On Boreas, Pontos and the Ancient Garden of Phoibos: Some Remarks on the Sophoclean Geography of the European North
Podossinov Alexandr V.
The article discusses a short text from an unknown drama of Sophocles, preserved by Strabo (VII. 3.1), which says that Boreas abducted and carried away Oreithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, “across the entire Pontus to the extreme limits of the earth, to the sources of the night, to the open sky, to the ancient garden of Phoebus”. Understanding these lines presents considerable difficulties, and their interpretation by various researchers is ambiguous. The article substantiates the point of view according to which Boreas takes his future wife to the country of mythical Hyperboreans, located in the north of Eastern Europe “beyond Pontus (Euxine)”, in the patrimony of Apollo (“the ancient garden of Phoebus”), which, in the opinion of the ancient Greeks, had close connections with Hyperboreans. Moreover, according to some versions of the myth, the Hyperboreans were ruled by the Boreads, descendants of Boreas and Oreithyia. The whole complex of ancient ideas about Boreas, Boreads, Ripaean mountains, Pontus Euxine, Apollo, Hyperboreans, polar night (“the sources of the night”), analyzed in the article, leads to the conclusion that Sophocles was aware of the connection between the “Thracian” Boreas and the Hyperboreans (lit. “living beyond Boreas”). Thus, our collection of sources on the Northern Black Sea region’s ancient history is replenished with one more interesting piece of evidence.
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