A Collection and Critical Examination of the Passages in Greek Authors, in which Mention is made of the Hyperboreans

 

By Andrew William Cochrane

 

[Originally published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in Transactions, Original Series, Volume 3 (1837)]

 

[The subject of the following paper being out of the ordinary range of literary research, it is proper to state the circumstances which have given occasion to the composition and publication of it:—The Right Honble. Sir Charles Grey when lately in this Province as one of His Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry, having become a member of the Literary and Historical Society, placed at the disposal of the Society a prize for the best paper "containing a collection and critical examination of the passages in Greek authors in which mention is made of the Hyperboreans."

 

The Council of the Society having accordingly offered this among other prize subjects for competition, the following essay was adjudged to be entitled to the prize offered by Sir C. Grey, and the Society deemed it also worthy of publication.]

 

The subject which has been chosen by an eminent and accomplished person, and adopted by the Literary and Historical Society as a subject for a prize essay, is one so involved in the obscurity of a remote and uninformed antiquity, and the investigation of it is so little aided by the lights of ancient history or geography, that the enquirer enters upon it with little more than dim conjecture to guide him.

 

The existence of a Hyperborean people is indeed mentioned in several Greek authors; but the very fact of that existence is made a matter of doubt by the Historian, who is himself to be resorted to, as the principal guide of our inquiries; and the geography as well as the history of the writers of Greece, (particularly those of Hellas or Greece proper) was so innacurate and imperfect, that we have little of certainty to rest upon, beyond the limits which that polished but vain nation fixed as the pale of civilization, Foreign travel, foreign commerce, and foreign navigation,—the sources from which geography has in more recent times derived its largest accessions, yielded it in those days but a feeble and uncertain light.

 

The mariner in his ill-found and ill-constructed bark, unaided by the compass, and guided only by the stars, or by land marks, in general clung timidly to the well-known shore, and seldom visited regions not connected with, or dependent on the country to which he himself belonged;—the merchant carried forth and brought home his wares, chiefly in journies by land,—oftentimes, indeed, long and toilsome and perilous,—but only where gain could be sought with the least danger;—the man of letters, however liberal curiosity might prompt him to enlarge his knowledge by travel, was deterred by fear, or by the universally prevailing contempt for the nations called barbarous, from investigating, among them, their history, their geography, or their actual condition. Even where countries were explored by ancient travellers, or became known to them by report, the want of adequate means of observing the latitude and longitude, rendered their geography in these points to a great degree inaccurate and uncertain; and the error under which they laboured, in believing that the earth was habitable only in temperate regions, retarded the improvements of the ancients in this science. [1]

 

In truth its boundaries were more enlarged by the march of the conqueror than the travels of the philosopher: Alexander the Great, took with him to the shores of the Ganges and Indus, and kept in his pay, men of science, who measured and delineated the movements of his armies; and Caesar caused surveys to be made and itineraries to be prepared of the Roman empire, which he had so greatly extended.[2]

 

These observations apply to the state of geographical knowledge before the Christian Era; about which time Strabo travelled and wrote; and with little qualification they are not less applicable to the subsequent period of 136 years which elapsed from the death of Strabo to that of Ptolemy.

 

One eminent writer, indeed, the father of profane history, travelled through many of the countries of which he professes to give an account, and it is from him or through him that we derive some of the clearest and most intelligible notices which we have at the present day, respecting the existence and situation of a Hyperborean people. But, though an English author of some note [3]positively states that Herodotus claims the credit of having seen with his own eyes the regions north of the Euxine, of which he treats in his fourth book, we believe it will be found that he makes no such assertion ; and it would appear that he did not even extend his personal researches to all the Grecian colonies in that quarter, much less to the interior of Scythia, or to the nations farther north : His information was evidently often obtained at second hand and considering the remote period at which he wrote,— and the difficulties already glanced at, which he had to encounter in ascertaining the truth respecting distant places or facts,—we are rather disposed to admire the accuracy he has attained, than to blame the errors into which he may have fallen. Notwithstanding the tendency of his natural temperament to seize on what was marvellous or new, there are evident proofs throughout his work, of the caution and restraint which he practised in pursuing his inquiries, and forming his conclusions, and of the judgment, with which, so far as could be expected .from a writer of his age, he sifted fact from fable.

 

Herodotus composed his historical work about 450 years .before the Christian Era; and as he is the earliest extant prose writer who has mentioned the Hyperboreans as a nation, he deserves our first attention ; Those who came after him, and who have touched upon this subject, will be found not only to have added little that is authentic or clear to the notices of it which he has given, but to have involved it in greater confusion and obscurity; so that the assertion of the Abbé Gedoyn will probably be discovered to be fully justified,— " Que les Grecs ne s'entendpient pas eux mêmes quand ils parloient des peuples Hyperboréens,"

 

