of the golden horns, consecrated to Artemis Orthosia by Taygeta4; “In quest of her he likewise beheld that land behind the chilling north wind; there he stood and marvelled at the trees.” The judge at the Olympic festival placed round the locks of the victor “the dark green adornment of the olive, which in days of yore Amphitryon’s son had brought from the shady sources of the Ister, a most glorious memorial of the contests at Olympia, when he had won over by word the Hyperborean folk that are the henchmen of Apollo5.” The hero Perseus too had reached that land where no ordinary mortal could find his way. “Neither in ships nor yet on foot wouldst thou find out the marvellous ways to the assembly of the Hyperboreans, but once on a time did the chieftain Perseus enter their houses and feast, having come upon them as they were sacrificing glorious hecatombs of asses to the god. Now Apollo takes continuous and especial delight in their banquets and hymns of praise, and he laughs as he beholds the rampant lewdness of the beasts6.”
Herodotus felt puzzled where to place the Hyperboreans; “For concerning Hyperborean men neither the Scythians say anything to the point nor any other of those that dwell in this region, save the Issedones. But as I think, not even do they say anything to the point; for in that case the Scythians too would have told it, as they tell about the one-eyed people” (the Arimaspians7). “But a certain Aristeas, the son of Caÿstrobius, a man of Proconnesus, alleged in a poem that under the influence of divine afflatus he had reached the Issedones, and that beyond them dwelt the Arimaspians who have but one eye, and that beyond these are the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans, stretching to the sea8.” But where Pindar and Herodotus hesitated, the priest of Apollo at Delos stepped in with an explicit statement of that “marvellous road” which Pindar said no one could find by sea or land. Accordingly Herodotus has to resort to the men of Delos for his information about the Hyperboreans: “Much the longest account of them is given by men of Delos, who have alleged that sacred objects bound up in wheaten straw are brought from the Hyperboreans to the