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Abstract: A study of the myths and cultic realities involving Apollo's visit to Hyperborea demonstrates that many of them incorporate certain calendric information of different degrees of precision. Apollo's movements set within a Hyperborean framework appear to have mainly been of a seasonal character and in this respect ultimately conditioned by the annual motion of the sun. However, this does not necessitate an outright assimilation of Apollo to the physical sun; the correspondences between the deitys voyages to the far north and the movements of the celestial body were rather derived from the explicit seasonality of the rites at Delphi, Delos and elsewhere.
Key words: Apollo, Hyperboreans, Alcaeus, calendar, sun
Introduction
In an influential paper on the origin of the name Apollo, which he derived from Doric meetings, ånéWai, especially from their initiatory role, Burkert established a standard interpretation of the name and function of the deity that is widely accepted.1 He found no place for the sun in his analysis of the early worship of Apollo, and one of the most conspicuous characteristics of the dominant paradigm in the studies of Apollo is precisely the complete avoidance of this particular subject.2 Indeed, Apollos solar connections, especially in the Archaic period, are largely dismissed in modern scholarship.3
This situation is in large part the result of a move from substantive to sociocultural framework of interpretation of religion.4 During the 20th century the "physical" content of beliefs as exemplified in myths was overshadowed by other concerns, such as the role of cult and its relevance to the worshippers in chronologically sensitive contexts. The "origins" and "original nature" of Greek gods were at the same time discarded as meaningless concepts, and were replaced by more nuanced and informative analyses focusing on their roles and functions within the polytheistic system of ancient Greece.
Apollo's Hyperborean connections, sometimes used as arguments for the deity's solar function, have shared the fate of other tenets of the solar-myth paradigm.5 But although Farnell decidedly claimed that "no sane criticism can find any solar meaning in the legend of... his [i.e. Apollo's] visit to the Hyperboreans or his periodical absences and returns,"6 the available evidence does not seem to support such a radical dismissal. At any rate, not when it is interpreted...