F. A. Paley
1879
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NOTE |
FREDERICK APTHORP PALEY (1815-1888) was a British classical scholar famed for his editions of several classical works. In this piece, Paley drew on emerging German scholarship that suggested more ancient origins for the stories behind the Homeric poems to investigate whether Homer used an early version of the Argonautica in developing the Odyssey. This work, first published in the Dublin Review in 1879, is notable both for anticipating future scholarship and for suggesting that Greek mythology had not just Bronze Age antecedents but possibly forerunners dating back to the Ice Age, a claim echoed in modern fringe history hypotheses of a lost civilization and its myths. The article has been modified from the original as follows: Some Greek language text and footnotes have been omitted, transliterated into Latin letters, or translated into English from standard sources.
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Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts
Very many centuries before the dawn of history a band of noble youths who called themselves the Minyae, in Thessaly, entered into a solemn league and compact to visit and explore the abode of the great Sun-god in the far East. Their knowledge of astronomy was undoubtedly weak; but their enthusiasm was strong, and their courage was not damped by any apparently insuperable obstacles to the success of such an expedition. They had the evidence of their senses that the Sun-god moved, and therefore lived. Every day he rose out of the Eastern sea, climbed to the summit of the heavenly vault, and disappeared in the far West. If they could but reach the horizon, the wall, as it were, of that great arch that spanned the flat and immovable world, they must there find some means of solving the great secret, how and whence did he come forth, how and whither did he sink to repose.
Nevertheless, the boldest of them must have felt that to get very near to that grand and awful ball of fire — to touch it, measure it, bring away some trophy of it, was an adventure of much danger and very uncertain result! [1] Nothing but a voyage to the far East, and over the unknown seas and lands where the sun appeared to them to rise, could solve the problem. Like Columbus and his voyage of discovery across the western ocean, they had a conviction that they must get somewhere to an unexplored land, however far that somewhere lay to the East. So they agreed to sail. And this, briefly expressed, seems the probable origin of that most celebrated and interesting tale of antiquity, the voyage of Jason and his companions in the good ship Argo in search of the Golden Fleece.
I do not, of course, for a moment say or believe that it is history, or contains any historical truth whatever. I only offer this explanation to account for the existence of the myth. For history proper deals only with dates and with real persons; and when we can say nothing more of a given story (like that of the Trojan war) than that it may or may not describe a real incident, we are on the confines of fable, and can only speculate on possibilities. We have the narrative at length in the poem entitled “Argonautica” by Apollonius Rhodius, who lived and wrote in the time of the Ptolemies (about B.C. 200). We have it also in the eight books, bearing the same title, by the late Roman poet, Valerius Flaccus. But these men only reproduced in a later form ballads which, as we shall show, were familiar to Pindar and the tragic poets, and even to the author of the “Odyssey”
It is one of the most singular properties of Myths that they have a tendency to reappear, almost or quite unchanged, even in their most grotesque details, however late may be the particular composition in which they are embodied. Thus it is that what some regard as silly nursery stories, Cinderella or Jack and the Bean Stalk, will generally be found to have a far greater antiquity and a much wider prevalence than most persons would suppose. So, too, it is that a very late epic poet, like Quintus Smyrnaeus, who lived some centuries after the Christian era, has preserved a great deal of matter known to and used by the tragic poets more than four centuries before it. Let not therefore any one suppose that because Apollonius Rhodius lived and wrote only about two centuries before that era, therefore his poem carries no weight or authority as a legend of genuine antiquity. It is the object of this paper to show that the contrary is the case.
Possibly it will be objected that the solar interpretation of the story is strained and unnatural. A golden fleece “may have meant a rude method of collecting gold particles from running streams. These adventurers may, after all have only desired to go to certain far-off “diggings,” the reputation of which had reached them from the reports of merchants or travellers. They may have gone in search of a breed of sheep with wool of a naturally yellowish tint, like that of the Spanish sheep, so much prized by the Romans; [2] or, lastly, they may have been Phoenician adventurers, influenced solely by a wish to extend their commerce.
It is desirable, therefore, at the outset, to show that the sun is generally symbolised by a fiery cloud, or golden fleece, as the mantle of glory and majesty in which the god is wrapped. Amictus lumine sicut vestimento is the description that the Psalmist gives to the Divine Being himself. [3] The aegis of Pallas, the goddess of the Dawn, is in the same manner the fringed cloud that arrays in spangled light the Aurora of the Greek Mythology. [4] It was represented in ancient art, as may be seen on many of the early Greek vases, as a fringed goat-skin, the root of the word, which implies “rushing motion,” being confounded with αἴξ, “a goat.” We read in Homer [5] of the golden tassels or fringes surrounding it, and Herodotus tells us [6] that the dress of the goddess was derived from the stained goat-skins (apparently closely akin to what we still call Morocco leather) worn by Libyan women. This shows that he had not the least suspicion of the true origin of the symbol, as a solar “glory.” Even in early Christian art the oval nimbus, or aureole, enveloping the whole form of the Blessed Virgin, may be referred to the same traditional idea. The edges of the goat-skins were cut in strips and curled to imitate snakes’ heads, and this, which at first merely represented the ragged edges of a cloud, was designed to add terror to the form of the dread war-goddess.
So naturally is the idea of a cloud associated with that of a fleece, that Virgil describes the absence of cirri, or what we ourselves call “light fleecy clouds,” as a sign of the approach of fine weather, --
Tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri. [7]
But other proofs are not wanting that this interpretation of the “Golden Fleece” is the true one. We read in Sophocles [8] that the wife of Hercules, jealous of her husband’s supposed attachment to a younger woman, sent him, under the guise of a costly sacrificial robe, a garment smeared with some phosphoric preparation. It is to be noted that the poison itself was laid on with a piece of wool, and that the wool first caught fire and was consumed. [9] No sooner had he thrown the mantle round him, and approached the fire of the altar, than it burst into flame, and so nearly destroyed him that he implored his own son to finish his pains by burning him on a pyre upon Mount Oeta. A nearly identical story is told of Medea, who, enraged at Jason’s desertion of her for a royal bride, sent by her own children a robe and a golden coronet as a present to the princess. Here, too, the gift proved a fatal one, for not only the bride herself, but her aged father, who ran to her assistance, miserably perished by the fiery robe cleaving to their flesh. [10]
Now the evidence furnished by these several legends must be regarded as complete, when we consider that Hercules was the Sun-god; that his dying on the pyre obviously symbolises the Sun sinking in flames behind a hill; that Medea was the grand-daughter of the Sun, and that the fiery robe had been bequeathed by the Sun-god himself to his descendants. [11] Nor can we doubt that the gilt chaplet which adhered to the brow of the bride, like red-hot iron, is nothing more than a symbol of the round and glowing orb of the sun itself.
Thus far, then, we seem to have made out a clear case for the right explanation of the Argonautic legend. An expedition to bring home the golden fleece was an attempt — not either a very absurd or a very unnatural one in such remote ages, when the only knowledge was obtained through the senses — to get close enough to the rising sun to find out his true nature. The question of his real size was not, perhaps, entertained by them seriously, if at all. And, it is here important to observe, that even so advanced a thinker as Lucretius gravely teaches that the sun and moon cannot be very much larger than their apparent size. [12] Whenever, he argues, the outline of a fire seen by us on earth can be clearly defined, and is not a mere indistinct glow or flickering light, the distance cannot be sufficiently great to affect the size of it very seriously. Therefore, as the filum solis, the circular outline of the sun, seems clear and sharp, it cannot be so far remote as greatly to be diminished from its actual bulk by its distance from our eyes. The accumulated knowledge which enables us now to state with certainty that the diameter of the sun is very nearly nine hundred thousand miles, [13] and its distance from us about ninety-three millions, is certainly a marvellous advance on all such primitive and purely sensuous ideas!
There are some persons who read with utter incredulity the attempts of learned men to show that many of the legends of classical antiquity — even the Achilles and the Ulysses of Homer — may be readily explained by the ideas and the symbolism of a primitive sun-worship. They revolt from the theory as from a form of rationalism; and that, they are quite convinced, whatever be the subject to which it is applied, must, be something dangerous, if not positively wrong. In fact, they will hardly listen to the expounders of the theory, however good their claims to a fair hearing. “Everything,” they object, “was the sun, according to your view.” And the reply is not an irrational one: “Yes, everything was the sun, at a time and in a nation where the all-powerful and beneficent giver of light and heat engaged all the prayers and all the aspirations of the human race.” [14] With more reason we might ask. What possible explanation can be given to such stories as Sisyphus rolling a round stone uphill only to fall back again; or of Tantalus, now fearing lest a hanging rock should fall on his head, now standing up to his chin in water which evaded all his efforts to drink it; — what symbolism can they embody if they are not stories about the sun? His apparent descent into the nether world, and his daily reappearance in renewed vigour from out of the Eastern sea, where he reddened all things with his light,” [15] gave rise to the stories of penal tasks imposed in Hades for crimes committed in this life.
Again, the narrative in the “Odyssey” about Cyclops, and the blinding of his one eye, is either a very silly and impossible story, or it is a myth not inappropriately describing the extinction of the sun, the eye of day, in the “forehead of the sky,” as Milton calls it. If Ulysses himself meant, as the name will allow him to mean, the “setting sun,” the interpretation is as simple as possible; the setting of the sun puts out, or removes from sight, the orb that is the eye of the world — that far-ranging power to whom poets naturally and spontaneously attribute the faculty of sight. But you will convince very few persons, if you propound such a view, reasonable as it is and perfectly consistent in itself. Not less evident is it that the numerous and varied stories of the descent of heroes into the nether world in quest of some departed friend, whom they brought back to life, like Orpheus, who went to recover his Eurydice, are founded on the apparent sinking of the sun below the horizon and his speedy return to the surface of the world. Nothing, we say, can be more clear than this ; and those who cannot accept such an interpretation cannot have gone far into the history of primitive thought. If there is one fact more certain than another in the records and monuments of the ancient world, it is the wide prevalence of sun-worship. Therefore, there is the strongest antecedent probability that many of the primitive myths symbolise sun-worship too.
