Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/285

 RETUKN OF THE ARGONAUTS. 253 m Anaphe, in Korkyra, in the Adriati; Gulf, in Italy and ic JEthalia. It became necessary to devise another route for them in their return, and the Hesiodic narrative was (as I have before observed), that they came back by the circumfluous ocean ; first going up the river Phasis into the circumfluous ocean; follow- ing that deep and gentle stream until they entered the Nile, and came down its course to the coast of Libya. This seem? also to have been the belief of Hekatseus. 1 But presently sev- eral Greeks (and Herodotus among them) began to discard the idea of a circumfluous ocean-stream, which had pervaded their old geographical and astronomical fables, and which explained the supposed easy communication between one extremity of the earth and another. Another idea was then started for the return- ing voyage of the Argonauts. It was supposed that the river Ister, or Danube, flowing from the Hhipaean mountains in tbj north-west of Europe, divided itself into two branches, one of which fell into the Euxine Sea, and the other into the Adriatic. The Argonauts, fleeing from the pursuit of JEetes, had been obliged to abandon their regular course homeward, and had gone from the Euxine Sea up the Ister ; then passing down the othei branch of that river, they had entered into the Adriatic, the Kolchian pursuers following them. Such is the story given by Apollonius Rhodius from Timagetus, and accepted even by so able a geographer as Eratosthenes who preceded him by one generation, and who, though sceptical in regard to the localities visited by Odysseus, seems to have been a firm believer in the reality of the Argonautic voyage. 2 Other historians again, among 1 See above, p. 239. There is an opinion cited from Hekataeus in Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284. contrary to this, which is given by the same scholiast on iv. 259. But, in spite of the remarks of Klausen (ad Fragment. Heka- tsei, 187. p. 98), I think that the Schol. ad. iv. 284 has made a mistake in citing Hekataeus ; the more so as the scholiast, as printed from the Codex Parisinus, cites the same opinion without mentioning Hekattens. Accord ing to the old Homeric idea, the ocean stream flowed all round the earth, and was the source of all the principal rivers which flowed into the great in- ternal sea, or Mediterranean (see Hekataeus, Fr. 349 ; Klausen, ap. Arrian. ii. 16, where he speaks of the Mediterranean as the (teyuhri ddhaaaa). Re- taining this old idea of the ocean-stream, Hekataeus would naturally belicv<< that the Phasis joined it: nor can I agree with Klausen (ad Fr. 187) thai this implies a degree of ignorance too gross to impute to him. 2 Apollon. Rhod. iv. 287 ; Schol. ad iv. 284 : Pindar, Pyth. iv. 447, witi