Their True Situation And Form Were
First Explored By The Argonauts.
They now safely entered the Euxine Sea,
where they seem to have been driven about for some time, till they
discovered Mount Caucasus; this served as a land mark for their entrance
into the Phasis, when they anchored near OEa, the capital of Colchis.
IV. The course of the Argonauts to Colchis is well ascertained; and the
accessions to the geographical knowledge of that age, which we derive from
the accounts given of that course, are considerable. But with respect to
the route they followed on their return, there is much contradiction and
fable. All authors agree that they did not return by the same route which
they pursued in their outward voyage. According to Hesiod, they passed from
the Euxine into the Eastern Ocean; but being prevented from returning by
the same route, in consequence of the fleet of Colchis blockading the
Bosphorus, they were obliged to sail round Ethiopia, and to cross Lybia by
land, drawing their vessels after them. In this manner they arrived at the
Gulph of Syrtis, in the Mediterranean. Other ancient writers conduct the
Argonauts back by the Nile, which they supposed to communicate with the
Eastern Ocean; while, by others, they are represented as having sailed up
the Danube to the Po or the Rhine.
Amidst such obscure and evidently fictitious accounts, it may appear
useless to offer any conjecture; but there is one route by which the
Argonauts are supposed to have returned, in favour of which some
probability may be urged. All writers agree in opinion that they did not
return by the route they followed on going to the Euxine; if this be true,
the least absurd and improbable mode of getting back into the Mediterranean
is to be preferred: of those routes already mentioned, all are eminently
absurd and impossible. Perhaps the one we are about to describe, may, in
the opinion of some, be deemed equally so; but to us it appears to have
some plausibility. The tradition to which we allude is, that the Argonauts
sailed up some sea or river from the Euxine, till they reached the Baltic
Sea, and that they returned by the Northern Ocean through the straits of
Hercules, into the Mediterranean. The existence of an ocean from the east
end of the Gulf of Finland to the Caspian or the Euxine Sea, was firmly
believed by Pliny, and the same opinion prevailed in the eleventh century;
for Adam of Bremen says, people [could sail->could formerly sail] from the
Baltic down to Greece. Now the whole of that tract of country is flat and
level, and from the sands near Koningsberg, through the calcareous loam of
Poland and the Ukraine, evidently alluvial and of comparatively recent
formation.
If the Trojan war happened, according to the Arundelian Marbles, 1209 years
before Christ, this event must have been subsequent to the Argonautic
expedition only about fifty years: yet, in this short space of time, the
Greeks had made great advances in the art of ship building, and in
navigation.
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