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Cimmerians
In the account of Herodotus (iv) Aristeas was a magician, who rose after his death, and whose soul could leave and reenter its body according to its pleasure. He was, like Abaris, connected with the worship of Apollo, which he was said to have introduced at Metapontum. Herodotus calls him the favourite and inspired bard of Apollo.From The 1911 Encyclopedia
He is said to have travelled through the countries north and east of the Euxine, and to have visited the countries of the Issedones, Arimaspae, Cimmerii, Hyperborei, and other mythical nations, and after his return to have written an epic poem, in three books, in which he seems to have described all that he had seen or pretended to have seen.
Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
CIMMERII, an ancient people of the far north or west of Europe, first spoken of by Homer (Odyssey, xi. 12-19), who describes them as living in perpetual darkness. Herodotus (iv), in his account of Scythia, regards them as the early inhabitants of South Russia (after whom the Bosporus Cimmerius and other places were named), driven by the Scyths along by the Caucasus into Asia Minor, where they maintained themselves for a century.
But the Cimmerii are often mentioned in connexion with the Thracian Treres who made their raids across the Hellespont, and it is quite possible that some Cimmerii took this route, having been cut off by the Scyths as the Alani were by the Huns. Certain it is that in the middle of the 7th century B.C., Asia Minor was ravaged by northern nomads (Herodotus. iv.), one body of whom is called in Assyrian sources Gimirrai and is represented as coming through the Caucasus. They were probably Iranian speakers, to judge by the few proper names preserved. The name has also been identified with the biblical Gomer, son of Japheth (Gen. X. 2, 3).
To the north of the Euxine their main body was merged in the invading Scyths. Later writers identified them with the Cimbri of Jutland, who were probably Teutonized Celts, but this is a mere guess due to the similarity of name. The Homeric Cimmerii belong to an early part of the Odyssey in which the hero was conceived as wandering in the Euxine; these adventures were afterwards translated to the western Mediterranean in accordance with a wider geographical outlook.
The battle of the Cimmerians against the Greeks accompanied by their dogs.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sarcophagus of Clazomenę.
According to the Histories of Herodotus (c. 440 BC), the Cimmerians had been expelled from the steppes at some point in the past by the Scythians. To ensure burial in their ancestral homeland, the men of the Cimmerian royal family divided into groups and fought each other to the death. The Cimmerian commoners buried the bodies along the river Tyras and fled from the Scythian advance, across the Caucasus and into Anatolia and the Near East. Their range seems to have extended from Mannae eastward through the Mede settlements of the Zagros Mountains, and south of there as far as Elam.
Timeline
721-715 BC – Sargon II mentions a land of Gamirr near to
Urartu.
714 – suicide of Rusas I of Urartu, after defeat by both
the Assyrians and Cimmerians.
705 – Sargon II of Assyria dies on an expedition against
the Kulummu.
679/678 – Gimirri under a ruler called Teushpa invade
Assyria from Hubuschna (Cappadocia?). Esarhaddon of Assyria
defeats them in battle.
676-674 – Cimmerians invade and destroy Phrygia, and reach
Paphlagonia.
654 or 652 – Gyges of Lydia dies in battle against the
Cimmerians. Sack of Sardis; Cimmerians and Treres plunder Ionian
colonies.
644 – Cimmerians occupy Sardis, but withdraw soon
afterwards
637-626 – Cimmerians defeated by Alyattes II.
ca. 515 – Last historical record of Cimmerians, in the
Behistun inscription of Darius.
References To The Cimmerians
From: Armenian Mythology by Mardiros H. Ananikiam
It would seem that the Urartians belonged to the same non-Aryan and non-Semitic stock of peoples as the so-called Hittites who held sway in the Western Asiatic peninsula long before Indo-European tribes such as Phrygians, Mysians, Lydians, and Bithynians came from Thrace, and Scythians and Cimmerians from the north of the Black Sea to claim the peninsula as their future home.
From Herodotus The History: The First Book: Clio
Ardys took Priene and made war upon Miletus. In his reign the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomads of Scythia, entered Asia and captured Sardis, all but the citadel. He reigned forty-nine years, and was succeeded by his son, Sadyattes, who reigned twelve years. At his death his son Alyattes mounted the throne.
