 48) suggests, this in itself may
include motifs repeated from the Polyphemus episode. In clarifying the location and culture of
the Laestrygonians some have noted the similarity of their episode in the Odyssey to Jason and his
crews Argonautic experience at Propontic Cyzicus against the cannibal Aborigines (Apoll. Rhod.
Arg. I.9361011; Danek 1998, 19799; M. L. West 2005: 4853). If it is possible to assume an
overlap between the Argonautic and Homeric cycles, then perhaps too the rock hurling, giantism
and cannibalism of both the herding Laestrygonians (Hom. Od. X.114115, 12022) and
Cyclopes when they later attempt to pelt Odysseuss ships with rocks (IX. 289f, 32122, 53738)
represent typical tropes for experiences with primitive peoples. For instance, in Apolloniuss
Argonautica, the local earth born Aborigines also attack the crew of the Argo with rocks (I.995)
and are exterminated. Like the Cyclops Polyphemus (Hom. Od. IX. 529), they are also the sons of
Poseidon (Apoll. Rhod. Arg. I. 952). 62
60
This uncanny mixture of the Cyclopes barbarism and climatic abundance would seem to have much in common
with Greek geographical notions concerning primitive beings continued dwelling in the same conditions of early man
in general, wherein nature was far richer and agriculture was not needed. See Romm (1994: 4666) for detailed
discussion on this matter. Thus, it is not surprising that the oldest mention in text with regard to either Polyphemus or
the Homeric Cyclopes, besides the Odyssey itself, is made by an Athenian in reference to primordial nature of human
society in a passage of Platos Laws (690b) written during the fifth century BCE. In it, lines 1125 of Book IX of the
Odyssey are quoted verbatim.
61
See M. L. West (2005 n. 1) for a full list of discussions of this matter going back to the mid-nineteenth century. The
Argonautic cycle is first mentioned in the Odyssey (XII.6970) as (the ship Argo, of
interest to everyone) in reference to the planctae or clashing/wandering rocks episodes in both traditions (Od.
XII.61 cf. Apoll. Rhod. Arg. II.600ff).
The similarity between the Artakian font giving water to Telepylos in Laestrygonia in Homer ( Od. X. 109), and a
similar Artakia in Apollonius of Rhodes (Arg. I.195560) has also been one of the key ingredients in this theory.
However, the Laestrygonians were never associated with any location as far south and relatively well known as the
62
28

The Laestrygonians have since antiquity commonly have been associated with northern
climes. Geminus in his Elements of Astronomy in the first century BCE, basing his understanding
on Crates the Grammarian, located the Laestrygonians in the far north (Gem. Elem. Ast. VI. ap.
Heath 1991: 13233), due to the long days the herdsmen there possess according to Homers
description (Od. X. 8186). As it is suggestible in many ways that the herding Laestrygonians were
a race of semi-settled nomads in the far north of the world with whom the Greeks interacted
during early encroachments upon the Pontic region, this could also perhaps be equally applied to
the society of the giant, cannibal Cyclopes.63
All of this suggests that both of these portions of the (wandering of Odysseus) mirror
one another due to similar experiences or standard literary formulas for representing herding
peoples in this region during the seventh-century BCE expansions in the Pontic region notably
that of cannibalism.64 Other negative elements we find in this intercultural encounter, aside from
cannibalism, such as Polyphemuss breaking the Greek taboo of drinking of unmixed wine (Hom.
Od. IX. 35871) a common clich in relation to Black Sea peoples, 65 and ignorance of the
Greek rituals of guest friendship (IX.271), would also suggest this. We should also note that
Herodotus mentions the habit of the Crimean Taurii of killing and sacrificing all Greeks and
sailors who came into their lands (Hdt. IV.104), which suggests an experience that the Greeks had
been encountered more than a few times in their travels in this region. These elements would
seem to have far more in common with standard notions in connection with Black Sea cultures
than they would with the Ogre Tale explored below.
3. Blinding the Ogre
We now come to the meeting and confrontation between Odysseus and the individual Cyclops
Polyphemus in Book IX of the Odyssey, long renowned for its ability to entertain and baffle its
commentators (Mondi 1983: 17), and arguably one of the most famous and repeatedly analyzed
episodes in the entire canon of Classical mythology. One thing that has largely kept discussions of
the Cyclopes away from those on the Argonautic cycle in classical studies is the identification of the
Propontus, and thus most likely a conflation of two stories from the Black Sea occurred, and both came to be called by
the same shared name (M. L. West 2005: 53).
63
Sworder (2008: 16) has gone further than this by suggesting that the magnitude of these peoples has a basis in a
particular Mediterranean conception used by Porphyry (Antr. Nymph. 13. 33) of the north of the worlds hard climate
producing both gigantic men and pasture animals, namely in the lands of the Celts, Scythians and Thracians.
64
Man-eaters in the far north are mentioned by the geographers and others from Herodotus onwards (Hdt. IV. 65, 104;
Plat. Euthyd. 299e-300a; Ephorus ap. Strab. VII. 3.9; Plin. H.N. VI. 20. 53). Pliny even makes a comparison between
the Cyclopes and the existence of northern Scythian cannibals, though he of course by his time assumes the Cyclopes
to have existed in the area around Italy (Plin. N.A. VII. 9).
The drunkenness of Polyphemus (Hom. Od. IX. 360ff) also echoes the many verbs of ethnic pejoration which were
coined regarding the Scythians purported immoderate drinking (Gruen 2005: 42, 219). Wine in great quantity was
one of the main imports into the early Scythian colonies such as Berezan (Solovyov 2001: 4953), and we should note
that the Greek story of Cleomeness going mad from drinking it unmixed with the Scythians (Hdt. VI. 8485), would
have been charactered for the Greeks by its distinct barbarism.
65
29