In the commencement of his 4th book, (or Melpomene) Herodotus, after treating of the origin of the Scythians, repeats in the 13th section the account given by one Aristeas of Proconnesus, of the early history of several nations north of the Euxine, but he quotes it only as what was current among the Greeks and. Barbarians and without any language signifying his own approbation of it; for in the beginning of a former section[4] he had expressed his adoption of a different view **** ** *** **** ****** **** **** ****.******.***** *** ***** **********.**[5] He informs us that this Aristeas (who appears from Longinus to have been the author of a poem on the wars between the Arimaspi,—a neighbouring people to the Hyperboreans, and the Gryphons), reported that he had visited the country of the Issedonians,—above, or beyond whom, (that is, to the northward), were the Arimaspi, a one-eyed nation ; above them the Gryphons,[6] who guarded a golden treasure ; above them the Hyperboreans, reaching to the sea ; but Herodotus concludes by remarking, that the accounts given by this writer were at variance with those of the Scythians themselves ;—and it is manifest that he does not attach any credit to them ; for he afterwards observes, that, with respect to the countries beyond (or above) Scythia, (of which he himself was about to give a description), no accurate information could be obtained,—since he had never met with any person who had actually visited them ; and that even Aristeas did not pretend to have travelled farther than to the Issedonian country ; and the historian then proceeds to give what he solemnly avers to be as correct an account of these countries as he had been able, by diligent inquiry from others, to collect.

 

Beginning at the mouth of the Borysthenes, (now the Dnieper), "the centre of Maritime Scythia," he describes the nations to the west, the north, and. the east. First,-in ascending that river,[7] and to the westward of it, (upon and beyond the Hypanis, now the Bog), he notices the Callipidae, (who were Scythian Greeks) ; next the Alazonés ; above these the agricultural Seythians, (who carried on a corn trade.[8]) ; and above these the Neuri ; but he represents the country to the north-east of these (*****; ***** *******),[9] as an uninhabited desert, so far as was known. On the other side of the Borysthenes, the first tract which he names is Hylaea, or the wooded region ; next to this the Agricultural Scythians again, extending in a N.E. direction up the Borysthenes, 13 days'journey, [10] or about 400 miles ; beyond them a tract of desert ; and then the Anthropophagi, or Cannibals, (not a Scythian nation) ; and above these still, to the N. E., he describes the whole region, in the same direction, as, without all doubt, a desert uninhabited as far as he knew, by any race of men.

 

Taking, again, the tract of country to the east of those last described, he mentions the Nomadian Scythians, dwelling in a treeless country, (the Steppes of Modern Russia) ; beyond these the Basilian or Royal tribe ; to the N. %. of these the Melanchlaeni,[11] or Black Mantles—beyond whom were tracts supposed to be uninhabited by man ; and, after naming several other tribes more to the eastward and northward, he speaks of the Issedonians, [12] as well ascertained to inhabit a country still farther in the same direction ; but states that the regions to the N. E. were unknown to the Issedonians or the neighbouring nations, except that they related that there was the race of one-eyed men and gryphons ; that the Scythians had received this story from them ; and that the Greeks had it from the Scythians,—and, taking it for true, gave these strange inhabitants the name of Arimaspi.[13]

 

These geographical notices by Herodotus, with respect to the Scythians, have been dwelt upon at greater length than might appear necessary, in consequence of an opinion expressed by a well-informed author[14] already alluded to, who wrote on the spot, and has devoted a separate essay to this particular enquiry—that the country of the Hyperboreans may, on the authority of Herodotus, be fixed immediately to the north of the Issedonians, whom this writer would place about the <50th degree of N. lat., where the Russian government of Kief is now laid down in the maps, south of Moscow; and there is -the far greater authority of Sir William Jones—a man whose most casual dicta can be received only with the highest respect, and impugned with the greatest diffidence, who, in his 8th anniversary discourse before the Asiatic Society of Bengal, assumes, that the Hyperboreans were to be found by rounding the N. E. coast of Asiatic Russia, and coming thence westward ; and is of opinion, " from what is known of their old religion and laws' that they were of Gothic or Hindoo origin. But we have no reason to suppose that this distinguished man meant to be understood as giving a deliberate opinion, founded on an examination of the whole authorities bearing on the question—as to the existence of a separate and distinct Hyperborean nation with an ascertained system of laws and religion ; nor does he dwell on the subject beyond the extent now mentioned. But it will be seen that, in describing the Scythian countries, Herodotus speaks of them as bounded to the N. and N. E. by uninhabited or unknown tracts ; and with respect to the Issedonians, in particular, he does not state them to be the neighbours of the Hyperboreans—but, on the contrary, throws discredit on the fabulous tales related by that people of the countries contiguous to them.

 

When he comes,however, to speak directly of the Hyperboreans themselves (in the 82nd section) his caution, and indeed incredulity are significantly shewn : " Of these Hyperborean people " he says, " neither the Scythians nor any of the inhabitants of these countries can give any account, excepting the Issedones, and even they as I think say nothing" ( i. e. that can be depended upon) (** ***** ********* ***** ****** *********) " for if they did, the Scythians also would have spoken of them ; as they do of the one-eyed nation," &c. Evidently holding the same opinion or degree of belief with respect to the Hyperboreans as of the one eyed nation.

