§ 1. Connexion of the fable of the Hyperboreans with the worship
of Apollo. § 2. Its connexion with the temples at Delphi; § 3. and
Delos. § 4. Original locality of the Hyperboreans. § 5. Localities
subsequently assigned by Poets and Geographers. § 6. The
Hyperboreans considered a sacred people.
1. Wearisome as it is to follow up the chain of remote events which gave
rise to the wide diffusion of the worship of Apollo, nevertheless the
fable of the Hyperboreans, by referring a number of particular
circumstances to one head, is very well qualified to arrest and fix our
attention.
We assert, then, the connexion of this tradition with the original worship
of Apollo. No argument to the contrary can be drawn from its not being
mentioned either in the Iliad or Odyssey; these poems not affording any
opportunity for its introduction. Moreover, the Hyperboreans were spoken
of in the poem of the Epigoni, and by Hesiod.(1149) The fable, indeed, may
not have come till late within the province of poetical mythology; as a
local tradition, it must have arisen whilst that primitive connexion
between the temples of Tempe, Delphi, and Delos (which was afterwards
entirely dissolved) still existed in full vigour.
2. According to a Doric hymn of Bœo, a poetess of Delphi, quoted by
Pausanias,(1150) Pagasus, and the godlike Agyieus, the sons of the
Hyperboreans, founded the celebrated oracle at Delphi. Agyieus is merely
another name for Apollo himself. Pagasus refers to the Pagasæan temple on
the sacred road.(1151) With them came Olen, the first prophet and bard of
Apollo. Two other Hyperborean heroes, Hyperochus and Laodicus, assisted in
the slaughter of the Gauls at Delphi;(1152) and, in accordance with
similar traditions, Mnaseas of Patara called all the inhabitants of Delphi
descendants of the Hyperboreans.(1153)
Alcæus,(1154) in a hymn to Apollo, related how “Zeus adorned the new-born
god with a golden fillet and lyre, and sent him, in a chariot drawn by
swans, to Delphi, in order to introduce justice and law amongst the
Greeks. Apollo, however, ordered the swans first to fly to the
Hyperboreans. The Delphians, missing the god, instituted a pæan and song,
ranged choruses of young men around the tripod, and invoked him to come
from the Hyperboreans. The god remained an entire year with that nation,
and at the appointed time, when the tripods of Delphi were destined to
sound, he ordered the swans to resume their flight. The return of Apollo
takes place exactly in the middle of summer; nightingales, swallows, and
grasshoppers sing in honour of the god; and even Castalia and
Cephisus(1155) heave their waves to salute him.”
If Alcæus consecrated this pæan, as Pindar did his pæan, to the worship of
the Delphian god, he would hardly have dared to do more than embellish the
local traditions. Supposing, however, that this was not the case, he would
still have taken the principal event (viz., the arrival of Apollo from the
Hyperboreans) rather from a fable universally acknowledged, than the
unauthorized fictions of poetry. The whole account, and even the time, are
clearly drawn from the mysteries of the worship. According to the
tradition of Delphi, Apollo, at the expiration of the great period,
visited the beloved nation of the Hyperboreans, and danced and played with
them from the vernal equinox to the early setting of the Pleiades; and
when the first corn was cut in Greece, he returned to Delphi, as I
suppose, with the full ripe ears, the offerings of the Hyperboreans.(1156)
Even the story of the swans was no addition of Alcæus; for the painted
vases in the south of Italy (the extremity of the Grecian world) represent
the same fiction as the Lesbian poet; nay, so exactly do they correspond,
that we do not indeed recognise Alcæus, but the traditions upon which the
account was founded, as they were perhaps related at Metapontum and
Croton. The boy Apollo, the sceptre and goblet in one hand, and full ears
of barley in the other (which allude to the offerings of the Hyperboreans,
and the “golden summer”), is seated, with a mild aspect, on a car, the
axles of which are bound with swans’ feathers. Hyperborean women, with
torches, and pitchers for sacred libations, conduct him.(1157) The swans,
with which Apollo here comes, occur elsewhere in the legends of Delphi,
which refer to the Hyperboreans. The most ancient temple of Delphi,
according to the assertion of the priests, was merely a low hut, built
with branches of the sacred laurel of Tempe; the second was a tent, which
either the Hyperboreans or Pteras of Crete formed of swans’ feathers and
wax.(1158) The Peneus flowed by the altar of Tempe; the notes of the swans
on the banks of this river are mentioned in a short hymn attributed to
Homer.(1159) And allowing that these birds were here particularly
numerous, it is evident that their brilliant colour and majestic motion
peculiarly adapted them for symbols of Apollo.
