PART 1 - Ch.V.2
(The temple of the Hyperboreans
in Leuce island)
V. 2.
Leto and
Apollo. The prophets Olen and Abaris
from the land of the Hyperboreans.
During Greek antiquity, the
true home of the god Apollo was considered to have been in the land of the Hyperboreans.
Even the inhabitants of Croton (
Leto, on the other
hand, the gentle goddess, with a sweet and kind disposition, the mother of
Apollo and Artemis, was born in the
Hyperborean country, according to Hecateus, as well as to other authors of the antiquity (Diodorus Siculus, II.
c. 47, IV.51; Pausanisas,
Descriptio Graeciae,
According to Greek legend, Leto,
pregnant by Jove, was persecuted by jealous Juno, being chased everywhere on
the face of the earth, so much so that no country wished to receive her in
order to give birth. Rejected everywhere, Leto at
last reached, after long wanderings this way and that, Delos, a small
unproductive island in the Archipelagos, and the solitary rocks of this island
gave her asylum. The birth pains lasted for nine days and nine nights and here,
on the green grass, under a fragrant palm tree, the Hyperborean goddess (from the Lower Danube) gave birth to the great god of the antique light (Apollodorus,
Bibliotheca, I. 4.1). Since that time, the island of Delos became a holy ground
for the new Hyperborean god, and
strong religious ties were established between the Hyperboreans
and the temple of Apollo in Delos, ties which continued during the whole of
Greek antiquity.
Herodotus and Plutarch mention an old custom of the Hyperboreans, to send each year to the temple of Apollo in
Delos gifts from their first harvest.
They wrapped these gifts in straw, and sent them to Delos with a delegation,
which travelled to the holy place of their
destination, in accompaniment of whistles, bagpipes and “cobze”
(Plutarc,
Oeuvres, Tome XIV, p.518). The Hyperborean mission went first to Dodona in
Epirus, the old religious centre of the Balkan Pelasgians,
from Dodona they crossed Thessaly and over to Eubea Island, and from there they continued the trip to
Delos on water.
In the beginning, writes Herodotus (lib. IV. C. 33-35), the Hyperboreans
sent to Delos with these gifts two virgins, whose names, according to the Delians, were Hyperoche and Laodicea. To ensure their safety they sent with them five
men, whom, according also to Herodotus, the Delians
called Perpheres
(bringers of gifts) and whom they treated with great honor. But it so happened
that this delegation sent to Delos did not return, the Hyperboreans
were very affected and, afraid that it could happen again in the future, they
introduced the custom to bring the holy gifts, wrapped in straw, to the
boundary of their country, where they asked their neighbors to hand them on,
from people to people, until they reached Delos.
But even before Hyperoche and Laodicea, continues Herodotus, the Hyperboreans
had sent to Delos another two virgins, one called Arge and the other Opis, girls, who had travelled
there together with Ilithya,
who afterwards had helped Leto to give birth to the
god Apollo. The women from Delos and from the Ionian islands venerated these
two girls and Ilithya as divinities, and invoked them
in the hymns composed by the hieratic poet Olen
[1].
[1. So, the virgins sent by the Hyperboreans
to Delos were, according to Herodotus, Arge and Opis (IV, 35), and the ones sent
the second time were Hyperoche
and Laodicea (IV,33). Pausanias names the first ones Hecaerge and Opis (V, 7. 8)
and another one, sent later, Achaea.
It results therefore that Arge
was identical with Hecaerge and Hyperoche
with Achaea. It is without doubt that the names of
these Hyperborean virgins were expressed in Greek forms.
In Pelasgian language Arg(os) means
country (TN – tera) and field (Strabo, VIII, 6. 9). Homer calls the country of the Pelasgians Pelasgichon ‘argos (Iliad, II, 681). The whole of the Peloponnesus was once called Argos (Strabo, VIII, 6. 9).
So, in this case, Arge cannot have another meaning
than countrywoman or from the country (TN - terana or from tera); a
word identical in fact with Opis, the second virgin’s name, which in the old Pelasgian - Latin language meant Terra (Varro,
L, L, V. 57. 64). As we have seen, the name Arge
appears with Pausanias as Hecaerge,
the Greek adverb “hecas”,
from far away, having been added.
So, Hecaerge appears as a name with a topical character, having the meaning: from a far away country.
The name of the virgin Hyperoche also, is a simple
Greek translation. In Pelasgian language Oche means big stagnant water, word identical with
the Latin aqua, with the Greek root acha, and the
old German Oche,
Ache or Aache. The etymology of the word
Achaei,
with the meaning of river dwellers (Wissowa, Pauly’s Real-Encyclopadie ad. V. Achaei), belongs also to the primitive form of aqua. We also mention here that a
population called Achaei had really existed at the
north of the mouths of Istru. Pliny (IV, 26. 2) mentions a Portus Achaeorum there.
So the name Hyperoche
appears as a word composed of Oche and the Greek preposition yper, from across, from beyond, having the meaning: from beyond the big water. We establish therefore that the
names of the Hyperborean virgins Arge, Hecaerge, Achaea, Hyperoche (and probably Laodice
also) are only simple topic and ethnical designations, and have nothing to do
with either the Greek adjective arges, white, brilliant, bright, or the verb yperecho, to excel.
