A'baris(Ἄβαρις), son of Seuthes, was a
Hyperborean priest of Apollo (Hdt. 4.36), and came from the country
about the Caucasus (Ov. Met. 5.86) to Greece, while his own
country was visited by a plague. He was endowed with the gift of prophecy, and by this as well
as by his Scythian dress and simplicity and honesty he created great sensation in Greece, and
was held in high esteem. (Strab. vii. p. 301.) He travelled
about in Greece, carrying with him an arrow as the symbol of Apollo, and gave oracles. Toland,
in his History of the Druids, considers him to have been a Druid of the Hebrides, because the
arrow formed a part of the costume of a Druid. His history, which is entirely mythical, is
related in various ways, and worked in with extraordinary particulars: he is said to have
taken no earthly food (Hdt. 4.36), and to have ridden on his arrow,
the gift of Apollo, through the air. (Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 314.) He
cured diseases by incantations (Plat. Charmid. p. 158, B.), delivered the
world from a plague (Suidas, s. v.
Ἄβαρις), and built at Sparta a temple of Κόρη σώτειρα. (Paus. 3.13.2.)
Suidas and Eudocia ascribe to him several works, such as incantations, Scythian oracles, a
poem on the marriage of the river Hebrus, expiatory formulas, the arrival of Apollo among the
Hyperboreans, and a prose work on the origin of the gods. But such works, if they were really
current in ancient times, were no more genuine than his reputed correspondence with Phalaris
the tyrant. The time of his appearance in Greece is stated differently, some fixing it in Ol.
3, others in Ol. 21, and others again make him a contemporary of Croesus. (Bentley, On the Epist. of Phalaris, p. 34.) Lobeck places it about the year B. C. 570, i. e. about Ol. 52. Respecting the
perplexing traditions about Abaris see Klopfer, Mythologisches
Wörterbuch, i. p. 2; Zapf, Disputatio historica de Abaride,
Lips. 1707; Larcher, on Herod. vol. iii. p. 446.
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