 

The Historian however then proceeds to relate the traditions current among the inhabitants of the Island of Delos respecting the Hyperboreans,—but without any expressions or indications of his own belief in them ; he states these traditions to be, that from the Hyperboreans, offerings for the temple at Delos were brought to the Scythians, packed in barley or wheaten straw ; that by the Scythians they were handed over to their neighbours ; and being then transferred from nation to nation, until they reached the Adriatic sea, they were thence carried southward, and taken in charge by the Greeks of Dodona,—passed from them across Greece to the Sinus Maliacus (or bay of Zeitoun,) thence through Eubœa to the city of Carystus at its southern extremity,—thence to Tenos (or Tino), and by the Tenians were borne to the Island of Delos, where the precious charge was to be deposited, as an offering to Apollo ; that these Hyperboreans had on a former occasion sent their offerings by two young women, who were escorted by five men of their country ; but as these had never returned, the Hyperboreans had been deterred from despatching another mission, and had adopted the method already described of sending them by a circuitous route, from nation t« nation : but after relating this Delian tradition, Herodotus adds significantly, that he had seen similar offerings made up by the Thraeian and Pceonian women for their sacrifices to Diana,— seeming shrewdly to suspect (as Bishop Heber remarks, Hist, of the Cossacks, c. 26.) that the offerings sent to Delos were the workmanship of some devotees among the Thracians.

 

Recording farther these traditionary tales, he states that these young women having died at Delos, the inhabitants paid them certain posthumous honours, which he describes; and that even before they had arrived in the Island, two other Hyperborean virgins had come thither (according to the report of the Delians) with an offering to Lucina, bringing with them their own gods ; —that to these also the inhabitants paid honours ; and that the Delian women collected alms for them, and introduced their names into a hymn composed by Olen, a Lycian poet, the author of other ancient hymns sung by the Islanders.

 

" Thus much (concludes the Historian) it was necessary to tell ' of the Hyperboreans ; for as to the story of Abaris, who was said " to be a Hyperborean, and to have gone round the earth upon an arrow, and without eating, I will not speak of it."

 

Such are the notices we derive from the father of History respecting the Hyperboreans ; and they certainly seem hardly to amount even to the lowest degree of historical evidence,—to that founded on the testimony of hearsay ; for the author who reports what he had thus heard, does not even add, as he does to other relations in other places, the stamp of his own credit and belief ; but concludes his whole account with an expression, casting doubt on the existence of such a people, "** ** *** *** ********** **********” &C.

 

Before entering on an examination of some of the particulars of these Delian traditions, it may be convenient to refer at once to the concurring authorities respecting them, and respecting the Hyperboreans generally, which we find in other writers to whom we have had the opportunity of access.

 

Callimachus, who. flourished about 200 years after Herodotus, composed a hymn on the island of Delos ; but the writer of these notes has not had it in his power to consult this author.— It is probable, however, that his account of the Hyperborean offerings brought to Delos, was drawn, in great part, from that of Herodotus ; it appears from authorities in which Callimachus is quoted, that that poet entirely agrees with Herodotus as to the route supposed to have been pursued by the Hyperboreans in coming to Delos ; he mentions the mission of Hyperborean virgins ; but differs from Herodotus as to the names of those who first arrived ; and he speaks of Olen, the Lycian, who brought the hymns ascribed to him, from the borders of the Xanthus.

 

Diodorus Siculus, the next author to whom reference is to be had, wrote about 400 years after Herodotus, but his authority, in general, is not held by critics of equal weight ; although he also travelled extensively, and laboured long in conecting materials for his work. As this author is not so frequently to be met with in this country as Herodotus, (there being, it is believed, but two copies in Quebec, only one of which is in the original Greek, and the other an old, and not very correct Latin version, printed in- 1552), the writer is induced to add a transcript in the original language, of the account given by Diodorus respecting the Hyperboreans.

 

***[15]

 

It might, perhaps, suffice to point out, that this author manifests his own scepticism of what he thus repeats ; He speaks of the things which he reports as fabulous " *************** " as belonging to ancient fables " ************************ " and these expressions, signifying the merely fabulous nature of the story, are repeated several times by him ; nor does he once vouch for the relation, or indicate his belief of it.

 

The substance of his account, (for which he quotes Hecataeus, a historian who lived about 545 B. a), is, that the Hyperboreans inhabited an island near the ocean, over against the Celtic country, and the Arctic or northern region ; that they derived their name-from their lying beyond the blast of Boreas ; that their island was arable, and fertile in various products, its climate excellent, and yielding two gatherings of fruits in the year ; that, as the birthplace of Latona, special worship was there paid to Apollo, beyond all other gods ; and that the inhabitants were, in a manner, priests to that deity—singing daily hymns to him withont ceasing ; that they had a peculiar language ;[16] and that they entertained a particular regard towards the Greeks, and especially towards the Athenians and Delians—a traditional goodwill handed down to them from ancient times ; that some Greeks who had travelled among them, bad left them splendid gifts inscribed with Grecian characters ; that, in like manner, the visit of one Abaris, who, in ancient times, had passed into Greece, had kept up the national friendship and connexion with the Delians ;—that from this Hyperborean island the moon was seen at so short a distance from the earth, that the mountains, or projecting parts on her surface, seemed to be distinctly visible ; that the deity visited the island in cycles of nineteen years,—in which period, also, the revolutions of other planets were accomplished; and that, on that account, the nineteenth year was called by the Greeks, the " Great Year"[17] ; and that in this appearance, the deity played on the harp, and kept up nightly dances, from, the vernal Equinox to the rising of the Pleid-.;. and, finally, that the country was under the rule of the Boreadse, the descendants of BoTeas, in whom the hereditary dominion was vested.

