In classical times, it was illegal to die on the sacred isle of Delos. It was also illegal to give birth there.
Delos was the birthplace of two gods: Apollo and Artemis. That made the tiny island incredibly holy.
There had been a sacred sanctuary on Delos since Minoan times. There had also been a village of priests and priestesses who served the temples. The priestly village was on the coast right next to the sanctuary, which was natural enough. That made it a short walk to work.
But then some time around 540BC, something interesting happened. The Athenians, who supported Delos with gifts and supplies, took it into their heads to remove all the dead people from around the sanctuary. Nobody knows exactly why they decided to do this, but it's too weird to have been anything other than an oracle received, either from Delphi or maybe from Delos itself.
Either way, the Athenians turned up at Delos en masse. They dug up every body in the village cemetery and relocated the corpses to a new cemetery on the other side of the island. (This must have been fun.)
Then they dismantled the village and relocated it to the other side of the island too.
This was a catharsis. We use catharsis for plays and books, but the original meaning was ritual purification.
From that moment on, it seems, it was illegal to die or be born on Delos. Fortunately the much larger island of Mykonos was not far off, so if you felt one event or the other coming on, then you could be ferried off the island. For emergencies there was an even smaller islet called Rhenia, so close by you could almost wade there.
You're probably wondering what the penalty was for dying, and so am I. Presumably things couldn't get much worse for you anyway. Alas we'll never know.
But we're not done yet. In 426BC, the Athenians decided their ancestors of a hundred years ago hadn't done a good enough job. They returned to Delos, dug up the bodies from the new cemetery, and carried them off the island completely.
At that point there was not a single corpse left on the island (except for the two Hyperborean women), and this odd game of move-the-bodies ended. Delos remained ritually pure until after the death of Alexander, when people became less fussed about such things, and a thriving community moved in.
The Hyperborean Problem
Hyperborea will be known to you if you're a Conan the Barbarian fan. What is less well known is that this fantasy land might have existed for real.
Hyperborea in Greek means "beyond Boreas". Boreas was the name of the cold north wind that blew across central Europe. So Hyperborea is a land far to the north, beyond the cold. (Which is how it ended up being stolen for Conan).
At first glance Hyperborea has about as much reality as Atlantis. There isn't a shred of archaeological evidence for any such place.
The difficulty is that, unlike Atlantis, a lot of very credible men talk about Hyperborea as if it exists. Herodotus says that Hesiod wrote about the Hyperboreans. Unfortunately that piece of Hesiod has been lost, but Hesiod was Europe's first non-fiction author. If Hesiod wrote about them, then he thought they existed, rightly or wrongly.
There's also an archaic poem that talks about Hyperboreans, that probably wasn't written by Homer but which is the same sort of time period.
Herodotus himself provides the best evidence, with a short tale that is quite bizarre. Apparently the Hyperboreans decided to send gifts to the sacred isle of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis and possibly the most holy sanctuary in all of Greece.
Their gifts were carried by two young women, who were sent on the long journey with five male warriors to protect them. The young women died while on Delos. It's not clear what killed them, but disease rather than violence is kind of assumed since the women were greatly honoured. Herodotus states point blank that their tomb is on the left as you enter the temple of Artemis at Delos, and that teenage boys and girls sacrifice to them.
Now this is a very precise detail! There might not be two Hyperborean women in that tomb, but the Greeks think there are. If you ever visit Delos, by the way, you'll be able to go to exactly where the tomb was, because the ruins of the Artemis temple are well known. Just walk to the entrance and look left. Sadly there's nothing there now, but you'll also be standing on a spot where Herodotus himself certainly stood.
Herodotus states that when the Hyperboreans realized that their emissaries might not return, they decided to continue to send gifts every year, but to pass them on from one people to the next. To protect their gifts the Hyperboreans wrapped their gifts in sheathes of wheat. Then they gave the gifts to their neighbours, with a request to hand them on to the next people to the south.
The Hyperborean Gift thus turned into an international game of pass-the-parcel. The gift was handed along until it reached Delos. Multiple authors speculated about the paths the gift took, in an attempt to work out where exactly was this Hyperborea. The ancient people themselves were none too sure.
But what is undeniable is that the gifts were arriving from somewhere! Herodotus states, very clearly, that the Hyperborean Gift was still turning up on Delos right up to his present day.