first-ever depiction of this myth on the Eleusis amphora of the Polyphemus painter c. 680650
BCE (M. L. West 2005: 59), which shows Odysseus and his men represented wielding a forked
stick to blind a most likely two-eyed giant (Fig. 2), though we must be aware that, like the
Arimaspians, the Cyclopes are hardly ever represented as monocular in art.66
Fig. 2. The Eleusis Amphora, c. 680650 BCE, the Polyphemus Painter. Note
forked stick used to blind Polyphemus in his pair of eyes (Spivey and Squire 2011:
124).
In light of this, I would like to propose a thesis, in the following paragraphs, that at this
early stage in Homer, Polyphemus was not necessarily a one-eyed entity, and that the Cyclopes
only came to be one-eyed (all of them) through confusion between the ogre-blinding story and the
monocular Inner Asian and Caucasian myths received by the Greeks around the Black Sea coast. 67
In support of this, Homers Greek is ambiguous at best with regard to the monocularity of
Polyphemus. Little is made even of the Cyclopss size except by allusions to the moving of the
66
The Hesiodic Cyclopes were only ever represented very dimly or with lines across their faces (Mondi 1983: 33 n. 59).
Due to the differences in ancient and modern literacy, which include the fact that the many people during antiquity
could often only comprehend lapidary written passages and items of a familiar context (Thomas 1992: 9), it may be
that the more conventional motif of the single eye located in the middle of the forehead of the Cyclopes was simply
not well known among craftsmen and their clients before the fifth century (Mondi 1983: 33 n. 59). This is certainly
possible, though it should also be noted that the Arimaspians and Cyclopes, like many other beings in Greek art, are
represented in profile and thus only a single eye is often visible anyway (Mondi 1983: 36 n. 66).
Even in Euripidess fifth-century BCE satyr-play on Polyphemus, Cyclops, he sometimes seems to have two eyes
(Seaford 1984: 100; Bremmer 2002a: 142).
67
30

colossal rock and his huge staff (Hom. Od. IX. 241243,320325).68 Polyphemuss eye is only
mentioned when it comes explicitly to blinding him, and curiously, he is described as possessing
both brows and lids integrally in the plural. As Mandzuka (2013: 276ff) has recently remarked,
nearly all translators of Homer fail to notice this, automatically assuming the presence of a single
eye, which is not attested in the text at all. One would think that such a characteristic, which has
become a most important element in Greek myth, would have been stated outright. Instead we
read: I then ordered the others to cast lots, for whoever was to dare lift the stave along with my
self and stick it in (his) eye (IX. 332333).69 The actual blinding is described thus:
I then took it from the fire as my companions stood around: and then the god
breathed great courage into them. They took up the olive wood staff, sharp at the
tip, and plunged it into his eye. As we drove the fiery pointed stave into his eye, we
spun it and the heat singed all around his eyelids and eyebrows as the eyeball was
burnt up and the roots crackled with the flamehis eye hissed like hot metal
around the olive stake. (IX. 38090)70
As well as various symbolic exegeses, 71 the blinding of Polyphemus has also been
commonly held to belong to a structural class of ancient Ogre Ur-myths in which this section of
68
Bremmer (2002a: 141) has coyly referred to the idea that the story was sufficiently well known that bluntly stating the
monocularity was unnecessary to Homers art. This would seem to be quite an assumption.
69
Hom. Od. IX. 33233:
...
Hom. Od. IX. 38094: ,
: .
, ,
:
70

,
.
71
Symbolic exegeses have taken this act of blinding to signify a number of natural phenomena: the eruption of a
volcano (Berard 1929: 17985), the eclipsing of the sun (Meyer [1857] 2010: 7071; Hackman 1904: 35), the waning
of the moon (Nitzsch 1840: xviii), the eye of a storm (Laistner 1879: 272), and, with the introduction of Freudian
analysis, a multitude of sexual symbols indicating the dynamic between Odysseus and Polyphemus as father and son
(Roheim 1952: 36167; Menninger 1938: 321; Glenn 1978: 15255). Burkert (1979: 3034) and Bakker (2013: 59ff)
have also connected the Polyphemus episode with the formers lord of the animals hypothesis, suggesting that
elements of the story were Palaeolithic representations of a struggle with a god who controlled all the game. However,
such views as this would seem to have more in common with twentieth-century anthropological mythology than they
would with anything provable regarding Homer and his roots.
31

