In Northern Mists Volume I Part 26

END OF VOL. I.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Hecataeus of Miletus (549-after 486 B.C.) was the best-known geographer of the Ionian school. He made a map of the world, and summarised the contemporary Greek ideas of geography.

[2] Cf. Kretschmer, 1892, pp. 41-42.

[3] Berger, 1894, p. 13.

[4] Men like Empedocles, Leucippus, Herac.l.i.tus, Anaxagoras, and even Herodotus entertained the naive view that the earth was a disc.

[5] Cf. Kretschmer, 1892, p. 99; Berger ii., 1889, p. 36.

[6] Cf. Theopompus (about 340 B.C.) in aelian, "Varia," iii. c. 18.

[7] The celebrated physician Hippocrates (470-364 B.C.) makes Scythia extend on the north to the Rhipaean Mountains, which stretch far enough to be just below the Great Bear. From them comes the north wind, which therefore does not blow farther north, so that there must be a milder climate where the Hyperboreans dwell. The Rhipaean Mountains had become altogether mythical, but seem often to have been connected with the Ural and placed north of Scythia; sometimes also they were connected with the Alps, or with the mountains farther east.

[8] The Cimmerians of the Odyssey (xi. 14) are undoubtedly the same as the historical Cimmerians of the districts north of the Black Sea, who made several inroads into Asia Minor in the eighth century, and whose name was long preserved in the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Cf. Niese, 1882, p. 224, and K.

Kretschmer, 1892, p. 7. W. Christ [1866, pp. 131-132] connects the name with the Cimbri of Jutland, whose name is alleged to have been somewhat modified under the influence of the Phnician "kamar," dark, which may be doubtful; but Posidonius seems to have been the first to take Cimmerii and Cimbri for the same name [cf. Strabo, vii. 293], and there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the wandering Cimbri may have reached the Black Sea and been the same people as the Cimmerians, who were remarkable just in the same way for their migrations. Similarly, we find the Goths both on the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic and by the Black Sea, where we first meet with them in literature.

[9] O. Helm of Danzig has shown by chemical a.n.a.lysis that the amber of the Mycenae beads contains 8 per cent. of succinic acid, and is thus similar to that found on the Baltic and the North Sea, and unlike all known amber from districts farther south, Sicily, Upper Italy or elsewhere. Cf.

Schuchhardt, 1890, p. 223, f., and Kretschmer, 1892, p. 10.

[10] "The Times" of Sept. 28, 1909, pp. 9-10. A. W. Brogger [1909, p. 239]

mentions a find from a grave at Corinth of six necklaces of amber, of the neolithic period, which is preserved in the Museum fur Volkerkunde at Berlin. Brogger informs me that nothing has been published about this find, which was bought in 1877 from Prof. Aus'm Weerth of Kessenich, near Bonn. Prof. Schaafhausen briefly mentioned it at the congress at Stockholm in 1874 [Congres internat. d'anthrop. et d'archeol. de Stockholm, Compte rendu, 1874, ii. p. 816]. a.s.suming that this is Baltic or North Sea amber, it points to an intercourse of even far greater antiquity, which is also probable.

[11] Strabo, vii. 295.

[12] Damastes of Sigeum (about 450 B.C., and contemporary with Herodotus) says that "beyond the Scythians dwell the Issedonians, beyond these again the Arimaspians, and beyond them are the Rhipaean Mountains, from which the north wind blows, and which are never free from snow. On the other side of the mountains are the Hyperboreans who spread down to the sea."

[13] Since the form of the sphere was the most perfect according to the opinion of the Pythagoreans.

[14] It was, moreover, a common belief in mediaeval times that people who were connected with the other world could not be killed by iron.

[15] "Hyperboreans" are first mentioned in certain poems doubtfully attributed to Hesiod, but which can scarcely be later than the 7th century B.C. The full development of the myth is first found in Pindar (about 470 B.C.); but his Hyperboreans cannot be considered as dwelling especially in the north; their home, to which "the strange path could be found neither by sea nor by land," lay rather beyond the sea in the far west, and thither came Perseus borne by wings on his way to Medusa.