 

From this incoherent and fabulous account, little, .even of rational conjecture, still less of certainty, can be drawn ; it is evident, however, that Diodorus, or rather Hecatieus, assigns a very different position to the Hyperborean country, from that mentioned in Herodotus ; but his geographical statements are inconsistent with each other ;—for, whether we suppose the Celtic country to mean Gaul, as understood by some writers—and especially of late by Bishop Heber—or take his island of Hyperboreans to mean the Hebrides, as the Annotator on Bayle imagines, [18] we shall, in either case, be far from,a country of so excellent a climate as to yield its fruits twice a year ; and we shall be equally at a loss to explain the astronomical facts which he states.

 

It may here be observed, however, that when the terms ** **** ********** ** ******* *******—-and,**************** are used by him respecting the Hyperborean Island, a much wider range is given in which to seek for that region, than-would at first seem to be justified ; for the ancients appear to have had a very vagué notion of the Celtic region ;[19] as -while Herodotus (6 2, c. 33,) places the sources of the Ister, or Danube, among the Celts, beyond the pillars of Herculus ; we find from Plutarch, in his life of Marius, that the country of the Celts was considered to stretch from the Western Ocean to the most northern climates, and to the lake Moetis, eastward ; while according to another account referred to by him, a Celtic tribe dwelt at the extremities of the earth, near the North Sea ; and that they were then under that part of the heavens where the elevation of the pole was such, that by the declination of the parallels, it became almost a vertical point to the inhabitants, and their day and night divide the year into equal parts ; on the other hand, the expression *************** is sometimes vaguely used for the northern hemisphere of the earth, or for distant points or places far to the northward of those regions, with which the ancient writers were most familiar.

 

But if we compare this account of Diodorus hot only with its several parts, but with other passages of the same writer, we shall find still more remarkable inconsistencies ;—for in his description of the Celts, the inhabitants of Galatia, (which was the name given by ancient geographers to Gaul in its whole extent), he calls them a nation very much towards the Arctic pole, dwelling in a frozen clime, where snow falls in winter instead of rain ; where the earth and rivers are bound in ice, and where the severity of the climate is snch, that neither wine nor oil can be produced ; and yet it is in the ocean over against this country and towards the pole that he or his author Hecateaus places the Hyperborean Island, with its delightful climate, fruitful soil, and two harvests in the year.

 

An examination of these and other passages in his work will be found to bear out the severe but just observations of Bishop Heber, (Hist, of the Cossacks, page 53), "that the knowledge " possessed by Diodorus of these countries (to the north and " east), is so greatly inferior to that of Herodotus, that it would "seem a strange kind of prejudice which should build on the " testimony of a remote and credulous antiquary, in preference " to that of one who had visited the countries, or conversed with " the people he describes ; and that there are many proofs to be " found in Diodorus, that from the days of the father of history, " the knowledge of the north and east was retrograding among " the Greeks ; and that the more widely succeeding authors de-" parted from his authority, the more effectually they betrayed " their own ignorance."

 

These observations may fitly be borne in mind in reviewing what has been written concerning the Hyperboreans by Pausanias, the next and only remaining prose author whom the writer of these notes has had the means of consulting in extenso ; nor has he been able to meet with a copy in the original Greek ; and his quotations arc therefore made from the French translation of Abbé Gedoyn, which, though pronounced by Larcher in his Annotations on Herodotus to be often incorrect, may be deemed sufficiently accurate for the purposes of the present reference.

 

Pausanias who wrote 170 years after the Christian era, in giving a brief notice[20] of Prasiae, a small town or district of Attica, men dons, that there was a temple of Apollo, to which it was said, that the Hyperboreans regularly sent offerings of tbeir first-fruits, which they entrusted, in the first" instance, to the Arimaspians,—and these to the Issedonians, from whom the Scythians received them and sent them to Sinope, (a Greek Milesian colony of Pontus in Asia) ; whence they were carried by the Greeks to Prasis ; and thence by the Athenians to Delos ;—and he adds, that these first-fruits were wrapped up in wheaten straw, and that none were allowed to see them.

 

It is obvious to remark, that this account seems, in its principal points, to be little more than a repetition of the current traditions of Delos, related by Herodotus,—with a considerable variation, however, in the line of route assigned to the Hyperborean offerings; they are still however represented as coming through the Scythian and Greek colonies to the Grecian continent, and thence to Delos ; but the first part of this passage from Pausanias, assigning these offerings a resting-place in the Prasian temple, is at variance with the conclusion which carries them to Delos.

 

In a subsequent passage, (book 5, cap. 7,) in treating of the Olympic games, he mentions the olive-crown, which was given as a prize ; and says, that the wild-olive was supposed to have been first brought into Greece by Hercules, from the country of the Hyperboreans,[21] a people that dwelt beyond the northeast wind ; that Olen the Lycian, in a hymn composed in honour of Achaeia, first informed us, that that nymph came to Delos from the country of the Hyperboreans; and that after Olen, Melanopus of Cumae says in an ode in honour of Opis and He-caerge,[22] that they also came, in ancient times,[23] into Achoeia and to Delos ; and Pausânias adds, that Aristeas the Proconnesian, had satisfied himself with a very slight mention of the Hyperboreans, although he might have given a fuller account of them than other person , as he had travelled (according to his own statement in some verses he had written), into the Issedonian country.

 

Again, (in book 10, cap 5,) writing of Delphi, he mentions, that Boeo, a native of that neighbourhood, and well known for the hymns she had composed for the inhabitants of Delphi—had related that the temple there, in which Apollo in after times gave his oracles, was built by Hyperborean strangers ; that several of them prophesied there; that she had made special mention of Olen as one of the prophetical bards, and as the inventor of hexameter verse; and that she had noticed also, by name, two other Hyperboreans who had come to that sacred spot ; and he subsequently relates, as another tradition respecting that temple, that after the first rude chapel had been formed, a second was built by bees with wax, and their own wings, and that this was sent[24] by Apollo to the Hyperboreans.

