Aristeas of Proconnesus

You have heard me mention Aristeas of Proconnesus and I'd like to give a little more detail about his life and his poem, the Arimaspea. All of my information comes from JDP Bolton's Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford University Press, 1962). Little is known of his life other than what Herodotus records of it. Bolton fixes his floruit in the Seventh century bc. Aristeas' poem, which survives now only in a few fragments, probably served as source material for Herodotus' histories. Here is his description of the life of Aristeas:

Aristeas also, the son of Caystrobius, a native of Proconnesus (an island in the Sea of Marmara), says in the course of his poem that, possessed by Apollo, he reached the Issedonians. Above them dwelt the Arimaspi, men with one eye; still further, the gold-guarding griffins; and beyond these, the Hyperboreans, whose country extend to the sea. Except the Hyperboreans, all these nations, beginning with the Arimaspi, encroached on their neighbors......I will now relate a tale which I heard concerning him (Aristeas) at Proconnesus and Cyzicus. Aristeas, they said, who belonged to one of the noblest families in the island, had entered one day a fuller's shop, when he suddenly dropped dead. Hereupon the fuller shut up his shop, and went to tell Aristeas' kindred what had happened. The report of the death had just spread through the town, when a certain Cyzicenian lately arrived from Artace (a seaport about five miles from Cyzicus), contradicted the rumor, affirming that he had met Aristeas on the road to Cyzicus and had spoken with him. This man, therefore, strenuously denied the rumour; the relations however proceeded to the fuller's shop with all things necessary for the funeral, intending to carry the body away. But on the shop being opened, no Aristeas was found either dead or alive. Six years afterwards he reappeared, they told me, in Proconnesus, and composed the poem which the Greeks now know as the Arimaspea, after which he disappeared a second time.

Herodotus is, as Bolton points out, "the one firm source" certifying the existence of Aristeas. A few dubious fragments of the Arimaspea survive in other late ancient sources such as Tzetzes. These fragments tell of visiting shaggy one-eyed men in and around the Black Sea. There is clearly some connection with shamanistic practices, e.g., 'bilocation' and 'phoibolamptos' (possession by Apollo). But the really amazing thing about Aristeas for me is the fact that we have here the earliest western example of travel literature, of an adventure driven not by military campaigns or the love of some woman, but solely the desire to go beyond and see for oneself what is there.