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Apollo at the Back of the North Wind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Rendel Harris
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Extract

There are not many of the occupations of primitive man in Europe that have continued to the present day. The beasts that he hunted have, for the most part, disappeared: the elk and the mammoth are in the museum; the weapons which he employed in his pursuit of them must be sought for in the same quarter; if we were suddenly to come upon him in some unexplored area, his speech would be almost as unintelligible to us as the cry of a monkey, or the shriek of a sea-bird. But there is one primitive pursuit that is still being carried on almost unchanged. On the shores and in the shallows of the Eastern Baltic sea men are still searching and dredging for the exudations of the primeval forest which go under the name of amber. It was ornament and amulet in the beginning, it is a desirable decoration to-day; at one time almost an equivalent of the precious metals, and perhaps in earlier esteem than they, and not destitute of magical influences, as well as of commercial worth; it stands now, as then, with coral and with pearls, as a thing greatly to be desired.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , 1925 , pp. 229 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1925

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References

1 Even in Pliny's time it was a child's amulet: see H.N. xxxvii. 51: ‘Infantibus adligari amuleti ratione prodest.’

2 But see what Genthe says in favour of a more westerly route from the Baltic to the Mediterranean: infra, p. 231: the lower terminus would be not far from Aquileia.

3 Tr. from the Polish by Kohn (Jena, 1877).

4 Die Beziehungen der Griech. u. Rōmer z. Balticum; Verhandl. der 39 Karlsruher Philol. Versamml.

5 Haimburg to the east of Vienna.

6 See Ptolemy: ed. Müller, i. p. 267.

7 Müller, in his edition of Ptolemy, questions the method by which Sadowski reduces the Ptolemaic latitudes and longitudes to modern measurements; but he agrees that Kalisia is Kalisch. In Ptolemy's map Askaukalis is placed close to the Vistula, and on the western side.

8 So Herodotus affirms: ‘The Delians add that once before there came to Delos by the same road as Hyperoche and Laodice, two other maidens from the Hyperboreans, named Arge and Opis. Hyperoche and Laodice came to bring to Ilithyia the offerings they laid upon themselves, in acknowledgment of their quick labours; but Arge and Opis came at the same time as the gods of Delos.’—Herodotus, iv. 35.

9 Pliny says they were firstfruits carried by virgins.

10 Manchester University Press, reprinted from the John Rylands' Library Bulletin.

11 Herodotus, iv. c. 33.

12 Pausanias (tr. Frazer), ii. 405.

13 I have assumed that the gifts for Apollo were taboo, and it is interesting to note that Humboldt had suspected that the amber road of the Etruscans was also recognised as a Via Sacra. See Kosmos, ii. 169, and Waldmann, , Der Bernstein im Altertum, p. 43.Google Scholar

14 Sadowski brings the trade-route over the mountains somewhat further west, if I understand him rightly.

15 Is it possible that this is Herodotus' route to the Adriatic?

16 Martial (iv. 32) suggests that the ‘bee in amber’desired to die in its own nectar:

‘Et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta,

Ut videatur apis nectare clausa suo.

Dignum tantorum pretium tulit ille laboreum,

Credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori.’

17 Shakespeare, in Hamlet, appears to connect ‘amber and plum-tree gum,’ and he also connects the exudation with tears: the old man's eyes purge amber and plumtree gum.

18 So Waldmann: Der Bernstein im Altertum, who also suggests a neighbouring island named Habel. The coast and the configuration of the adjacent islands have probably changed a good deal.

19 ‘In der Stelle des 4 Buches des Herodot, wo die handschriftliche Ueberlieferung angibt, dass Griechen 40 Tagereisen aufwärts den Borysthenes (Dnjepr) zu befahren pflegten, muss 40 in 14 geändert werden.’—Verhandlung der 39 Philologen—Versammlung in Karlsruhe, p. 27.

Rapids in a river are not a serious obstacle, as may be seen by portages on Canadian trade-routes.

20 P. 473.

21 P. 475.

22 For these dwellings see also Truhelka, , Pfahlbau im Savebette, etc., 1904Google Scholar, and Der Pfahlbau von Donja Dolina, 1904.