This is a detail impossible to ignore. Herodotus first "published" his work at the Olympics of 440BC. There were obviously people from Delos present. If the gift was not turning up as described, they surely would have put up their hands and pointed out that he was wrong. It doesn't absolutely prove that Hyperborea existed. But if not, then someone was playing a strange game (which might be the case).
I think the general consensus among sane people is that the whole thing is a myth. Personally I have trouble getting past the apparent fact that the gift was arriving in classical times. Yet Herodotus himself seems doubtful. I speculate that a quite different and probably well-known tribe was sending the gift and being mislabeled Hyperborean. But either way, there's a puzzle there for someone to solve!
Hyperborea in Greek means "beyond Boreas". Boreas was the name of the cold north wind that blew across central Europe. So Hyperborea is a land far to the north, beyond the cold. (Which is how it ended up being stolen for Conan).
At first glance Hyperborea has about as much reality as Atlantis. There isn't a shred of archaeological evidence for any such place.
The difficulty is that, unlike Atlantis, a lot of very credible men talk about Hyperborea as if it exists. Herodotus says that Hesiod wrote about the Hyperboreans. Unfortunately that piece of Hesiod has been lost, but Hesiod was Europe's first non-fiction author. If Hesiod wrote about them, then he thought they existed, rightly or wrongly.
There's also an archaic poem that talks about Hyperboreans, that probably wasn't written by Homer but which is the same sort of time period.
Herodotus himself provides the best evidence, with a short tale that is quite bizarre. Apparently the Hyperboreans decided to send gifts to the sacred isle of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis and possibly the most holy sanctuary in all of Greece.
Their gifts were carried by two young women, who were sent on the long journey with five male warriors to protect them. The young women died while on Delos. It's not clear what killed them, but disease rather than violence is kind of assumed since the women were greatly honoured. Herodotus states point blank that their tomb is on the left as you enter the temple of Artemis at Delos, and that teenage boys and girls sacrifice to them.
Now this is a very precise detail! There might not be two Hyperborean women in that tomb, but the Greeks think there are. If you ever visit Delos, by the way, you'll be able to go to exactly where the tomb was, because the ruins of the Artemis temple are well known. Just walk to the entrance and look left. Sadly there's nothing there now, but you'll also be standing on a spot where Herodotus himself certainly stood.
Herodotus states that when the Hyperboreans realized that their emissaries might not return, they decided to continue to send gifts every year, but to pass them on from one people to the next. To protect their gifts the Hyperboreans wrapped their gifts in sheathes of wheat. Then they gave the gifts to their neighbours, with a request to hand them on to the next people to the south.
The Hyperborean Gift thus turned into an international game of pass-the-parcel. The gift was handed along until it reached Delos. Multiple authors speculated about the paths the gift took, in an attempt to work out where exactly was this Hyperborea. The ancient people themselves were none too sure.
But what is undeniable is that the gifts were arriving from somewhere! Herodotus states, very clearly, that the Hyperborean Gift was still turning up on Delos right up to his present day.
This is a detail impossible to ignore. Herodotus first "published" his work at the Olympics of 440BC. There were obviously people from Delos present. If the gift was not turning up as described, they surely would have put up their hands and pointed out that he was wrong. It doesn't absolutely prove that Hyperborea existed. But if not, then someone was playing a strange game (which might be the case).
I think the general consensus among sane people is that the whole thing is a myth. Personally I have trouble getting past the apparent fact that the gift was arriving in classical times. Yet Herodotus himself seems doubtful. I speculate that a quite different and probably well-known tribe was sending the gift and being mislabeled Hyperborean. But either way, there's a puzzle there for someone to solve!
A fun TED-ED animation about tragedy
Thanks to Monty on twitter for pointing this out! It goes rather well with Death Ex Machina, and talks about three of my characters.
Book stand as art
This looked so nice, I couldn't resist ripping it off my editor's facebook stream. It's the Soho Press book stand at a recent conference, and it looks like a work of art.
This is the creation of Rudy Martinez, Abby Koski, and Meredith Barnes. Well done, ladies and gent.
A lovely review of Death Ex Machina
The American Library Association has a magazine and a web site where they post reviews of books.
This review of Death Ex Machina just came online, and it is rather nice for the book's author to read!
This review of Death Ex Machina just came online, and it is rather nice for the book's author to read!
Corby is adept at delineating ancient Greece without sounding professorial. Having Nicolaos as a first-person narrator helps; he’s the ideal tour guide to the theater and the city around it. The characters are a mix of fictional and actual, with the latter including Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and the child Socrates, who drives everyone crazy with his questions.
This works on every level.