for an historical thread to connect the Baotian | ing those features in the legend which manilegends of Hercules with those of Peloponne- festly belong to Eastern religions, to distinguish sus, it must be set entirely aside; and yet it is the Theban Hercules from the Dorian and the not only the oldest form of the story, but no oth- Peloponnesian hero. In the story of each, some er has hitherto been found or devised to fill its historical fragments have most probably been place with a greater appearance of probability. preserved, and perhaps least disfigured in the The supposed right of Hercules to the throne Theban and Dorian legends. In those of Peloof Mycena was, as we shall see, the ground on ponnesus it is difficult to say to what extent their which the Dorians, some generations later, original form may not have been distorted from claimed the dominion of Peloponnesus. Yet, political motives. If we might place any reliin any other than a poetical view, his enmity to ance on them, we should be inclined to conjecEurystheus is utterly inconsistent with the ex- ture that they contain traces of the struggles ploits ascribed to him in the peninsula. It is by which the kingdom of Mycena attained to also remarkable, that while the adventures that influence over the rest of the peninsula, which he undertakes at the bidding of his rival which is attributed to it by Homer, and which are prodigious and supernatural, belonging to we shall have occasion to notice when we come the first of the two classes above distinguished, to speak of the Trojan war. he is described as during the same period engaged in expeditions which are only accidentally connected with these marvellous labours, and which, if they stood alone, might be taken for traditional facts. In these he appears in the light of an independent prince and a powerful conqueror. He leads an army against Augeas, king of Elis, and having slain him, bestows his kingdom on one of his sons, who had condemned his father's injustice. So he invades Pylus to avenge an insult which he had received from Neleus, and puts him to death, with all his children, except Nestor, who was absent, or had escaped to Gerenia. Again he carries his conquering arms into Laconia, where he extermi-ing to us so far as it may be regarded as a ponates the family of the King Hippocoon, and places Tyndareus on the throne. Here, if anywhere in the legend of Hercules, we might seem to be reading an account of real events. Yet who can believe that, while he was overthrow-invented merely to fill up a gap in chronology; ing these hostile dynasties and giving away sceptres, he suffered himself to be excluded from his own kingdom?

It was the fate of Hercules to be incessantly forced into dangerous and arduous enterprises; and hence every part of Greece is in its turn the scene of his achievements. Thus we have already seen him, in Thessaly, the ally of the Dorians, laying the foundation of a perpetual union between the people and his own descendants, as if he had either abandoned all hope of recovering the crown of Mycenæ, or had foreseen that his posterity would require the aid of the Dorians for that purpose. In Etolia, too, he appears as a friend and a protector of the royal house, and fights its battles against the Thesprotians of Epirus. These perpetual wanderings, these successive alliances with so many different races, excite no surprise, so long as we view them in a poetical light, as is suing out of one source, the implacable hate with which Juno persecutes the son of Jove. They may also be understood as real events, if they are supposed to have been perfectly independent of each other, and connected only by being referred to one fabulous name. But when the poetical motive is rejected, it seems imposable to frame any rational scheme according to which they may be regarded as incidents in the hfe of one man, unless we imagine Hercules, in the purest spirit of knight-errantry, sallying forth in quest of adventures, without any definite object, or any impulse but that of disinterested benevolence. It will be safer, after rejectApollod., 11., 7, 6.

