ARIMASPI  , an

ancient people in the extreme N.E. of Scythia (q.v.), probably the eastern Altai . All accounts of them go back to a poem by Aristeas of Proconnesus, from whom Herodotus (iii . 116, iv . 27) drew his information . They were supposed to be one-eyed (hence their Scythian name), and to steal gold from the griffins that guarded it . In art they are usually represented as richly dressed Asiatics, picturesquely grouped with their griffin foes; the subject is often described by poets from Aeschylus to Milton . They are so nearly mythical that it is impossible to insist on the usual identification with the ancestors of the Huns . Their gold was probably real, as gold still comes from the Altai .