Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/363

 no4 HTPATUS MONS. metropolitan chnrch be noticed a handsome shaft of white marble, and on the outside of the wall an m~ BcriptioB in small characters of the best times. He also discovered an Inscription on a broken block of white marble, lying under a plane-tree near a foun- tain in the Jewish bnrjing-ground. (Leake, North- em GreecCy vol. ii. p. 14, seq.) HYPATUS MON& [Bobotia, p. 414, a.; G LISAS.] HYPELAEUS ('Tr^Aoiof), a fountain in the neighbourhood of Ephesos. (Strab. xir. pp. 634, 640; Athen. yiii.pi 361.) This spring was still seen by Mr. Hamilton during his excursion in Asia Minor. (Reiearchet, ii. p. 25.) [L. S.] HYPERBOREl (*Tvcp«<{pf<oi). The legendary race of the Hyperboreans, though mentioned nnther in the Iliad nor Odyssey, are spoken of in the poem of the Epigoni and in Hesiod (Herod, it. 32), and occur in the traditions connected with tlie temples of Tempo, Delphi, and Delos. (Comp^ Mttller, Dor, Tol. i. p. 284, trans.) The situation assigned to this sacred nation was, as the name indieates, in the remote r^ons of the North. They were said to dwell beyond Boreas (Bopras), the mountain wind, which came from the Khipaean mountains, the name of which was derived from hurricanes (fivaf), issuing from a cavern, which they warded off from the Hyperboreans, and sent to more southern nations; so that they never Iblt the cold north wind, but had their lot fixed in some happy climate, where, like an Alpine summit rising above the storms, they were surrounded by an atmosphereof calm and undisturbed serenity. ^'Here,** . says Von Humboldt { Atie Ce ntntUy vol i. p. 403), fCHt^tO^'M are the first views oif a naturaT science which ex- if Ki! ' P^^ ^® distribution of heat and the difierenoe of ^ climates by local causes, — by the direction of the winds, — the proximity of the sun, and the action of a moist or saline principle." And thus the ^ meteoro- logical myth," which placed the Hyperboreans in the North at the sources of the Ister, as conceived by Pindar ((7/ymp. iii. 14, vui. 47, Pgth. x. 31, IsOmi, ▼. 22), and- Aeschylus in the Prometheus Unbound (ap. Schd, ad AjhM. Rhod, iv. 284), was, when the Ister was supposed to be a river running Uirough all Europe from its western extremity, transferred to the regions of the West In consequence of this we find, in later writers, a confusion of this happy land with that of Italy and other western countries, as well as of the Bhipaeans with the Alps and Pyre- nees. But whatever arbitrary license was assumed by the poets and geographers who wished to mould these cfeations of the fancy into the form of a real people, as to their local habitation, the religious idea always remained the same. They were represented as a pious nation, abstaining from the flesh of ani- mals, and living in perpetual serenify in the service of their God for a thousand yean. (Hellanic. ap, Clem, Alex, Strom, vol i. p. 305; Simonides, Pin- dar, op. Strab, xv. p. 711.) ** The muse is no stranger to thdr manners. The dances of girls, and the sweet melody of the lyre and pipe, resound on eveiy side, and twining their hair with the glittering bay they feast joyously. There is no doom of sick- ness or disease fbr this sacred race; but they lire apart from toil and battles, undisturbed by exacting Nemesis.'* (Pind. Pyth, x. 56.) But at lengUi, tired out with this easy life, betwixt the sun and shade, they leapt, crowned with garlands, from a rock mto the sea. (Plin. iv. 26 ; Pomp. Mehi, iii. 1. § 5.) We are conducted almost involuntarily to the HYFEBBOREL AxtGiiPFABi, IsdEDOiOES, and the ** ancieastUi^dSni of the Griffin," to which Aristesa of ProoaincsBiis,sad, two hundred years after him, Hesodu t ui, hate ghca such celebrity. Esst of the Kalmuck Aigippaei were the lae- dones, but to the N. of boUi, nothing was kaan (Herod, iv. 25), since high mooDtaios presented sa impassable barrier. In desoeoding the chsia of Ural to the £., towaids the steppes of ObU sad lekim, another lofty range of inoantains, fonniag the W. eztremi^ of the Altai, does in fiMt appeir. The commercial route crossed the fifst disin {Ural) from W. to £., which indicates a ** floeridian * ebsm with its main axis running from S. to N In inaik* ing off the second chain, Herodotus cleariy dkia- gi^es that which is to the £. of the Aigii^ (the countiy of the Issedooes) from that whxh ha beyond the huge mountains towarda the N., — wkn the men sleep half the year,and the air isfiDedvith feathers, — when the Arimgapi live who steal the gold from the " Griffins." This disthietioD scms/^ to establish the existenoe~of a chain running froa«V>* W. to E. The region of the ** Griffiss" and dic^ Hjrpertxmans commences beyond the N. slope of ib*^ tion of the Issedones to the K. of the Jaiaitei ^ (Araxes) appears justified by the account of (k campaign of Cyrus against the Massagetie, vbi occupied the plain to the S. of the Istedones. The most predoos minenl riches are stored np in the extremities of the earth, and it is in the IL of Europe that the.greatest abimdance of goid it found. (Herod, iii. 1 16.) Now the N. of Envft, in the geognphy of Herodotus, comprehends the K. of Asia, and we are irresistibly reminded of the gold-washings to the 8. of the Ural, anxn^ tb» mountains o£ Koutitetds, and the nvina of t^ Lowlands of S. Siberia. The locaHty of the sold trade of NW. Asia may be pbced between the 53id and 55th degrees of latitude. An ingenious hypothesis has been started (£iidu, Reiee, vol. L p. 712), which refers the mytfau of the " Griffins," guardians of the gokl of the An- maspi, to the phenomenon of the frequent uec ui w i ne of the fossil bones of the great pachydermatoos ani- mals found in the alluvium of N. Siberia; — hoes which to this day the native tribes of wild koBten believe to be the daws, beak, and head of some gi- gantic bird. Von Humboldt {Ane CeatraU, vol L pp. 389—41]), to whose interesting discossiaDai this subject reference has been made, just^ faoe^ condemns thb confusion between andent and moden fable; and shows that the symbolic imsge of IIm the arts, did precede, amoqg the Greeks, the time when relations were formed anoong the cokoiiti «f Pontus and the Arimaspl The ^^Griffis" vas known to the Samians, who figured it upon the vue which commemorated the good fortnne of their fint expedition to Tartessus. (Herod, iv. 152.)<^^Tliis mysterious symbol of an animal actii^ as gusnliu over gold, seems to have been the growth of Indis and of Peraia (Aelian, N, A. iv. 26 ; Ctesias, Ind, § 12; comp. BShr, Exeure, V, ad Herod, vL 116): and the commerce of Miletus contributed to spread it in Greece akmg with the tapestries of Babykii. The r^ion of auriferoos sand, of which the Bindas (Dardan, or Derders, mentioned in Uie JfoAe&U- rata, and in the fragments of Megasthenes) gave in- telligence to travellen, and with which the cAoi* repeated fable of the ants became connected, wmi i/. X /' /- V rx.
 * chain of the Aegipodes " (the ^(fai). Thepoa-7^
 * Griffins," as a poetic fiction and representstioo io