suggestions. Pliny himself prefers those accounts that Fall of Troy. At the lavish funerals of Achilles and Ajax, the place amber’s origins in northern Europe: “It is well mourners heaped drops of amber on the bodies. For established,” he writes, “that amber is a product of islands Achilles, in the Northern Ocean.” Herodotus is less sure: “I do not believe that there is a river called by foreigners Eridanus Wailing captive women brought uncounted fabrics issuing into the northern sea, whence our amber is said to From storage chests and threw them upon the pyre come, nor have I any knowledge of Tin-islands.… This Heaping gold and amber with them. only we know, that our tin and amber come from the For Ajax, most distant parts.”83 Lucent amber-drops they laid thereon The Eridanus River to which Herodotus refers was Tears, say they, which the Daughters of the Sun, originally a mythical river that came to be associated with The Lord of Omens, shed for Phaethon slain, the Po and sometimes with the Rhône, among others. In When by Eridanus’ flood they mourned for him. the ancient sources, the Eridanus migrates about the map. These for undying honour to his son, Pliny’s comment on his sources’ confusion about its The God made amber, precious in men’s eyes. location is typically pointed: “Such statements only make Even this the Argives on the broad-based pyre it easier to pardon their ignorance of amber when their Cast freely, honouring the mighty dead.87 ignorance of geography is so great.” The most likely explanation of this confusion is that the Eridanus at some By Quintus’s time, the tale of Phaethon88 had long been point became connected in myth to memories of an early the preeminent myth associated with amber.89 The name land–riverine amber route running from the Baltic to Phaethon, meaning “the shining one” or “the radiant one,” northern Italy. derives from the Greek verb phaethô, “to shine.” The Phaethon story, which provides a classic example of Herodotus himself affirms the existence of an exchange hubris followed by nemesis, was first recorded by Hesiod, route running from the far north all the way to the and dramatized in Euripides’ mid-fifth-century Phaethon, Aegean. In his discussion of the Hyperboreans (a but it might be best known today from Ovid’s version in legendary race from the far north who worshipped the Metamorphoses.90 Apollo), he mentions “offerings wrapt in wheat straw” that they bring to Scythia and that are passed from nation According to Ovid, Phaethon was the son of Clymene and to nation until they reach Delos (Apollo’s birthplace).84 the sun-god Helios. As an adolescent, he doubted his You cannot reach Hyberborea by either land or sea, says parentage and voyaged to the East to question his father. Pindar (Pythian 10.29); most stories of travel to and from There the god welcomed his son and promised as proof of this region involve flight. There is something his paternity to grant any boon Phaethon might ask. The otherworldly as well as northerly about the youth rashly demanded permission to drive the sun Hyperboreans’ land.85 Scholars are undecided as to chariot through the sky for one day. So unsuccessful and whether the offerings Herodotus mentions were actually dangerous was the young charioteer that Zeus was forced amber, but it is likely that amber was transported on such to kill Phaethon with a thunderbolt to save the world a route. from destruction. The result was a disastrous cosmic fire. The youth’s flaming body fell into the legendary Eridanus Furthermore, Apollonius of Rhodes (whose answer to the River. His sisters, called the Heliades (daughters of question “Where does amber come from?” is a Helios), stood on the riverbanks weeping ceaselessly for mythological one) provides a link between amber and the their brother until finally they were changed into poplars cult of Apollo in his Argonautica. He refers to a Celtic (figure 23). Thereafter the tears of the Heliades fell as myth that drops of amber were tears shed by Apollo for drops of precious amber onto the sandy banks, to be the death of his son Asclepius when he visited the washed into the river and eventually borne off on the Hyperboreans.86That amber should come to be associated with Apollo is not surprising, given its waters to one day “adorn young wives in Rome.” connections with the sun, but it is significant that the Phaethon’s friend Cygnus, the king of Liguria, was so connection should occur specifically in the context of the distressed that he left his people to mourn among the mourning of Asclepius. Amber’s role in mourning, poplars and was eventually transformed himself, into a evidenced by its funerary use, is constantly emphasized in swan. mythology. There is an explicit connection between this mythology and the funerary use of amber in Quintus’s 32 INTRODUCTION