5

350 NOTESand
the arrival of Apollo among the Ilj'perboreans, from whom
he had received the said arrow, in poetry.
Gregory, the thco.
logist, also mentions him in his epitaph to the great Basil. So
far Coelius. Besides the Scythian oracles, aud the marriage of
the river Hebrus, he wrote some other things, as Suidas mentions.
Herodotus in Melpomene, and Strabo, lib. 7. also mention him."
The reader will find several interesting particulars of Abaris,
and his wonderful arrow or javelin, in Dacier's Life of Pythagoras,
p. 70 i^r 71.
What has greatly injured the history of Pythagoras and Aba.
lis in the eyes of the present age, is their pretension to magic,
iniracles, and divination.
But these were the hobby horse oi the
day, and there was no possibility of being eminent without Ihem.
Even the Romish ecclesiastics, who ought to have known better,
did not give up their pretensions to miracles and prophecy, till
the enlightened state of mankind would give them credit for nei.
ther.
The Greeks (as I have formerly noticed) had an opinioa
that the Hyperboreans founded the Delphic oracle of Apollo,
and that at last he went to the Hyperboreans altogether.
Aba.
ris, who wrote the history of this event, must have been very ac.
ceptable to Pythagoras : and that his arguments on this l^ead
were convincing, we need only to mention that the
great, the
wise, (he celebrated Pythagoras exposed himself to public view,
in a full assembly at the Olympic games, as the Hyperborean
Apollo,— Dacicr^s Life of Pythagoras, p. 69. Can there be a
more convincing argument that at that time the Hyperborean
Apollo was held in much higher estimation than the Grecian one ?
As to the arrow or javelin of Abaris, which has afforded, and
may still aii'ord, ground for numerous conjeclures, I am of opi.
nion (whatever was its shape) that it was nothing more than his
Magical stajf. The staff has been, in all ages, the emblem of
power.
Almost all eminent persons used one, but in a pretend,
er to magic it was indispensible.
Note LXXIV.—Page 207.
Then tlte
most celebrated Abaris icas both cfiMs country, i^c.