the Odyssey partook, but was not the source thereof, spread widely across Eurasia (Frazer 1921:
40454, Mundy 1956: 27982; Mondi 1983: 25). James Frazer (1921: 40454) collated thirty-six
examples of such tales in his thirteenth appendix to the Loeb translation of Apollodoruss
Bibliotheke.72 However, as was long ago suggested by Meuli ([1921] 1976: I. 63940) and more
recently by Bremmer (2002a: 13842), it is far more likely that the Odyssey was the source of
nearly all of these other versions as the majority of them come from the Black Sea region where
Greek sailors still tell versions of the Polyphemus story, and moreover all of the versions cited have
only been recorded from the Late Middle Ages onwards (cf. Frazer 1921: 40454). Some betray
the influence of Classical learning on what would appear at face value to be simply the oral tales of
peasants (Bremmer 2002a: 1368), and others are merely stories sharing in one or two qualities
with the Polyphemus story and do not represent a mythic pattern by any standard. Monocularity is
certainly not a common quality except in those stories that seem to have been arguably the direct
result of influence from the Polyphemus tale.73
Thus, despite the unlikely notion of a universal ogre Ur-myth- at least one that involves
monocularity- it is worth detailing here that there is however one particular myth in antiquity that
appears to mirror that of the encounter between Polyphemus and Odysseus and has strong
parallels with other portions of Odysseuss journey.74 This is that of the battle between Gilgamesh
72
Hackman (1904: 3ff) lists 120 recordings of such Ogre Tales, though Glenn (1971: 155) has remarked that only
seventy-four even contain any traces of monocularity. In Frazers (1921: App. XIII) collection it is necessary to note
that of these thirty-six archetypal Polyphemus or Ogre Tales listed, only thirteen explicitly refer to beings with a
single eye. These are the tales numbered 5, 7, 14, 17, 18, 21, 23, 26, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36. Of the selected
monocular versions those numbered: 23, 26, 32, 33, 34, 35 seven in total are from the region around Greece,
strongly suggesting impetus from the Odyssey. There are also two Modern Greek versions that do not mention the
single eye: one from Athens (24) and one from Chios (25).
Evidence for the Odyssey as the origin for the entire pattern of ogre tales includes the Old Irish Merugud Uilix
Maicc Leirtis (Wandering of Ulysses son of Laertes), which includes a one-eyed Cyclops episode (trans. Meyer 1999:
2), and dates from the eighth century CE (Harris 1998: 14). Even the Renaissance Latin editio princeps of the Greek is
in comparison much later at 1488 CE (Sarton 1952: 153). This suggests that the Odyssey may have remained alive as
73
an oral or lost textual tradition in the West during the Middle Ages. Other versions, such as the usage of the usually
benevolent and tutelary Basque Basa-Juan Lord of the forest...the cultural initiator who instructs mankind (Lurker
1987: 56) as a Polyphemus figure further suggests that the Odyssey may have influenced local stories at a later date.
See Bremmer (2002a) for the refutation of several other key ogre myths from Central Europe that clearly display
great evidence of influence from the Classical Tradition. Lithuanian version 16, which Frazer (1921) calls
suspiciously close to the Odyssey contains implicit monocularity. Oghuz Turkish version 36 in connection with the
figure Tepegz has already been discussed as most likely stemming from the influence of the Odyssey. Further, 23 is
a Cappadocian version which does not refer explicitly to the one eye, but makes use of the term tepekozes, which is
most likely a Greek rendering of the Turkish tepegz of 36. Thus, due to both the lack of any other of these Ogre
Myths in antiquity, as well as the likelihood of the Odysseys survival in some form in both East and West, it is
unlikely that a widespread tradition existed that the Odyssey merely took part in or was inserted at a late date into the
rest of the heros (wandering), as was suggested long ago (Grimm 1857: 130).
M. L. West (2005: 6264) deftly notes strong parallels between the Calypso and Circe episodes in the Odyssey and
that of the alewife Shiduri in Gilgamesh, as well as possible connections with Medea in the Argonautica.
69
32

and the demon of the Cedar Mountain 75 Huwawa (Humbaba) in Sumerian and Akkadian
mythology (Gilgamesh V. SBV I-VI). Suggestions have often been made that their exists an affinity
between the two stories via Greek contact with cultures in Western Asia (Dalley 1989: 47; Burkert
2004: 26, 44; Lowden 2011: 18185). This episode contains several themes which may have
worked their way into the Greek myth of Polyphemus. One of these is the blinding of Huwawa
with winds by Gilgameshs patron Shamash (Gilgamesh V. LV. II). However, Huwawa does not
seem to have been a one-eyed entity. He is described and represented in Akkadian mythology as
intestine-faced and as lord of the fortress of Intestines (Dalley 1989: 43) and was often pictured
in this manner, with his face drawn in a single unending line (Napier 1986:111).76 Thus, if the
Gilgamesh epic was influential in the creation of the Polyphemus through the act of blinding the
monster who in neither account appears to be one-eyed, we must look elsewhere for the
monocular connections that have been assumed regarding the Cyclopes owing to its more
explicit attestation in relation to other beings possessing the same name.
4. In Search of the Origin of the Monocular Cyclopes
The question then is where did Greek literature draw the motif of the one-eyed man from, which
came to be joined with the Cyclopes through the act of Polyphemuss blinding and the emphasis
on his eye (but not a single one) in Homer. One key piece of evidence to support this is the fact
that before he is blinded, the monster is merely the Cyclops (Hom. Od. IX. 296, 319, 345,
347).77 It is only following this that he is for the first time twice referred to as Polyphemus (Hom.
Od. IX. 404, 466). However, he is still called the Cyclops after the blinding as well (IX. 362, 415,
428), suggesting that the two names had not been properly integrated in the Homeric tradition.78 As
noted, the fixing of the Homeric epics most likely took place during the mid-sixth century BCE
or slightly beforehand. The emphasis on blinding Polyphemus in one eye appears to have been
uneasily squared with the name of Cyclopes, the most obvious answer for this being that the
Dalleys (1989) translation has Pine Mountain and pine used on multiple occasions instead of cedar (Gilgamesh
V. SBV I).
75
76
Some have also suggested that Huwawas monstrous face may have been the impetus behind the creation of the
Greek gorgon masks and the story of Perseus (Napier 1986: 111; Kovacs 1989: XXX).
77
One suggestion that has been developed to allow for the difficulties inherent in the Polyphemus episode is that the
story existed in different tellings: one in which Polyphemus had one eye and the other in which he possessed two
(Mondi 1983: 2122). Another is that the single eye might represent a version of the tale in which the already
deformed Cyclops deliberately exists to be completely blinded by the loss of the second ( ibid.). In spite of the
attractive creativity of these suggestions, they would seem very much clutching at straws in order to solve a much
simpler problem, easily solved by bringing the Hesiodic Cyclopes into the equation as the originators of the monocular
aspect.
78
The name Polyphemus itself seems merely to mean literally great spoken about or, according to Liddell and Scott
([1898] 2008: 659) abounding in many songs or legends. In the Argonautica (I.140ff) one of the lesser characters is
the Lapith Polyphemus, who in the Iliad (I.260f) Nestor calls godlike and numbers among the mighty heroes already
perished long before the Trojan War. The name in general seems to have no connection with any facet of the
Cyclopss physical character.
33