3. We find the same tradition, with merely a few local alterations, at
Delos.(1160) Latona, in the first place, is said to have arrived in that
island from the country of the Hyperboreans as a she-wolf, having
completed the whole journey, pursued by Here, in twelve days and
nights.(1161) Afterwards the young virgins, Arge and Opis, came with
Apollo and Artemis; a lofty tomb was erected to their memory at Delos,
upon which sacrifices were offered; an ancient hymn, which was attributed
to the ancient minstrel Olen, celebrated their appearance.(1162)
Afterwards the Hyperboreans sent two other virgins, Hyperoche and Laodice,
the same names as occur above, and with them five men, who are called
_perpherees_(1163) (from their bringing the sacred gifts enveloped in
wheaten straw): this exactly corresponds with “the golden summer” of the
Delphians. The perpherees received great honours at Delos; and the Delian
maidens before marriage laid on the tomb of the two Hyperborean virgins a
spindle, the young men a branch, both entwined with locks of hair. The
offering, however, of the Hyperborean women was, it was said, really
intended for Ilithyia, the protectress of women in labour, in order to
fulfil a vow made to that goddess for the birth of Apollo and Artemis. Now
these missions, according to Delian traditions, always continued to be
carried on. The Hyperboreans were supposed to pass them on to their
neighbours the Scythians; from them they were transmitted through a chain
of nations on the coast of the Adriatic, by Dodona,(1164) through
Thessaly, Eubœa, and the island of Tenos, and came accompanied with flutes
and pipes,(1165) to Delos.(1166) This story cannot have been a mere
poetical fiction; it doubtless originated in the active connexion kept up
by means of sacred missions with the ancient settlements of the worship of
Apollo in the north of Thessaly.(1167) In Delos also, as at Delphi, there
was a story of the god resting for some time amongst the Hyperboreans;
though the scene was generally changed to Lycia.(1168) A painted vase
exhibits the god with a lyre in his hand, alighting near the palm-tree of
Delos: a young woman, representing a whole chorus, receives him, playing
upon a stringed instrument.(1169)
As the temple at Olympia was connected with Delphi, we find also here some
traditions respecting the country of the Hyperboreans, as the native land
of the wild olive-tree which flourished in the grove of Zeus.
4. Thus much concerning the places where the fable of the Hyperboreans
really existed; we must next notice the situation generally assigned to
that sacred nation. In this the name is our chief guide. In the first
place it indicates a _northern_ nation; which idea is sufficiently
accounted for by the fact that the worship of Apollo came from the most
northern part of Greece, from the district of Tempe;(1170) and although
the actual distance was not great, yet the imagination might have been
moved by this circumstance to conceive Apollo as coming from the most
remote regions of the north. But, in the second place, the Hyperboreans
are said to dwell _beyond_ Boreas; so that this happy nation never felt
the cold north wind: in the same manner that Homer represents the summit
of Olympus as rising above the storms, nor ever covered with snow, but
surrounded by an atmosphere of cloudless and undisturbed serenity.
5. This is nearly the whole of our information on the origin of this
fabulous people. Poets, however, and geographers, dissatisfied with such
accounts, attempted to assign to it a fixed habitation in the catalogue of
nations: and for this purpose connected multifarious and foreign accounts
of the northern regions of the world with the religious fable of the
Hyperboreans, and moulded the whole into an imaginary picture of a
supposed real people.