 

In these passages of Pausanias, we trace much of the same traditionary information which Herodotus had collected and handed down,—enlarged, indeed, but not improved by being mixed up with other traditions connected with Delphos instead of Delos ; and with one addition, the inconsistency and improbability of which stamps the character of the whole,—that it was from this Hyperborean clime that the olive-tree was brought by Hercules into Greece : There is this defence, indeed, to be made for Pausanias, that (as Heyne observes in his notes oii Pindar), he probably drew from that author his notion of the Hyperborean origin of the olive ; but the Poet, inspired by his subject—" His eye in a fine phrenzy rolling o'er earth and heaven"—may be excused, or even praised, for a departure from the truth of geography, or of history, which we are not so well disposed to pardon in the historian : Turn we now, therefore, to this loftiest of Grecian poets, whom, in like manner, we shall find extolling Hercules for bringing the olive-tree from a far Hyperborean clime :—Pindar, (who, according to Heyne and Corsini, died about the time when Herodotus gave his history to the world), thus speaks of the olive in his third Olympic ode :—

 

—-**********. ******* ******** **********

****************************************

*****************

*************************************

*          *            *            *

***************************************

 

And afterwards :—

 

***************************************

***************************************

**************************************

 

In West's translation

 

            —Bestows

The darksome olive, —studious to fulfil

The mighty founder's will,

Who this fair ensign of Olympic toil

From distant Scythia's fruitful soil,

And Hyperborean Ister's woody shore,

With fair entreaties gained to Grecian Elis bore.

The spacious Scythian plains he viewed,—

A land beyond the chilling blast

And northern caves of Boreas cast ;

There, too, the groves of olive.he surveyed ;—&c.

 

Upon these passages,—which place the sources of the Danube and the native region of the olive, in a country beyond or behind the blast of Boreas, the Greek Scholiasts (both ancient and modern,) merely observe, that the Ister or Danube flows through many rations of Europe, but takes its rise in the country of the" Hyperboreans,—and that Scythia was the country in which Hercules fonnd the olive ;—which, according to the Poet, he brought from the sources of the Ister, (************) [25] Herodotus, indeed, as has been.remarked before, had but a very imperfect knowledge of the countries where the Danube rises, but he does not make it flow from north to south ; the Poet in his ardour, casts aside all geography,—and the grave Scholiast and Grammarian, writing many centuries later, follows his example ;—the pithy observation of Heyne on the passage, contains all that can be said—Locus notdbilis propter veterum inscitiam geographiœ, et vagam Hyperboreorum notitiam : oleaster petitus esse non pohdt nisi ex Australïbus Europœ terris.[26]

 

But after so long seeking the Hyperboreans beneath a polar sky, we are enabled by the same Poet, to whom we have just referred, to place them in a more genial clime : In his 10th Pythian ode he thus descants :

 

*********************

************************

************************

************************

***********************

 

Here we have at least a pleasing and poetical picture ; the Hyperborean region is represented as enlivened by perpetual jollity, youth and joy,—justifying the comparison of[27] *********************************** (More precious than gold, and in bliss excelling that of the Hyperboreans,) and reminding us strongly of the daily and nightly hymns and dances with which Diodorus (drawing, perhaps, partly from this source,) represents the lunar cycle as celebrated in the Hyperborean island.

 

But let us examine, particularly, some of the parts of this striking passage ; the story of Perseus is a well known part of Grecian Mythology ; he is here spoken of as coming among the Hyperboreans, on his way to seek for the Gorgon virgins ; he surprises the Hyperboreans in the sacrifice of asses to Apollo ; but Herodotus tells us,[28] (and so it is to this day,) that, among the Scythians, there was neither ass nor mule, those animals being impatient of cold ; Clemens Alexandrinus, indeed, speaks of the sacrificing of asses among the Scythians ; but he relies on a verse of Callimachus,

 

************************************

Apollo delights in the splendid sacrifices of Asses,

 

which the Scholiast on Pindar, (10th Pyth. line 49,) applies to the Hyperboreans ; but the question still remains, who and where they were, if they ever existed ; it may be'inferred, however, that if those animals were not to be found among the Scythians,a nation farther north would not have them, and that this passage in Pindar, is not to be reconciled with the fact stated by Herodotus, but that another explanation is to be sought.

 

The errand of Perseus was to seek the Gorgon's head ;—but as the Scholiast on Pindar remarks it is a question how Perseus could come among the Hyperboreans in this pursuit,-—for they dwell towards the north pole, (this is the Scholiast's assumption,) but the Gorgons, according to some, were in the Erythraean and Ethiopian country, lying to the east and south, or (according to others) towards the farthest confines of Lybia, in the west, but (he adds,) that the Gorgons were not to be found towards the north pole, is plain, for no author has so related.

 

There is a passage in ./Eschyliis which illustrates the meaning of Pindar, and shews at least that the tragic Poet did not place the Gorgons among the Hyperboreans; in the Prometheus Vinctus[29] he makes Prometheus describe thus, to Io, the course of her fated wanderings.

