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The Hyperboreans Again, , and Helixoia

Grace H. Macurdy

The Classical Review / Volume 34 / Issue 7-8 / November 1920, pp 137 - 141 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00014025, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00014025

How to cite this article: Grace H. Macurdy (1920). The Hyperboreans Again, Abaris, and Helixoia. The Classical Review, 34, pp 137-141 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00014025

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THE HYPERBOREANS AGAIN, ABARIS, AND HELIXOIA. Miss HARRISON made a just criticism direction.' My surprise was great on on my paper on the Hyperboreans, reading Mr. Casson's recent article3 on published in the Classical Review for the Hyperboreans to find him stating 1916, in her review of the year's work that I had placed the Hyperboreans in Greek religion and mythology1 for themselves among the people of Pela- 1917. I quote the passage in question: gonia-Paeonia, among whom, as I ' But to the making of the Hyper- argue, the myth about them arose. borean myth went another bora, I derive the name from the Pierian sheltering another garden of the Sun, side, but did not mean that the Hyper- 'Poiftov 7raXato? /cfjiro*;, which I would boreans were neighbours close by the ask Professor Macurdy to consider. Paeonians. By my expressions ' the Pauly-Wissowa's lexicon has happily land beyond the bora,' and ' a holy race embarked on a second series beginning of men living beyond the bora on the with R, and concealed under Vitraia north-western track that led to the home opt) is an account of the astronomical of the Sun God,' I meant an indefinite Heiliger Gotterberg im Norden, behind region of fancy. Professor Shewan's which the Sun, after setting in the west, remarks in Class. Quart. XIII. 2, was supposed to pass to the east. This 66-67, on the idealisation of unknown astronomical and of course purely regions, give many illustrations of such imaginative northern bora puts a new imaginings about people just beyond the complexion on many an old" confusion, limits of knowledge. My dwelling on on the myths not only of Hyperboreans, Heracleia Lyncestis as an important but of Kimmerians and Atlas. The station in the route of those who came bora of myth gets contaminated with the from the north for purposes of trade or bora of fact, like contamination of hero cult was intended to emphasise the and daimon.' significance of the entire Sun-route, I heartily concur with all that Miss along which the Sun and Moon, Apollo Harrison says about the heavenly Bora. and Artemis Basileia, were worshipped Kiessling's remarkable article was by Illyrians and Thraco - Paeonians. known to me at the time when I wrote Somewhere in the track of the Sun, my paper, and I refer to his remarks afj.v deXiov nvetyaiav l-irirocnacnv, there about the derivation of the word lived, in the Thraco-Greek imaginings Hyperborean. My own aim was merely of them, a blessed folk, devoted to the 10 show that the myth of the Hyper- service of Apollo. From them, "l&Tpov boreans was among the gifts of the airo aKiapav irwyav, Heracles, according Pierians to Greece, and to bring the to Pindar's famous passage, brought the previously suggested derivation of the olive, 'Tirep(3opea>v ireia-aia'' 'ATTOXXWCO? word from bora, mountain, into con- Oepa-novTa. And though the Heavenly nexion with the well-known facts about Pair, from whose cult, according to my the northern worship of Sun and Moon, belief, the myth arose, was worshipped Apollo and Artemis Basileia in the all along the trade-route which led to Hyperborean countries2 Illyria, Thrace, the (fancied) home of the Hyperboreans, Macedon, and Thessaly. I had no in- yet vaval ovre 7re£o9 Imp Ta%' evpois e? tention of giving these mythical people Tirep^opewv ava davfiacrrbv 686v. I any local habitation except possibly regret that my interest was so centred that assigned them by Minns: ' The on the etymology of the word, and the Hyperboreans are always the people transmission of the myth to Southern beyond knowledge toward the north. Greece by the Pierians, that I did not They must always figure as the last make sufficiently clear the fact that I term in any series that stretches in that did not place them in any definite region beyond the Bora. Between the Pela- gonians and the ancient Chinese, whom 1 'Year's Work in Classical Studies,' 1917, 96. 3 2 Farnell, Cults, IV. 100 and 104. Class. Rev. XXXIV. 1 and 2, iff. 138 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW Mr. Casson, following Gladisch afar off, the Sun and Moon in the ' Hyper- inclines to, I personally would choose borean ' lands, Ulyria, Thrace (in the Pelagonians, on the principles laid widest sense of Thrace), Macedon, and down by Professor Shewan in the pages Thessaly, produced the Hyperborean already cited. The Pelagonians, like legend ; that it took shape in the lands the wild peoples discussed by Professor this side the Bora, and that Bora is Shewan, were called Titans and giants.1 Bermion in particular, or the Balkan And Almopia on the Bora and Pallene range in general. But I do not mean are among the giant-lands. J. N. by this that the people who imagined Svoronos has an interesting, though the Hyperboreans were the Hyper- highly rationalistic, explanation of the boreans. way in which the Titans came to be Now to take up Mr. Casson's view. called Pelagones in his article in the He thinks that the ' main problem at Journal International Numismatique for issue ' is to ' locate' the pre-Hellenic or 1913, entitled ' Numismatique de la non-Hellenic Hyperboreans. In his Peonie et de la Mace"doine.' As Phere- 2 endeavour to do this he follows Gladisch nikos says that the Hyperboreans were and Tomaschek, though without re- sprung from the blood of Titans, one peating all of their puerilities. Of such might, if so inclined, make a genealogy attempts Daebritz4 remarks: ' (Darum) from that. I am not arguing for that, hat man es im algemeinen aufgegeben however, but for the general thesis that die H. zu lokalisiren.' Gladisch, in his the Danubian peoples influenced, to a work on ' Hyperboreer und die alten greater extent than is usually admitted, Schinesen,'_ brings forward such things the religion and mythology of Greece. as the love of music in China and M. Svoronos puts the case perhaps too among the Hyperboreans. The Hyper- strongly when he says—' que la Peonie borean griffins he derives from the grequeet lePange"e . . . deviendront dans dragons of the Chinese flag. Mr. Casson l'avenir le plus important centre et point refers to the celestial calm of the Chinese de depart des nos connaissances numis- as perhaps faintly echoed by the Hyper- matiques, historiques, et mythologiques.' borean bliss. That and the griffins are The article on the ' Date of Hesiod,' by mentioned by him as indicating an T. W. Allen (J.H.S. 35) shows clearly Asiatic home for the Hyperboreans. the influence of the southern Thracians The celestial calm, the music, and the on Greece proper; and Tomaschek, in Chinese flag may be dismissed. The his well-known articles on ' Die Alten griffins offer ground for argument as to Thraker,' discusses the-culture of these whether they came to the Hyperborean more civilised of the northern tribes 3 worship from the Apollo worship at and their contacts with Greece. These Delos and Delphi, or vice-versa. Like ' mountaineers, descending either in one the swans they are debateable, and both flood or in various streams from the views have adherents. Daebritz con- Haliacmon,' brought with them a form demns the method of Tomaschek and of music, an art of healing, and many Gladisch: ' Es bedeutet doch ein myths connected with their local wor- Riickkehr zu dem Rationalismus der ships. In the article just cited Mr. T. W. Alten.' The theories of both have been Allen writes: ' By Hesiod's time the generally discredited by recent scholars, UUpes, southern Thracians—to Homer and rationalism has no doubt been a mere landmark like Emathia between carried by them to an absurd degree. Olympus and Athos—had sent their Yet it is difficult to escape the charge muses, friends of Thamyris, southward.' of rationalism in the explanation of And by Hesiod's time, too, as Mr. Allen myth, and many who use the term in does not fail to note, the myth of the reproach are found guilty of it. Atlantis, Hyperboreans had reached the south. the Phaeacians, and Elysium itself, had My own position is that the cult of a ' rationalistic ' element in their origin, and my own theory of the Hyperboreans is open to that charge, as I connect 1 Strabo T,frag. 30, Callim. Hymn to Zeus 3. 2 Schol. on Pindar Ol. 3, 28. 3 J.H.S., 1914, p. 95- 4 Pauly-Wissowa, 121, 122, Sp. 279. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 139 them with a highway of trade and r) as they are.3 Suidas ascribes to religion. The Chinese resemblances him xPVa'tJ'ov'> and Ka6apfiov<;. His seem particularly vague and meaning- magic arrow and his purity of life are less, and Professor Shewan's articles the most striking points in the legend, tend, I think, to show that such legends and these may well bring him into are apt to arise, so to speak, a little connexion with the Thracian Sun- nearer home—that is, about places 'just worship, which produced Orpheus. A beyond knowledge.' wonderful picture of him is given by It can neither be proved or disproved Himerius,4 "Afiapiv Be rbv covT)V yeyevrjcrOai, ical ~Slnv6r)v fJ.ev a%pi name of a Chinese or Asiatic tribe. It

