their god Apollo, they are the children of the creative wisdom and mystery. That festival of Apollo, which commemorates his return from the Hyperboræans, is possibly the mythic history of their origin,—too obscure, perhaps too fragmentary, to be clearly elucidated. Sometimes it seems as if they must have come from the foot of the Himmelaya mountains, and that Apollo and the Indian Heri are the same. Other researches, for instance those of Professor Henne, would lead us to believe that they were the emigrating life of the ancient nation, which he believes, and endeavors to prove, had its seat, before history began, in Europe. In favor of this, we may remark that the Hyperboræan procession came from the North-west, passing from the Scythians through a chain of nations on the coast of the Adriatic, by Dodona, through Thessaly, Eubœa, and the Island of Tenos, accompanied with flutes and pipes to Delos.[1]
Another argument for the Dorians being of European origin is, that their character is in strong antagonism to the Asiatic.
But we leave these curious and interesting inquiries for the present, to record what Müller has ascertained.[2] The Dorians, says this indefatigable antiquarian, are first known at the foot of Mount Olympus. The oldest known temple of Apollo was in the Vale of Tempe. Thence they spread in colonies by sea, along the eastern shores of the Archipelago, among the islands, into Crete especially, where they established themselves long before the Trojan war. Their whereabout is always traceable by temples of Apollo. These temples were their centres of artistic cultivation. Apollo is always the god of music, and of all elegant exercises, whether of mind or body, but especially of those of mind.
Within the borders of the mainland, we do not find that the Dorians advanced much, till after the Trojan war. To the
- ↑ "According to the tradition of Delphi," says Müller, "Apollo, at the expiration of the great period, visited the beloved nation of the Hyperboræans, and danced and played with them, from the vernal equinox to the early setting of the Pleiades; and, when the first corn was cut in Greece, he returned to Delphi with the full ripe ears, the offerings of the Hyperboræans."
- ↑ History of the Dorians.
