Chap. 26.] ACCOUNT OP COUNTEIES, ETC. 
337 
every noxious blast. Tlie abodes of tbe natives are tbe 
"woods and groves ; tbe gods receive tbeir worsbip singly 
and in groups, wbile all discord and every kind of sick- 
ness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them 
only wten 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 v^e 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 w^hich 
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, w^hom 
in especial they worship. Virgins 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 Vlmj 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. 20. 
2 SiLlig omits the word "non" here, in which case the reading woula 
be, " Those writers who place them anywhere but, &c. it is difficult to 
see with what meaning. 
3 Herodotus, B. iv., states to this effect, and after him, Pomponius 
Mela, B. iii. o. 5. ^ 
VOL. I. 7i 
