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Aristeas was a semi-legendary Greek poet and miracle-worker, a native of Proconnesus in Asia Minor, c. 7th century BC. 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 Arismapea, giving an account of travels in the far North. There he encountered a tribe called the Issedonians, 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.
Centuries 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.
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