ambiguity of blinding one of the ogres eyes brought to attention actual monocular beings already
possessed in Greek myth that were, however, vastly different. Thus, in order to solve this we must
look to the second branch of the Cyclopes those of Hesiod, who are clearly described as
monocular, and most importantly with words very similar to those of Aristeass Arimaspians.
The Homeric Cyclopes from at least the time of Thucydides (VI.2) 79 were seen to possess
a very strong geographical connection to Italia in the western Mediterranean in particular
volcanic Lipara and Mount Aetna near Sicily80 (Call. Hymn to Artemis III. 46; Verg. Georg. I.
471472, Aen. VIII. 418420). One of the principle reasons for this identification of them with Mt.
Aetna was that it was seen as the forge of the god Hephaestus/Vulcan and the prison of the Titans,
with both of whom the Cyclopes came to be associated (Pindar. Pyth. I. 15; Verg. Aen. III. 579
82). In relation to this conflation, Mondi (1983: 88) makes a simple and useful observation: the
significant fact is that though they reside on the slopes of Etna, Polyphemus and his fellows are
always shepherds, never smiths. This connection between a smithing god, divine servitude and the
Cyclopes stems from the Cyclopes of Hesiod, writing during the seventh century BCE.81 Hesiods
smithing Cyclopes and their origins as titans born from the earth are described as follows:
79
By the third century BCE the wandering rocks, the sirens and Scylla and Charybdis were also relocated to Sicily
(Lycophron Alex. 648; Apoll. Rhod. Arg. IV. 826), seemingly to group together all the elements of Odysseus
wanderings. Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, describes the Cyclopes vaguely as his relatives due to both peoples
having been fathered by the sea-god Poseidon (VII. 5463, 207), and that they lived within a very similar vicinity (VI.
46). This is an interesting connection as the location of the Phaeacians and their land Scheria, according to
Thucydides (I.25.4), was the island of Corcyra, quite near to Ithaca, though the Odyssey (IX. 17) emphasizes the long
distance between the two locations. Strabo (I.2.18) thought that Scheria was in the Atlantic sea or Ocean. Thus we
are left unable to answer questions of location, but a shared legacy through the same ancestral deity most likely caused
them to be collapsed together in the wake of Homeric myth. One popular conception as to why the Cyclopes were
sited in Sicily has been the long discovery of prehistoric elephants in caves on the island, which as far back as the time
of Boccaccio were regarded as the skeletons of giants such as Polyphemus and Eryx (Mayor 2000: 67, 28485).
Othenio Abel (1914) is the main person responsible for noting and popularizing the similarity between the single eyelike trunk socket in the skulls of such animals and the monocular Cyclopes, and he has been keenly followed by other
scholars (cf. Mayor 2000: 6ff; Eberhart 2002: 117; Agnesi et al. 2007: 26370). However, as Mayor (2000: 28485)
points out, he also appears to have been responsible for the error that the ancient philosopher Empedocles of
Acrargus spoke of such skeletons and regarded them as elephants, as supposedly did Boccacio both ideas that are
utterly false. However, we cannot entirely deny the possibility that such skeletons may have informed some of the
impetus for locating the Cyclopes here, though the other arguments based on the position of Circe and other
characters from the Odyssey and the collapsing of these Cyclopes with those of Hesiod would seem stronger.
However, Homer seems very much aware of the existence of Sicily (Od. XX. 383; XXIV. 211, 307), and it would
have been odd for him or the tradition to fail to give it as a landmark if all these portions of the were originally
intended for this region after Odysseus and his crew were swept off course (IX. 8081).
80
81
From Hesiods time onward, Circe and Odysseus are named as the progenitors of Latinus and Agrius, who came to
rule the Tyrrhenians in Italia (Hes. Theog. 101216). However, the Odyssey itself states that Circe lived very close to
the house of Dawn, which would be in the far east (Hom. Od. XII. 34), and not the far west ( M. L.West 2005: 43).
As the sister of baleful Aeetes (= Medea) (Hom. Od. X. 13739), Circe too may have belonged originally at Phasis in
the Black Sea in the completely opposite direction, where a plain of Circe is attested (Apoll. Rhod. Arg. II. 400;
Timaeus FGrH 566 F 84), as with many other seemingly shared portions of the Argonautica and Odyssey.
34

Again she [the earth] bore the Cyclopes, whose hearts were insolent, Brontes
[Thunder] and Steropes [Lightning Bolt] and proud-souled Arges [Shining],82 those
who found and gave the thunder and lightning-bolt to Zeus. They were like other
gods in all respects, but that a single eye lay in the brow of each, and from this they
received the name, Cyclopes, from the one round eye that lay in the middle of each
forehead. Strength and energy and craft were in their works. (Hes. Theog. 13946)83
As we may see from the quotes below, these smithing Cyclopes are clearly described not only as
monocular, but possessing a single eye in the middle of their foreheads like the Arimaspians, and
even the Mongol Duwa Soqur. In the Greek we may certainly see the similarities between Aristeas
and Hesiods monocular beings:
Aristeas frag. 3:
,
(And each of them has a single eye in the middle of his fair forehead)
Hes. Theog. 143-5:

