HYPERBOLE (from Gr. ὑπερβάλλειν, to throw beyond), a figure of rhetoric whereby the speaker expresses more than the truth, in order to produce a vivid impression; hence, an exaggeration.
HYPERBOREANS (Ὑπερβόρεοι, Ὑπερβόρειοι), a mythical people intimately connected with the worship of Apollo. Their name does not occur in the Iliad or the Odyssey, but Herodotus (iv. 32) states that they were mentioned in Hesiod and in the Epigoni, an epic of the Theban cycle. According to Herodotus, two maidens, Opis and Arge, and later two others, Hyperoche and Laodice, escorted by five men, called by the Delians Perphereës, were sent by the Hyperboreans with certain offerings to Delos. Finding that their messengers did not return, the Hyperboreans adopted the plan of wrapping the offerings in wheat-straw and requested their neighbours to hand them on to the next nation, and so on, till they finally reached Delos. The theory of H. L. Ahrens, that Hyperboreans and Perphereës are identical, is now widely accepted. In some of the dialects of northern Greece (especially Macedonia and Delphi) φ had a tendency to become β. The original form of Περφερέες was ὑπερφερέται or ὑπέρφοροι (“those who carry over”), which becoming ὑπέρβοροι gave rise to the popular derivation from βορέας (“dwellers beyond the north wind”). The Hyperboreans were thus the bearers of the sacrificial gifts to Apollo over land and sea, irrespective of their home, the name being given to Delphians, Thessalians, Athenians and Delians. It is objected by O. Schröder that the form Περφερέες requires a passive meaning, “those who are carried round the altar,” perhaps dancers like the whirling dervishes; distinguishing them from the Hyperboreans, he explains the latter as those who live “above the mountains,” that is, in heaven. Under the influence of the derivation from βορέας, the home of the Hyperboreans was placed in a region beyond the north wind, a paradise like the Elysian plains, inaccessible by land or sea, whither Apollo could remove those mortals who had lived a life of piety. It was a land of perpetual sunshine and great fertility; its inhabitants were free from disease and war. The duration of their life was 1000 years, but if any desired to shorten it, he decked himself with garlands and threw himself from a rock into the sea. The close connexion of the Hyperboreans with the cult of Apollo may be seen by comparing the Hyperborean myths, the characters of which by their names mostly recall Apollo or Artemis (Agyieus, Opis, Hecaergos, Loxo), with the ceremonial of the Apolline worship. No meat was eaten at the Pyanepsia; the Hyperboreans were vegetarians. At the festival of Apollo at Leucas a victim flung himself from a rock into the sea, like the Hyperborean who was tired of life. According to an Athenian decree (380 B.C.) asses were sacrificed to Apollo at Delphi, and Pindar (Pythia, x. 33) speaks of “hecatombs of asses” being offered to him by the Hyperboreans. As the latter conveyed sacrificial gifts to Delos hidden in wheat-straw, so at the Thargelia a sheaf of corn was carried round in procession, concealing a symbol of the god (for other resemblances see Crusius’s article). Although the Hyperborean legends are mainly connected with Delphi and Delos, traces of them are found in Argos (the stories of Heracles, Perseus, Io), Attica, Macedonia, Thrace, Sicily and Italy (which Niebuhr indeed considers their original home). In modern times the name has been applied to a group of races, which includes the Chukchis, Koryaks, Yukaghirs, Ainus, Gilyaks and Kamchadales, inhabiting the arctic regions of Asia and America. But if ever ethnically one, the Asiatic and American branches are now as far apart from each other as they both are from the Mongolo-Tatar stock.
See O. Crusius in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; O. Schröder in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft (1904), viii. 69; W. Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte (1905); L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States (1907), iv. 100.
