Cyclops Christiannus; or, an argument to disprove the supposed antiquity of the Stonehenge and other megalithic erections in England Britanny / A. Herbert.

  • Herbert, A. (Algernon), 1792-1855.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cyclops Christiannus; or, an argument to disprove the supposed antiquity of the Stonehenge and other megalithic erections in England Britanny / A. Herbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    notitia locorum processit, eo magis ad septentrionem recessere Hyperboreorum sedes. In Apollod. p. 169. At length it ran out into the vague and indefinite ; expressive of a terra bore- alis incognita. Marcianus of Heraclea, about a.d. 300, speaks of a the hyperborean ocean bordering upon the hyperborean and unknown country/' where Hudson wisely has put small initials. Periplus, p. 56. But the story in question, however misplaced by my- thologists of no great reputation, beyond all reasonable doubt had its true situation, neither in the west, nor in the far north, but in the east, in the countries north by east of Greece. Apollodorus2, a mythologist of the first order, places the Hyperboreans at the Asiatic Mount Atlas (which he expressly distinguishes from the African), and not remote from Mount Caucasus. Apollod. lib. ii. p. 192 and 197, ed. Heyne. Also Tzetz. Chil. ii. 371. Diodorus, while tran- scribing the statements of the Abderite, himself considered them to be a people of Asia. He describes them in his Second book, which is exclusively Asiatic, and he begins thus. “ Since I have taken in hand the description of the northern parts of Asia, it will not be foreign to my purpose to repeat what has been fabulously said concerning the Hyperboreans, <kc. In fact that name was used in two ways. One was merely relative, and might be given to any nation, by others situate to the south of them ; or to the Arctic regions, relatively to the rest of the world. But the Greeks had likewise pretty early made it the positive appel- lation3 of one particular people. Those who do not keep 2 “ Hercules went from Greece to the Hypei’boreans, through Illyricum, and by the river Eridanus or Po. Apollod. ii. cap. 4.” Davies Celt. Res. 180. This deceitful quotation suppresses, that he went from the Po to Libya, thence to Egypt [Asia, Rhodes] and Arabia, from which country he found his way to the Caucasus, and thence to the Hyperboreans. Such are the petty artifices we have to deal with. Mr. Higgins, the faithful transcriber even of a Davies and a Vallancey, copies that mis-quotation verbatim, and adds, “this points directly to Britain.” Celtic Druids, p. 118. Indirectly, it does point thither, that being the object to which Mr. Davies sought to direct his readers. 3 It may naturally be expected, that the relative and positive geography were sometimes mixed ; as in Pindar, who placed this people at the fountains of the Ister, Olymp. iii. 25, and in a certain Protarchus, who fancied that the Ripheeans were the Alps. A pud Steph. in Hyperb.