. ,

(And a single eye was borne in the middle of [their] foreheads, and they were called Cyclopes by
name, because a single round eye was borne in the middle of their forehead[s])
It is imperative to note on this matter that Bolton (1962: 818) appears to regard the
fragments of Aristeas as almost artificial and very repetitive perhaps composed of pieces of
Homer and Hesiod, and, moreover, written by someone who appears to have been a rather
tasteless and inept poet. This echoes Longinus (de Subl. X.4) comments regarding another
82
Whereas the names of these three Hesiodic Elder Cyclopes all have names connected with forging and
thunderbolts, under later tradition they were to multiply from three to seven (Strab. VIII. 6.11; Nonn. Dion. XXVIII.
172), some of whom possessed names connected with the ocean such as Halimedes (sea ruler) and Euryalos (sea
roaming) (Nonn. Dion. XIV. 52). This not only brings to mind Polyphemus wading through the ocean in the Aeneid
(III. 66566), but also the Homeric Cyclopes association with Poseidon (Hom. Od. IX. 529). This crossing over
highlights well the conflation of the two very different groups of Homeric and Hesiodic Cyclopes.
Hes. Theog. 13946: ,
,
.
,
.
,
:
.
83
35

fragment of Aristeas in which the poet is denigrated for trying to be grand in his description of a
storm at sea but failing at this when compared with Homer (Il. XV. 624f). However, as Bolton
(1962: 1819) admits, Aristeas work could well also represent an unconventional and even a
colloquial originality in his approach to the hallowed sources he was attempting to imitate, rather
than anything such as corruption or later invention of fragments under Aristeass name (cf.Bowra
1956: 8). Even if Bolton (1962: 818) is correct in assuming that Aristeas may have borrowed from
Hesiods famous Theogony in order to write his , this at most is yet another early
recognition of the similarity of the Arimaspians and Cyclopes. Further, Mondi (1983: 34) has
expounded a theory that the fourth line of the Hesiodic passage (line 142) may in fact be a later
addition and can be substituted with a line explaining the Cyclopes insolence with a line
implicitly explaining another myth. This is how they were slain by Apollo for making the lightning
bolts used to kill his son Asclepius (cf. Schol. ad Hes. Theog.; Hes. Catal. frag. 43). In spite of this,
it would still leave the other lines describing the Cyclopes monocularity as valid. It would not, as
Mondi (1983: 34. n. 59) believes, prove that the Hesiodic Cyclopes were absurdly rewritten as
monocular due to the success of Polyphemuss blinding in folklore.84 Thus the fact remain that
both Hesiod and Aristeas are reflecting on monocular entities, which appear far too close to be
merely coincidental.
Moreover, the Hesiodic Cyclopes, in their role as smiths to the gods, appear to have had a
very close affinity with a third branch of Cyclopes worshipped as the divine builders of many of the
still-standing remnants of the prior Mycenaean culture including the walls of Tiryns, Argolis and
Mycenae (Bacchyl. frag. 11; Strabo VII.25.5, VIII. 6.2.11). These Cyclopes also possessed an altar
at Corinth and possibly one at Megara as well (Paus. I.42.2, II.2.1). According to Strabo and others
(Strabo. VIII. 6.11; Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 966), these Cyclopes originally came from Thrace to
Lycia and Crete under a Cyclops king who gave them their name. There is also mention, in a
minor work by Aristotle, of a race of Thracian Cyclopes who possessed a poisonous fountain
(Arist. De Mir. Ausc. 121. 842a 1114).85 This Thracian connection will be vital for what follows.
In dating the introduction and spread of this association of the Cyclopes with construction,
Bacchylidess fifth-century BCE fragment would appear to be the earliest following Hesiod, which
is also supported by their employment of the early euphemism of bellyhands in relation to their
laborious profession a century earlier (Nicophon frag. 6.12l; Bremmer 2002a: 140). However, this
brings into question the source of Hesiods depiction of them as divine smiths much earlier than
The alternate line 142 of Crates the Grammarian reads: = and [the
earth] nursed those of the immortals who are called mortal. The grammar of the line is itself is quite hard and expects
an accusative (direct object), where instead only nominatives are present. Moreover, it appears more of a gloss due to
later attempts to rationalize the killing of the Cyclopes and amending their being like the gods in all respects except
for the fact that if they had been killed by Apollo, then logically they could not have been immortal.
84
85
Gravess ([1955] 2000: I. 40) suggestion, however, that Thracian smiths tattooed themselves with single rings
representing Cyclopean eyes in the middle of their forehead appears to have almost no basis. Although the Thracians
were one of the few peoples known by the Greeks who practiced tattooing (Van Dinter 2005: 8), there are no specific
links between this and the Cyclopes except that the Thracians most likely drew the custom of tattooing from the
Scythians (ibid. 10).
36

