Homer provides the earliest surviving reference to the Arimoi when he compares the ground trembling beneath an army to the earth around Typhoeus where Zeus strikes him. The passage names a people or land associated with Typhoeus but supplies no clear neighbouring city, river or coastline.

Hesiod gives the related name Arima a different emphasis. Echidna, the half-nymph and half-serpent monster, has a deep cave beneath a hollow rock far from gods and mortals, and the gods appoint that underground dwelling as her home. The poem says she keeps watch in Arima beneath the earth. The passage makes Arima the setting of Echidna's hidden existence, not a travelled human kingdom.

Because Typhon becomes Echidna's mate in the Theogony, later readers naturally connect Homer's Arimoi with Hesiod's Arima. The connection is plausible within ancient mythic geography, but the texts do not independently prove that every reference describes exactly the same place.

Cilicia becomes one of the strongest ancient candidates. Strabo preserves Callisthenes's identification of the Arimoi and mountains called Arima near the Calycadnus, Sarpedon and the Corycian cave. Other traditions place Typhon's conflict in Syria, while western Anatolian writers connect the story with the volcanic Burnt Land of Lydia and Mysia.

Pithecussae, modern Ischia in Italy, offers another dramatic explanation because its earthquakes, hot springs and volcanic disturbances could be imagined as movements of a buried monster. Ancient writers use such landscapes to localise Typhon without erasing the older eastern traditions.

Arima also stands behind the broader monster genealogy. Echidna's offspring with Typhon include Orthrus and Cerberus in Hesiod, while later sources expand the family to include creatures such as the Greek Sphinx. Those descendants leave the hidden cave and populate heroic stories across the mythological world, but the source text does not say that every monster is born or raised in Arima.