The fleece in quest of which Jason and his crew made their adventurous voyage to the Pontus, is not, of course, in the legend itself represented as the sun. It is peculiar to all solar myths to treat the subjects of them as real heroes. The authors of the stories were always quite unconscious that the heroes themselves are but representatives of the elemental power which underlies the whole narrative. Thus, to the author or authors of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” Achilles and Ulysses are mighty heroes who lived in remote ages, when man was a greater and a grander being than the men in the poet’s day. So with the sun-fleece; it was not a sun-fleece to Jason who went to fetch it, nor to Apollonius Rhodius who describes it; it was simply the skin of the ram that had carried Phrixus with his sister Helle [16] in their flight from the cruelty of their mother-in-law, the wife of Athamas. This ram had been offered up to Zeus, the God of Flight, on the spot where it had lauded by Phrixus himself at the command of the god Hermes. [17] Its skin had been consecrated on an oak-tree, in a sacred grove; and the description of it is very remarkable, because it shows how, even to the unconscious writer of the account, the “solar idea” is still present in the tradition. “It was like,” says the poet, “to a cloud which glows with the hot rays of the rising sun” Guided by the skill and inspired by the love of the fair sorceress Medea, [18]
Jason enters the grove and finds the glorious prize guarded by a huge snake, which hissed so loud that the grove and even the shores of the mighty rivers Araxes, Lycus, and Phasis resounded with the horrible din. [19] The monster, however, is put to sleep by her powerful incantations, and the fleece is carried off in triumph from the sacred oak. The description of Apollonius is very good, if somewhat turgid, as is the manner of the Alexandrine poets. It will be better, perhaps, to attempt a version of his words than to quote at length the twelve Greek hexameters (iv. 170 — 82).
Thus then did Jason joyfully hold aloft in his hands the huge fleece. On his brown cheeks and forehead a ruddy light, like a flame, settled from the flashing brightness of the tufts of wool. In size it nearly measured, in all directions, the hide of a yearling heifer, or a young stag. So heavy hung the wool-tufts that they covered him as with a roof; and the very earth as he walked seemed to glow beneath his feet. So he proceeded, now throwing it like a mantle over his left shoulder, so that it hung pendant to his feet, now clutching it tightly grasped and rolled into a smaller space, for much he feared lest some man or god who chanced to meet him, should deprive him of the prize.
We need not follow our hero in his return to his country with the fleece and accompanied by Medea, whose tragic story, and desertion by Jason, is the subject of the justly celebrated “Medea” of Euripides. We are anxious to pass on to a literary question of the highest interest. We shall show that between the scenes and the characters in the “Odyssey” and those in the Argonautics of Apollonius, there is a singular identity. How far the fact has hitherto been noticed by classical scholars, we are not prepared to say. But we shall show good reasons for thinking that the fact itself is highly suggestive, and deserves a working out which has never yet been assigned to it. Let us here say distinctly, that it is altogether a superficial view to assume, that because Homer lived very early and Apollonius very late, therefore Apollonius merely borrowed his story from Homer. We contend that such a fact is against all experience, and, for many reasons, very improbable in itself. It is a much sounder and more probable view, that both poems were composed independently out of older materials.
We have called the Argonautic legends “pre-Homeric.” Two verses in the “Odyssey” are in themselves quite conclusive. In xii. 69-70 the poet says (speaking of the “moving rocks” through which Ulysses had to sail) that “ the only ship that ever yet passed them was the far-famed Argo in her voyage from King Aeetes.”
Now, as these very same rocks (although in quite a different part of the world), these [clashing rocks], are described both in the “Odyssey” and in the “Argonautics,” [20] as Scylla and Charybdis, Circe, Calypso and the Sirens, Alcinous and his queen Arete, the savage king Echetus, [21] are common to both poems; it is a perfectly fair question to ask, which account is really the oldest? For, as we have said, it is not enough to reply, in an off-hand way, “Of course, the late Alexandrine poet copied all this from the ‘Odyssey’ the author of which lived at least 850 years before Christ.” For if so, how is it that the Argo is so explicitly mentioned in the “Odyssey”? Further, while it is perfectly easy to prove that Pindar and the tragic poets in the age of Pericles had the whole story of the Argonauts, and composed many tragedies from it; [22] it is very difficult to prove that they knew of the “Odyssey” in the form, at least, in which we possess it. Some persons will be surprised to be told that no mention appears to be made of the nymph Calypso or of the suitors of Penelope in any genuine passage, earlier than Plato or even Aristotle. Consequently, when we find Aeschylus comparing the murderess Clytemnestra to a Scylla who has her abode in the rocks to destroy sailors, [23] it becomes an inquiry of some importance, from which of these two sources did he obtain his knowledge? The very full account we have of the adventures of Jason and Medea in the fourth Pythian ode of Pindar, the contemporary of Aeschylus, makes it quite certain that the Argonautic story was current in their time, [24] while conversely, the marked discrepancies that exist between the accounts of Aeschylus and Homer of the murder of Agamemnon, and the vengeance taken by Orestes, tend to throw much uncertainty on the question, whether Aeschylus knew our poem of the Odyssey at all.
It is a very significant circumstance also, that the epithet applied in the “Odyssey” [25] to the enchantress Circe, Aeaean, is the same as that given in the “Argonautics.” [26] But Aeaea and Aeetes were words intimately connected with the Argonautic geography and the story of Jason; they have no direct relation to Ulysses. The word Aea, means “mainland,” and it seems to have been primarily applied to the continent that stretched away still eastward after navigators had touched the eastern shores of the Pontus. It is to be distinguished from Aeaea, which is described as an island. [27] Most of our readers are familiar with the opening verses of the Medea of Euripides; “O that the hull of the Argo had never scudded through the looming rocks of the Symplegades to Aea in Colchis” or, as the words are more commonly rendered, “to the land of the Colchians.” Of course, King Aeetes is the “lord of the mainland;” he is named in connexion with Phrixus in Pindar (“Pyth,” iv. 160), and as ruling the Colchian people near the Phasis (ibid. 213). This Phasis, we may here just remark, is unconsciously spoken of at many a dinner-table where the guests are asked if they will take some pheasant. For the Romans got this bird, it would appear, from that locality, and thence called it phasianus, as we read of it in Martial. The epithet was applied, however, much earlier, for Aristophanes, [28] appears to describe by it a particular breed of horses.
It appears on the whole very probable that the author of the “Odyssey,” by whatever name he is to be called, and at whatever period he composed that immortal poem, really was indebted to some still earlier epics about the Argo for his account of Circe and her island home in Aeaea. But, if he took from thence his character of Circe, we are bound, in logical consistency, to believe that he may also have derived his Scylla and Charybdis, his sirens and his king Alcinous with the good queen Arete, from the same source. It is quite surprising how large a portion of the Homeric story is common to the two poems. Thus, the nymph Calypso (Ap. iv. 574), the island of Thrinacia and the oxen of the Sun [ibid. 965), Aeolus the god of the winds {ibid. 765), besides the many coincidences already pointed out, seem to be consciously claimed by both poets as peculiarly their own. There seems only one explanation; both poems are based independently on the same earlier ballads.
Euripides also mentions the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Circe and the Cyclops, and the oxen of the Sun. It is rather remarkable, that whereas Aeschylus seems to have followed the “Argonautica,” Euripides seems to have known the “Odyssey,” in some form at least, if not precisely the present form, of that poem. For he makes the locality of Scylla to be, not the neighbourhood of the Pontus, but the Straits of Messina. He calls the monster Tyraenis and Thucydides, in describing the sites of the channel through which Ulysses was said to have sailed, says it was between the Tyrrhenian (or Ionian) and Sicilian seas. [29] From this, it is evident, Euripides gave her the epithet in question [Tyraenidos]. [30]
In a remarkable passage of the “Trojan Captives” (Troades) [31] Euripides gives an epitome of the main facts of the “Odyssey” in their direct connexion with Ulysses, which proves that he at least was acquainted with a poem, of which neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles shows any other knowledge than what may be inferred from the titles of two lost plays, [32] though we do not know what was their treatment.
A further argument for the priority of the “Argonautica” may be derived from the mention of the “Unstable Rocks” in both poems. [33] That these were volcanic, probably in the neighbourhood of Stromboli and the Liparse islands, seems more than probable, both from the name “shifting,” “moving about”, descriptive of a well-known property of submarine volcanos, and also from the distinct mention of smoke issuing from their summits. [34] Now we read in Apollonius how the Argo was conveyed safely past these dangerous rocks by Thetis and her sea-nymphs; and in allusion to this story the author of the “Odyssey” says, that “the only ship which ever got past them was the Argo!’ It is added that no birds ever pass it,” [35] not even the doves which are carrying ambrosia to Father Zeus ; but one even of these is always taken off, only the father sends in another to make the number complete.
This is, per se, a very curious tradition. The dove is a well-known Eastern symbol of divine favour and protection; but the mention of it in the “Odyssey” seems somewhat lame and unconnected. Now, in the account of the passage through the dangerous Symplegades, in a very different part of the world, the Propontis, Apollonius Rhodius gives a narrative at once consistent and archaic in its very details. The good ship, as Phineus the seer had foretold, would pass safely through the clashing rocks, if a dove let loose from the prow should make the passage. Euphemus, we are told, [36] sent the dove on its mission of danger. It flew through them, but lost its tail feathers, by the meeting of the rocks at the moment of its flight.
Here, we have no doubt, we have the nearest approach to the original story. The version of it in the “Odyssey,” transferred from the icebergs of the Propontis to the basaltic rocks of the Sicilian Sea, is probably later, because it bears the character of imitation. The idea in the mind of the author of the “Odyssey” was, that many doves had been “nipped,” and had lost their lives, not merely their tails. The addition is unquestionably feeble: “But Father Zeus always sends another to take their place.”
We have said, instead of the received word, the Symplegades, or clashing rocks, “the icebergs of the Propontis.” This is a matter of much literary and geological interest. It may be a record, or rather a dim tradition, of a remote pre-historic period, reaching back nearly to that “glacial” era, the existence of which appears to be now generally accepted as a scientific certainty.