VOL. I.-K

The name of Hercules immediately suggests that of Theseus, according to the mythical chronology his younger contemporary, and only second to him in renown. It was not without. reason that Theseus was said to have given rise to the proverb, another Hercules; for not only is there a strong resemblance between them in many particular features, but it also seems clear that Theseus was to Attica what Hercules was to the rest of Greece, and that his career likewise represents the events of a period which cannot have been exactly measured by any human life, and probably includes many centuries. His legend is chiefly interest

etical outline of the early history of Attica. The list which has been transmitted to us of the Attic kings, his predecessors, is a compilation in which some of the names appear to have been

others clearly belong to purely mythical personages; not one can safely be pronounced historical. Their reigns are no less barren of events than their existence is questionable. Two occurrences only are related in their annals which may seem to bear marks of a really political character. One is the war with Euboea, in which Xuthus aided the Athenians; the other a contest much more celebrated, between the Attic king Erechtheus and the Thracian Eumolpus, who had become sovereign of Eleusis, where he founded a priesthood, which in later times was administered by an Athenian house, which claimed him as its ancestor. In this war Erechtheus is said to have perished, either through the wrath of Poseidon, or by the hand of a mortal enemy; and after his death, according to one form of the legend, Ion, intrusted by the Athenians with the command, terminated the war by a treaty, in which the Eleusinians acknowledged the supremacy of Athens, but reserved to themselves the celebration of their rites. Neither Xuthus nor Ion, however, is enumerated among the kings of Attica. Erechtheus was succeeded by a second Cecrops, who migrated to Euboea, and left his hereditary throne to his son, a second Pandion. henceforward the Athenian annals are full of civil wars and revolutions. Pandion is expelled from his dominions by the Metionids-a rival branch of the royal family-and takes refuge in Megara, where he marries the king's daughter, and succeeds to the throne.† At Megara Apollod., ii., 15, 4. Paus., i., 38, 3. Strabo, viii,, p. + Paus., i., 5, 3.

383

*

But

74

he became the father of four sons; but the le-
gitimacy of Ægeus, the eldest, was disputed;
and when, after the death of Pandion, he enter-
ed Attica at the head of an army, recovered his
patrimony from the usurpers, and shared it with
his brothers, he was still the object of their
jealousy. As he was long childless, they began
to cast a wishful eye towards his inheritance.
But a mysterious oracle brought him to Tree-
zen, where fate had decreed that the future hero
of Athens should be born. Æthra, the daugh-
ter of the sage King Pittheus, son of Pelops,
was his mother; but the Trazenian legend
called Poseidon, not Egeus, his father. Æge
us, however, returned to Athens with the hope
that, in the course of years, he should be fol-
lowed by a legitimate heir. At parting, he
showed Ethra a huge mass of rock, under
which he had hidden a sword and a pair of san-
dals: when her child, if a boy, should be able
to lift the stone, he was to repair to Athens with
the tokens it concealed, and to claim Ægeus as
his father. From this deposite, Ethra gave
her son the name of Theseus.

as captives consecrated to the god, who, by
famine and pestilence, had compelled the Athe-
nians to propitiate him with this sacrifice.*
With the aid of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos,
he vanquished the monster of the labyrinth, and
retraced its mazes; but on his homeward voy-
age he abandoned his fair guide on the shore
at Naxus, where, as poets sang, she was con-
soled by Dionysus for the loss of her mortal
lover. At Delos, too, he left memorials of his
presence in sacred and festive rites, which
were preserved with religious reverence in af-
ter ages. His arrival at Athens proved fatal to
Egeus, who was deceived by the black sail of
the victim-ship, which Theseus had forgotten
to exchange for the concerted token of victory,
and in despair threw himself down from the
Cecropian rock: his memory was honoured by
the Athenians with yearly sacrifices, of which
the house of the Phytalids were appointed he-
reditary ministers. Many cheerful festivals long
commemorated the return of Theseus, and the
plenty which was restored to Attica when the
wrath of the gods was finally appeased by his
enterprise. He himself was believed to have
opened the vintage procession of the Oscho-
phoria, with two youths, who had accompanied
him in disguise among the virgins, and to have
instituted the harvest feast of the Pyanepsia,
when the Eiresioné (an olive branch laden with
the fruits of the year, cakes, and figs, and flasks
of honey, oil, and wine) was carried about in
honour of the sun and the seasons.