[16] This idea can be traced back to Delphi, where any one who had incurred the G.o.d's displeasure was thrown from a cliff. Something similar happened at the annual festivals of Apollo at Leucas, where he who was chosen as a victim to ward off evil threw himself from the Leucadian rock into the sea. It is true that all sorts of feathers and birds were fastened to the victims to act as a parachute, and after their fall they were rescued by boats and taken beyond the frontier, as bearers of a curse. According to some it was the priests themselves who made this leap.

Among the Germanic peoples, if we may believe "Gautrek's Saga" [cf. J.

Grimm, 1854, p. 486; Ranisch, 1900, p. lxxvii. f.], there existed the custom that the elders of the tribe, when tired of life, used to cast themselves down from a high crag, called "aetternis stapi" (the tribal cliff), so as to die without sickness and go to Odin. As a reward for faithful service the head of the house took his thrall with him in the leap, so that he too might come thither. After Skapnartungr had divided the inheritance, he and his wife were conducted to the cliff by their children, and they went joyfully to Odin. This reminds one strongly of the happy Hyperboreans. Thietmar of Merseburg (about A.D. 1000) has a similar legend about the tribal cliff. It is probable that the Germanic peoples in very early times, like other peoples--the Eskimo, for example--may have had the custom of taking the lives of the old and useless, or that these may have taken their own lives, by throwing themselves into the sea, for instance, as occurs among the Eskimo. On the other hand, it seems very doubtful that there should have been such tribal cliffs; and it is more probable that this legend is of literary origin and derived from the cliffs of Delphi and Leucas, which through the Hyperborean legend came down to the Roman authors Mela and Pliny, and from them was handed on to the writers of the Middle Ages and to the scribe of the "Gautrek Saga." It has been thought that many such "atte-stupar" can be pointed out in southern Sweden, but they seem all to be of recent date, and may have been suggested by this saga.

[17] These may be the architectonical figures on the roof of the temple of Delphi, transferred to the North together with the Hyperboreans. At Delphi they were no doubt regarded as guardians of the temple's treasures.

[18] This idea has been explained as being derived from stories of people dressed in breeches of goats' skin.

[19] Strabo [iii. 147] and Diodorus [v. 38], following Posidonius, mention these three districts as the places where tin was found.

[20] In the three districts named tin oxide (SnO_{2}) occurs in lodes in the solid rock, as well as (sometimes in conjunction with gold and silver) in the gravel or sand of streams, and it was certainly in the latter form that tin was first extracted, after its discovery by some accident or other.

[21] It is possible, of course, that the first bronze, like silk, may have reached the people of the Orient and Egypt from China, without their knowing from whence it was originally derived. Bronze articles have been found at Troy which may indicate a connection with China, and it has even been a.s.serted that Chinese characters have been found there [cf.

Schliemann, 1881, p. 519]. Tin is also known to occur in Persia, but it has not been ascertained that it was worked there in ancient times. Strabo [xv. 724] says, however, that the Drangae in Drangiana, near the Indus, "suffer from want of wine, but tin occurs with them." Tin is found in the Fichtelgebirge, and it has been thought possible to identify prehistoric tin-mines there [cf. O. Schrader, 1901, article "Zinn"].

[22] The Phnicians' "Tarsis" (or Tars.h.i.+sh), rich in silver, called by the Greeks "Tartessos," was on the south-west coast of Spain between the Pillars of Hercules and the Guadiana. About 1100 B.C. Tyre established there the colony "Gadir" (i.e., "fortress"), called by the Greeks "Gadeira," and by the Romans "Gades" (now Cadiz).