HYPEREIDES (c. 390-322 B.C.), one of the ten Attic orators, was the son of Glaucippus, of the deme of Collytus. Having studied under Isocrates, he began life as a writer of speeches for the courts, and in 360 he prosecuted Autocles, a general charged with treason in Thrace (frags. 55-65, Blass). At the time of the so-called “Social War” (358-355) he accused Aristophon, then one of the most influential men at Athens, of malpractices (frags. 40-44, Blass), and impeached Philocrates (343) for high treason. From the peace of 346 to 324 Hypereides supported Demosthenes in the struggle against Macedon; but in the affair of Harpalus he was one of the ten public prosecutors of Demosthenes, and on the exile of his former leader he became the head of the patriotic party (324). After the death of Alexander, he was the chief promoter of the Lamian war against Antipater and Craterus. After the decisive defeat at Crannon (322), Hypereides and the other orators, whose surrender was demanded by Antipater, were condemned to death by the Athenian partisans of Macedonia. Hypereides fled to Aegina, but Antipater’s emissaries dragged him from the temple of Aeacus, where he had taken refuge, and put him to death; according to others, he was taken before Antipater at Athens or Cleonae. His body was afterwards removed to Athens for burial.
Hypereides was an ardent pursuer of “the beautiful,” which in his time generally meant pleasure and luxury. His temper was easy-going and humorous; and hence, though in his development of the periodic sentence he followed Isocrates, the essential tendencies of his style are those of Lysias, whom he surpassed, however, in the richness of his vocabulary and in the variety of his powers. His diction was plain and forcible, though he occasionally indulged in long compound words probably borrowed from the Middle Comedy, with which, and with the everyday life of his time, he was in full sympathy. His composition was simple. He was specially distinguished for subtlety of expression, grace and wit, as well as for tact in approaching his case and handling his subject matter. Sir R. C. Jebb sums up the criticism of pseudo-Longinus (De sublimitate, 34) in the phrase—“Hypereides was the Sheridan of Athens.”
Seventy-seven speeches were attributed to Hypereides, of which twenty-five were regarded as spurious even by ancient critics. It is said that a MS. of most of the speeches was in existence in the 16th century in the library of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, at Ofen, but was destroyed at the capture of the city by the Turks in 1526. Only a few fragments were known until comparatively recent times. In 1847 large fragments of his speeches Against Demosthenes (see above) and For Lycophron (incidentally interesting as elucidating the order of marriage processions and other details of Athenian life, and the Athenian government of Lemnos), and the whole of the For Euxenippus (c. 330, a locus classicus on εἰσαγγελίαι or state prosecutions), were found in a tomb at Thebes in Egypt, and in 1856 a considerable portion of a λόγος παρανόμων, a Funeral Oration over Leosthenes and his comrades who had fallen in the Lamian war, the best extant specimen of epideictic oratory (see [Babington], [Churchill]). Towards the end of the century further discoveries were made of the conclusion of the speech Against Philippides (dealing with a γραφὴ παρανόμων, or indictment for the proposal of an unconstitutional measure, arising out of the disputes of the Macedonian and anti-Macedonian parties at Athens), and of the whole of the Against Athenogenes (a perfumer accused of fraud in the sale of his business). These have been edited by F. G. Kenyon (1893). An important speech that is lost is the Deliacus (frags. 67-75, Blass) on the presidency of the Delian temple claimed by both Athens and Delos, which was adjudged by the Amphictyons to Athens.
On Hypereides generally see pseudo-Plutarch, Decem oratorum vitae; F. Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit, iii.; R. C. Jebb, Attic Orators, ii. 381. A full list of editions and articles is given in F. Blass, Hyperidis orationes sex cum ceterarum fragmentis (1894, Teubner series), to which may be added I. Bassi, Le Quattro Orazioni di Iperide (introduction and notes, 1888), and J. E. Sandys in Classical Review (January 1895) (a review of the editions of Kenyon and Blass). For the discourse against Athenogenes see H. Weil, Études sur l’antiquité grecque (1900).