this, and would suggest some form of precedent in popular religion such as the altar at Corinth and
the construction cult, despite the late literary recordings of these beliefs. Both Graves ([1955] 2000:
40) and more recently Burkert (1985: 140) have suggested that the Cyclopes may have been an
actual cult similar to other groups with Thracian and Anatolian smithing connections, such as the
Corybantes, Curetes and Telchines, who possessed connections with fertility and the myths of
nursing Zeus on Crete (Strabo X.3.7, 17, 19; Eliade [1951] 1989: 473; Blakely 2006: 124).
We should as a result of this consider the possibility that the Thracian craftsmen Cyclopes
came into Greek myth through the mixed Cimmero-Thracian and Scytho-Thracian cultures on the
west coast of the Black Sea joining mainland Greece to Anatolia. These were produced by Inner
Asian migrations westwards during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE86 just as these legends
of the builder Cyclopes themselves suggest. One strong possibility to consider in relation to a cult
of smithing Cyclopes is the fact that since antiquity among the nomads of Northern and Inner Asia,
the smith has fulfilled a position in society that is deeply connected with magic-working, shamanic
practice and power over heat (Eliade [1956] 1962: 53; Peck 1963: 2004). Part of the numinous
controlling of heat is that the smith-shaman is often associated with lightning, or a smithing deity
who manufacturers the thunderbolt on his anvil (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005: 35). Their
monocularity may be connected simply with their relationship to sacred primordial space, as we
have already seen in great detail concerning the use of monocular beings throughout history in
Inner Asian culture.
As Kristiansen (1998: 18698) points out in great detail in his study on the ThracoCimmerian cultural complex, intercultural meetings between the emerging nomads of the Inner
Asian steppe from the ninth century BCE and settled agriculturalists in the Pontic and Caucasus
regions led to a great diffusion and diversification of material goods, which seem to have much in
common with Scytho-Siberian art and funerary customs (Wells 2001: 50, 77; 2006: 1921).87 The
result of such interactions between the steppe and their ongoing refreshment under the Scythians
and Sarmatians have been suggested to have deeply influenced the Lusatian, Szentes-Vekerzug,
86
Strabo (I.3.21) refers to an alliance between the Thracian Teres tribe and the Cimmerians, and later, due to
confusion on his own part, calls the Cimmerians Thracians and Teres Cimmerians (I. 3.21, XIV.1.40), which has led
to widespread belief among some scholars that the Cimmerians were of Thracian origin (cf. Olbrycht 1998: 9293).
Some, to the contrary, have even suggested that the Cimmerian and Thracian invasions of Anatolia were utterly
unconnected, but were conflated by Strabo due to confusion and lack of knowledge on his part (Diakonoff 1985: 94
95; Olbrycht 1998: 9293).
87
The term Thraco-Cimmerian is often used in archaeology to describe the complex burial cultures and uncanny
similarities that were to develop in the regions between the Caucasus, the Black Sea and Eastern Europe during the
ninth and eighth centuries prior to the Scythian era (seventh-to-third c. BCE). As Kristiansen (2000: 193) says, ThracoCimmerian represents archaeological and cultural affinities and signs of sharing motifs, rather than a single historical
people, accidentally referred to at various times in history, and in several places, none of which was their original
homeland. However, it is very difficult to deduce specific different cultures and their ranges from within this mass
of varied yet highly similar material finds (Wells 2006: 19). Perhaps the most interesting notions have been offered by
Ginzburg (1992: 212, 289) in the form of a theoretical Eurasian continuum of mythic and artistic motifs stretching
from China to Central Europe, due to intercultural exchange through the overlapping of the steppe and Central
European worlds during this period.
37

Hallstatt and later the proto-Celtic La Tne cultures in Central Europe (Chadwick 1971: 1314;
Wells 2001: 50, 77; 2006: 1921) and even the Huns (Kim 2013: 145), pointing towards important
and ongoing cultural interplay among these cultural regions.
In relation to this intercultural overlapping and exchange between Inner Asian and
European cultural spheres, we should note several key Scytho-Thracian figures. The first of these
is the divinided being Zalmoxis (Hdt. IV.936; Strabo. VII. 3. 5),88 who has been well-studied in
relation to his similarities with Inner Asian journeys to the underworld and the formation of
Pythagoreanism (Rohde 1900: II.27ff; Dodds 1951: 147; Meuli 1953: esp. 163; Burkert 1962: 36
55; Eliade [1970] 1995: 3133; Ustinova 2009: 24698). As well as Zalmoxis there is also the
famous Greek musician, magician and traveler to the underworld, Orpheus. Like the Cyclopes and
their arts, Orpheus was said to have brought the healing arts from Thrace by way of the smith
magician Idaean Dactyls from Phrygia (Diod. Sic. V. 64.35; Strabo. X.16.318; Graf and
Johnston 2007: 170).89 The Dactyls themselves may have had their roots in various smithing rites
performed by Inner Asian nomadic peoples who migrated into Thrace after dwelling in and
passing through Anatolia, as the Scythians are attested to have done during the seventh century
BCE (Meuli [1935] 1975: II. 697, 872; Ginzburg 1992: 254).
The very similar mythic iron smithing tribe, the Chalybes, certainly seem to have possessed
keen connections with the Scythians, and were usually cited as dwelling in Armenia (Hdt. I.28;
Apollod. Rhod. Arg. II.1001). We may note their presence in the catalog of Ios Northern
wanderings in Prometheus Bound (7145), suggesting that Aristeas may have mentioned them.
Scythia, for that matter, was itself frequently described as the mother of iron (301), the Chalybes
as a Scythic race (Schol. ad. Apoll. Rhod. Arg. I.132123, II.3758), iron as a Scythic emigrant
(Aesch. Sept. 818) and the Scythian king Saneunus as responsible for irons (or possibly bronzes)
discovery (Hellan. frag. 189). This suggests that iron working was explicitly tied to the Scythians
and the Scytho-Thracian complex by the Greeks, and what is more, it is necessary to remark that it
was for metallic riches that the Greeks first founded colonies in Thrace during the seventh century
BCE (Kristiansen 2000: 186ff; Arapopoulou and Chrite 2007: 739).
5. A Comparative Theory
It is important to note as we consider these links between the Cyclopes and the Black Sea region
that no scholar has yet suggested a Near Eastern or any other intercultural borrowing responsible
for the three Cyclopean smiths in the works of Hesiod, as there are no known parallels in the
Homers (Il. XIII. 37) description of Zeus turning his attention away from Troy to the Thracians and other
northern peoples, who are the most just of men and live on milk, appears to have evolved at least before the time of
Strabo (VII.3.27; Aesch. ap. Stabo. VII. 3.7; Antiphanes ap. Athen. Deip. 226d ) into a perception of such northern
peoples as being naturally Pythagorean and not eating meat.
88
89
As Dodds (1951: 147) has remarked on this matter that Orpheus in many ways appears to have been: A Thracian
figure of much the same kind as Zalmoxis a mystical shaman or proto-type of shamans, and indeed in support of
this, his earliest connections in Greek myth seem to be in the use of song to defeat the Sirens in the Black Sea region
in the proto-Argonautica (M. L. West 2005: 4548).
38