ORIENTATION OF THE DEAD IN GREECE AND ITALY.1 THERE IS a curious passage in Plutarch a westward aspect (77/30? icnrepav pf (Solon 10), on which no adequate p,eva), but that the Athenians bury but commentary exists. When Solon and one in a grave, the Megarians as many the Athenians had got possession of as three or four. Salamis, there ensued a long and ex- So far as the Athenian orientation hausting war with Megara, which was goes, Aelian supports this account, both at last settled by Spartan arbitration. he and Plutarch I suppose drawing at The common tradition is that Solon first hand or otherwise upon an A tthis ; had a proof-text from Homer, of his own for he says (uar. hist. V. 14) that it is a forging, to win his case with ; ' but the law of Athens that he who finds a dead Athenians' own version is that this is body shall by no means omit to cast nonsense,1 and they claim that Solon pro- earth upon it, and further that he duced historical proof of a deed of gift should bury it face to the west. But from the children of Aias to the Athenian Diogenes Laertius introduces great state, and further appealed to the confusion into the matter in his Life of testimony of archaeology, whereby it Solon (I. 48) by telling the story, it was made plain ' that the dead (in would seem from the same source as Salamis) were laid out, not in the Plutarch, or one very like it, with this Megarian, but in the Athenian fashion. curious variant, that Solon found not Now the Megarians when they bury only the dead men in the graves of a man turn his face to the east, but Salamis, but the graves themselves, the Athenians to the west.' He is ' looking to the east' (77/309 eco 0\e- careful, however, to add the counter- irovTa'i). The witnesses for the west- opinion of Hereas of Megara (early ward position in Athens are two to third century B.C., see Pauly-Wissowa one ; but while I have no high opinion s.v.), that the real difference is not of the intelligence or critical powers of as the Athenians would have it, for the the worthy Diogenes, I cannot hold Megarians also bury their dead with with C. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der gr. Ant.,1 II. iii. 40, p. 205) that he so grossly mistook his own language as to 1 The following paper was read before the Classical Association at Newcastle, April, 1920. suppose that ' to turn towards the