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]
Chapter V.
§ 1. The Apollo of Tempe, Delphi, Delos, Crete, Lycia, Troy, Athens, and Peloponnesus, the same deity. § 2. Apollo Nomius of Arcadia rightly distinguished from the preceding. § 3. Apollo the father of Æsculapius likewise a distinct deity. § 4 and 5. Apollo not originally an elementary deity, or god of the sun. § 6. Origin of this idea. § 7. Rites of Apollo unlike those of the elementary deities.