Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/371

 Chap. 26.] ACCOUNT OF COUNTEIES, ETC. 337 every noxious blast. The abodes of the natives are tbe woods and groves ; the gods receive their worship singly and in groups, while all discord and every kind of sick- ness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them only when satiated with life ; after a career of feasting, in an old age sated with every luxiu'y, they leap from a certain rock there into the sea ; and this they deem the most desirable mode of ending existence. Some writers have placed these people, not in Europe, but at the very verge of the shores of Asia, because we find there a people called the Attacori who greatly resemble them and occupy a very similar locality. Other writers again have placed them mid- way between the two suns, at the spot where it sets to the Antipodes and rises to us ; a thing however that cannot possibly be, in consequence of the vast tract of sea which there intervenes. Those writers who place them nowhere" but under a day which lasts for six months, state that in the morning they sow, at mid-day they reap, at sunset they gather in the fruits of the trees, and during the night conceal themselves in caves. Nor are we at liberty to entertain any doubts as to the existence of this race ; so many authors^ are there who assert that they were in the habit of sending their first-fruits to Delos to present them to Apollo, whom in especial they worship. Yirgins used to carry them, who for many years were held in high veneration, and received the rites of hospitality from the nations that lay on the route ; until at last, in consequence of repeated "violations of good faith, the H}'3)erboreans came to the determination to deposit these offerings upon the frontiers of the people who adjoined them, and they in their turn were to convey his position, and that Pliny is incorrect in his assertion. The same commentator tliinks that Pliny can have hardly uitended to censure Mela, to whose learning he had been so much indebted for his geographical information, by applying to him the epithet "imperitus," 'ignorant' or 'unskilled' ; he therefore suggests that the proper reading here is, " ut non imperiti dLxere," " as some by no means ignorant persons have asserted." ^ The Attacori are also mentioned in B. vi. c. 2Q ' SUlig omits the Trord "non" here, in which case the reading woula be, " Those writers who place them anywhere but, &c. ;'* it is dilficult to see with what meaning. 3 Herodotus, B. iv., states to this effect, and afler him, Pomponius Mela, B. iii. c. 5. VOL. I. K