Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

Apollon and Artemis 497
sometimes as an earthly, sometimes as a heavenly path. The former
was the great trade-route that skirted the easternshoreof the Adriatic.
The latter was its aerial counterpart, the Milky \Vay\ The one was
the track by which amber reached the Greeks. The other was the highway
followed by the birds. And it is interesting to find that Sopho-
kles connected amber with birds, when he described it as the tears
shed by the meleagrides or 'guinea-fowl' at the death of Meleagros-.
Of the route by which the Hyperborean offerings came to
Apollon at Delos we have two very different records. Herodotos^'
a propos of the Hyperboreoi writes :
' By far the fullest account of them is that given by the Delians, who declare
that sacred things wrapped in wheaten straw,^are carried from the Hyperboreans
to the Scythians ;
that from the Scythians they are received by a succession of
neighbouring tribes, who bring them westwards as far as the Adriatic ; that from
this point they are forwarded south to the people of Dodona, who are the first of
the Hellenes to receive them ;
that from Dodona they come down to the Malian
gulf and cross over to Euboia, where they are sent from town to town till they
reach Karystos ; but that, after this, Andres is passed by, the Carystians taking
them direct to Tenos, and the Tenians to Delos.'
Pausanias*, having occasion to mention Prasiai, a small township on
the east coast of Attike, observes :
'In Prasiai there is a temple of Apollon. Here the first-fruits of the
Hyperboreans are said to come. The Hyperboreans— I am told—hand them
over to the Arimaspians, and the Arimaspians to the Issedones; from these
the Scythians convey them to Sinope; thence they are borne by Hellenes to
Prasiai ; and it is the Athenians that bring them to Delos. These first-fruits—it
is said—are hidden in wheaten straw, and nobody knows what they are. At
Prasiai there is a tomb of Erysichthon*, who died on the voyage as he was
returning from Delos after the sacred embassy.'
The routes thus traced by Herodotos and Pausanias correspond, at
least in part, with the two main branches of the Amber Road
mentioned above", viz. that which passed along the Elbe, the Moldau,
^ Cp. such names for the Galaxy as ' Watling Street' or ' London Road' {supra p. 37).
H. Gaidoz and E. Holland ' La Voie Lactee ' in Mdusine 1884— 85 ii. 151 ff. add Strmta
iV Roma (Parma, Malaspina), Via roiiiana (Tuscany), la via che gtiida a Roma (Romagna),
Rom strose (mediaeval Germany), Cesta do Riina (Czechs), Chemiii d' Esfagne (Morbihan),
Strasze nock Aachen or Franc/urter Strasse or Koelsche strate or Nierenberger patweg
(Westphalia).
- Soph. ap. Plin. nat. hist. 37. 40 f. See further R. Holland in Roscher Lex. Myth.
ii. 2586 ff. and A. C. Pearson in his edition of The Fragments of Sophocles Cambridge
19 1 7 ii. 65 f. Mnaseas of VzXxzS. frag. 41 {Frag. hist. Gr. iii. 156 Miiller) ap. Plin. nat.
hist. 37. 38 likewise associates amber with 'aves, quas meleagridas et penelopas vocat.'
^ Hdt. 4. 33.
• Paus. I. 31. 2.
' Note that Erysichthon was destroyed by Demeter for felling a sacred black-poplar
in her grove at Dotion (Kallim. h. Dem. 24 ff.) : see Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 180 f., 1904
xviii. 76 f., infra § 3 (c) i (t), and cp. He.sych. s.v. Aiyupirbixoi- l$ayevHS tlvss ' Adrji/rifftv
^ Supra p. 493 f.
c. II. 32