Of the political institutions ascribed to Theseus we shall find a fitter occasion of speaking hereafter, and we must pass over a great number of other adventures which adorn his legend; though some of them, as the war in which he is said to have repelled the invasion of the Amazons, may not be wholly destitute of historical import. We can only spare room for a few remarks on those broader features of the legend which we have here noticed. That part of it which relates to the journey from Trozen seems to be grounded on the fact that the coasts of the Saronic Gulf were early occupied by kindred tribes of the Ionian race. Hence Poseidon, the great Ionian deity, is the father of Theseus, as the national hero: the name of

The life of Theseus is composed of three main acts, his journey from Trozen to Athens, his victory over the Minotaur, and the political revolution which he effected in Attica. The former two achievements, notwithstanding their fabulous aspect, have probably an historical ground, no less than the third, as to which it can only be doubted how far it was the work of one individual. Instead of crossing the Saronic Gulf when he at length set out to claim the throne of Athens, the young hero resolved to signalize his journey by clearing the wild road that skirted the sea, which was haunted by monsters and savage men, who abused their gigantic strength in wrong and robbery, and had almost broken off all intercourse between Trozen and Attica. In the territory of Epidaurus he won the brazen mace with which Periphetes had been wont to surprise the unwary passenger. In the Isthmus he made Sinis undergo the same fate with his victims, whom he had rent to pieces between two pines; and he celebrated this victory by renewing the Isthmian games, which had been founded in honour of the sea-god Palæmon, and were sacred to Poseidon. Before he left the Isthmus, he did not disdain to exert his strength in destroying the wild sow of Crommyon. In the territory of Megara he was again stopped at a narrow pass hewn in a cliff, from which Sciron delighted to thrust wayfaring men into the waves. Theseus purified the accursed rock by hurling the tyrant down its side, and cleared the Scironian road of dangers and obstacles. So, still struggling and conqueringfor even in Eleusis and in Attica he met with fresh antagonists-he forced his way to the banks of the Cephisus, where he was first welcomed and purified from all this bloodshed by the hospitable Phytalids. Recognised by Egeus, he crushed a conspiracy of his kinsmen, who viewed him as an intruder; and then sailed to Crete, to deliver Attica from the yoke of Minos, geus and Theseus were strangers to the line who, every ninth year, exacted a tribute of of Erechtheus. Both came from Megara to Athenian youths and virgins, and doomed them take possession of Attica; and the accounts to perish in the jaws of the Minotaur. This that Pandion fled from Athens to reign in Mewas the more tragic story: according to anoth-gara, and that Theseus, when he had mounted er tradition, they were only detained in Crete

geus was probably no more than an epithet of the same god. The journey of Theseus, however, must signify something more than a mere national relation; for its prominent feature is a successful struggle with some kind of obstacles. It may, perhaps, be best explained by the supposition that a period was remembered when the union of the Ionian tribes of Attica and the opposite coast of Peloponnesus was cemented by the establishment of periodical meetings, sacred to the national god, not without opposition and interruption. The legend seems likewise to indicate that, during the same period, perhaps as an effect of the troubles which were thus composed, a change took place in the ruling dynasty at Athens, This appears to be implied by the tradition that

the throne, added Megara to his dominions, may be considered as expressing the same fact in an inverted order. But there seems to be no sufficient ground for referring any of these traditions to a migration by which the Ionians first became masters of Attica.

were of Cretan origin. These settlements, though they are commonly referred either directly or indirectly to Minos, may easily be conceived to have been the work of more than one generation. The more interesting and difficult I question which they raise is, to what race Minos and his people belong? It is interesting, because, according to a common opinion, this people possessed institutions which subsequent

there are few questions which perplex the inquirer more by the conflict of reasons and authorities. We must briefly direct the reader's attention to what seem to be the most important points in the inquiry.

ant of Dorus the son of Hellen, and is thus connected with a colony said to have been led into Crete by Teutamus, or Tectamus, son of Dorus, who is related either to have crossed over from Thessaly, or to have embarked at Malea after having led his followers by land into La

