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. The equipment of the Argonautic expedition was regarded, at the
period it took place, as something almost miraculous; yet the ships sent
against Troy seem to have excited little astonishment, though, considering
the state of Greece at that period, they were very numerous.
It is foreign to our purpose to regard this expedition in any other light
than as it is illustrative of the maritime skill and attainments of Greece
at this era, and so far connected with our present subject. The number of
ships employed, according to Homer, amounted to 1186: Thucydides states
them at 1200; and Euripides, Virgil, and some other authors, reduce their
number to 1000. The ships of the Boeotians were the largest; they carried
120 men each; those of the Philoctetae were the smallest, each carrying
only fifty men.
