Arimaspi are a legendary one-eyed people from ancient Greek myth, usually placed in a far northern or eastern land. Poets and writers mention them as part of the old world of marvels: a distant, half-legendary race linked with gold, griffins, and the edges of the map. In poetic language, the name can evoke remoteness, strangeness, and mythic wealth.
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.
Example
Beyond the blue ridge, where winter keeps its watch,
I heard of Arimaspi, one-eyed and gold-gleaming,
who rode into legend at the edge of the world
while griffins screamed above their buried treasure.