CHAPTER IV.
Primaeval Trade Routes.
There can be little doubt that from the extreme West of Europe to Northern India, or rather to China and the Pacific shore, there was complete intercourse in the way of trade, from the most remote epochs. In the lake dwellings of Switzerland are found implements of Jade, a stone which is not found at any spot in Europe; in fact the nearest point from which the material was fetched must have been Eastern Turkestan on the borders of China[151]. If in neolithic days such communication existed between Further Asia and Western Europe, it is not unreasonable to suppose that when gold, an article existing in almost every country across the two continents, came into use, a like facility of intercourse must have existed. In one of the passages of Herodotus which I have given above we had explicit information respecting a trade route extending from the Greek factories on the northern shores of the Black Sea through the medium of the Scythians right away to the remote region of the Altai. On the other hand there is good evidence for the existence of a great trade route from the Black Sea westward up the valley of the Danube, and so reaching the head of the Adriatic; and again, there is equally good reason for believing that from the mouth of the Po there ran a similar route across Northern Italy through Liguria and Narbonese Gaul and into Spain. In reference to the first of these routes we may quote a tradition preserved in the Book of Wonderful Stories before alluded to. It is there stated that once on a time travellers who had voyaged up the Danube finally by a branch of that river which flowed into the Adriatic made their way into that Sea. It is there alleged[152] that “there is a mountain called Delphium between Mentorice and Istriana, which has a lofty peak. Whenever the Mentores who dwell on the Adriatic mount this crest, they see, as it appears, the ships which are sailing into the Pontus (Black Sea). And there is likewise a certain spot in the intervening region in which, when a common mart is held, Lesbian, Chian and Thasian wares are set out for sale by the merchants who come up from the Black Sea, and Corcyraean wine jars by those who come up from the Adriatic. They say likewise that the Ister, taking its rise in what are called the Hercynian forests, divides in twain, and disembogues by one branch into the Black Sea, and by the other into the Adriatic. And we have seen a proof of this not only in modern times, but likewise still more so in antiquity, as to how the regions there are easy of navigation (reading εὔπλωτα). For the story goes that Jason sailed in by the Cyanean Rocks, but sailed out from the Black Sea by the Ister.”
The story of the meeting between the traders from the Black Sea and Adriatic has every mark of probability, whilst we are possibly justified in regarding the legend of Jason as evidence that for long ages the Greeks knew that up the valley of the Danube traders from the Pontus made their way. Doubtless too it was with a view to tapping the trade of this very route that the trading factories like Istropolis were founded on the Danube.
The branch of the Danube flowing into the Adriatic can only mean that travellers from the Danube by passing up one of its tributaries would reach a point from which it was but a short journey to the Adriatic shore. But a famous story in Herodotus will yield us more efficient aid. To the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. the extreme north was represented by the land of those happy beings the Hyperboreans, just as the furthest south was represented by the sources of the Nile. Thus Pindar sings: “Countless broad paths of glorious exploits have been cut out one after another beyond Nile’s fountains and through the land of the Hyperboreans[153].”
Some of the oldest legends of the young world’s prime cluster around this shadowy region. Herakles had wandered there in quest of the hind of the golden horns, consecrated to Artemis Orthosia by Taygeta[154]; “In quest of her he likewise beheld that land behind the chilling north wind; there he stood and marvelled at the trees.” The judge at the Olympic festival placed round the locks of the victor “the dark green adornment of the olive, which in days of yore Amphitryon’s son had brought from the shady sources of the Ister, a most glorious memorial of the contests at Olympia, when he had won over by word the Hyperborean folk that are the henchmen of Apollo[155].” The hero Perseus too had reached that land where no ordinary mortal could find his way. “Neither in ships nor yet on foot wouldst thou find out the marvellous ways to the assembly of the Hyperboreans, but once on a time did the chieftain Perseus enter their houses and feast, having come upon them as they were sacrificing glorious hecatombs of asses to the god. Now Apollo takes continuous and especial delight in their banquets and hymns of praise, and he laughs as he beholds the rampant lewdness of the beasts[156].”
Herodotus felt puzzled where to place the Hyperboreans; “For concerning Hyperborean men neither the Scythians say anything to the point nor any other of those that dwell in this region, save the Issedones. But as I think, not even do they say anything to the point; for in that case the Scythians too would have told it, as they tell about the one-eyed people” (the Arimaspians[157]). “But a certain Aristeas, the son of Caÿstrobius, a man of Proconnesus, alleged in a poem that under the influence of divine afflatus he had reached the Issedones, and that beyond them dwelt the Arimaspians who have but one eye, and that beyond these are the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans, stretching to the sea[158].” But where Pindar and Herodotus hesitated, the priest of Apollo at Delos stepped in with an explicit statement of that “marvellous road” which Pindar said no one could find by sea or land. Accordingly Herodotus has to resort to the men of Delos for his information about the Hyperboreans: “Much the longest account of them is given by men of Delos, who have alleged that sacred objects bound up in wheaten straw are brought from the Hyperboreans to the Scythians, and that the Scythians receive them and pass them on to their neighbours upon the west, who continue to pass them on until at last they reach the Adriatic, and from thence they are sent on southwards. First of the Greeks do the men of Dodona receive them, and from them they travel down to the Melian Gulf and cross over to Euboea, and city sends them on to city as far as Carystus. The Carystians take them over to Tenos without stopping at Andros; and the Tenians convey them to Delos.” Then he adds a further story that on the first occasion the Hyperboreans sent two maidens, Hyperoché and Laodicé, with five male protectors, but as they died at Delos, and returned home no more, they for this reason “bring to their borders the sacred objects packed up in wheaten straw and lay a solemn injunction on their neighbours, bidding them send them forward to another nation, and the men say that being forwarded in this fashion they arrive at Delos[159].”
