The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 1 of 2

by Karl Otfried Müller

Chapter IV.

§ 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] [pg 285] 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 [pg 286] 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 [pg 287] 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 [pg 288] 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, [pg 289] 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; [pg 290] 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 [pg 291] 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 [pg 292] 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 [pg 293] 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] [pg 294] 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]