cultures of Asia Minor, the Levant or Mesopotamia. In light of this we should note an alternative
possibility: Ananakians [1925] 1964 XI.856 and Bedrosians (1993: 12 n. 49, 31) comments that
the little known Ancient Armenian god Tork,90 who was both one-eyed and a smith, may have
influenced the smithing Cyclopes.91 In elaborating what has been begun on this, it is curious to note
that there are several important modern parallels to the myths of the Arimaspians and Cyclopes
from the Caucasus and Circassian regions of Armenia, Georgia and Southern Russia that would
seem to suggest that in former times monocular beings were closely tied to dominion over smithing
and fire-making in these regions. Each of these in turn is strongly connected with the influence of
migrational Inner Asian peoples.
For instance, in the Nart Sagas of the Ossetian peoples of Circassia, who are in many ways
the descendants of the Indo-Iranian nomads such as the Scythians and Sarmatians of antiquity, the
foil to the heroic Narts is a race of mountain dwelling monocular beings called the Ayniwz, who
have to be constantly outwitted through episodes such as the stealing of millet and fire from them
by the hero Sosruquo (Colarusso 2002: 53 p. 202, 55 p. 216, 57 p. 222). In one regularly
recurring narrative pattern from these regions, a giant, much like the Greek Prometheus, is bound
to the top of a mountain as punishment for stealing fire and is freed by a Heracles-type hero,
Sosruquo or Pataraz (Colarusso 1989: 64451, 2002: 3439 pp. 15872). In at least one such
story the giant who is freed by the hero is clearly monocular (37 p.170), inverting the previously
mentioned tale of fire being stolen from monocular beings by Sosruquo (57 p. 222). Along with
similar Georgian fire-stealing tales concerning the hero Amirani, these affinities with Greek myth
have led to much interest in suggestions that this mythic pattern too may have been borrowed by
the Greeks through contact with Western Asia. The mountain on which Prometheus was
imprisoned after all though not directly named by Hesiod or Aeschylus was commonly
referred to in antiquity as Mount Caucasus (Aesch. PS frag. 107 ap. Cic. Tusc. X. 235; Apoll.
Adontz (1927: 18394) connects the name of the god Tork/Tarkhou with Greek and Avar itarkou,
meaning vulture, and his title Ang (Mod. Arm. cruel, terrifying) with the Scythic word for swan (), in order
to suggest that the being was worshipped in connection with birds of prey. However, Bedrosians view (1993: 12 n. 49)
that Torks name is cognate with the mythical smithing Germanic Duregar and Greek Telchines seems much more
reliable. See Toumanoff (1963: 299303) for questions on the royal Armenian house of Ang and its connections
with Tork.
90
91
Ananikian ([1925] 1964 XI.856, App. IV. 98100 The Cyclops) seems to adhere to Frazers idea of the ogre Urmyth. Indeed Frazer (1921: 446ff 30) does include an Armenian tale told in various places throughout the
mountains of the country of a one-eyed giant, which seems very close to the Odyssey, as Frazer (ibid. 446) himself
admits. However, the name of Tork is not mentioned at all in the story, and connections with the ogre Ur-myth
seem to be from Ananikians own assumptions, in which the Homeric Cyclopes are regarded as the same as the
smithing beings of Hesiod, with which Tork actually appears to share common features. Within the Caucasian Nart
Sagas we also find a tale that clearly matches the Ogre tale pattern in the form of Sosruquos tricking of the
cyclopean being Yinizh (Colarusso 2002: 56 pp. 21921), and thus should be taken in conjunction with what has
previously been said and reiterated on this mythic pattern in connection with monocularity. Hunts (2012) recent
collection of Caucasian myths does not seem to include any that fit with myths of monocular giants, except perhaps
that of the Chechen myth of the blind giant raised from a pelvic bone by Soska Solsa (Sosruquo) ( ibid. 423ff), which is
largely irrelevant to this study.
39

Rhod. Arg. II. 1239; Apollod. Bib. I.145, II. 120; Ov. Met. II.224f).92 Such Cyclopean connections
with fire and smithing would indeed seem to lead back to notions of a monocular deity or group of
such beings who presided over such knowledge and were attached strongly to distant abodes in the
mountains.
We should also note modern Armenian tales of one-eyed demons who lurk on rooftops to
murder people and who dwell in mountain caves. Such myths may have shared similar IndoIranian cultural roots with those of the Scythic peoples in antiquity (Bedrosian 1993: 12 n. 49, 31);
there is as well the long history of nomadic peoples from the Cimmerians and Scythians and
onwards passing through the regions of Armenia and Georgia in order to enter Anatolia. Like the
Arimaspians, these Caucasian beings may too have simply devolved and become monsters like the
Mongolian Almas. Ananikian ([1925] 1964 XI.85, App. IV. 98100 The Cyclops) writes on
these Armenian beings:
The modern descendants of the Cyclops in Armenia are one-eyed beings, who are
either gigantic devils or a monstrous race living in caves. Each individual weighs a
hundred times more than a human being. In the day-time they sit on their roofs in
wait for travellers, animals, birds, jinn, monsters, whom they may devour. When
nothing comes they procure a whole village for their dinner.
If such links between the Classical World and Caucasia regarding the smithing Cyclopes
are to be considered seriously, then as Adontz (1927: 1924) long ago suggested, due to the close
connections between the monocular Tork, the Cimmerians and Scythians, 93 the most reasonable
answer would most fittingly sit with the iron age nomadic peoples of Inner Asia, who, as mentioned,
regularly dwelt in and passed through Armenia and Georgia and the Urartic Empire (900600
BCE), from the Cimmerians onwards. As we have seen in relation to the long history of
monocular beings in Inner Asian lore such links would not seem unreasonable and are further
authenticated by the written records of Chinese and Indic geographers, and even the possibility
that the Arimaspians were known by not only the Issedones and the Greeks, but also the Scythians
themselves. The domino effect of migrations of nomadic peoples between the eighth and sixth
92
Much focus has been put on the Georgian hero Amirani, which has precipitated a long interest in the interplay of
Greek and Caucasian myth (Furtwangler 1910: I.V.37; Dumzil 1930: 3138, 8589; Colarusso 1989: 64451; 2002:
XXIX). Other similarities in the Nart Sagas have been taken to have exerted influence on the formation of the
Arthurian legends, precipitated by Scythian and Sarmatian presence and cultural activity in Central Europe (Scott
Littleton and Malcor 1994; Colarusso 2002: XXIX, 552; Anderson 2003: 1326; Emerson 2004: 14).
93
Adontz (1927: 1924) considers the descent list for the sons of Noah (and therefore etiologies of the peoples known
to the Jews) at Gen. 10:3, in which the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz and Tgarmah are listed. His suggestions that they
represent the Cimmerians (Gimmeri), Scythians (ikuzia) and the people of Tork (Armenians) would seem to have
much going for it. In Ezekiel (27: 14, 38: 6) we should also note that Beth-Tgarmah is located in the far north and
is connected with supplying soldiers and horses to both the armies of the Tyrians and Gog. Armenian connections
with Tgarmah (without mention of Tork) are supported by a number of scholars (Diakonoff 1985: 125; Emerton
1990: 39). Later Christian writers certainly also saw the connection between what they called and Armenia
(Flav. Jos. Ant. Jud. 126; Euseb. Chron. II.12).
40

