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But the persons who have by far the most to say on this subject are the
Delians. They declare that certain offerings, packed in wheaten
straw, were brought from the country of the Hyperboreans into
Scythia, and that the Scythians received them and passed them on to
their neighbours upon the west, who continued to pass them on until at
last they reached the Adriatic. From hence they were sent southward,
and when they came to Greece, were received first of all by the
Dodonaeans. Thence they descended to the Maliac Gulf, from which
they were carried across into Euboea, where the people handed them on
from city to city, till they came at length to Carystus. The
Carystians took them over to Tenos, without stopping at Andros; and
the Tenians brought them finally to Delos. Such, according to their
own account, was the road by which the offerings reached the Delians.
Two damsels, they say, named Hyperoche and Laodice, brought the
first offerings from the Hyperboreans; and with them the Hyperboreans
sent five men to keep them from all harm by the way; these are the
persons whom the Delians call "Perpherees," and to whom great
honours are paid at Delos. Afterwards the Hyperboreans, when they
found that their messengers did not return, thinking it would be a
grievous thing always to be liable to lose the envoys they should send,
adopted the following plan: they wrapped their offerings in the wheaten
straw, and bearing them to their borders, charged their neighbours to
send them forward from one nation to another, which was done
accordingly, and in this way the offerings reached Delos. I myself
know of a practice like this, which obtains with the women of Thrace
and Paeonia. They in their sacrifices to the queenly Diana bring
wheaten straw always with their offerings. Of my own knowledge I can
testify that this is so.
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