[867] They are merely enumerated among other tribes of Scythians, inhabiting the country beyond the Palus Mæotis. See B. iv. c. 26, and B. vi. c. 19.—B.
[868] The figures of the Gryphons or Griffins are found not uncommonly on the friezes and walls at Pompeii. In the East, where there were no safe places of deposit for money, it was the custom to bury it in the earth; hence, for the purpose of scaring depredators, the story was carefully circulated that hidden treasures were guarded by serpents and dragons. There can be little doubt that these stories, on arriving in the western world, combined with the knowledge of the existence of gold in the Uralian chain and other mountains of the East, gave rise to the stories of the Griffins and the Arimaspi. It has been suggested that the Arimaspi were no other than the modern Tsheremis, who dwelt on the left bank of the Middle Volga, in the governments of Kasan, Simbirsk, and Saratov, not far from the gold districts of the Uralian range.
[869] It has been conjectured, that these fabulous tales of the combats of the Arimaspi with the Griffins, were invented by the neighbouring tribes of the Issedonæ or Essedones, who were anxious to throw a mystery over the origin of the gold, that they might preserve the traffic in their own hands. The Altai Mountains, in the north of Asia, contain many gold mines, which are still worked, as well as traces of former workings. The representation of an animal, somewhat similar to the Griffin, has been found among the sculptures of Persepolis, and is conceived to have had some allegorical allusion to the religion of the ancient inhabitants of the place. Ælian, Hist. Anim. B. iv. c. 27, gives an account of the Griffin, and its contests with the Indians, for the gold, similar to that here given.—B.
[870] We have an account of the Arimaspi, and of Aristeas, in Herodotus, B. iv. cc. 13, 15, and 27. Most of the wonderful tales related in this Chapter may be found in Aulus Gellius, B. ix. c. 4. We have an account, also, of the Arimaspi in Solinus, very nearly in the words of Pliny. We have some valuable remarks by Cuvier, on the account given by Pliny of the Arimaspi and the Griffins, and on the source from which it appears to have originated, in Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 16, and Ajasson, vol. vi. pp. 164, 165.—B.
[871] The modern Himalaya range.
[872] Aulus Gellius relates this, among other wonderful tales, which are contained in his Chapter “On the Miraculous Wonders of Barbarous Nations,” B. ix. c. 4. He cites, among his authorities, Aristeas and Isigonus, whom he designates as “writers of no mean authority.”—B.
[873] In B. iv. c. 26, and B. vi. c. 29.
[874] One of the pleasures promised to the Gothic warriors, in the paradise of Odin, was to drink out of the skulls of their enemies.—B.
[875] The variety of the human species to which the term Albino has been applied, from the whiteness of their hair and skin, is supposed by Cuvier to be more frequently found in the close valleys of mountainous districts, and may therefore have been very often met with in Albania, which is composed of valleys in the Caucasian range.—B.
[876] “Tertio die;” literally, “on the third day.” In reckoning the time between two periods, the Romans included both of those periods in the computation, whereas we include but one of them.