Such a tradition, and one quite independent of this, is that the plains of Elis were once covered with deep snow. Another name for the Symplegades was Cyaneae, “the dark blue” rocks ; and the word is used as an epithet by Euripides. [37] There must have been some special reason for the use of this word, as well as for the tradition of moving and clashing rocks, which the mere effect of perspective will not sufficiently account for. Pindar says [38] they rolled and plunged like living things, which is exactly what icebergs do; the reflection of the sun upon them also gives them a tint well described by cyaneae, “bluish”, [39] the tradition that they ceased to roll, and stood still after the Argo had passed them, is precisely what icebergs would do when stranded at the mouth of the Bosphorus, to which they had been carried by the current from the icebound coasts and rivers on the north of the Pontus.
Modern attempts to explain the phenomena described by the legend are far-fetched. There is really more to be said for the expressed opinion of Humboldt, that the breaking of the barrier of the Euxine, formerly a great inclosed lake, and the discharge of its waters into the Aegean Sea through the Sea of Marmora, were events probably within the range of the human period. [40] The peril of ships in the Arctic and Antarctic seas, from the closing of icefloes, is too well known to require any illustration. The Argo, says the story, got safely through them, and then they were stranded and never moved more. [41]
But we are told that this is only a silly story about some rocks that are still to be seen near the entrance of the Bosphorus. The following is the account given in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Geography [42]: --
Nevertheless, the boldest of them must have felt that to get very near to that grand and awful ball of fire — to touch it, measure it, bring away some trophy of it, was an adventure of much danger and very uncertain result! [1] Nothing but a voyage to the far East, and over the unknown seas and lands where the sun appeared to them to rise, could solve the problem. Like Columbus and his voyage of discovery across the western ocean, they had a conviction that they must get somewhere to an unexplored land, however far that somewhere lay to the East. So they agreed to sail. And this, briefly expressed, seems the probable origin of that most celebrated and interesting tale of antiquity, the voyage of Jason and his companions in the good ship Argo in search of the Golden Fleece.
I do not, of course, for a moment say or believe that it is history, or contains any historical truth whatever. I only offer this explanation to account for the existence of the myth. For history proper deals only with dates and with real persons; and when we can say nothing more of a given story (like that of the Trojan war) than that it may or may not describe a real incident, we are on the confines of fable, and can only speculate on possibilities. We have the narrative at length in the poem entitled “Argonautica” by Apollonius Rhodius, who lived and wrote in the time of the Ptolemies (about B.C. 200). We have it also in the eight books, bearing the same title, by the late Roman poet, Valerius Flaccus. But these men only reproduced in a later form ballads which, as we shall show, were familiar to Pindar and the tragic poets, and even to the author of the “Odyssey”
It is one of the most singular properties of Myths that they have a tendency to reappear, almost or quite unchanged, even in their most grotesque details, however late may be the particular composition in which they are embodied. Thus it is that what some regard as silly nursery stories, Cinderella or Jack and the Bean Stalk, will generally be found to have a far greater antiquity and a much wider prevalence than most persons would suppose. So, too, it is that a very late epic poet, like Quintus Smyrnaeus, who lived some centuries after the Christian era, has preserved a great deal of matter known to and used by the tragic poets more than four centuries before it. Let not therefore any one suppose that because Apollonius Rhodius lived and wrote only about two centuries before that era, therefore his poem carries no weight or authority as a legend of genuine antiquity. It is the object of this paper to show that the contrary is the case.
Possibly it will be objected that the solar interpretation of the story is strained and unnatural. A golden fleece “may have meant a rude method of collecting gold particles from running streams. These adventurers may, after all have only desired to go to certain far-off “diggings,” the reputation of which had reached them from the reports of merchants or travellers. They may have gone in search of a breed of sheep with wool of a naturally yellowish tint, like that of the Spanish sheep, so much prized by the Romans; [2] or, lastly, they may have been Phoenician adventurers, influenced solely by a wish to extend their commerce.
It is desirable, therefore, at the outset, to show that the sun is generally symbolised by a fiery cloud, or golden fleece, as the mantle of glory and majesty in which the god is wrapped. Amictus lumine sicut vestimento is the description that the Psalmist gives to the Divine Being himself. [3] The aegis of Pallas, the goddess of the Dawn, is in the same manner the fringed cloud that arrays in spangled light the Aurora of the Greek Mythology. [4] It was represented in ancient art, as may be seen on many of the early Greek vases, as a fringed goat-skin, the root of the word, which implies “rushing motion,” being confounded with αἴξ, “a goat.” We read in Homer [5] of the golden tassels or fringes surrounding it, and Herodotus tells us [6] that the dress of the goddess was derived from the stained goat-skins (apparently closely akin to what we still call Morocco leather) worn by Libyan women. This shows that he had not the least suspicion of the true origin of the symbol, as a solar “glory.” Even in early Christian art the oval nimbus, or aureole, enveloping the whole form of the Blessed Virgin, may be referred to the same traditional idea. The edges of the goat-skins were cut in strips and curled to imitate snakes’ heads, and this, which at first merely represented the ragged edges of a cloud, was designed to add terror to the form of the dread war-goddess.
So naturally is the idea of a cloud associated with that of a fleece, that Virgil describes the absence of cirri, or what we ourselves call “light fleecy clouds,” as a sign of the approach of fine weather, --
Tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri. [7]
But other proofs are not wanting that this interpretation of the “Golden Fleece” is the true one. We read in Sophocles [8] that the wife of Hercules, jealous of her husband’s supposed attachment to a younger woman, sent him, under the guise of a costly sacrificial robe, a garment smeared with some phosphoric preparation. It is to be noted that the poison itself was laid on with a piece of wool, and that the wool first caught fire and was consumed. [9] No sooner had he thrown the mantle round him, and approached the fire of the altar, than it burst into flame, and so nearly destroyed him that he implored his own son to finish his pains by burning him on a pyre upon Mount Oeta. A nearly identical story is told of Medea, who, enraged at Jason’s desertion of her for a royal bride, sent by her own children a robe and a golden coronet as a present to the princess. Here, too, the gift proved a fatal one, for not only the bride herself, but her aged father, who ran to her assistance, miserably perished by the fiery robe cleaving to their flesh. [10]
Now the evidence furnished by these several legends must be regarded as complete, when we consider that Hercules was the Sun-god; that his dying on the pyre obviously symbolises the Sun sinking in flames behind a hill; that Medea was the grand-daughter of the Sun, and that the fiery robe had been bequeathed by the Sun-god himself to his descendants. [11] Nor can we doubt that the gilt chaplet which adhered to the brow of the bride, like red-hot iron, is nothing more than a symbol of the round and glowing orb of the sun itself.
Thus far, then, we seem to have made out a clear case for the right explanation of the Argonautic legend. An expedition to bring home the golden fleece was an attempt — not either a very absurd or a very unnatural one in such remote ages, when the only knowledge was obtained through the senses — to get close enough to the rising sun to find out his true nature. The question of his real size was not, perhaps, entertained by them seriously, if at all. And, it is here important to observe, that even so advanced a thinker as Lucretius gravely teaches that the sun and moon cannot be very much larger than their apparent size. [12] Whenever, he argues, the outline of a fire seen by us on earth can be clearly defined, and is not a mere indistinct glow or flickering light, the distance cannot be sufficiently great to affect the size of it very seriously. Therefore, as the filum solis, the circular outline of the sun, seems clear and sharp, it cannot be so far remote as greatly to be diminished from its actual bulk by its distance from our eyes. The accumulated knowledge which enables us now to state with certainty that the diameter of the sun is very nearly nine hundred thousand miles, [13] and its distance from us about ninety-three millions, is certainly a marvellous advance on all such primitive and purely sensuous ideas!
There are some persons who read with utter incredulity the attempts of learned men to show that many of the legends of classical antiquity — even the Achilles and the Ulysses of Homer — may be readily explained by the ideas and the symbolism of a primitive sun-worship. They revolt from the theory as from a form of rationalism; and that, they are quite convinced, whatever be the subject to which it is applied, must, be something dangerous, if not positively wrong. In fact, they will hardly listen to the expounders of the theory, however good their claims to a fair hearing. “Everything,” they object, “was the sun, according to your view.” And the reply is not an irrational one: “Yes, everything was the sun, at a time and in a nation where the all-powerful and beneficent giver of light and heat engaged all the prayers and all the aspirations of the human race.” [14] With more reason we might ask. What possible explanation can be given to such stories as Sisyphus rolling a round stone uphill only to fall back again; or of Tantalus, now fearing lest a hanging rock should fall on his head, now standing up to his chin in water which evaded all his efforts to drink it; — what symbolism can they embody if they are not stories about the sun? His apparent descent into the nether world, and his daily reappearance in renewed vigour from out of the Eastern sea, where he reddened all things with his light,” [15] gave rise to the stories of penal tasks imposed in Hades for crimes committed in this life.
Again, the narrative in the “Odyssey” about Cyclops, and the blinding of his one eye, is either a very silly and impossible story, or it is a myth not inappropriately describing the extinction of the sun, the eye of day, in the “forehead of the sky,” as Milton calls it. If Ulysses himself meant, as the name will allow him to mean, the “setting sun,” the interpretation is as simple as possible; the setting of the sun puts out, or removes from sight, the orb that is the eye of the world — that far-ranging power to whom poets naturally and spontaneously attribute the faculty of sight. But you will convince very few persons, if you propound such a view, reasonable as it is and perfectly consistent in itself. Not less evident is it that the numerous and varied stories of the descent of heroes into the nether world in quest of some departed friend, whom they brought back to life, like Orpheus, who went to recover his Eurydice, are founded on the apparent sinking of the sun below the horizon and his speedy return to the surface of the world. Nothing, we say, can be more clear than this ; and those who cannot accept such an interpretation cannot have gone far into the history of primitive thought. If there is one fact more certain than another in the records and monuments of the ancient world, it is the wide prevalence of sun-worship. Therefore, there is the strongest antecedent probability that many of the primitive myths symbolise sun-worship too.
