Arimoi

Arimoi in Greek mythology are the people in whose country (or τὰ Ἄριμα – the place in which) lies under the ground bound by Typhon.

Homer describes a place he calls the "couch [or bed] of Typhoeus", which he locates in the land of the Arimoi (εἰν Ἀρίμοις), where Zeus lashes the land about Typhoeus with his thunderbolts.[1] Presumably this is the same land where, according to Hesiod, Typhon's mate Echidna keeps guard "in Arima" (εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν).[2]

But neither Homer nor Hesiod say anything more about where these Arimoi or this Arima might be. The question of whether an historical place was meant, and its possible location, has been, since ancient times, the subject of speculation and debate.[3]

Strabo discusses the question in some detail.[4] Several locales, Cilicia, Syria, Lydia, and the island of Ischia, all places associated with Typhon, are given by Strabo as possible locations for Homer's "Arimoi". Pindar has his Cilician Typhon slain by Zeus "among the Arimoi",[5] and the historian Callisthenes (4th century BC), located the Arimoi and the Arima mountains in Cilicia, near the Calycadnus river, the Corycian cave and the Sarpedon promontory.[6] The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, mentioned above, says Typhon was born in Cilicia "under Arimon",[7] and Nonnus mentions Typhon's "bloodstained cave of Arima" in Cilicia.[8] Diodorus Siculus localizes them in Phrygia.[9] Just across the Gulf of Issus from Corycus, in ancient Syria, was Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra) and the Orontes River, sites associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus,[10] and according to Strabo, the historian Posidonius (c. 2nd century BC) identified the Arimoi with the Aramaeans of Syria.[11]

Alternatively, according to Strabo, some placed the Arimoi at Catacecaumene,[12] while Xanthus of Lydia (5th century BC) added that "a certain Arimus" ruled there.[13] Strabo also tells us that for "some" Homer's "couch of Typhon" was located "in a wooded place, in the fertile land of Hyde", with Hyde being another name for Sardis (or its acropolis), and that Demetrius of Scepsis (2nd century BC) thought that the Arimoi were most plausibly located "in the Catacecaumene country in Mysia".[14] The 3rd-century BC poet Lycophron placed the lair of Typhons' mate Echidna in this region.[15]

Another place, mentioned by Strabo, as being associated with Arima, is the island of Ischia, where according to Pherecydes of Athens, Typhon had fled, and in the area where Pindar and others had said Typhon was buried. The connection to Arima, comes from the island's Greek name Pithecussae, which derives from the Greek word for monkey, and according to Strabo, residents of the island said that "arimoi" was also the Etruscan word for monkeys.[16]

In history

Assyrian kings and some scholars under this ethnonym meant the Arameans[17][11]

Notes
  1. Homer, Iliad 2.783.
  2. Hesiod, Theogony 295–305. Fontenrose, pp. 70–72; West 1966, pp. 250–251 line 304 εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν; Lane Fox, p. 288; Ogden 2013a, p. 76; Fowler 2013, pp. 28–29. West, notes that Typhon's "couch" appears to be "not just 'where he lies', but also where he keeps his spouse"; compare with Quintus Smyrnaeus, 8.97–98 (pp. 354–355).
  3. For an extensive discussion see Lane Fox, especially pp. 39, 107, 283–301; 317–318. See also West 1966, pp. 250–251 line 304 εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν; Ogden 2013a, p. 76; Fowler 2013, pp. 28–30.
  4. Strabo, 13.4.6.
  5. Pindar, fragment 93 apud Strabo, 13.4.6 (Race, pp. 328–329).
  6. Callisthenes FGrH 124 F33 = Strabo, 13.4.6; Ogden 2013a, p. 76; Ogden 2013b, p. 25; Lane Fox, p. 292. Lane Fox, pp. 292–298, connects Arima with the Hittite place names "Erimma" and "Arimmatta" which he associates with the Corycian cave.
  7. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield. pp. 59–60 no. 52; Ogden 2013b, pp. 36–38; Gantz, pp. 50–51, Ogden 2013a, p. 76 n. 46.
  8. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.140. (I pp. 12–13).
  9. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica. V.71.2.
  10. Strabo, 16.2.7; Apollodorus, 1.6.3; Ogden 2013a, p. 76.
  11. Strabo, 16.4.27. According to West 1966, p. 251, "This identification [Arimoi as Aramaeans] has been repeated in modern times." For example for Fontenrose, p. 71, the "Arimoi, it seems fairly certain, are the Aramaeans, and the country is either Syria or Cilicia, most likely the latter, since in later sources that is usually Typhon's land." But see Fox Lane, pp. 107, 291–298, which rejects this identification, instead arguing for the derivation of "Arima" from the Hittite place names "Erimma" and "Arimmatta".
  12. Strabo, 12.8.19.
  13. Strabo, 13.4.11.
  14. Strabo, 13.4.6. For Hyde see also Homer, Iliad 20.386.
  15. Lycophron, Alexandra 1351 ff. (pp. 606–607) associates Echidna's "dread bed" with a lake identified as Lake Gygaea or Koloe (modern Lake Marmara), see Robert, pp. 334 ff.; Lane Fox, pp. 290–291. For Lake Gygaea see Homer, Iliad 2.864–866; Herodotus, 1.93; Strabo, 13.4.5–6.
  16. Strabo, 13.4.6; Lane Fox, pp. 298–301; Ogden 2013a, p. 76 n. 47; Fowler 2013, p. 29.
  17. G. M. Avetisyan: Early information about the distribution of aramayan tribes in Northern Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands (in russian)

References
  • Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
  • Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths, (1955) 1960, §36.1–3
  • Griffiths, J. Gwyn, "The Flight of the Gods Before Typhon: An Unrecognized Myth", Hermes, 88, 1960, pp. 374–376. JSTOR
  • М. И. Касьянова, «Что такое Аримы? К вопросу о локализации мифа о Тифоне в поэме Нонна Панополитанского “Деяниях Диониса”» // Журнал: "Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология" 2008
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