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 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 beasts ."

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 Arimaspians ). "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 sea ." 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 Scythians, and that the Scythians receive them and pass them on to their neighbours upon the west, who continue to pass them on until at last they reach the Adriatic, and from thence they are sent on southwards. First of the Greeks do the men of Dodona receive them, and from them they travel down to the Melian Gulf and cross over to Euboea, and city sends them on to city as far as Carystus. The Carystians take them over to Tenos without stopping at Andros; and the Tenians convey them to Delos." Then he adds a further story that on the first occasion the Hyperboreans sent two maidens, Hype-*