DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14696#0530
Apollon and Artemis 459
connexions with the Hyperboreans....On the other side Apollo
reaches back to an Aegean matriarchal Kouros. His home is Delos,
where he has a mother, Leto, but no very visible father....He is no
" Hellene." In the fighting at Troy he is against the Achaioi : he
destroys the Greek host, he champions Hector, he even slays Achilles.
In the Homeric hymn to Apollo1 we read that when the great
archer draws near to Olympus all the gods tremble and start from
their seats; Leto alone, and of course Zeus, hold their ground.'
Miss M. H. Swindler (1913)2, after a survey of these divergent
views, frankly abandons the quest: 'An attempt to name the tribe
in which the Apollo cult had its beginning can scarcely meet with
success. The reasons for this are apparent. Although Apollo is a
comparatively late comer into Greece, he stands out in Homer,
almost in his full development, with a cosmopolitan character. He is
essentially a migratory god, which seems to be one source of his
great popularity. While he sojourned in the various lands to which
he was " invited," he took over into his cult the local gods and
oracles, and acquired new epithets. He is at home in Dorian Pytho
and Ionian Delos; he has his place in almost all of the oracles on
the western and southern coast of Asia Minor, and is especially
bound to I.ycia. The islands know him and northern Greece in
particular bears witness to his worship. It is this pandemic character
of Apollo and this tendency to appropriate foreign elements to
his cult which render difficult the problem of determining his original
character. The origin of his cult and the earliest elements contributed
to it must for this reason remain problematic'
I confess, I am not so despondent. The myth of the Hyper-
boreans3 goes a long way, if not all the way, towards a settlement
of the points at issue.
Himerios4 (s. iv A.D.) has preserved for us in prose form the
contents of a poem by xAlkaios3 (c. 600 B.C.), which affords the
earliest known version of the myth :
' When Apollon was born, Zeus arrayed him with a golden mitra and a
lyre, and giving him a chariot of swans to drive sent him to Delphoi and
the streams of Kastalia, there to utter justice and law for the Hellenes. But
Apollon, stepping on to the chariot, urged the swans to fly to the Hyperboreoi.
1 H. Ap. 1 ff.
2 M. H. Swindler Cretan Elements in the Cults and Ritual of Apollo Bryn Mawr
1913 p. 13 f.
3 The fullest and fairest collection of evidence with regard to the Hyperboreans is that
of Daebritz in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ix. 258—279. See also important articles by
O. Crusius and M. Mayer in Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 2805—2841, O. Schroeder ' Hyper-
boreer' in the Archiv /. A'el. 1905 viii. 69—84, Gruppe Myth. Lit. 1908 p. 520 b,
G. H. Macurdy 'The Hyperboreans' in the Class. Rev. 1916 xxx. 180—183.
4 Himer. or. 14. 10 f. 5 A\k. frag. 2 Bergk4.
connexions with the Hyperboreans....On the other side Apollo
reaches back to an Aegean matriarchal Kouros. His home is Delos,
where he has a mother, Leto, but no very visible father....He is no
" Hellene." In the fighting at Troy he is against the Achaioi : he
destroys the Greek host, he champions Hector, he even slays Achilles.
In the Homeric hymn to Apollo1 we read that when the great
archer draws near to Olympus all the gods tremble and start from
their seats; Leto alone, and of course Zeus, hold their ground.'
Miss M. H. Swindler (1913)2, after a survey of these divergent
views, frankly abandons the quest: 'An attempt to name the tribe
in which the Apollo cult had its beginning can scarcely meet with
success. The reasons for this are apparent. Although Apollo is a
comparatively late comer into Greece, he stands out in Homer,
almost in his full development, with a cosmopolitan character. He is
essentially a migratory god, which seems to be one source of his
great popularity. While he sojourned in the various lands to which
he was " invited," he took over into his cult the local gods and
oracles, and acquired new epithets. He is at home in Dorian Pytho
and Ionian Delos; he has his place in almost all of the oracles on
the western and southern coast of Asia Minor, and is especially
bound to I.ycia. The islands know him and northern Greece in
particular bears witness to his worship. It is this pandemic character
of Apollo and this tendency to appropriate foreign elements to
his cult which render difficult the problem of determining his original
character. The origin of his cult and the earliest elements contributed
to it must for this reason remain problematic'
I confess, I am not so despondent. The myth of the Hyper-
boreans3 goes a long way, if not all the way, towards a settlement
of the points at issue.
Himerios4 (s. iv A.D.) has preserved for us in prose form the
contents of a poem by xAlkaios3 (c. 600 B.C.), which affords the
earliest known version of the myth :
' When Apollon was born, Zeus arrayed him with a golden mitra and a
lyre, and giving him a chariot of swans to drive sent him to Delphoi and
the streams of Kastalia, there to utter justice and law for the Hellenes. But
Apollon, stepping on to the chariot, urged the swans to fly to the Hyperboreoi.
1 H. Ap. 1 ff.
2 M. H. Swindler Cretan Elements in the Cults and Ritual of Apollo Bryn Mawr
1913 p. 13 f.
3 The fullest and fairest collection of evidence with regard to the Hyperboreans is that
of Daebritz in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ix. 258—279. See also important articles by
O. Crusius and M. Mayer in Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 2805—2841, O. Schroeder ' Hyper-
boreer' in the Archiv /. A'el. 1905 viii. 69—84, Gruppe Myth. Lit. 1908 p. 520 b,
G. H. Macurdy 'The Hyperboreans' in the Class. Rev. 1916 xxx. 180—183.
4 Himer. or. 14. 10 f. 5 A\k. frag. 2 Bergk4.