The fleece in quest of which Jason and his crew made their adventurous voyage to the Pontus, is not, of course, in the legend itself represented as the sun. It is peculiar to all solar myths to treat the subjects of them as real heroes. The authors of the stories were always quite unconscious that the heroes themselves are but representatives of the elemental power which underlies the whole narrative. Thus, to the author or authors of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” Achilles and Ulysses are mighty heroes who lived in remote ages, when man was a greater and a grander being than the men in the poet’s day. So with the sun-fleece; it was not a sun-fleece to Jason who went to fetch it, nor to Apollonius Rhodius who describes it; it was simply the skin of the ram that had carried Phrixus with his sister Helle [16] in their flight from the cruelty of their mother-in-law, the wife of Athamas. This ram had been offered up to Zeus, the God of Flight, on the spot where it had lauded by Phrixus himself at the command of the god Hermes. [17] Its skin had been consecrated on an oak-tree, in a sacred grove; and the description of it is very remarkable, because it shows how, even to the unconscious writer of the account, the “solar idea” is still present in the tradition. “It was like,” says the poet, “to a cloud which glows with the hot rays of the rising sun” Guided by the skill and inspired by the love of the fair sorceress Medea, [18]
Jason enters the grove and finds the glorious prize guarded by a huge snake, which hissed so loud that the grove and even the shores of the mighty rivers Araxes, Lycus, and Phasis resounded with the horrible din. [19] The monster, however, is put to sleep by her powerful incantations, and the fleece is carried off in triumph from the sacred oak. The description of Apollonius is very good, if somewhat turgid, as is the manner of the Alexandrine poets. It will be better, perhaps, to attempt a version of his words than to quote at length the twelve Greek hexameters (iv. 170 — 82).
Thus then did Jason joyfully hold aloft in his hands the huge fleece. On his brown cheeks and forehead a ruddy light, like a flame, settled from the flashing brightness of the tufts of wool. In size it nearly measured, in all directions, the hide of a yearling heifer, or a young stag. So heavy hung the wool-tufts that they covered him as with a roof; and the very earth as he walked seemed to glow beneath his feet. So he proceeded, now throwing it like a mantle over his left shoulder, so that it hung pendant to his feet, now clutching it tightly grasped and rolled into a smaller space, for much he feared lest some man or god who chanced to meet him, should deprive him of the prize.
We need not follow our hero in his return to his country with the fleece and accompanied by Medea, whose tragic story, and desertion by Jason, is the subject of the justly celebrated “Medea” of Euripides. We are anxious to pass on to a literary question of the highest interest. We shall show that between the scenes and the characters in the “Odyssey” and those in the Argonautics of Apollonius, there is a singular identity. How far the fact has hitherto been noticed by classical scholars, we are not prepared to say. But we shall show good reasons for thinking that the fact itself is highly suggestive, and deserves a working out which has never yet been assigned to it. Let us here say distinctly, that it is altogether a superficial view to assume, that because Homer lived very early and Apollonius very late, therefore Apollonius merely borrowed his story from Homer. We contend that such a fact is against all experience, and, for many reasons, very improbable in itself. It is a much sounder and more probable view, that both poems were composed independently out of older materials.
We have called the Argonautic legends “pre-Homeric.” Two verses in the “Odyssey” are in themselves quite conclusive. In xii. 69-70 the poet says (speaking of the “moving rocks” through which Ulysses had to sail) that “ the only ship that ever yet passed them was the far-famed Argo in her voyage from King Aeetes.”
Now, as these very same rocks (although in quite a different part of the world), these [clashing rocks], are described both in the “Odyssey” and in the “Argonautics,” [20] as Scylla and Charybdis, Circe, Calypso and the Sirens, Alcinous and his queen Arete, the savage king Echetus, [21] are common to both poems; it is a perfectly fair question to ask, which account is really the oldest? For, as we have said, it is not enough to reply, in an off-hand way, “Of course, the late Alexandrine poet copied all this from the ‘Odyssey’ the author of which lived at least 850 years before Christ.” For if so, how is it that the Argo is so explicitly mentioned in the “Odyssey”? Further, while it is perfectly easy to prove that Pindar and the tragic poets in the age of Pericles had the whole story of the Argonauts, and composed many tragedies from it; [22] it is very difficult to prove that they knew of the “Odyssey” in the form, at least, in which we possess it. Some persons will be surprised to be told that no mention appears to be made of the nymph Calypso or of the suitors of Penelope in any genuine passage, earlier than Plato or even Aristotle. Consequently, when we find Aeschylus comparing the murderess Clytemnestra to a Scylla who has her abode in the rocks to destroy sailors, [23] it becomes an inquiry of some importance, from which of these two sources did he obtain his knowledge? The very full account we have of the adventures of Jason and Medea in the fourth Pythian ode of Pindar, the contemporary of Aeschylus, makes it quite certain that the Argonautic story was current in their time, [24] while conversely, the marked discrepancies that exist between the accounts of Aeschylus and Homer of the murder of Agamemnon, and the vengeance taken by Orestes, tend to throw much uncertainty on the question, whether Aeschylus knew our poem of the Odyssey at all.
It is a very significant circumstance also, that the epithet applied in the “Odyssey” [25] to the enchantress Circe, Aeaean, is the same as that given in the “Argonautics.” [26] But Aeaea and Aeetes were words intimately connected with the Argonautic geography and the story of Jason; they have no direct relation to Ulysses. The word Aea, means “mainland,” and it seems to have been primarily applied to the continent that stretched away still eastward after navigators had touched the eastern shores of the Pontus. It is to be distinguished from Aeaea, which is described as an island. [27] Most of our readers are familiar with the opening verses of the Medea of Euripides; “O that the hull of the Argo had never scudded through the looming rocks of the Symplegades to Aea in Colchis” or, as the words are more commonly rendered, “to the land of the Colchians.” Of course, King Aeetes is the “lord of the mainland;” he is named in connexion with Phrixus in Pindar (“Pyth,” iv. 160), and as ruling the Colchian people near the Phasis (ibid. 213). This Phasis, we may here just remark, is unconsciously spoken of at many a dinner-table where the guests are asked if they will take some pheasant. For the Romans got this bird, it would appear, from that locality, and thence called it phasianus, as we read of it in Martial. The epithet was applied, however, much earlier, for Aristophanes, [28] appears to describe by it a particular breed of horses.
It appears on the whole very probable that the author of the “Odyssey,” by whatever name he is to be called, and at whatever period he composed that immortal poem, really was indebted to some still earlier epics about the Argo for his account of Circe and her island home in Aeaea. But, if he took from thence his character of Circe, we are bound, in logical consistency, to believe that he may also have derived his Scylla and Charybdis, his sirens and his king Alcinous with the good queen Arete, from the same source. It is quite surprising how large a portion of the Homeric story is common to the two poems. Thus, the nymph Calypso (Ap. iv. 574), the island of Thrinacia and the oxen of the Sun [ibid. 965), Aeolus the god of the winds {ibid. 765), besides the many coincidences already pointed out, seem to be consciously claimed by both poets as peculiarly their own. There seems only one explanation; both poems are based independently on the same earlier ballads.
Euripides also mentions the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Circe and the Cyclops, and the oxen of the Sun. It is rather remarkable, that whereas Aeschylus seems to have followed the “Argonautica,” Euripides seems to have known the “Odyssey,” in some form at least, if not precisely the present form, of that poem. For he makes the locality of Scylla to be, not the neighbourhood of the Pontus, but the Straits of Messina. He calls the monster Tyraenis and Thucydides, in describing the sites of the channel through which Ulysses was said to have sailed, says it was between the Tyrrhenian (or Ionian) and Sicilian seas. [29] From this, it is evident, Euripides gave her the epithet in question [Tyraenidos]. [30]
In a remarkable passage of the “Trojan Captives” (Troades) [31] Euripides gives an epitome of the main facts of the “Odyssey” in their direct connexion with Ulysses, which proves that he at least was acquainted with a poem, of which neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles shows any other knowledge than what may be inferred from the titles of two lost plays, [32] though we do not know what was their treatment.
A further argument for the priority of the “Argonautica” may be derived from the mention of the “Unstable Rocks” in both poems. [33] That these were volcanic, probably in the neighbourhood of Stromboli and the Liparse islands, seems more than probable, both from the name “shifting,” “moving about”, descriptive of a well-known property of submarine volcanos, and also from the distinct mention of smoke issuing from their summits. [34] Now we read in Apollonius how the Argo was conveyed safely past these dangerous rocks by Thetis and her sea-nymphs; and in allusion to this story the author of the “Odyssey” says, that “the only ship which ever got past them was the Argo!’ It is added that no birds ever pass it,” [35] not even the doves which are carrying ambrosia to Father Zeus ; but one even of these is always taken off, only the father sends in another to make the number complete.
This is, per se, a very curious tradition. The dove is a well-known Eastern symbol of divine favour and protection; but the mention of it in the “Odyssey” seems somewhat lame and unconnected. Now, in the account of the passage through the dangerous Symplegades, in a very different part of the world, the Propontis, Apollonius Rhodius gives a narrative at once consistent and archaic in its very details. The good ship, as Phineus the seer had foretold, would pass safely through the clashing rocks, if a dove let loose from the prow should make the passage. Euphemus, we are told, [36] sent the dove on its mission of danger. It flew through them, but lost its tail feathers, by the meeting of the rocks at the moment of its flight.
Here, we have no doubt, we have the nearest approach to the original story. The version of it in the “Odyssey,” transferred from the icebergs of the Propontis to the basaltic rocks of the Sicilian Sea, is probably later, because it bears the character of imitation. The idea in the mind of the author of the “Odyssey” was, that many doves had been “nipped,” and had lost their lives, not merely their tails. The addition is unquestionably feeble: “But Father Zeus always sends another to take their place.”
We have said, instead of the received word, the Symplegades, or clashing rocks, “the icebergs of the Propontis.” This is a matter of much literary and geological interest. It may be a record, or rather a dim tradition, of a remote pre-historic period, reaching back nearly to that “glacial” era, the existence of which appears to be now generally accepted as a scientific certainty.
