[16] This idea can be traced back to Delphi, where any one who had incurred the god’s displeasure was thrown from a cliff. Something similar happened at the annual festivals of Apollo at Leucas, where he who was chosen as a victim to ward off evil threw himself from the Leucadian rock into the sea. It is true that all sorts of feathers and birds were fastened to the victims to act as a parachute, and after their fall they were rescued by boats and taken beyond the frontier, as bearers of a curse. According to some it was the priests themselves who made this leap.
Among the Germanic peoples, if we may believe “Gautrek’s Saga” [cf. J. Grimm, 1854, p. 486; Ranisch, 1900, p. lxxvii. f.], there existed the custom that the elders of the tribe, when tired of life, used to cast themselves down from a high crag, called “ætternis stapi” (the tribal cliff), so as to die without sickness and go to Odin. As a reward for faithful service the head of the house took his thrall with him in the leap, so that he too might come thither. After Skapnartungr had divided the inheritance, he and his wife were conducted to the cliff by their children, and they went joyfully to Odin. This reminds one strongly of the happy Hyperboreans. Thietmar of Merseburg (about A.D. 1000) has a similar legend about the tribal cliff. It is probable that the Germanic peoples in very early times, like other peoples—the Eskimo, for example—may have had the custom of taking the lives of the old and useless, or that these may have taken their own lives, by throwing themselves into the sea, for instance, as occurs among the Eskimo. On the other hand, it seems very doubtful that there should have been such tribal cliffs; and it is more probable that this legend is of literary origin and derived from the cliffs of Delphi and Leucas, which through the Hyperborean legend came down to the Roman authors Mela and Pliny, and from them was handed on to the writers of the Middle Ages and to the scribe of the “Gautrek Saga.” It has been thought that many such “ätte-stupar” can be pointed out in southern Sweden, but they seem all to be of recent date, and may have been suggested by this saga.
[17] These may be the architectonical figures on the roof of the temple of Delphi, transferred to the North together with the Hyperboreans. At Delphi they were no doubt regarded as guardians of the temple’s treasures.
[18] This idea has been explained as being derived from stories of people dressed in breeches of goats’ skin.
[19] Strabo [iii. 147] and Diodorus [v. 38], following Posidonius, mention these three districts as the places where tin was found.
[20] In the three districts named tin oxide (SnO2) occurs in lodes in the solid rock, as well as (sometimes in conjunction with gold and silver) in the gravel or sand of streams, and it was certainly in the latter form that tin was first extracted, after its discovery by some accident or other.
[21] It is possible, of course, that the first bronze, like silk, may have reached the people of the Orient and Egypt from China, without their knowing from whence it was originally derived. Bronze articles have been found at Troy which may indicate a connection with China, and it has even been asserted that Chinese characters have been found there [cf. Schliemann, 1881, p. 519]. Tin is also known to occur in Persia, but it has not been ascertained that it was worked there in ancient times. Strabo [xv. 724] says, however, that the Drangæ in Drangiana, near the Indus, “suffer from want of wine, but tin occurs with them.” Tin is found in the Fichtelgebirge, and it has been thought possible to identify prehistoric tin-mines there [cf. O. Schrader, 1901, article “Zinn”].
[22] The Phœnicians’ “Tarsis” (or Tarshish), rich in silver, called by the Greeks “Tartessos,” was on the south-west coast of Spain between the Pillars of Hercules and the Guadiana. About 1100 B.C. Tyre established there the colony “Gadir” (i.e., “fortress”), called by the Greeks “Gadeira,” and by the Romans “Gades” (now Cadiz).
[23] Cf. S. Reinach, 1892, p. 277. In Breton tin is called “sten,” a name which is certainly not borrowed from the Latin “stannum,” as Reinach thinks; according to the above-quoted opinion of Professor Torp we must believe that the borrowing has been in the opposite direction.
[24] The explanation of this statement may be that Crassus sailed to the Cassiterides from the mouth of the Garonne, up which river the route ran to Narbo. What is alluded to here would then be the sea-passage from the Garonne.