[42] Ὑακινθίοις πρὸ τῆς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος θυσίας ἐς τοῦτον Ὑακίνθῳ τὸν βωμὸν διὰ θύρας χαλκῆς ἐναγίζουσιν· ἐν ἀριστερᾷ δέ ἐστιν ἡ θύρα τοῦ βωμοῦ. Paus. 3, 19, 3. We shall meet with similar examples in treating of the sacrifices made to Heroes. This naive sacrificial rite regularly presumes the physical presence of the god or “spirit” in the place underground into which the offerings are poured or thrown (as in the μέγαρα of Demeter and Kore, etc.).
[43] The story of Hyakinthos is found in its familiar form in the poets of the Hellenistic period and their imitators, Nikander, Bion, Ovid, etc.: already Simmias and Euphorion had told it (see Welcker, Kl. Sch. i, 24 ff.; and G. Knaack, Anal. Alexandrino-romana, p. 60 ff.). It may even reach back to earlier times; the death of H. caused by Apollo’s discus-throw is mentioned by Eur., Hel. 1472 ff., though he does not speak of the love of Apollo for H. As the story was generally given, and, indeed, as it had already been implicitly told by Nikias, it had no local colouring and no importance as local legend. It was not ever even an aetiological myth for it could only account in the most general way for the melancholy character of the Hyakinthos festival and not at all for the peculiar features of its ritual. It is an erotic myth leading up to a metamorphosis, like so many others of its kind, in substance, it is true, closely related the Linos myth, etc., with which it is generally compared—and in accordance with the fashionable theory interpreted as an allegory of the spring blossom fading beneath the heat of the sun. It is, in fact, a regular mythological theme (the death through the cast of the discus occurring for example in the stories of Akrisios, Kanobos, Krokos [see Haupt, Opusc. iii, 574 f. In Philo ap. Galen, xiii, 268, read v. 13 ἠϊθέοιο, v. 15 perhaps κείνου δὴ σταθμόν]). We cannot tell how far the flower Hyakinthos had anything to do with the Amyklaian Hyakinthos (cf. Hemsterhuis, Lucian ii, p. 291 Bip.); perhaps nothing at all—there were no hyacinths used in the Hyakinthia. The similarity of the name may have suggested this addition to the metamorphosis story to the Hellenistic poets.
[44] Certainly not as Apollo’s ἐρώμενος (as which Hauser, Philol. 52, 218, in spite of the beard, regards the Hyakinthos of the Amyklaian altar). Bearded παιδικά are unthinkable as every reader of the Anth. Pal. knows. The most ancient form of the story, as implied in the sculpture at Amyklai, neither knows anything of the love of Apollo and Hyakinthos nor consequently of the latter’s early death, etc.
[45] The Ὑακινθίδες at Athens were regarded as the daughters (strangely migrated to Athens) of the “Lacedaemonian” Hyakinthos. i.e. the one buried in Amyklai. See St. Byz. Λουσία; Harp. [113] Ὑακινθίδες; [Apollod.] 3, 15, 8, 5–6; Hyg. 238 (Phanodemos ap. Suid. Παρθένοι arbitrarily identifies the Ὑακινθίδες with the Ὑάδες or daughters of Erechtheus. So also [Dem.] 60, 27). This idea implies a form of the story in which Hyak. did not die while still a boy or a half-grown youth as in the metamorphosis version.—That the figure of Hyakinthos on the sculpture at Amyklai had a beard is expressly mentioned by Paus. 3, 19, 4, as conflicting with the fresh youthfulness of Hyakinthos as Nikias (second half fourth century) with reference to the love-story had represented him in his famous picture (πρωθήβην Ὑάκινθον, Nic., Th. 905). Paus. § 5, expressly raises a doubt as to the truth of the traditional fable about H.’s death.
[46] πρὸ τῆς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος θυσίας Paus. 3, 19, 3. More than once it is stated that at a particular festival sacrifice to the Hero preceded that to the god (cf. Wassner, de heroum ap. Gr. cultu, p. 48 ff.). Probably the reason in all such cases is that the cult of the “Hero” (or god turned Hero) is older in that particular spot than the worship of the god whose cult had only been adopted there at a later time. Thus in Plataea at the Daidalia sacrifice was made to Leto before Hera (προθύεσθαι): Plu. ap. Eus., PE. iii, 84 C: there it is quite evident that the cult of Hera was adopted later. Perhaps even the form of the word Ὑάκινθος implies that it was the name of an ancient deity worshipped already by the pre-Greek inhabitants of the Peloponnese. See Kretschmer, Einl. in Gesch. gr. Spr. 402–5.
[47] Ὑακίνθῳ ἐναγίζουσιν, Paus. 3, 19, 3.
[48] The second day of the festival was sacred to Apollo and not to Hyakinthos: τὸν θεὸν ᾄδουσιν Ath. 139 E. (It has been rightly said that this was when the παιάν mentioned by Xen., HG. 4, 5, 11, must have been sung.) It is impossible to deny, with Unger, Philol. 37, 30, the cheerful character of this second day of the festival as described by Polykrates ap. Ath. 139 E, F. It is true that Didymus (whose words Athenaeus is quoting) begins in a way (139 D) that might lead one to suppose that all three days of the τῶν Ὑακινθίων θυσία διὰ τὸ πένθος τὸ γενόμενον (γινόμενον?) περὶ τὸν Ὑάκινθον were passed in gloom without festivity, crowns, feasting, or Paean, etc. But he refutes himself afterwards in his description of the second day of the festival, at which not merely at the performances but at the sacrifice and the banquetings festivity reigns supreme. We can only suppose that his language at the beginning is inaccurate, and that he means what he says of the solemnity of the occasion “because of the mourning for Hyakinthos” to be taken as limited like the mourning itself to the first day of the feast.
[49] Hesych. Πολύβοια· θεός τις ὑπ’ ἐνίων Ἄρτεμις, ὑπὸ δὲ ἄλλων Κόρη. Cf. K. O. Müller, Dorians, i. 361 (Ἄρτεμις there probably as Hekate).
[50] Another view of the combined worship of Apollo and Hyakinthos at Amyklai is taken by Enmann, Kypros, etc., 35. In this as elsewhere he relies on certain opinions adopted from H. D. Müller’s mythological writings, which must be approved of in general before they can be found enlightening as applied to any particular case.
[51] As happened in the case of Hyakinthos, too, in the scene represented on the Amyklaian altar, Paus. 3, 19, though nothing can be deduced from this as to his original nature.