Aristeas was a semi-legendary Greek poet and miracle-worker, a native of Proconnesus in Asia Minor, active ca. 7th century BC. In book IV of The History, Herodotus reports that Aristeas appeared to drop down dead in a shop, but before his relatives could collect the body, he had left on a seven-year long trip.

Aristeas was supposed to have authored a poem called the Arimaspea, giving an account of travels in the far North. There he encountered a tribe called the Issedones, who told him of still more fantastic and northerly peoples: the one-eyed Arimaspi who battle gold-guarding gryphons, and the Hyperboreans among whom Apollo lives during the winter.

Three hundred and forty years after his death, Aristeas appeared in Metapontum in Southern Italy to command that a statue of himself be set up and a new altar dedicated to Apollo, saying that since his death he had been travelling with Apollo in the form of a sacred raven.

This story appears to be referred to in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics: Aristaeus was a man who lived around 700 BC, and became, by transformation, one of the ravens acting as advisor to Dream.

Bibliography

• J. D. P. Bolton, Aristeas of Proconnesus. Oxford, 1962.

Ancient Greek poets

Aristeas | Ariszteasz | Aristeas | Aristeas