Such a tradition, and one quite independent of this, is that the plains of Elis were once covered with deep snow. Another name for the Symplegades was Cyaneae, “the dark blue” rocks ; and the word is used as an epithet by Euripides. [37] There must have been some special reason for the use of this word, as well as for the tradition of moving and clashing rocks, which the mere effect of perspective will not sufficiently account for. Pindar says [38] they rolled and plunged like living things, which is exactly what icebergs do; the reflection of the sun upon them also gives them a tint well described by cyaneae, “bluish”, [39] the tradition that they ceased to roll, and stood still after the Argo had passed them, is precisely what icebergs would do when stranded at the mouth of the Bosphorus, to which they had been carried by the current from the icebound coasts and rivers on the north of the Pontus.
Modern attempts to explain the phenomena described by the legend are far-fetched. There is really more to be said for the expressed opinion of Humboldt, that the breaking of the barrier of the Euxine, formerly a great inclosed lake, and the discharge of its waters into the Aegean Sea through the Sea of Marmora, were events probably within the range of the human period. [40] The peril of ships in the Arctic and Antarctic seas, from the closing of icefloes, is too well known to require any illustration. The Argo, says the story, got safely through them, and then they were stranded and never moved more. [41]
But we are told that this is only a silly story about some rocks that are still to be seen near the entrance of the Bosphorus. The following is the account given in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Geography [42]: --
Strabo (p. 319) correctly describes their number and situation: he calls them “two little isles, one on the European, and the other on the Asiatic side of the strait, separated from each other by twenty stadia.” The more ancient account, representing them as sometimes separated, and at others joined together, was explained by Tournefort, who observed that each of them consists of one craggy island, but that when the sea is disturbed the water covers the lower parts, so as to make the different points of either resemble insular rocks. They are, in fact, each joined to the mainland by a kind of Isthmus, and appear as islands when this is inundated, which always happens in stormy weather.
Such an explanation, we repeat, is altogether inadequate. [43] Rocky islands occur everywhere, but the story of their closing on ships is not applied to any but these. Nothing, as it seems to us, but the iceberg theory will really satisfy the conditions of the legend.
We have already observed that Apollonius Rhodius does not call these rocks the Symplegades, with Euripides, but Planctae and these again, in common with the Odyssey, he associates with volcanic agency. [44] The instability, due to different causes, both perhaps equally real in their origin, have become confounded in the legend.
Pindar’s long Pythian ode, the fourth, written not later than B.C. 470, contains an interesting and brilliant account of Jason as the hero of the Argonautic expedition. Incidentally, he mentions the voyage to Lemnos and the crime of the Lemnian women, who had murdered their husbands. [45] In a chorus of the Choephoroe, Aeschylus alludes to the same tale, and adds that the deed was regarded everywhere as accursed. [46] Sophocles and Euripides allude to the cruel act of Phineus in putting out the eyes of his own sons through jealousy of their mother Cleopatra. [47] Now, the very same tale was known to Apollonius, who mentions Cleopatra by name; [48] and, indeed, the fame of the prophet, his blindness, and the punishment inflicted on him by Apollo for too freely declaring the counsels of Zeus, in having his food always carried away by Harpies, [49] were among the celebrated stories of antiquity. The legend appears to record some destructive flights of locusts, the putrefaction of which caused the foul stink which forms a part of the story, while the driving away of the Harpies by the sons of Boreas [50] may be explained by the removal of the clouds of these insects by a strong north-wind. Some half-mythical geography of the Pontus — e.g., Salmydessus, Thermodon, Themiscura, the Bosphorus, common to the tragic poets, [51] evidently came from the ancient Argonautica. But one of the most remarkable coincidences between Pindar and Apollonius, and one which incontestably proves that Apollonius has but worked up in his own way an older story, [52] ft is the meeting of Jason and his crew with the god Triton in the Libyan desert. To appreciate the close identity, the reader should have the strange story presented to him in the words of each poet.
Pindar writes thus [53] --
We have already observed that Apollonius Rhodius does not call these rocks the Symplegades, with Euripides, but Planctae and these again, in common with the Odyssey, he associates with volcanic agency. [44] The instability, due to different causes, both perhaps equally real in their origin, have become confounded in the legend.
Pindar’s long Pythian ode, the fourth, written not later than B.C. 470, contains an interesting and brilliant account of Jason as the hero of the Argonautic expedition. Incidentally, he mentions the voyage to Lemnos and the crime of the Lemnian women, who had murdered their husbands. [45] In a chorus of the Choephoroe, Aeschylus alludes to the same tale, and adds that the deed was regarded everywhere as accursed. [46] Sophocles and Euripides allude to the cruel act of Phineus in putting out the eyes of his own sons through jealousy of their mother Cleopatra. [47] Now, the very same tale was known to Apollonius, who mentions Cleopatra by name; [48] and, indeed, the fame of the prophet, his blindness, and the punishment inflicted on him by Apollo for too freely declaring the counsels of Zeus, in having his food always carried away by Harpies, [49] were among the celebrated stories of antiquity. The legend appears to record some destructive flights of locusts, the putrefaction of which caused the foul stink which forms a part of the story, while the driving away of the Harpies by the sons of Boreas [50] may be explained by the removal of the clouds of these insects by a strong north-wind. Some half-mythical geography of the Pontus — e.g., Salmydessus, Thermodon, Themiscura, the Bosphorus, common to the tragic poets, [51] evidently came from the ancient Argonautica. But one of the most remarkable coincidences between Pindar and Apollonius, and one which incontestably proves that Apollonius has but worked up in his own way an older story, [52] ft is the meeting of Jason and his crew with the god Triton in the Libyan desert. To appreciate the close identity, the reader should have the strange story presented to him in the words of each poet.
Pindar writes thus [53] --
It shall come to pass that Thera shall one day become the mother of great cities, by that token which once, at the mouth of the lake Tritonis, Euphemus descending from the brow received at the hands of a god, when in the likeness of a man he offered him as a hospitable gift a clod of earth . . . . It was then that the God who haunts the wilds (Triton) came up to them, having assumed the cheery countenance of a venerable man ; and he commenced a friendly address in terms such as well-doers use when they first offer hospitality to strangers on their arrival. Then he told us that he was Eurypylus, the son of the Earth-holder, the immortal Ennosides. And he was aware we were pressed for time; so instantly catching up in his right hand a hospitable offering of field-earth that chanced to lie before him, he desired to make that a friendly gift. Nor did Euphemus refuse to comply, but leaping on the shore, and joining hand to hand he took from him the fateful clod.
Compare the precisely similar narrative in Apollonius (iv. 1551):—
Then they were met by the widely ruling Triton in the guise of a young man, who took up a clod of earth and offered it as a hospitable gift to the heroes, with these words: — “I am lord of the coast-land, if in some other country you have heard of one Eurypylus, a native of Libya, the nurse of wild animals.” So spake he; and forthwith Euphemus held his hand to receive the clod, and said these words in reply.
In Apollonius (ii. 500 seqq) we have an account of the nymph Cyrene, carried off by Apollo, and by him becoming the mother of Aristaeus. Pindar (Pyth. ix.) says precisely the same; and both poets add, that the shepherd-god Aristaeus was also invoked as Agreus and Nomios. Evidently, therefore, a common source or tradition for the statement was known to both.
One of the many close resemblances between the “Argonautics” of Apollonius and the “Odyssey” is the account of the oxen of the sun in the island of Thrinacia, tended by two fair nymphs, Lampetie and Phaethusa. [54] But nothing is said in the “Argonautics” about killing any of the sacred herd, an act which, in the “Odyssey,” brings a heavy retribution. Here, again, it seems that both poets independently followed older accounts. The name Thrinacia, which carries with it no intelligible meaning, appears to us a change introduced by the rhapsodists from the word Trinacria, the island with the three headlands, i.e., Sicily, [55] partly from metrical convenience, but more so from that singular affectation of great antiquity which has stamped many words in our Homeric texts with a pseudo-archaic character. To fix the precise geographical position of the half mythical Thrinacia would of course be impossible. In Homer it seems to be in the region of the Euxine; [56] in Apollonius it may fairly occupy the position of Rhodes or Sicily. It is obvious, however, that Apollonius, writing at so late a period as that of the Ptolemies, purposely avoided the identification of the Sun-island with any real and then well-known geographical position. For the whole point and interest of these old stories is lost when once we pass from the regions of cloudland into that of fixed sites and historical localities. To make the Scheria or Phseacia of the “ Odyssey” nothing more nor less than the Corcyra of Thucydides, is to divest the narrative of its true character by changing mystery into reality.
The efforts of early writers to get rid of merely mythical geography, and to ascertain the true names and relative positions of seas, cities, and islands, is in itself an interesting subject of thought and inquiry. To the last there were lingering beliefs in India being an extension of Ethiopia, in a circling ocean stream, in a river Eridanus, in lakes and rivers connected with subterranean and infernal agencies, in a somewhat “uncanny” city called Tartessus, in the far West, [57] to say nothing of weird lands inhabited by Gorgon, Harpies, one-eyed women, et hoc genus omne. Perhaps Herodotus was the first who travelled as a scientific explorer of the parts of the world dimly known and incorrectly described and mapped out by the Logographers, such as Hecatseus of Miletus. But we find Aeschylus in the early play of The Persians (B.C. 472), giving a pretty long and correct list of the Ionian cities and settlements of the Asiatic coast which had hitherto paid tribute to the great King. Maps of a rude kind were used before the time of Herodotus, and they are mentioned also by Apollonius Rhodius. [58]
The Sirens, or “Pipers,” form the subject of another myth common to Homer and Apollonius. They are not mentioned by Hesiod, Pindar, or Aeschylus; but Sophocles is quoted by Plutarch as having referred to them in connexion with the wanderings of Ulysses, [59] and Euripides alludes to them once in the “Helena.” [60] We read in Homer of their enchanting songs, and of Ulysses having stopped the ears of his crew with wax, that they might not hear those lovely but fatal strains as they sailed past the island, while he himself listened to them tied fast to the mast” [61] The story, without doubt, is very ancient, and it seems to have had many versions. The Sirens symbolised the magic power which the fascinations of women exercise over men, “song” and “incantation” being nearly the same ideas expressed in similar words. In Apollonius [62] they are called Daughters of Achelous and the Muse Terpsichore, in shape now resembling birds, now young maidens. One of the crew, by name Butes, unable to resist the melody, leaped into the sea, and was only saved by a miracle from being drowned in swimming to their island. Now Euripides, who calls the Sirens winged, seems to refer to the Argonautics, and not to the “Odyssey,” though he also calls them “Children of Earth.” Conversely, Sophocles, as we have seen, said that Ulysses visited them, and yet he calls them “Daughters of Phorcus,” and says they sang death-dirges. The inference from this is a very curious one; that Sophocles may not have had the “Odyssey” in its present form, but other stories about the adventures of Ulysses which, without doubt, were current in very early times. Be this as it may, another very striking fact is here to be mentioned. Apollodorus, in his “Bibliotheca,” [63] who, though a late writer, doubtless epitomised the earlier authors, such as Pherecydes and Acusilaus, mentions not only the Sirens, but Scylla and Charybdis, Thrinacia, the oxen of the Sun, Alcinous, the Plauctse, only in connexion with the Argonauts. He does not allude to them at all in their relation to Ulysses. He seems, therefore, as a matter of priority, to have considered the genuine legend to be Argonautic and not Homeric; and, in all probability, though the conclusion is a somewhat startling one, he was right.
