Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/262

 246 HISTORY OF GREECE. spirit, or failure in the means of subsistence, among the nomadic tribes of the Asiatic plains, have brought on the civilized nations of southern Europe calamitous invasions, of which the prime moving cause was remote and unknown. Sometimes a weaker tribe, flying before a stronger, has been in this manner precipitated upon the territory of a richer and less military population, so that an impulse originating in the distant plains of Central Tartary has been propagated until it reached the southern extremity of Europe, through successive intermediate tribes, a phenomenon especially exhibited during the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era, in the declining years of the Roman empire. A pressure so transmitted onward is said to have brought down the Cimmerians and Scythians upon the more southerly regions of Asia. The most ancient story in explanation of this incident seems to have been contained in the epic poem (now lost) called Arimaspia, of the mystic Aristeas of Prokonnesus, composed apparently about 540 B. c. This poet, under the inspiration of Apollo, 1 undertook a pilgrimage to visit the sacred Hyperbore- ans (especial votaries of that god) in their elysium beyond the Rhipaean mountains ; but he did not reach farther than the Isse- dones. According to him, the movement, whereby the Cimme- rians had been expelled from their possessions on the Euxine sea, began with the Grypes or Griffins in the extreme north, the sacred character of the Hyperboreans beyond was incompatible with aggression or bloodshed. The Grypes invaded the Arimas- pians, who on their part assailed their neighbors the Issedones ;- these latter moved southward or westward and drove the Scythi- ans across the Tanais, while the Scythians, carried forward by this onset, expelled the Cimmerians from their territories along the Palus Maeotis and the Euxine. "We see thus that Aristeas referred the attack of the Scythians upon the Cimmerians to a distant impulse proceeding in the first instance from the Grypes or Griffins ; but Herodotus had heard it explained in another way, which he seems to think more cor- rect, the Scythians, originally occupants of Asia, or the regions east of the Caspian, had been driven across the Araxes, in 1 Herodot. iv, 13. Herodot. iv, 13.