From Herodotus The History: The Fourth Book: Melpomene
Scythia still retains traces of the Cimmerians; there are Cimmerian castles, and a Cimmerian ferry, also a tract called Cimmeria, and a Cimmerian Bosphorus. It appears likewise that the Cimmerians, when they fled into Asia to escape the Scyths, made a settlement in the peninsula where the Greek city of Sinope was afterwards built. The Scyths, it is plain, pursued them, and missing their road, poured into Media. For the Cimmerians kept the line which led along the sea-shore, but the Scyths in their pursuit held the Caucasus upon their right, thus proceeding inland, and falling upon Media. This account is one which is common both to Greeks and barbarians.
From Herodotus The History: The Seventh Book: Polymnia
Reckoning from the recovery of Egypt, Xerxes spent four full years in collecting his host and making ready all things that were needful for his soldiers. It was not till the close of the fifth year that he set forth on his march, accompanied by a mighty multitude. For of all the armaments whereof any mention has reached us, this was by far the greatest; insomuch that no other expedition compared to this seems of any account, neither that which Darius undertook against the Scythians, nor the expedition of the Scythians (which the attack of Darius was designed to avenge), when they, being in pursuit of the Cimmerians, fell upon the Median territory, and subdued and held for a time almost the whole of Upper Asia; nor, again, that of the Atridae against Troy, of which we hear in story; nor that of the Mysians and Teucrians, which was still earlier, wherein these nations crossed the Bosphorus into Europe, and, after conquering all Thrace, pressed forward till they came to the Ionian Sea, while southward they reached as far as the river Peneus.
From: The Odyssey of Homer Book XI
'She came to the limits of the world, to the deep-flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had declared to us.
From Apollodorus Library Book 2
Hera next sent a gadfly to infest the cow, and the animal came first to what is called after her the Ionian gulf. Then she journeyed through Illyria and having traversed Mount Haemus she crossed what was then called the Thracian Straits but is now called after her the Bosphorus. And having gone away to Scythia and the Cimmerian land she wandered over great tracts of land and swam wide stretches of sea both in Europe and Asia until at last she came to Egypt, where she recovered her original form and gave birth to a son Epaphus beside the river Nile.
From: Ancient Fragments by I. P. Cory
Of the Titanian war there appears to be a double aspect. When the Scuths of Touran are the Giants, the war between them and the Ionim is the subject of the legend; and they are the Giants cast out into Cimmerian darkness, and buried under mountains. The other view presents both parties conjointly before the schism, as the Nephelim, Apostates or Giants, engaged in carrying on the war against Heaven itself. And in these accounts we find more frequent allusions to the Tower and its supernatural overthrow.
From: Cerberus, The Dog of Hades. By Maurice Bloomfield
The association of the two dogs with day and night is the association of sun and moon with their respective diurnal divisions, and nothing more. Of Cimmerian gloom there can be nothing in the myth primarily, because it deals at the beginning with heaven, and not with hell; with an auspicious, and not a gloomy, vision of life after death.
From: Myths Of Babylonia And Assyria by Donald A. Mackenzie Chapter 19
Rusas of Urartu was succeeded by Argistes II, who reigned over a shrunken kingdom. He intrigued with neighbouring states against Assyria, but was closely watched. Ere long he found himself caught between two fires. During his reign the notorious Cimmerians and Scythians displayed much activity in the north and raided his territory.
From: Egyptian Myth and Legend, by Donald Mackenzie Chapter XXIX
Ashur-banipal was unable to retain for long his hold upon the land of the Pharaohs. Persistent revolts occupied his attention at the very heart of his empire. His brother, the subject king of Babylon, had secured the co-operation of the Elamites, the Aramæans, the Chaldeans, and the Arabians, and a fierce struggle ensued, until in the end Babylon was besieged and captured and Elam was devastated. Meanwhile Cimmerians were invading Asia Minor and the Aryan Medes were pressing into Elam. When peace was at length restored Assyria, although triumphant, was weakened as a result of its terrible struggles, and the empire began to go to pieces.
