Page:Arrian's Voyage Round the Euxine Sea Translated.djvu/44

40 and not one of the Sanatorian Procunuls. He mentions, that his reports on this ubject were tranmitted in the Latin language, in which the properly official communications were always made.

Arrian derives the name of this place from Absyrtus, the brother of Medea, whom he is aid to have murdered at this place, and whoe sepulchre was till to be een.

I wih to observe here, that the numerous traditions and local evidences of the Argonautic expedition, which Arrian dicovered on this coast, and which other writers have recorded to have existed in the neighbouring countries, are trong preumptive proofs that such a voyage was once undertaken, and that the history of it is not merely an allegorical tale invented by poets, or perons of fertile and flowery imagination, but a narrative of a real event. The purpoe of it is undoubtedly very mysterious, and the circumtances, which accompany it, complicated with poetical imagery and mythological machinery; but that such a hero as Jaon commanded uch an expedition, eems to me unquetionable. The proofs of it are not derived from Greece, the region of fabulous invention, but were found to ubist in countries barren, uncultivated, and of vat extent, uch as no forgery of uch a kind could influence, or probably penetrate. Strabo and Diodorus oberve, that