Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/126

 We have had occasion already to remark that the legends of the Voyage of the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and the journeyings of Herakles and such-like stories, really represent the earliest knowledge of the regions which lay far away to the east and north-west. There is no tale of the hero Herakles more famous than that of his travelling to the very marge of Ocean, where in the Pillars of Hercules he left an imperishable record of his wayfaring for the men of aftertime. His object, so goes the story, was the capture of the famous kine of the giant Geryon who dwelt in the island of Erythia, in after years the site of Gaddir, or Gadeira as the Greeks called it, the Gades of the Romans, and the modern Cadiz. Many vague stories relating to the early ethnology of Western Europe and Northern Africa cycle round this expedition. But for our present purpose it is only the fabled route by which he went with which we are concerned. As might naturally be expected that part of Italy with which the Greeks seem first to have become acquainted was the district lying in the Adriatic around the mouths of the Po (Eridanus). The reason why they came thither is not far to seek. They doubtless simply followed the example of the Phoenicians who probably had long traded thither to obtain both the highly prized golden amber from the Baltic, and the red amber of Liguria, called from that region Lingurium, or ligurion, a name for which the Greeks found a strange etymology which connected it with the lynx. According to Herodotus, "the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks who made long voyages and discovered Adria, Tyrsenia (Etruria), Iberia and Tartessus" ( 163). The trade routes to the amber coasts of the north have long been well known; they passed over the Alps, crossed the Danube at Passau, Linz or Presburg, and proceeded then either to Samland or to the vicinity of Jutland. As these northern routes crossed that which came up the valleyand [Greek: ouron]. The difference in colour between the Baltic and Ligurian amber found an easy explanation, the latter was regarded as the solidified urine of the female lynx, the former of the male animal. Pliny, H. N. 2, § 34.]