But here we are met by a further difficulty. In Book I. chap. iii. he gives the parentage of the Sirens nearly as in Apollonius — viz., the Daughters of Achelous and Melpomene; but he adds this clause — “about whom we will speak in our narrative about Ulysses.” This part of his work being lost, we cannot say how the double narrative was treated by him. [64] It is very possible, and even probable, that he would have repeated the same stories in his account of the wanderings of Ulysses; possibly, too, the identity of the accounts would have struck him more than it seems to have struck modern scholars. Anyhow, he seems to give precedence or priority of time to the Argonautic story. So far as we know, there is no other example in antiquity of two quite distinct poems being composed of incidents absolutely identical. Can we conceive an Alexandrine poet, solely on his own caprice, and without any ancient authority, simply importing into his own poem these primary incidents of the “Odyssey?” If he did this, and make up his more modern poem with the most barefaced plagiarisms, from what sources did he derive those other non-Homeric portions of the story which were familiar to Pindar and the Tragics? How is it, for instance, that both poets make Pelias to live in constant fear of “the man with one shoe,” whom the oracle had forewarned him of as the claimant and invader of his kingdom?” [65]
The character of Jason, as given by Pindar, is one of great interest. It shows how strong and sincere an admiration for a chaste and virtuous life could be felt even by those who too often set all morality at defiance in their practice. Jason, we are told, was the pupil of old Chiron the Centaur, who also taught the young Achilles. We have pictures of him on ancient Greek vases, handling the lute and showing Achilles how to use it. How beautiful is the consciousness of manly innocence with which Jason accosts king Pelias in answer to his inquiries: --
One of the many close resemblances between the “Argonautics” of Apollonius and the “Odyssey” is the account of the oxen of the sun in the island of Thrinacia, tended by two fair nymphs, Lampetie and Phaethusa. [54] But nothing is said in the “Argonautics” about killing any of the sacred herd, an act which, in the “Odyssey,” brings a heavy retribution. Here, again, it seems that both poets independently followed older accounts. The name Thrinacia, which carries with it no intelligible meaning, appears to us a change introduced by the rhapsodists from the word Trinacria, the island with the three headlands, i.e., Sicily, [55] partly from metrical convenience, but more so from that singular affectation of great antiquity which has stamped many words in our Homeric texts with a pseudo-archaic character. To fix the precise geographical position of the half mythical Thrinacia would of course be impossible. In Homer it seems to be in the region of the Euxine; [56] in Apollonius it may fairly occupy the position of Rhodes or Sicily. It is obvious, however, that Apollonius, writing at so late a period as that of the Ptolemies, purposely avoided the identification of the Sun-island with any real and then well-known geographical position. For the whole point and interest of these old stories is lost when once we pass from the regions of cloudland into that of fixed sites and historical localities. To make the Scheria or Phseacia of the “ Odyssey” nothing more nor less than the Corcyra of Thucydides, is to divest the narrative of its true character by changing mystery into reality.
The efforts of early writers to get rid of merely mythical geography, and to ascertain the true names and relative positions of seas, cities, and islands, is in itself an interesting subject of thought and inquiry. To the last there were lingering beliefs in India being an extension of Ethiopia, in a circling ocean stream, in a river Eridanus, in lakes and rivers connected with subterranean and infernal agencies, in a somewhat “uncanny” city called Tartessus, in the far West, [57] to say nothing of weird lands inhabited by Gorgon, Harpies, one-eyed women, et hoc genus omne. Perhaps Herodotus was the first who travelled as a scientific explorer of the parts of the world dimly known and incorrectly described and mapped out by the Logographers, such as Hecatseus of Miletus. But we find Aeschylus in the early play of The Persians (B.C. 472), giving a pretty long and correct list of the Ionian cities and settlements of the Asiatic coast which had hitherto paid tribute to the great King. Maps of a rude kind were used before the time of Herodotus, and they are mentioned also by Apollonius Rhodius. [58]
The Sirens, or “Pipers,” form the subject of another myth common to Homer and Apollonius. They are not mentioned by Hesiod, Pindar, or Aeschylus; but Sophocles is quoted by Plutarch as having referred to them in connexion with the wanderings of Ulysses, [59] and Euripides alludes to them once in the “Helena.” [60] We read in Homer of their enchanting songs, and of Ulysses having stopped the ears of his crew with wax, that they might not hear those lovely but fatal strains as they sailed past the island, while he himself listened to them tied fast to the mast” [61] The story, without doubt, is very ancient, and it seems to have had many versions. The Sirens symbolised the magic power which the fascinations of women exercise over men, “song” and “incantation” being nearly the same ideas expressed in similar words. In Apollonius [62] they are called Daughters of Achelous and the Muse Terpsichore, in shape now resembling birds, now young maidens. One of the crew, by name Butes, unable to resist the melody, leaped into the sea, and was only saved by a miracle from being drowned in swimming to their island. Now Euripides, who calls the Sirens winged, seems to refer to the Argonautics, and not to the “Odyssey,” though he also calls them “Children of Earth.” Conversely, Sophocles, as we have seen, said that Ulysses visited them, and yet he calls them “Daughters of Phorcus,” and says they sang death-dirges. The inference from this is a very curious one; that Sophocles may not have had the “Odyssey” in its present form, but other stories about the adventures of Ulysses which, without doubt, were current in very early times. Be this as it may, another very striking fact is here to be mentioned. Apollodorus, in his “Bibliotheca,” [63] who, though a late writer, doubtless epitomised the earlier authors, such as Pherecydes and Acusilaus, mentions not only the Sirens, but Scylla and Charybdis, Thrinacia, the oxen of the Sun, Alcinous, the Plauctse, only in connexion with the Argonauts. He does not allude to them at all in their relation to Ulysses. He seems, therefore, as a matter of priority, to have considered the genuine legend to be Argonautic and not Homeric; and, in all probability, though the conclusion is a somewhat startling one, he was right.
But here we are met by a further difficulty. In Book I. chap. iii. he gives the parentage of the Sirens nearly as in Apollonius — viz., the Daughters of Achelous and Melpomene; but he adds this clause — “about whom we will speak in our narrative about Ulysses.” This part of his work being lost, we cannot say how the double narrative was treated by him. [64] It is very possible, and even probable, that he would have repeated the same stories in his account of the wanderings of Ulysses; possibly, too, the identity of the accounts would have struck him more than it seems to have struck modern scholars. Anyhow, he seems to give precedence or priority of time to the Argonautic story. So far as we know, there is no other example in antiquity of two quite distinct poems being composed of incidents absolutely identical. Can we conceive an Alexandrine poet, solely on his own caprice, and without any ancient authority, simply importing into his own poem these primary incidents of the “Odyssey?” If he did this, and make up his more modern poem with the most barefaced plagiarisms, from what sources did he derive those other non-Homeric portions of the story which were familiar to Pindar and the Tragics? How is it, for instance, that both poets make Pelias to live in constant fear of “the man with one shoe,” whom the oracle had forewarned him of as the claimant and invader of his kingdom?” [65]
The character of Jason, as given by Pindar, is one of great interest. It shows how strong and sincere an admiration for a chaste and virtuous life could be felt even by those who too often set all morality at defiance in their practice. Jason, we are told, was the pupil of old Chiron the Centaur, who also taught the young Achilles. We have pictures of him on ancient Greek vases, handling the lute and showing Achilles how to use it. How beautiful is the consciousness of manly innocence with which Jason accosts king Pelias in answer to his inquiries: --
I am the pupil of Chiron. I come straight from his cave on the hills, where I was brought up side by side with the virtuous maiden daughters of Chiron. For twenty years I have not said one word or done a single act to them that was unbecoming. And now you see me here to claim my father’s kingdom which has been held by a tyrant and a usurper. [66]
“Jason” means “healer,” as Chiron means “handy” The young man had been taught what the old man had long practised, the kindly arts of a hermit of the wilds, — how to cure wounds and blains, sun- strokes and frost-bitten limbs. [67]
The name then was fancifully associated with iasthai and iatros, and Iason was “the medicine-man.” The name was given him, he declared, by Chiron himself [68] Here is a magnificent description of his person; [69] we commend it heartily to any artist who desires an effective theme for a powerful picture:
The name then was fancifully associated with iasthai and iatros, and Iason was “the medicine-man.” The name was given him, he declared, by Chiron himself [68] Here is a magnificent description of his person; [69] we commend it heartily to any artist who desires an effective theme for a powerful picture:
He came, that hero bold, striking awe as he went by the two pointed darts that he grasped in his hand. On him was a dress, partly native to the Magnesians of Thessaly fitting close to his grand limbs, [70] while over it was thrown a leopard’s skin to protect him from the hurtling showers. Not yet had the glossy locks of his hair been severed from his head, but they hung gleaming all down his back.