Among these stories the most remarkable is that which connects the
Hyperboreans with the Scythians. Herodotus found them mentioned in the
Arimaspea of Aristeas the Proconnesian, in which poem his ideas of the
worship of Apollo were interspersed with obscure accounts of the northern
regions.(1171) He came, led by the spirit of Apollo, through Scythia to
the Issedones,(1172) the one-eyed Arimaspians, the Griffins that kept
watch over the gold, and thus at last reached the Hyperboreans who
inhabited the shores on the further side of the ocean. Now Aristeas must
have collected the tradition concerning these nations and monsters from
the same sources as Herodotus; viz., from the Greeks dwelling on the
Pontus and Borysthenes, and through these from the Scythians.
In the list of the fabulous nations of the north, the ancient Damastes
exactly agrees with the Arimaspea of Aristeas.(1173) Beyond the Scythians
he places the Issedones, then the Arimaspians, then the Rhipæan mountains,
from which the north wind blows, and on the other side of these, on the
sea-coast, the Hyperboreans.(1174) Without doubt this geographer placed
the Issedones in the districts to the north of the Euxine sea, and rather
to the east of Greece.(1175) And indeed neither Issedones, Arimaspians,
nor Griffins could be placed in any other region than that which lies to
the north of the Euxine sea, as all this tract had become known to the
Greeks by means of the Scythians, who dwelt in these parts; it was only in
this district that the Greeks heard of Arimaspians. The case is entirely
different with respect to the Hyperboreans and Rhipæans. Of the former the
Scythians, as Herodotus tells us, knew nothing; and the latter are a mere
political fiction of Greece, since they derived their names from
_hurricanes_ (ῥιπαὶ), issuing from a cavern, which they warded off from
the Hyperboreans, and sent to more southern nations. For this reason the
Hyperboreans could also be placed in another part, remote from Scythia;
still however they kept their original position in the _north_. Thus
Pindar,(1176) and also Æschylus in the Prometheus Unbound,(1177) place the
Hyperboreans at the source of the Ister. Now, if, with Herodotus, the
Ister is conceived to be a river which runs through all Europe from its
_western_ extremity, the Hyperboreans, in spite of their name, must be
placed in the regions of the _west_.(1178) But there was in ancient times
also an idea that the Ister was a vast stream descending from the extreme
_north_;(1179) and this notion was evidently entertained by the two poets
just mentioned; thus Æschylus, in the Prometheus Unbound, represented
Hercules as penetrating to the place where Boreas rushes from the
mountains; and with this the Rhipæan mountains, the Hyperboreans, and the
Ister were doubtless mentioned. Sophocles also placed the “_ancient garden
of Phœbus_” _i.e._, the country of the Hyperboreans, at the extremity of
the earth, and near the dwelling of Boreas.(1180) This natural conception
of the Hyperboreans, and agreeing so well with the origin of the legend,
is universal among the early poets; it is only in the works of later
writers that we find certain traces of a translation of the Hyperboreans
to Italy and other western countries, and of a confusion of the Rhipæans
with the Alps and Pyrenees.
6. We see then that notwithstanding the arbitrary license assumed by
poets, the religious ideas respecting the Hyperboreans were every where
preserved without the slightest variation. They were represented as a
pious nation, abstaining from the flesh of animals, and living in
perpetual serenity, in the service of their god, for a thousand
years.(1181) “The muse,” says Pindar, “is not estranged from their
manners. The choruses of virgins and sweet melody of the lyre or pipe
resound on every side; and, twining their hair with the glittering laurel,
they feast joyfully. Neither disease nor old age is the lot of this sacred
race; while they live apart from toil and battles, undisturbed by the
revengeful Nemesis.”(1182)
Respecting their festivals, which were supposed to take place in the open
air,(1183) it was related by Hecatæus the younger, of Abdera, that these
were celebrated by three gigantic Boreadæ, whose songs and dances were
accompanied by innumerable flocks of swans.(1184) But the strangest
account is that of Pindar, that whole hecatombs of asses were sacrificed
at these festivals:(1185) this however is borrowed from the real worship,
from one of the sacred rites of Delphi, where asses were sacrificed at the
Pythian festival.(1186) Lastly, the account given of the death of the
Hyperboreans strongly reminds us of the rites of the Thargelia, and the
leap at Leucate; we are told that, tired of a long existence, they leapt,
crowned with garlands, from a rock into the sea.(1187)