Because the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts, and the eagle the king of the birds, by the Middle Ages, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature. Since classical antiquity, griffins were known for guarding treasures and priceless possessions.
In Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspians were associated with gold deposits of Central Asia. The earliest classical writings derive from Aristeas 7th cent. BC , preserved by Herodotus and Aeschylus mid 5th century BC , but the physical descriptions are not very explicit. Thus even though they are sharp-beaked, their being likened to "unbarking hounds of Zeus" has led to the speculation they were seen as wingless.
Pliny the Elder 1st century was the first to explicitly state that griffins were winged and long eared. But Apollonius of Tyana wrote that griffins did not have true bird wings, but only membranous webbed feet that only gave them capability of short-distanced flight. Writers after Aelian 3rd century AD did not add new material to griffin lore, except for the later lore that griffins deposited agate stone among the eggs in their nest.
Scholars have observed that legends about the gold-digging ants of India may have contaminated griffin lore. In the Christian era, Isidore of Seville 7th century AD wrote that griffins were a great enemy of horses. This notion may have readily developed from the tradition that horseback-riding Arimaspians raided the griffin gold. The derivation of this word remains uncertain. However, the practice of referring to ancient Iranian griffin objects or monuments as sherdal , [ 8 ] is not followed by other current archaeological scholarship e.
Possible Old or Middle Iranian names for the creature have been discussed. Litvinskij [ ru ] argued for the possibility that the application of this term may extend to the griffin. Schmidt characterized as the counterpart of the simurgh.
