Chap. 26.] ACOOimT OP COUNTEIES, ETC. 837 



every noxious blast. The abodes of the natives are the 

 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 luxury, 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. Vu-gins 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 Hyperboreans 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 thinks that Plmy can have hardly intended 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 dixere," " as some by no means ignorant persons have 

 asserted." * The Attacori are also mentioned in B. vi. c. 2(1 



2 Sillig omits the word "non " here, in which case the reading woula 

 be, " Those writers who place them anywhere but, &c. j" it is difficult to 

 see with what meaning. 



3 Herodotus, B. iv., states to this effect, and after him, Pomponius 

 Mela, B. iii. c 5. 



yOL. I. 7i 