[23] Cf. S. Reinach, 1892, p. 277. In Breton tin is called "sten," a name which is certainly not borrowed from the Latin "stannum," as Reinach thinks; according to the above-quoted opinion of Professor Torp we must believe that the borrowing has been in the opposite direction.

[24] The explanation of this statement may be that Cra.s.sus sailed to the Ca.s.siterides from the mouth of the Garonne, up which river the route ran to Narbo. What is alluded to here would then be the sea-pa.s.sage from the Garonne.

[25] Pliny [x.x.xiv. 162] mentions the tinning of copper objects as a Gaulish invention.

[26] Strabo's repeated statement [ii. 120 and 175] that the Ca.s.siterides lay north of the land of the Artabri [north-west Spain] also points decisively to Brittany. The idea must be derived from Eratosthenes, who borrowed from Pytheas, and the latter placed Cabaeum, the promontory of Brittany, farther west than Cape Finisterre. Diodorus [v. 38] says that the islands lay opposite Iberia in the Ocean. That they are always mentioned in connection with the Artabri or north-west Spain shows that the voyage to them was made from that country.

[27] Georg Mair [1899, p. 20, f.] has allowed himself to be led astray by Sven Nilsson's fanciful pictures [1862, 1865] into regarding it as a historical fact that the Phnicians had permanent colonies in Skane and regular communication with Scandinavia, even so far north as the Lofoten isles, whose rich fisheries are supposed to have attracted them.

[28] In a translation of the cuneiform inscription on the obelisk of the a.s.syrian king Asurnasirabal (885-860 B.C.) the a.s.syriologist J. Oppert has the following remarkable pa.s.sage, which is taken as referring to this king's great predecessor Tiglath Pileser I., of about 1100 B.C.: "In the seas of the trade-winds his fleets fished for pearls, in the seas where the pole-star stands in the zenith they fished for the saffron which attracts." [Cf. Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, 1898, p. 141.] Oppert has since altered the latter part of his translation to "fished for that which looks like copper." Both interpretations might mean amber, and if the translation were correct this inscription would furnish a remarkable piece of evidence for direct communication between a.s.syria and the Baltic as early as the ninth century B.C., and in that case we might suppose it established by means of the Phnicians. But unfortunately another eminent a.s.syriologist, Professor Schrader, has disputed the correctness of the translation given above, which he thinks is the result of a false reading of the inscription. According to Schrader there is no mention of pearls, or amber, or fleets, or pole-star, or zenith; the whole refers merely to this ancient king's hunting in the mountains of a.s.syria which took place "in the days when the star Sukud shone, gleaming like bronze." [Cf.

Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop. Ethnol. u. Urgesch, 1885, pp.

65, 66, 306, 372; and Mair, 1903, p. 47.] The last interpretation is undeniably more probable than the first, and it may well be thought that the bronze-coloured star which shone may have been Venus.

[29] That amber may have followed this route in early times is made probable by the finds of ornaments of amber in graves of the Bronze Age (Halstatt period) in the Caucasus, at Koban and Samthavro.

[30] Franz Mathias [1902, p. 73] draws attention to the statement of Von Alten ["Die Bohlwege im Gebiet der Ems und Weser," p. 40 and Pl. V.; this paper has not been accessible to me] that in 1818 there was found a piece of amber with a Phnician inscription on one of the oldest and deepest-lying bog causeways ("Moorbrucken") on the prehistoric trade-route from the district of the Weser and Ems to the Rhine. As one would expect amber to be carried from the countries in the north-east towards the south, and not in the reverse direction, this find, if properly authenticated, might show that there were Phnicians on the coast to the north. But the piece, if it be Phnician, may also have come from the south by chance.

[31] See on this subject specially Mullenhoff, 1870, i. pp. 73-203. Also W. Christ, 1866; Marx, 1895; G. Mair, 1899; and others.

[32] This epithet, which constantly recurs when Ireland is mentioned, may perhaps in ancient times be due to the resemblance between the Greek words "hieros" (holy) and "Hierne" (Ireland), which latter may be derived from the native name of the island, "Erin." In later times, of course, it is due to Ireland's early conversion to Christianity and its monastic system.