 

*******

********

*********

********

********

 

When thou shalt pass the flood—the common bound

Of cither continent, direct thy steps

Right to the fiery portals of the East,—

The Sun's bright walk,—along the roaring beach,—

Till thou shalt come to the Gorgonian plains

Of Cisthene ;

The Gorgons nigh,

Their sisters these, spread their broad wings, and wreath

Their horrid hair with serpents,—fiends abhorred,—

Whom never mortal could behold and live. (POTTER.)

thus fixing the abode of these amiable personages near Cisthene in Lycia : but Hesiod places them far In the west. ***********

****************[30]&c

            —The Gorgons who remain

Far in the seat of night, the distant main,—

Where murmuring at their task, the Hesperides

Watch o'er the golden fruit, &c. (COOKE.)

 

And to that region, it is more reasonable to apply the description given by Pindar, in the passage under review, of the happy Hyperborean people visited by Perseus.

 

But there is yet another situation assigned to the Hyperboreans, by Posidonius, who places them among the Cottian Alps, now part of Switzerland and Italy;********************* (Schol. in Apolloniurn 2v. 677.) And if we consider Herodotus as having had in view the Celtic country, afterwards known as Gaul, when he describes the Danube as taking its rise among the Celts, we shall find the Inn, one of the principal branches of the Danube, flowing from the country near the Cottian Alps; and the Celts of Herodotus and the Hyperboreans of Posidonius and Pindar may be nearly brought together. The conclusion of the. whole matter would seem to be this, that from these passages and various other scattered allusion's to the Hyperboreans in ancient writers, which will now be mentioned in a general way, it is certain that they were, down to a late period, in an utter state of ignorance and confusion upon the subject of geography and climate: Thule, which might be fancied by some to be the Hyperborean Island of Diodorus, and which is stated by Strabo as six days sail north of Britain, and by Dionysius in his Periegesis (v. 583,) as enjoying the light of the sun night and day, when he is farthest north, is praised by Solinus for its climate and fruitfulness in corn,in terms as strongas those which Diodorus applies to his Hyperborean island: Pliny speaks of the Hyperboreans (b.4.c.l4)assaid to live where the day was six months long,—as sowing their grain in the morning, reaping at noon, gathering their fruit at sunset, and hiding themselves at night in caves ; and yet this author and Simonides, as quoted by the Abbé Barthelemi, describe them as enjoying perpetual spring, and youth, and health ; their tranquil days gliding sweetly on though ten succeeding ages, in a round of festivals and joy ; but, to use the words of D'Anville, it becomes us to number these among the supernatural wonders, that the ancients imputed to the Arctic climates.

 

Dionysius, who wrote his geographical Poem as late at least as the time of Domitian, places on the Baltic sea some of the Scythian nations mentioned by Herodotus as near the sources of the Borysthenes : while, of the Riphaean mountains mentioned by him, which Ptolemy places at the sources of the Tanais, and beyond which the Hyperboreans were supposed to live,—the very existence has been disproved in modern times.

 

And here, although out of the chronological order, we may close the whole proof in support of the conclusion we adopt, by resting on the authority of Strabo, supported by extracts from the coinciding opinions of other Greek authors from whom he derived in part his information, or who in part derived their's from him ; But we would premise that according to the observation of M. Gosselin, (Mem. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, torn. 49, p. 724,) Strabo had apparently no knowledge of that part of Asia in which, following the accounts reported by Herodotus, we should be led to look for the Hyperborean country ; and that he and all other ancient geographers were in fact ignorant, (however they might supply the place of science by conjecture,) of the countries now known as Tartarian Russia, Siberia, and the tracts eastward, to the ocean, and northward, to the arctic circle. Strabo,[31] (as quoted in the 45th vol. of the Mem. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, p. 26,) states that all the nations beyond the Ister and the Euxine were included by the ancient Greek authors under the names of Hyperboreans, Arimaspians,and Sau-romatians : and it would appear highly probable, from the perpetual changes going on among those barbarous tribes, by wars and migrations, that even' the.most well informed geographers must have been continually at fault in naming the occupants of any particular region ; Then, the principle omne ignotum pro magnifico, had special power and application among the Greeks; Beyond the Sauromatians and Scythians, of whom, through their Colonies, they had some knowledge, lay unknown regions, which the genius of their poets, or their nation, peopled with the creations of fancy : Strabo however, writing at a period comparatively modern and enlightened, though he cannot wholly shake off the ancient errors, does not admit them into his entire belief: with respect to the supposed Hyperborean country he says (b.ll)************************************** ******** **************** ************* *********************************and,******* ********* again,*************In this passage he seems to fix the limit at which the earth became uninhabitable by reason of cold at about 53° or 54° north latitude. Again in his first book he states generally ******************************And in another passage (p. 7.) **************** *************** ****************In another passage he gives them indeed a more certain position, but still speaks only of what was said,—**********************************************—thus agreeing with the authorities already referred to, as to the vague manner in which the term was applied.

 

We conclude this part of the subject with some scattered citations to the same general effeet : Plutarch, in the life of Cam-illus, states that Heraclides of Pontus (B. C. 300) had related that it was an army of Hyperboreans who had taken Roma, when it was captured by the Gauls: A Greek Scholiast says, (in which he is supported by another on Apollonius************************************* ***: thus connecting the name with all the nations, from Spain to the farthest point east, known to the ancients, north of the Euxine ; And finally, Ptolemy himself says,—********************************

.

