Apollo at the Back of the North Wind | The Journal of Hellenic Studies | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

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.

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

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.’