Where did the griffin myth come from?

The griffin is older than Greek myth. It appears in Mesopotamian, Elamite and Egyptian art from the 4th millennium BC and reached the Aegean in the Bronze Age, as in the throne room at Knossos. The Greek story of griffins guarding gold comes from Aristeas' lost poem Arimaspea, summarized by Herodotus.

What is the difference between a griffin and a hippogriff?

A griffin is a winged lion with an eagle's head. The hippogriff, half horse and half griffin, was invented by Ariosto in Orlando Furioso (1516), inspired by a line of Virgil that used the mating of griffins and mares as an example of the impossible. There is no hippogriff in Greek mythology.

Were griffins inspired by dinosaur fossils?

That is a modern hypothesis by the historian Adrienne Mayor, who suggested that Protoceratops fossils in the Gobi Desert, along Central Asian gold routes, fed the legend. Several paleontologists reject it, noting that the griffin existed in Near Eastern art long before the Greek accounts.

Griffin in Greek mythology

The griffin (Greek gryps, also spelled gryphon) is a hybrid creature with a lion’s body, wings, and the head of an eagle with a hooked beak. In Greek mythology it has no hero story of its own: no hero is famous for killing one. Its job is to guard gold at the edge of the world, in the far north, against the Arimaspians, a race of one-eyed horsemen who try to steal it. It is also the sacred beast of Apollo, carrying him to the land of the Hyperboreans, and of Nemesis, goddess of retribution. It ranks among the most common hybrids in Greek art, from the Bronze Age to the Roman period.

A hybrid from the Near East

The griffin is not a Greek invention. It appears as early as the 4th millennium BC in the art of Mesopotamia, Elam and Egypt. The Aegean world adopted it in the Bronze Age: the frescoes of the throne room at Knossos in Crete show griffins lying on either side of the seat, and Mycenaean Greece put them on jewelry, ivories and seals.

In the 7th century BC, the Orientalizing period filled sanctuaries with bronze griffin protomes, heads mounted on the rims of great cauldrons dedicated at Olympia and at the Heraion of Samos. Herodotus (4.152) describes exactly such an offering: a bronze mixing bowl dedicated by the Samians to Hera, its rim lined with griffin heads. For the Greeks, then, the griffin was an image first, before any story gave it a place in the world.

Guardians of the Arimaspians’ gold

Aristeas of Proconnesus and Herodotus

The Greek griffin story goes back to a lost poem, the Arimaspea of Aristeas of Proconnesus (perhaps 7th century BC). Herodotus (4.13) summarizes it: Aristeas, “possessed by Apollo”, claimed to have traveled as far as the Issedones, north of Scythia. Beyond them live the Arimaspians, one-eyed men; beyond them the gold-guarding griffins; and beyond them, by the sea, the Hyperboreans.

Herodotus returns to the motif twice. He reports that the north of Europe is said to hold the most gold, which the Arimaspians snatch from the griffins (3.116), though he refuses to believe in one-eyed men. He also explains that “Arimaspian” is a Scythian word meaning “one-eyed” (4.27). Throughout, he presents the story as hearsay rather than fact.

Aeschylus: the hounds of Zeus

In Prometheus Bound (803-806), Prometheus warns the wandering Io about the dangers at the end of the earth. She must beware the “sharp-beaked hounds of Zeus that do not bark, the griffins”, and “the one-eyed Arimaspian host on horseback”. The phrase turns the griffin into a servant of divine order, the silent watchdog of the king of the gods.

Ctesias and the gold of India

In the early 4th century BC, Ctesias of Cnidus, a Greek physician at the Persian court, moved the griffins to India. As Photius summarizes him, they are four-footed birds the size of wolves, with a lion’s legs and claws, red feathers on the breast and black elsewhere, and they make the gold-bearing mountains hard to reach. Aelian (On the Characteristics of Animals 4.27) fills out the portrait: griffins do not want the gold for itself but fight to protect their young, and the gold-seekers come at night, armed, in bands of a thousand or two.

The gods’ griffins

Apollo and the Hyperboreans

The griffin’s link with Apollo runs through the Hyperboreans, a blessed people of the far north with whom the god spends the winter. Because griffins live on the road to their land, Greek art shows Apollo riding a griffin or driving a griffin-drawn chariot as he leaves or returns to Delos and Delphi. The city of Teos, and later its colony Abdera, put the griffin on their coins.

Athena, Nemesis and Dionysus

According to Pausanias (1.24.6), the helmet of Phidias’ Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis bore a sphinx in the middle and a griffin on each side. Pausanias takes the chance to quote Aristeas: griffins fight the Arimaspians for gold, and they look like winged lions with an eagle’s beak. Athena thus paired her martial wisdom with two hybrid guardians, the griffin and the Sphinx.

In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the griffin became the animal of Nemesis. The goddess is often shown with a griffin at her feet, one paw resting on a wheel, an image of turning fortune and of punishment for pride. Griffins also appear in the retinue of Dionysus, alongside his panthers.

How the sources differ

Source	Location	The griffin’s role	Opponents
Aristeas, via Herodotus 4.13	far north, before the Hyperboreans	guards gold	one-eyed Arimaspians
Aeschylus, Prometheus 803-806	the ends of the earth	silent “hound of Zeus”	—
Ctesias, via Photius	mountains of India	four-footed bird guarding gold	Indian gold-seekers
Aelian 4.27	India	protects its young more than its gold	night raids
Pliny 10.136	—	dismissed as fabulous	—

The authors do not so much contradict each other as relocate the griffin: from the Scythian north to India, it always sits on the most distant goldfields the Greeks knew of. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 10.136) is the most skeptical, filing griffins, with their ears and hooked beaks, among fabulous animals, even as he repeats the Arimaspian story (7.10).

Origins and modern readings

The griffin’s gold has a basis in reality: the Altai and the Central Asian steppes really were gold-bearing regions, and the art of the Scythian peoples, including the Pazyryk tombs, is full of griffins. The historian Adrienne Mayor has suggested that fossils of Protoceratops, a beaked dinosaur from the Gobi Desert, inspired the legend among gold prospectors. The idea is attractive but disputed: the griffin existed in Near Eastern art long before Aristeas, and Protoceratops had neither wings nor talons.

The griffin’s image lived on. Virgil (Eclogues 8.27) uses the mating of griffins and mares as a proverb for the impossible, and Ariosto turned it into the hippogriff of Orlando Furioso (1516). Medieval writers, Dante among them, made the griffin a symbol of Christ, lion of the earth and eagle of the sky, and heraldry adopted it as an emblem of vigilance.

What the ancient sources say

Aristeas of Proconnesus, whose work is lost, is the original source for the griffins and the Arimaspians.
Herodotus (3.116; 4.13; 4.27) passes the story on while doubting it, and describes the griffin-headed cauldron at Samos (4.152).
Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound 803-806) calls the griffins “hounds of Zeus”.
Ctesias and Aelian place the griffins in India and describe their appearance.
Pausanias (1.24.6) describes the griffins on Athena Parthenos’ helmet.
Pliny the Elder (10.136) dismisses them as fabulous.

Griffin in Greek mythology: gold guardian of the north and Apollo's mount