[33] In spite of Mullenhoff's contrary view [1870, p. 92], it does not appear to me altogether impossible that it may have arisen through a corruption of the name of the people whom Pytheas calls "Ostimians" or "Ostimnians," and which in some ma.n.u.scripts of Strabo [iv. 195] also takes the forms "Osismians" [cf. also Mela, iii. 2, 7; Pliny, iv. 32; Ptolemy, ii. 8, 5; Orosius, 6, 8] and "Ostid.a.m.nians" [i. 64], and who lived in Brittany.

[34] In Caesar's description [B.G., iii. 13] of the s.h.i.+ps of the Veneti it is also stated that "the keels were somewhat flatter than in our s.h.i.+ps, whereby they were better able to cope with the shallows and the falling tides."

[35] It has been alleged as a proof that the Phnicians really knew of the Sarga.s.so Sea that Sarga.s.so weed is mentioned by Theophrastus ["Historia Plantarum," iv. 6, 4], but I have not been able to find anything of the sort in this author; nor can I find any statement in Aristotle [Miral.

Auscult.] which can be thus interpreted, as some have thought.

[36] Lycaon was the father of Callisto, and the latter became a she-bear and was placed among the stars as the constellation of the Great Bear. At the axis of Lycaon means, therefore, in the north.

[37] As to Pytheas, see in particular: Mullenhoff, 1870, pp. 211 f.; Berger, iii., 1891, pp. 1 f.; Hergt, 1893; Markham, 1893; Ahlenius, 1894; Matthias, 1901; Kahler, 1903; Detlefsen, 1904; Callegari, 1904; Mair, 1906.

[38] The princ.i.p.al authorities on Pytheas are: Strabo (1st century A.D.), who did not know his original works, but quotes for the most part from Polybius (2nd century B.C.), who was very hostile to Pytheas, and from Erastosthenes, Hipparchus, and Timaeus. Pliny has derived much information from Pytheas, though he does not know him directly, but chiefly through Timaeus, Isidorus of Charax, who again knew him through Erastosthenes, &c.

Diodorus Siculus (1st century B.C.) knows him chiefly through Timaeus.

Geminus of Rhodes (1st century B.C.), who has a quotation from him, possibly knew his original work, "On the Ocean," but he may have quoted from Crates of Mallus. Solinus (3rd century A.D.), who has much information about Pytheas, knows him chiefly through Pliny and Timaeus.

Further second-hand quotations and pieces of information derived from Pytheas occur in Pomponius Mela (1st century A.D.), Cleomedes (2nd century A.D.), Ptolemy (3rd century A.D.), Agathemerus (3rd century A.D.), scholiasts on Apollonius of Rhodes, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus (4th century A.D.), Orosius (5th century A.D.), Isidorus Hispaliensis (7th century A.D.), and others.

[39] A "gnomon" was the pillar or projection which cast the shadow on the various Greek forms of sun-dial. In the case mentioned above the gnomon was a vertical column raised on a plane. By measuring the length of the shadow at the solstice, Pytheas found that it was 41-4/5 : 120 or 209/600 the height of the column. According to that the alt.i.tude of the sun was 70 47' 50". From this must be deducted the obliquity of the ecliptic, which was at that time 23 44' 40", and the semi-diameter of the sun (16'), as the shadow is not determined by the sun's centre but by its upper edge, besides the refraction, which however is unimportant. When the equatorial alt.i.tude thus arrived at is deducted from 90, we get the lat.i.tude of Ma.s.salia as 43 13' N. The new observatory of Ma.r.s.eilles is at 43 18' 19"; but it lies some distance to the north of the ancient city, where Pytheas's gnomon probably stood in the market-place. It will be seen that this is an accuracy of measurement which was not surpa.s.sed until very much later times.