Upon a view of the whole question respecting the Hyperboreans, considered as a separate and distinct nation, (notwithstanding the weight of Sir W. Jones' opinion,—given however, incidentally, and as a mere obiter dictum,) we may be warranted in adopting the sentiments of Mr. Larcher irf his Commeritary ori Herode -tus, that as the Greeks applied the term Boreans to the Thracians, it is highly probable, that they called all those who lived beyond, Hyperboreans,—an opinion confirmed both by Constantine Porphyrogenites, who says that there are many considerable nations extending as far as the Danube in the country of the Hyperboreans, and by the authority of Posidonius, Strabo and the Greek Scholiasts already quoted,—and that in fact the Greeks understood by this word, the most distant nations towards the north, and applied it sometimes to one nation, sometimes to another.

 

But there is another view of the question, which we have reserved for the conclusion of this paper ; Although the existence of a separate and distinct Hyperborean people cannot be proved from the Greek authors, it is not to be doubted that those northern parts of the earth,.—unexplored, or unknown to them,—in which they supposed this fabulous nation to dwell, were inhabited by various tribes from a very early period : There dwelt the Celts, the descendants of Gomer and Japhet; thence, as has been supposed by very learned men, the Pelasgic Greeks themselves derived their origin ; and in regions north and east of the Euxine, were reared up those hordes, which in later ages overwhelmed and overran Rome, and Greece, and all Europe.

 

From those early tribes it may naturally be supposed that some wandering pilgrims would occasionally find their way to the more genial regions of the south : may we not consider Abaris and Olen,—spoken of in several of the authorities already referred to,—as wanderers of this description ?—for, although the latter is called by some a Lycian,—by Pausaniashe is mentioned as a Hyperborean ; and he may at any rate have come from a residence among the remote nations of the north into Greece.

 

Herodotus indeed has passed over the story of Abaris, as not deserving of particular notice or belief ; but the manifestly fabulous part of the story may have led him too far to reject the whole,—if such rejection be indeed inferrible from the expressions he uses ; the tradition, however, of the journey of Abaris into Greece is found in so many authors, that this fact at least, not impossible in itself, is deserving of belief. Further particulars respecting him, are given by Suidas (who wrote his Lexicon in the llth century,) in the following passage —

 

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Those who arc curious for further notices of this mysterious per-son will find all the information they can desire, collected from a variety of Greek authors, in the Dictionary of M. Bayle, Article ABAHIS.

 

The Annotatôr on that article, partly adopting the opinion that the Hebrides were the Hyperborean country of Diodorus, is disposed to consider Abaris as a Highland Scot; but though. we too, would trace him to a far northern region we cannot adopt him as a Scotchman, notwithstanding the peculiar gait and intellectual characteristics by which it is said that he was distinguished[32] We take him for a Scythian, or a denizen of some of the remote regions north of the Euxine, of Thrace, or of Greece. He is represented as a Priest of Apollo ; as having come[33] into Greece and to Delos ;—as having uttered Oracles: and as having given himself out as a special worshipper of the Hypetborean Apollo,—one of the characters in which that heathen Deity was known to the Greeks.

 

Delos was in an especial manner the seat of the worship of both Apollo and Diana: to that island the female Scytliian pilgrims, mentioned by Herodotus and by Callimachus, are said (as well as Abaris) 'to-have come; there, were sung the hvmns of Olen in honour of Apollo and Diana, supposed, to have been composed in the ancient Dorian dialect, more than ten centuries belore the Christian Era; and which were also sung at the Apollinian temple at Delphos ; The worship therefore of Apollo,— Delian, Delphian, and Hyperborean,—was an object of singular attraction to Greece in general, and also, particularly, to those remote visitants to Delos and Delphos : M. Larcher concludes, that the Scythians (or Hyperboreans so called,) were originally Greeks, because of their worship of Delian Apollo,—their rites,— and some similarities in their proper names ; But in this question of origin, it seems as probable that Greece received her mythology in part from Scythia, as that Scythia derived the worship of the Delian Apollo from Greece : the proofs in support of this probability cannot be compressed within the compass of this Essay; [34] but we may simply enquire, (without dwelling on the name of Scythiadis given to the island of Delos, which is susceptible of another[35] explanation)—why should the pilgrimages from the Scythian or Hyperborean region (be they fabulous or otherwise) have been so handed down by constant,tradition as connected with the Delian wordship ?—why should the pilgrims, whenead, receive at Delos almost divine honours ?—why should the Heathen Divinity himself have received the special distinction, of Hyperborean ? why should the people so called, be distinguished also as a sacred nation, specially devoted to that Deity ? why should the other traditions connected with them be so constantly preserved,—if this northern worship of Apollo was only derived to them from the Greeks themselves : But the question may be solved if we suppose,—either, that the Delian worship of Apollo and Diana (or of the Sun and Moon, or fire and light,) anciently came from Scythia ; or that this worship among the two nations, came from one and the same ancient and original source, but that the northern tribe had preserved it in greater purity.[36]

 

