Aristeas’ Journey to Hyperborea

Abstract

The Arimaspea remained for a long time the only detailed report of the further North for the rest of the Greek world. It was widely known in the Archaic and Classical periods, especially among the worshipers of Apollo and became a rich new source about Hyperborea. But it belongs to the memory of the worlds of Homer and Hesiod and simply cannot hold its own against the Histories in the contest of ethnographic authority. This study presents Aristeas’ alleged mystical journey to Hyperborea, preserved mainly in the accounts of Maximus of Tyre, and compares it to Herodotus’ rational mindset.