From: The Chronology Of Ancient Kingdoms Amended by Sir Isaac Newton
In the year before Christ 1125 Mephres Reigned over the upper Egypt from Syene to Heliopolis, and his Successor Misphragmuthosis made a lasting war upon the Shepherds soon after, and caused many of them to fly into Palestine, Idumæa, Syria, and Libya; and under Lelex, Æzeus, Inachus, Pelasgus, Æolus the first, Cecrops, and other Captains, into Greece. Before those days Greece and all Europe was peopled by wandring Cimmerians, and Scythians from the backside of the Euxine Sea, who lived a rambling wild sort of life, like the Tartars in the northern parts of Asia. Of their Race was Ogyges, in whose days these Egyptian strangers came into Greece. The rest of the Shepherds were shut up by Misphragmuthosis, in a part of the lower Egypt called Abaris or Pelusium.
From: The Destiny of the Soul, by William Rounseville Alger
The early Greek authors describe the creation as a stupendous hollow globe cut in the centre by the plane of the earth. The upper hemisphere is lighted by beneficent luminaries; the lower hemisphere is filled with unvarying blackness. The top of the higher sphere is Heaven, the bright dwelling of the Olympian gods; its bottom is the surface of the earth, the home of living men. The top of the lower sphere is Hades, the abode of the ghosts of the dead; its bottom is Tartarus, the prison of the Titans, rebellious giants vanquished by Zeus. Earth lies half way from the cope of Heaven to the floor of Tartarus. This distance is so great that, according to Hesiod, it would take an anvil nine days to fall from the centre to the nadir. Some of the ancients seem to have surmised the sphericity of the earth, and to have thought that Hades was simply its dark side, the dead being our antipodes. In the Odyssey, Ulysses reaches Hades by sailing across the ocean stream and passing the eternal night land of the Cimmerians, whereupon he comes to the edge of Acheron, the moat of Pluto's sombre house. Virgil also says, "One pole of the earth to us always points aloft; but the other is seen by black Styx and the infernal ghosts, where either dead night forever reigns or else Aurora returns thither from us and brings them back the day."1 But the prevalent notion evidently was that Hades was an immense hollow region not far under the surface of the ground, and that it was to be reached by descent through some cavern, like that at Avernus.
Decius Brutus and his army, as Florus relates, reaching the coast of Portugal, where, for the first time, they saw the sun setting in the blood tinged ocean, turned back their standards with horror as they beheld "the huge corpse of ruddy gold let down into the deep." The Phoenician traders brought intelligence to Greece of a people, the Cimmerians, who dwelt on the borders of Hades in the umbered realms of perpetual night. To the dying Roman, on the farthest verge of the known horizon hovered a vision of Elysian Fields. And the American Indian, sinking in battle or the chase, caught glimpses of happier Hunting Grounds, whose woods trooped with game, and where the arrows of the braves never missed, and there was no winter. There was a pretty myth received among some of the ancient Britons, locating their paradise in a spot surrounded by tempests, far in the Western Ocean, and named Flath Innis, or Noble Island. The following legend is illustrative. An old man sat thoughtful on a rock beside the sea. A cloud, under whose squally skirts the waters foamed, rushed down; and from its dark womb issued a boat, with white sails bent to the wind, and hung round with moving oars. Destitute of mariners, itself seemed to live and move. A voice said, "Arise, behold the boat of heroes: embark, and see the Green Isle of those who have passed away!" Seven days and seven nights he voyaged, when a thousand tongues called out, "The Isle! the Isle!" The black billows opened before him, and the calm land of the departed rushed in light on his eyes. We are reminded by this of what Procopius says concerning the conveyal of the soul of the barbarian to his paradise. At midnight there is a knocking at the door, and indistinct voices call him to come. Mysteriously impelled, he goes to the sea coast, and there finds a frail, empty wherry awaiting him. He embarks, and a spirit crew row him to his destination.
Select Epigrams from the Greek by Machail XXIII
THE MORNING STAR
MACEDONIUS
Morning Star, do not Love violence, neither learn, neighbour
as thou art to Mars, to have a heart that pities not; but as once
before, seeing Phaethon in Clymene's chamber, thou heldest not on
thy fleet- foot course from the east, even so on the skirts of
night, the night that so hardly has lightened on my desire, come
lingering as though among the Cimmerians.