Such was the stripling who won the heart of the too loving Medea. She followed his fortunes, and we know the end of the tragic story from Euripides. Now, we are not going to write one word of disparagement against that splendid and powerful tragedy, the “Medea.” But there our Jason of Chiron’s cave is but too sadly transformed into the special pleader, not to say the dishonest quibbler of the Athenian assembly. His desertion of Medea and engaging in a new marriage with the Corinthian princess, is a tale of woe familiar to every school-boy. It must have been a splendid sight on the Attic stage to see the outraged wife and sorceress, the grand- daughter of the Sun, born aloft in a gilded car, defying her enemies, and leaving to Jason the corpses of his murdered children.
That the story of Jason is really, as I have contended, a “Solar Myth” is very evident from another circumstance. He is ordered by King Aetes, as a condition of carrying off the Golden Fleece, to tame certain brazen-footed and fire-breathing bulls, and yoke them to a plough of adamant. This task he performs by the aid of the enchantress Medea. The bulls are expressly said to have been made by the god Hephaestus for the Sun, [71] because when he had become weary in the conflict against the giants, the Sun had received him, the fire-god, in his car. “Therefore,” says the poet, “he made for him bulls with brazen mouths and brazen feet, and a plough of adamant.”
Now, it is to be observed that Jason, in taming these bulls, throws them violently on their knees. [72] It is an interesting fact that this very act is represented in a celebrated group, not uncommon in ancient art, of the Persian Sun-god Mithras. He is portrayed as “a handsome youth kneeling on a bull, which is thrown on the ground, and whose throat he is cutting.” [73] Clearly, then, Jason is engaged in the same contest. Nor is the story a late figment of Apollonius. Pindar has exactly the same relation as Apollonius: [74] --
That the story of Jason is really, as I have contended, a “Solar Myth” is very evident from another circumstance. He is ordered by King Aetes, as a condition of carrying off the Golden Fleece, to tame certain brazen-footed and fire-breathing bulls, and yoke them to a plough of adamant. This task he performs by the aid of the enchantress Medea. The bulls are expressly said to have been made by the god Hephaestus for the Sun, [71] because when he had become weary in the conflict against the giants, the Sun had received him, the fire-god, in his car. “Therefore,” says the poet, “he made for him bulls with brazen mouths and brazen feet, and a plough of adamant.”
Now, it is to be observed that Jason, in taming these bulls, throws them violently on their knees. [72] It is an interesting fact that this very act is represented in a celebrated group, not uncommon in ancient art, of the Persian Sun-god Mithras. He is portrayed as “a handsome youth kneeling on a bull, which is thrown on the ground, and whose throat he is cutting.” [73] Clearly, then, Jason is engaged in the same contest. Nor is the story a late figment of Apollonius. Pindar has exactly the same relation as Apollonius: [74] --
Now when Aeetes had set before them the plough of adamant and the bulls that breathed from their tawny jaws the flame of burning fire, and with brazen hoofs stamped the ground with alternate steps, Jason forced them by the sole strength of his arm to submit their necks to the collar of the yoke, and drove them to the end of a furrow which he had marked by a straight line.
The narrative of Apollonius is longer, but the reader who will take the trouble to compare it will feel convinced of the general truth of my proposition, that very old Argonautica existed, well-known to Pindar and the Tragics, even at an era prior to the composition or compilation of the “Odyssey” The subject is worthy of further investigation. What I have said has been advanced in the spirit of inquiry, and as far removed as possible from that of dogmatic or confident assertion.
NOTES
[1] Diodorus Siculus, in describing the motives of the expedition (iv. 40), remarks that Jason viewed the exploit of winning the Golden Fleece as “difficult indeed of attainment, yet not altogether impossible.”
[2] Martial, Ep. v. 37, 7; xiv. 133.
[3] Psalm ciii. 2.
[4] Aurora is said to be the same word as Eos or Hos, “Morning,” and perhaps with Helios, “the Sun.” (Curtius, “Greek Etymology,” 1. 402.)
[5] “Iliad,” ii. 448.
[6] Lib. iv. 189.
[7] “Georgic,” i. 397.
[8] “Trachiniae,” 602.
[9] Ibid. 696.
[10] Euripides, “Medea,” 1215.
[11] “Medea,” 955.
[12] “Lucretius,” v. 565, 576.
[13] 886,887 miles, according to Mrs. Somerville, writing as long ago as
1849 (“Connexion of the Physical Sciences,” p. 64).
[14] The Indian Rig-Vedas are filled with these notions of living elemental powers. The possible extinction of the sun {i.e. the voluntary withdrawal of his light) was the one object of their superstitious fears. Even the Egyptians thought their Osiris was under the malign influence of the demon Typho. Of course all these notions were greatly encouraged by occasional eclipses.
[15] This is the true origin of our term, “Red Sea,” which was anciently applied to the Indian Ocean.
[16] She was said to have been drowned by falling from the back of the ram in crossing the sea which, from her fate, was afterwards called “Helle’s Sea,” or Hellespont. The story is told in Ovid’s “Fasti,” iii. 870, and there is a fresco-painting of the subject found at Pompeii, and long since published.
[17] Apollonius Rhodius, iv. 120. The story is given at some length by
Diodorus Siculus, iv. 47.
[18] Like Helen, and indeed, like the Calypso and the Circe of the “Odyssey,” a divine or semi-divine character attached to these persons in a remote antiquity. The deification, so to say, of woman’s influence over man, is a curious and suggestive theme ; but the subject is too long and intricate to be more than mentioned here.
[19] Ap. Rhod., ii. 405; iv. 130, seq.; Pindar, “Pyth.,” iv. 254, says that the fleece was held in the jaws of a snake as long and as thick as a fifty-oared galley! The belief in enormous serpents seems to have been common in all ages, and it has survived to our own in stories about the sea-serpent.
[20] “Odyssey,” xii. 60; Apoll. Rhod., iv. 925.
[21] Apoll., iv. 1093. See “Odyssey,” xviii. 85.
[22] The Hypsipyle and Phineus of Aeschylus, the Colchii (or Colchides), the Lemnian Women, the Pelias, the Phineus, the Phrixus of Sophocles, the Peliades, the Phrixus, and the Hypsipyle of Euripides. Not a few isolated passages in other plays have evident reference to the ancient Argonantics.
[23] Agamemnon,” 1233. The story arose, there can be little doubt, from the formidable cuttle-fish which are still found in the Straits of Messina and off the coasts of Sicily.
[24] It was known to antiquity by the title of Minyas poiesis. Pausanias, lib. X 28.
[25] xii. 273. Compare x. 135, where Ulysses says, “Then we arrived at the island Aeaea, and there dwelt the fair-haired Circe, a goddess, though speaking with human voice.”
[26] Apoll. Rhod., iv. 531. Circe was the sister of Aeetes, and had been transferred from Aea to the Tyrrhenian coast of the Western land in the chariot of the sun (Apoll., iii. 310). It is there, on the Italian coast, that the Odyssey finds her. Diodorus, iv. 43, makes Circe the daughter of Aeetes and Hecate, and the sister of Medea.
[27] Aea, is regarded as situated at the farthest confines of the world (Apoll. Rhod., ii. 417).
[28] “Nubes,” 109. This river (the Bion), at the eastern extremity of the Euxine, is appropriately described as the site of the Golden Fleece (Apoll. Rhod., ii. 400).
[29] Thucydides, iv. 24.
[30] “Medea,” 1342 and 1359.
[31] 435, seq.
[32] The Penelope of Aeschylus and the Nausicaa of Sophocles. The one passage in Pindar which may refer to the Odyssey is “ Nemea,” vii. 21.
[33] “Odyssey,” xii. 61 ; Apoll. Rhod., iv. 924. In this latter passage they are described as near to Charybdis, which coincides with the Homeric site. But Homer nowhere mentions the Gyanece of Apoll. Rhod., ii. 318, and iv. 304.
[34] Apoll. Rhod., ibid. So in “Odyssey,” xii. 68.
[35] This reminds us of the derivation of the lake Avernus from aornos, Virg. Aen. vi. 242.
[36] Apoll. Ehod., ii. 560-73. The prophecy of Phineus is in ii. 317, seq.
[37] “Medea,” 2. The name Symplegades does not occur in Homer, Pindar, or Apollonius.
[38] “Pyth.,” iv. 209.
[39] Coerulea glacie, Virg. Georg. i:, 236.
[40] This curious and very important tradition is preserved by Diodorus Siculus, V. 47. Humboldt comments on it in his “Cosmos,” but we cannot now give the reference.
[41] Theocritus, xiii. 24.
[42] Art. Bosphorus.
[43] It should, however, be observed that Sophocles calls them “table-rocks” (“Antig.,” 966).
[44] “Argonaut,” iv. 860, 924, 939.
[45] “Pyth.,” iv.252.
[46] “Choeph.,” 631. Apollonius relates the affair, “Argonaut,” i. 600, seq.
[47] “Antig.,” 971, where they are mentioned in connexion with the Cyanese. Eurip. “Iph. T.,” 422; Diodorus, iv. 43, 44.
[48] “Argonaut,” ii. 239.
[49] Apollonius, ii. 180. See Virg. Aen., iii. 212, seq.
[50] The great antiquity of this story is shown by its being made the subject of a sculpture at Amyclae, near Sparta, by an artist called Bathycles (Pausan., iii. 18, 15), believed to be contemporary with Solon, or about B.C. 600.
[51] See, for instance, Aesch. “Prom. Vinct.,” 724, seq. There are good reasons indeed for thinking that the subject of the play was itself taken from the old Argonautica. See Apoll. Rhod., ii. 370, 995, 1247.
[52] To suppose that he copied from Pindar would be to have a very imperfect idea of the literary resources of the ancients.
[53] “Pyth.,” iv. 20, seq.
[54] “Odyssey,” xii. 127 ; Apoll. Rhod., iv. 965.
[55] Trinacria, as a name of Sicily, is first mentioned in Thucydides, vi. 2.
[56] See “Juventus Mundi,” p. 481, 486; “Homer,” says Mr. Gladstone, p. 480, “appears to have compounded into one group two sets of Phoenician reports concerning the entrance from without to the Thalassa or Mediterranean : one of them referring to the Straits of Messina, with their Scylla and Oharybdis; the other to the Bosphorus and its Planctai.”