From the various passages quoted we may draw the probable conclusion that there was a well-defined trade route existing for untold ages between the heart of Asia, the valley of the Danube and the head of the Adriatic. The nameless poets who framed the legends of Herakles and his wanderings would certainly make the hero travel by the routes where both in their own time and from tradition they knew of the existence of highways from nation to nation. Thus in his journey to the Hyperboreans Herakles is represented as having visited the shady forests of the Danube, which points to the same road as that assigned to the Hyperborean maidens by the Delian tale. Finally it may not be farfetched to conjecture that the sacrifice of hecatombs of asses may be taken as evidence that the Hyperborean legend points to a people of Central Asia, which is the natural habitat of the wild ass. However, as it seems that there was an annual sacrifice of asses to Apollo at Delphi[160], we must be careful not to lay much stress on this argument, although it is quite possible that a vague knowledge of a far-off region where asses abounded and were sacrificed may have given the Greeks the idea that the Hyperboreans were worshippers of their own god Apollo, at whose altar like offerings were made.
Having seen some reasons for believing that before the beginning of history there was a well-defined route from Central and perhaps Further Asia across Southern Russia to the valley of the Danube, and then by one of the valleys of its tributaries to within a short distance of the Adriatic, whence after crossing the watershed it reached the head of that sea, we are now in a position to enquire whether we have similar evidence for the further continuance towards the west of this highroad of nations. We have had occasion already to remark that the legends of the Voyage of the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and the journeyings of Herakles and such-like stories, really represent the earliest knowledge of the regions which lay far away to the east and north-west. There is no tale of the hero Herakles more famous than that of his travelling to the very marge of Ocean, where in the Pillars of Hercules he left an imperishable record of his wayfaring for the men of aftertime. His object, so goes the story, was the capture of the famous kine of the giant Geryon who dwelt in the island of Erythia, in after years the site of Gaddir, or Gadeira as the Greeks called it, the Gades of the Romans, and the modern Cadiz. Many vague stories relating to the early ethnology of Western Europe and Northern Africa cycle round this expedition[161]. But for our present purpose it is only the fabled route by which he went with which we are concerned. As might naturally be expected that part of Italy with which the Greeks seem first to have become acquainted was the district lying in the Adriatic around the mouths of the Po (Eridanus). The reason why they came thither is not far to seek. They doubtless simply followed the example of the Phoenicians who probably had long traded thither to obtain both the highly prized golden amber from the Baltic, and the red amber of Liguria, called from that region Lingurium, or ligurion, a name for which the Greeks found a strange etymology which connected it with the lynx[162]. According to Herodotus, “the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks who made long voyages and discovered Adria, Tyrsenia (Etruria), Iberia and Tartessus” (I. 163). The trade routes to the amber coasts of the north have long been well known; they passed over the Alps, crossed the Danube at Passau, Linz or Presburg, and proceeded then either to Samland or to the vicinity of Jutland[163]. As these northern routes crossed that which came up the valley of the Danube, we see that by this route there was complete communication between the Black Sea and the Adriatic. In later times we know that active trade was carried on with all Northern Italy from Marseilles along by the Ligurian shore, for the coinage of Massalia, and the barbarous imitations of it struck by the peoples of what was afterwards known as Cisalpine Gaul, formed the currency of that region until the Roman Conquest. But once more the Book of Wonderful Stories comes to our aid: “They say that from Italy into Keltiké, and the land of the Keltoligyes and Iberians, there is a certain road called that of Herakles, by which if any journey, whether Greek or native, he is protected by those who dwell along it, that he may suffer no wrong. For those in whose vicinity the wrong is done have to pay the penalty.” Here we have a clear instance of a well-defined caravan route, connected by Greek tradition with the name of Herakles, which was placed under a kind of taboo, so that all travellers could use it with impunity. We may then conclude that as from Central Asia there was unbroken communication with Northern Italy, so likewise from Northern Italy there was from remote ages a definite trade route into Gaul and Spain, and that these routes were in turns connected with the great routes which lead from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and North Sea.
Fig. 15. Barbarous imitation of Drachm of Massalia.