Herodotus (lib. IV. 35), Pausanias (lib. I. 18. 5) and Strabo (V. 2. 8)
tell us that the Pelasgians
of Etruria had built a temple dedicated to Ilithya at the
sea port near the town of Caere. She was therefore a Pelasgian divinity].
The renowned temple of Apollo at
Delos, where the treasury of the Greek confederation was later deposited (Thucydidis, lib.
I. 36), was not the only temple which owed its origin to the Hyperborean
people, but the Hyperboreans
appear at the same time as the founders of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi,
near Parnassus, one of the most important and central places of Greek life.
According to what Pausanias tells
us, a group of shepherds, who had come with their flocks right to the very spot
where the oracle of Delphi would be later established, were the first to start
there the art of divination. On another hand, Boeo, a poetess from the
province of Phocis, tells us in one of her hymns,
that the oracle of Apollo at Delphi had
been founded by some people calling from the country of the Hyperboreans
(Pausanias,
lib. X.5.7)[2], and among those she
mentions Olen, a prophet of Apollo,
the most learned Hyperborean man of that epoch.
[2. The geographer Mnaseas from Patrae, Eratosthenes’
disciple, tells us that the inhabitants of Delphi
were of Hyperborean nationality (Fragmenta Hist. Graec. III. p.153, frag. 24). Clearch of Soli, Aristotle’s disciple, also writes that Leto, after
giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, came to Delphi (Fragmenta Hist.
Graec. Ed. Didot. II p.318,
frag.46). The most famous oracles of the ancient world were those
of Delphi and Dodona, both founded by Pelasgians (Pliny,
IV. 4.1).
The Delphians asked Apollo each year, in
festive songs, to come to them from the land of the Hyperboreans,
for the duration of the summer (Preller, Griech. Myth. I. 1854,
p.157-158).
The Pelasgians of Spinetum, situated near the
mouth of the river Pad, sent to Delphi
gifts from their maritime income (Dionysius of Halicarnassos,
I. 18)].
According to some, this Olen had lived
before Hesiodus, and according to others, even before
Orpheus. He is the most ancient hieratic poet known in Greek literature. He had
composed several sacred hymns, in which he celebrated the pilgrimages of the Hyperboreans to the island of Delos, and in which he also
mentioned some pious women, who had taken part in those travels. To Olen is
attributed especially the invention of the hexameter [3].
[3. The Greek authors also tried
to nationalize the epic poet Olen,
as they did with a great many other heroes of the mythical epoch. So, while
some insist that Olen was Hyperborean
by origin, as results even from his hymns and his apostolate for spreading the
cult of Apollo the Hyperborean, others, on the contrary, attribute the city Dyme of Achaia, or Xanthus of Lycia as his place of origin (see Suidas ad v. ‘Olen).
But the name Olen has a
wholly Pelasgian character. This name appears with
the Etruscans and the Romans (Pliny,
Hist. nat. XXVIII. 4.1; Tacitus, Ann.
IV.72). Pausanias
writes that Olen had composed a hymn
about the Hyperboreans, in which he celebrated the
coming at Delos of the virgin Achea (V.6.8), and another hymn about the coming at Delos of
Ilithya or Lucina (I.
18.5), and that he had been the earliest poet who had composed hymns for the Greeks, and the first who
had introduced the hexameter (X.5.7)].
Another devoted preacher of Apollo’s
cult throughout Greek lands was Abaris, whose origin was also in Hyperborean lands, a man
who, through his great feelings of justice and his extremely frugal life, had
been a real sensation among the Greeks. He used to show the people an arrow,
which he said was the symbol of Apollo. He composed and distributed diverse
prophetic sentences of his god, and healed the sick with incantations [4].
[4. The time in which Abaris lived is uncertain. Hyppostratus places him during
the 3rd Olympiad, around 768bc, while Suidas places him during the 53rd
Olympiad, around 568bc.
This name has been transmitted to us in a form more or less altered. In
Moldova, especially in the districts Falciu, Roman
and Neamtu, we find 12 topographical names of Averesci. The
name Averescu
is also very much used in the parts of Moldova.
Virgil (Aen. IX.344) presents a soldier called Abaris. Abaris appears as Hyperborean
with Herodotus (IV.36) and Plato (Charmides,
c.6), while Suidas
tells us that Pythagora (ad vocem)
had been the disciple of Abaris the
Hyperborean].
These legends and religious hymns
attest not only the powerful cult of Apollo in the lands of the Hyperboreans, but at the same time they tell us that the
founding of the renowned temples of Apollo at Delos and Delphi (two cultural
centers which had shone in Greece for a long time), was owing to a very
religious agricultural and pastoral people, named by the Greek authors Hyperboreans.
But who are these Hyperboreans, admirable for their sentiments of justice,
their religion and advanced civilization? This is an important matter, which
would explain several difficult questions in the history of the ancient world. Therefore,
it is necessary to talk now about the ethnic characteristics and the dwellings
of this people, representative of the golden age of the prehistoric times.