[57] Ar. Ran., 475.
[58] Arg., iv. 281; Herodotus, v. 49.
[59] See Soph. Frag., 407, ed., Dind.
[60] v. 169.
[61] “Odyssey,” xii. 178.
[62] Arg., iv. 894.
[63] Lib. i. 9, 25.
[64] Apollodorus is believed to have compiled his work about B.C. 140. As we have it, it is imperfect ; it may be that, like the Characters of Theophrastus, only an abbreviation of a larger work has come down to us. “The part which is wanting at the end contained the stories of the families of Pelops and Atreus, and probably the whole of the Trojan cycle also.” (Smith’s “ Greek and Roman Biography,” i. p. 234.) It is singular that the same narrative about Ulysses is wanting in Diodorus Siculus, who treats of the Argouautic expedition at length in his Fourth Book.
[65] Apollon. Rhod., i. 7; Pind. “Pyth.,” iv. 75.
[66] Pind. “Pyth.,” iv. 102—7.
[67] Pind. “Pyth.,” iii. 50.
[68] “Pyth.,” iv. 119.
[69] Ibid. 79—83.
[70] “Veste stricta et singulos artus exprimente,” is a phrase by which Tacitus describes the dress of the wealthier German chiefs, “Germ.” ch. 17.
[71] Apoll. Rhod., iii. 233.
[72] Apoll, iii. 1308.
[73] Smith’s “Dictionary of Biography,” ii. p. 1093; Diodorus, iv. 47, endeavours to explain the story rationally; the fierce bulls, he says, are only another name for the savage nation of the Tauri, in the Crimea.
[74] “Pyth.,” iv. 224; Apoll. Rhod., iii. 1290, seq.
[2] Martial, Ep. v. 37, 7; xiv. 133.
[3] Psalm ciii. 2.
[4] Aurora is said to be the same word as Eos or Hos, “Morning,” and perhaps with Helios, “the Sun.” (Curtius, “Greek Etymology,” 1. 402.)
[5] “Iliad,” ii. 448.
[6] Lib. iv. 189.
[7] “Georgic,” i. 397.
[8] “Trachiniae,” 602.
[9] Ibid. 696.
[10] Euripides, “Medea,” 1215.
[11] “Medea,” 955.
[12] “Lucretius,” v. 565, 576.
[13] 886,887 miles, according to Mrs. Somerville, writing as long ago as
1849 (“Connexion of the Physical Sciences,” p. 64).
[14] The Indian Rig-Vedas are filled with these notions of living elemental powers. The possible extinction of the sun {i.e. the voluntary withdrawal of his light) was the one object of their superstitious fears. Even the Egyptians thought their Osiris was under the malign influence of the demon Typho. Of course all these notions were greatly encouraged by occasional eclipses.
[15] This is the true origin of our term, “Red Sea,” which was anciently applied to the Indian Ocean.
[16] She was said to have been drowned by falling from the back of the ram in crossing the sea which, from her fate, was afterwards called “Helle’s Sea,” or Hellespont. The story is told in Ovid’s “Fasti,” iii. 870, and there is a fresco-painting of the subject found at Pompeii, and long since published.
[17] Apollonius Rhodius, iv. 120. The story is given at some length by
Diodorus Siculus, iv. 47.
[18] Like Helen, and indeed, like the Calypso and the Circe of the “Odyssey,” a divine or semi-divine character attached to these persons in a remote antiquity. The deification, so to say, of woman’s influence over man, is a curious and suggestive theme ; but the subject is too long and intricate to be more than mentioned here.
[19] Ap. Rhod., ii. 405; iv. 130, seq.; Pindar, “Pyth.,” iv. 254, says that the fleece was held in the jaws of a snake as long and as thick as a fifty-oared galley! The belief in enormous serpents seems to have been common in all ages, and it has survived to our own in stories about the sea-serpent.
[20] “Odyssey,” xii. 60; Apoll. Rhod., iv. 925.
[21] Apoll., iv. 1093. See “Odyssey,” xviii. 85.
[22] The Hypsipyle and Phineus of Aeschylus, the Colchii (or Colchides), the Lemnian Women, the Pelias, the Phineus, the Phrixus of Sophocles, the Peliades, the Phrixus, and the Hypsipyle of Euripides. Not a few isolated passages in other plays have evident reference to the ancient Argonantics.
[23] Agamemnon,” 1233. The story arose, there can be little doubt, from the formidable cuttle-fish which are still found in the Straits of Messina and off the coasts of Sicily.
[24] It was known to antiquity by the title of Minyas poiesis. Pausanias, lib. X 28.
[25] xii. 273. Compare x. 135, where Ulysses says, “Then we arrived at the island Aeaea, and there dwelt the fair-haired Circe, a goddess, though speaking with human voice.”
[26] Apoll. Rhod., iv. 531. Circe was the sister of Aeetes, and had been transferred from Aea to the Tyrrhenian coast of the Western land in the chariot of the sun (Apoll., iii. 310). It is there, on the Italian coast, that the Odyssey finds her. Diodorus, iv. 43, makes Circe the daughter of Aeetes and Hecate, and the sister of Medea.
[27] Aea, is regarded as situated at the farthest confines of the world (Apoll. Rhod., ii. 417).
[28] “Nubes,” 109. This river (the Bion), at the eastern extremity of the Euxine, is appropriately described as the site of the Golden Fleece (Apoll. Rhod., ii. 400).
[29] Thucydides, iv. 24.
[30] “Medea,” 1342 and 1359.
[31] 435, seq.
[32] The Penelope of Aeschylus and the Nausicaa of Sophocles. The one passage in Pindar which may refer to the Odyssey is “ Nemea,” vii. 21.
[33] “Odyssey,” xii. 61 ; Apoll. Rhod., iv. 924. In this latter passage they are described as near to Charybdis, which coincides with the Homeric site. But Homer nowhere mentions the Gyanece of Apoll. Rhod., ii. 318, and iv. 304.
[34] Apoll. Rhod., ibid. So in “Odyssey,” xii. 68.
[35] This reminds us of the derivation of the lake Avernus from aornos, Virg. Aen. vi. 242.
[36] Apoll. Ehod., ii. 560-73. The prophecy of Phineus is in ii. 317, seq.
[37] “Medea,” 2. The name Symplegades does not occur in Homer, Pindar, or Apollonius.
[38] “Pyth.,” iv. 209.
[39] Coerulea glacie, Virg. Georg. i:, 236.
[40] This curious and very important tradition is preserved by Diodorus Siculus, V. 47. Humboldt comments on it in his “Cosmos,” but we cannot now give the reference.
[41] Theocritus, xiii. 24.
[42] Art. Bosphorus.
[43] It should, however, be observed that Sophocles calls them “table-rocks” (“Antig.,” 966).
[44] “Argonaut,” iv. 860, 924, 939.
[45] “Pyth.,” iv.252.
[46] “Choeph.,” 631. Apollonius relates the affair, “Argonaut,” i. 600, seq.
[47] “Antig.,” 971, where they are mentioned in connexion with the Cyanese. Eurip. “Iph. T.,” 422; Diodorus, iv. 43, 44.
[48] “Argonaut,” ii. 239.
[49] Apollonius, ii. 180. See Virg. Aen., iii. 212, seq.
[50] The great antiquity of this story is shown by its being made the subject of a sculpture at Amyclae, near Sparta, by an artist called Bathycles (Pausan., iii. 18, 15), believed to be contemporary with Solon, or about B.C. 600.
[51] See, for instance, Aesch. “Prom. Vinct.,” 724, seq. There are good reasons indeed for thinking that the subject of the play was itself taken from the old Argonautica. See Apoll. Rhod., ii. 370, 995, 1247.
[52] To suppose that he copied from Pindar would be to have a very imperfect idea of the literary resources of the ancients.
[53] “Pyth.,” iv. 20, seq.
[54] “Odyssey,” xii. 127 ; Apoll. Rhod., iv. 965.
[55] Trinacria, as a name of Sicily, is first mentioned in Thucydides, vi. 2.
[56] See “Juventus Mundi,” p. 481, 486; “Homer,” says Mr. Gladstone, p. 480, “appears to have compounded into one group two sets of Phoenician reports concerning the entrance from without to the Thalassa or Mediterranean : one of them referring to the Straits of Messina, with their Scylla and Oharybdis; the other to the Bosphorus and its Planctai.”
[57] Ar. Ran., 475.
[58] Arg., iv. 281; Herodotus, v. 49.
[59] See Soph. Frag., 407, ed., Dind.
[60] v. 169.
[61] “Odyssey,” xii. 178.
[62] Arg., iv. 894.
[63] Lib. i. 9, 25.
[64] Apollodorus is believed to have compiled his work about B.C. 140. As we have it, it is imperfect ; it may be that, like the Characters of Theophrastus, only an abbreviation of a larger work has come down to us. “The part which is wanting at the end contained the stories of the families of Pelops and Atreus, and probably the whole of the Trojan cycle also.” (Smith’s “ Greek and Roman Biography,” i. p. 234.) It is singular that the same narrative about Ulysses is wanting in Diodorus Siculus, who treats of the Argouautic expedition at length in his Fourth Book.
[65] Apollon. Rhod., i. 7; Pind. “Pyth.,” iv. 75.
[66] Pind. “Pyth.,” iv. 102—7.
[67] Pind. “Pyth.,” iii. 50.
[68] “Pyth.,” iv. 119.
[69] Ibid. 79—83.
[70] “Veste stricta et singulos artus exprimente,” is a phrase by which Tacitus describes the dress of the wealthier German chiefs, “Germ.” ch. 17.
[71] Apoll. Rhod., iii. 233.
[72] Apoll, iii. 1308.
[73] Smith’s “Dictionary of Biography,” ii. p. 1093; Diodorus, iv. 47, endeavours to explain the story rationally; the fierce bulls, he says, are only another name for the savage nation of the Tauri, in the Crimea.
[74] “Pyth.,” iv. 224; Apoll. Rhod., iii. 1290, seq.
Source: F. A. Paley, “Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts,” The Dublin Review (1879): 164-182.
