Page:The Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.djvu/21

 who took refuge in the acropolis, or temple. Those who settled in Thessaly, carried with them the same memorials concerning Deucalion, and his deliverance; which they appropriated to their own country. They must have had traditions of this great event strongly impressed upon their minds; as every place, to which they gave name, had some reference to that history. In process of time, these impressions grew more and more faint, and their emblematical worship became very obscure and unintelligible. Hence they at last confined the history of this event to their own country; and the Argo was supposed to have been built, where it was originally enshrined. As it was reverenced under the symbol of the Moon, called Man or Mon, the people from this circumstance named their country Ai-mona, in after times rendered Aimonia.

This extract from the ingenious and learned mythologist will enable the reader to form some idea of his sentiments on this subject.

But whatever disgust the grave historian may have conceived at this unsightly mixture of the marvellous and the probable, the poet needs not be offended at it. Fiction is his province. He may be allowed to expatiate in the regions of fancy without controul, and to introduce his fiery bulls and sleepless dragons without the dread of censure.

The Argonautic expedition has been the admired subject of the Greek and Roman poets from Orpheus, or