Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/276

 244 HISTORTf OF GREECE. or identify the crew, or decipher the log-book, of the Argo, hut we have no means of settling even the preliminary question, whether the voyage be matter of fact badly reported, or legend from the beginning. The widely-distant spots in which the mon- uments of the voyage were shown, no less than the incidents of the voyage itself, suggests no other parentage than epical fancy. The supernatural and the romantic not only constitute an insep- arable portion of the narrative, but even embrace all the promi- nent and characteristic features ; if they do not comprise the whole, and if there be intermingled along with them any sprink ling of historical or geographical fact, a question to us indeter- minable, there is at least no solvent by which it can be disen- gaged, and no test by which it can be recognized. Wherever the Grecian mariner sailed, he carried his religious and patriotic mythes along with him. His fancy and his faith were alike full of the long wanderings of Jason, Odysseus, Perseus, Herakles, Dionysus, Triptolemus or 16 ; it was pleasing to him in success, and consoling to him in difficulty, to believe that their journeys had brought them over the ground which he was himself travers- ing. There was no tale amidst the wide range of the Grecian epic more calculated to be popular with the seaman, than the history of, the primaeval ship Argo and her distinguished crew, comprising heroes from all parts of Greece, and especially the quirere studet, aut se reperisse, atquc historicam vel geographicam aliquam doctrinam, systema nos dicimus, inde procudi posse, putat," etc. See also the observations interspersed in Burmann's Catalogus Argonauta rum, prefixed to his edition of Valerius Flaccus. The Persian antiquarians whom Herodotus cites at the beginning of his history (i. 2-4 it is much to be regretted that Herodotus did not inform us who they were, and whether they were the same as those who said that Per- seus was an Assyrian by birth and had become a Greek, vi. 54), joined together the abductions of 16 and of Europe, of Medea and of Helen, as pairs of connected proceedings, the second injury being a retaliat : on for the first, they drew up a debtor and creditor account of abductions between Asia and Europe. The Kolchian king ("they said) had sent a herald to Greece to ask for his satisfaction for the wrong done to him by Jason and to re-demand his daughter Medea ; but he was told in reply that the Greeks had received no satisfaction for the previous rape of 16. There was some ingenuity in thus binding together the old fables, so as to represent the invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes as retaliations fol the unexpiated destruction wrought by Agamemnon.