centuries BCE most likely brought the motif of the monocular man westwards, where, as is the
case within the bounds of Inner Asian myth, it was put to a myriad uses in relation to distant
people who in antiquity were concerned primarily with metals and smithing. There is the goldpillaging Arimaspians, the lightning manufacturing Hesiodic Cyclopes and Cyclopean builders and
the fire stealing/possessing beings of Caucasian and Circassian folklore. This final incarnation may
have in turn informed both the Prometheus and Cyclops myths either directly, through contact
with the peoples of Armenia and Georgia, or like the Cyclopean builders, through the migration of
ideas and peoples into Thrace at this time.
41

Conclusions
In summing up what has been discussed in this paper, the most important matters would appear to
be the following:
1. The original monster of the Issedonic tales told to Aristeas and labeled gryphon was not
like the Near Eastern artistic representation with which it came to be confounded. It did
not possess discernible avine qualities and was more likely some form of mythological doglike quadruped. In spite of the temptation to square it with skeletons of protoceratopians,
such a theory is largely reliant on a failure to note this confusion between gryphons in art
and much later literary sources dependant nearly wholly on such art and India rather than
Inner Asia. Reconstructing the original monster and its connections with gold would be
very much easier if we possessed more of Aristeass work.
2. Aristeas of Proconnesus appears to have been the recipient of a highly mythologised
account of the formation of the first nomadic states in Inner Asia, and perhaps even some
on the fall of the Western Zhou dynasty, due to peoples who were set in motion by the
migrations that ensued. This does not mean that he would have to have existed during the
eighth or seventh century BCE, as it is the subject of distant mythologisations that is being
discussed. If this is so it may position him as an integral recorder, not necessarily of purely
historical events, but of how such events were viewed through the lens of Inner Asian
peoples who had previously participated in them through the domino effect of migrations.
He may also have received some distant descriptions of the Eastern Zhou which he
construed as the Hyperboreans, further highlighting the multivalent cultural preconceptions
and the uniqueness inherent in this meeting between the Greek and Inner Asian cultural
spheres.
3. The Arimaspians represent but a part of a much larger tradition of one-eyed beings in
Inner Asian myth, in which such entities fulfilled ongoing roles in geographical concepts of
distant and symbolically significant regions and those who dwelt in them. These influences
may also be felt in the mountain-dwelling beings from whom fire is stolen in Caucasian and
Circassian myth, the Hesiodic Cyclopes and monsters found in modern Armenian folklore.
4. Similarities inherent between the Cyclopes and Arimaspians were recognized by the
Classical writers of antiquity, permitting elements of one group to be shared with the other
at different periods, e.g., the influence of Hesiod on Aristeas; the transferral of the
hairiness of the Arimaspians to the Cyclopes; the perceived influence of Aristeas on
Homer.
5. The Hesiodic Cyclopes most likely had their basis in Inner Asian myth, as did the
Arimaspians. The Cyclopes of Homer were not one-eyed and represent a completely
unrelated primitive Black Sea herding society conjoined to a monster-blinding myth, most
likely stemming from the Gilgamesh epic. These Cyclopes were simply granted the title
Cyclopes sometime before the mid-sixth century BCE because of the emphasis in
Homer on only one of Polyphemus eyes during the act of blinding. However, within the
42

text, Polyphemus, the Cyclopean society and the name Cyclops are not yet well integrated,
which suggests that this conflation was not much older than this period. The connection
between these elements is most likely that the ambiguity of the giants blinding in one eye
was reminiscent of the emphatically monocular smithing beings found in Hesiod and
among the Thracians and Caucasians who had been influenced by peoples from Inner Asia.
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Arimaspians and Cyclopes:

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Fig.1. Kelermes Mirror, Ukraine. Topmost panel featuring gryphomachy

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Max. Tyr. X.2f: ,

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Of the Arimaspians, who dwell by the font

Tz. Chil. VII. 68692:

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

In relation to the overall positive description of the Arimaspians in this fragment, we

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Hdt. IV. 27: ,

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

5. Monocular Beings in Inner Asian Myth

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

peoples of Siberia and Mongolia.

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Hom. Od. IX. 33233:

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Hes. Theog. 143-5:

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Jonathan Ratcliffe, Arimaspians and Cyclopes

Harvard University Press.

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