Abaris then may be supposed to have appeared in Greece as the sacred Ambassador andrepresentative, or ******, of the worshippers of Apollo,—the Sun or fire,—in the regions farther north than Scythia or Thrace; He probably brought/with him. the bow and arrow, which were the peculiar emblems of those nations—still found (see Dr. Guthrie's appendix,) on many of the ancient Grseco—Scythian coins ; We know from Herodotus, that the worship of fire was pre-eminent among the Scythian nations; and in the Scythian name—" Tahiti"—of their Deity of fire, mentioned by him, we may, without any forced etymolpgy, discover the Cabiri,—whose worship, embracing the Phenomena of the heavens and the various powers of earth and air, and derived from the Phoenicians, the Chaldees, and the idolatrous Hebrews, was spread oyer Africa, and the East, and was found among the Greeks of Samothrace in close neighbourhood to Scythia.[37]

 

That the worship of fire, or the Sun, came into the regions north of the Euxine, in the very earliest periods of history, there can be little doubt ; it was ampng the most ancient, and, we may add, the most natural, of the forms of Idolatry :—when man, forsaking the pure service of the true God, turned himself to worship " the creature rather than the Creator," what more natural than that he should first adore the visible source of heat and light :—Looking upward to the glories of an eastern sky,

 

 “He saw the Sun whose chariot rolled On wheels of amber and of gold,"[38]

 

and, addressing him, perhaps, in such language as Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen Spirit,

 

Oh thou that with surpassing'glory crowned,

Look'st from thy sole dominion like the God

Of this new world,-

           

he worshipped him, less at first as the original cause of his life and happiness, than as the great eye of the material world, and emblem of its Divine author;—and, when the early races of men were scattered over the globe by the results of natural, moral, and political causes, and the northern regions became peopled by some of those tribes to whom this worship was familiar, and who are known to have made their way through Asia, and between and beyond the Euxine and Caspian Seas,—.what more natural than, that in that Hyperborean region, the Sun should continue to be worshipped,—and especially with offerings of the first fruits of the earth, as the source of life, and light, of vegetation, and comfort; and the Moon—as in part his substitute and representative ; and this will be found to have been the case among the northern, Scythian, or Celtic people, at a period anterior to Grecian mythology ;—which, in fact, as Herodotus states, was only reduced to a system and nomenclature by He-' siod and Homer.

 

The Delian traditions, accordingly, as we have seen, represent the Hyperboreans as especially addicted to the worship of Apollo and 1) ana; Herodotus confirms the fact, as to the fire—worship of the Scythians;—he describes them, indeed, as also worshipping Jupiter and Neptune and Hercules; and we have seen that Pindar leads the latter hero among the Hyperboreans; but it has been shewn by Mr. Bryant that Jupiter and Neptune and Hercules were, in the worship of some heathen nations, identical with Apollo, and he again identical with the Canaani-tish Baal,-—with the Ammon of Lybia,—with the Apis of Egypt,— with the Arabian Saturn or time,—with the Zeus, ****, or Thoth of Assyria,—with the Egyptian Serapis,—and with Mithras or Osiris ; that he was also the Bacchus of Thrace, and the îitMoç or Sun of Babylonish worship,—in short, that he was, according to the Orphic verses ****************[39]

 

We moreover know that Diana or the Moon, known also as. Cybele, Dione, Selene, Astarte, and Meen, was especially worshipped, at an ancient date, among the Celtic nations north of the Euxine ;—that she, who was the Isis of Egyptian worship, was also the Celtic Isis[40], known as such from the Sarmatian region to Britain and to Gaul,—in which latter country she was the tutelar Deity of the Parisians, while yet Pagans;[41] and the Idol consecrated to her, was still subsisting in good condition in the Abbey of St. Germain des Près, until its removal, little more than three centuries ago.[42]

 

We will touch only on one more of the resemblances of the northern Celtic or Hyperborean fables, to the Mythology of Greece ; Herodotus mentions the Arimaspians, or one eyed nation, as the neighbours of the Hyperboreans : Aristeas, to whom he refers, describes them (somewhat whimsically, as to one of

 

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upon which we, may say with a learned modern, quoted by Mr. Bryant Neque enim tanta ******* gentium,—quanta fuit Deorum ********* his epithets,) as ****** ****** ******** ******* (each having one eye in his graceful forehead;) if, as is supposed» the Celtae were the descendants of Celtus, the son of Polyphemus of Grecian story, they are to be referred to Cyclopian ori¬ginal, (or the race of Anakinis who were worshippers of the Sun :) and the Arimaspians, as surmised by Mr. Bryant, were probably Hyperborean Cyclopians, having the Egyptian symbol of an eye over the entrance of their temples, or otherwise prominently exhibited in their worship,—as the same symbol was seen over the temples of Osiris (the Grecian Apollo,) in Egypt,—a significant hieroglyphic, not merely of the Sun—***********************—but of the superintendency of that Providence by which he was formed.

 

These brief notices of analogy, selected out of a multitude of others which we might adduce, if we could trust ourselves or venture to lead our readers further into this most tempting but boundless field of enquiry,—may suffice to establish at least some degree of probability, as to the origin of the Delian and Grecian traditions respecting the special honours paid by the Hyperboreans to Apollo,—the pilgrimages made by Abaris and others to the Delphian and Delian shrines of fire worship,—and the hymns of the Lycian or Hyperborean Olen to those powers of whose worship he had derived the knowledge and the rites from the East,—the fountain head, alike, of the whole race of mankind, and of all the false religions by which mankind have ever been debased,—as also of that only true one, on which,—spread by the goodness of Providence to this Hyperborean clime,—the Christian's sure and steadfast hopes repose.