The legend of the Cretan expedition, most probably, also preserves some genuine historical recollections. But the only fact which appears to be plainly indicated by it is a tem-ly became the model of those of Sparta; but porary connexion between Crete and Attica. Whether this intercourse was grounded solely on religion, or was the result of a partial dominion exercised by Crete over Athens, it would be useless to inquire; and still less can we pretend to determine the nature of the By Homer, Minos is described as the son of Athenian tribute, or that of the Cretan worship Jupiter and of the daughter of Phoenix,* whom to which it related. That part of the legend all succeeding authors name Europa; and he is which belongs to Naxos and Delos was proba- thus carried back into the remotest period of bly introduced after these islands were occu- Cretan antiquity known to the poet, apparently pied by the Ionians. But the part assigned in as a native hero, illustrious enough for a divine these traditions to Minos, leads us to inquire a parentage, and too ancient to allow his descent little farther into the character and actions of to be traced to any other source. But in a this celebrated personage, who is represented genealogy recorded by later writers, he is likeby the general voice of antiquity as having rais-wise the adopted son of Asterius, a descended Crete to a higher degree of prosperity and power than it ever reached at any subsequent period. Minos appears in the twofold character of a victorious prince, who exercises a salutary dominion over the sea and the neighbouring islands, and of a wise and just lawgiver, who exhibits to Greece the first model of a well-conia. It is his son Asterius who marries ordered state. In his former capacity he unites Europa, and leaves his kingdom to her son Mithe various tribes of Greece under his sceptre, nos. This somewhat marvellous migration, raises a great navy, scours the Egean, and though not expressly mentioned by any very subdues the piratical Carians and Leleges, weighty author, seems to be indirectly recogmakes himself master of the Cyclades, and nised by the testimony of Homer himself, who, plants various colonies, undertakes a success-in the Odyssey, describes the mixed population ful expedition against Megara and Attica, and of Crete as composed of Achæans, Eteocretes imposes tribute, as we have seen, on his van-(genuine Cretans), and Cydonians; to whom quished enemies: he is even said to have car- are added Dorians, with an epithet denoting a ried his arms into Sicily, where, indeed, he is triple division of some kind, and Pelasgians, cut off by treachery, and his fleet destroyed; yet who are also distinguished by an epithet which his people remain there, and found a settlement seems to show that they are known to the poet which preserves his name. The leading strokes as an independent race. In this outline are confirmed by the concurrent But this evidence, whatever may be its force, testimony of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aris- would be of secondary moment if it were certotle, and by a crowd of independent traditions; tain that Minos had left monuments of his reign, nor does there seem to be any reason to think which can be ascribed only to a Dorian prince that it greatly exaggerates the truth. Crete, or people. And this opinion, which seems to observes Aristotle, seems formed by nature, have been entirely unknown to the ancients, has and fitted by its geographical position, for the been maintained by a modern author, who has command of Greece; and, indeed, the insignifi- placed it in the most attractive light with which cance to which it was reduced during the his- learning and ingenuity could recommend it. torical period, is more extraordinary than the His elaborate argument mainly turns on the relitransient lustre which falls upon it in the myth-gious institutions which are commonly referred ical ages.

Egean, introduced there the worship of their national god-the Dorian Apollo-with his characteristic symbols, rites, and oracular shrines : they founded the numerous temples on the coast

to the age of Minos. According to this view, the The dominion of the Cyclades was an almost Cretan settlers who, during that period, spread indispensable condition of the naval power at-over the islands and the eastern shores of the tributed to Minos, and the tradition that they were subject to his rule is confirmed by numerous traces. Two of their towns, as well as the Isle of Paros, are said to have borne the name of Minoa. But Cretan colonies were un-of Troas, where he reigned, undoubtedly long doubtedly spread much farther over the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, as in Chios and Rhodes,t in Caria and Lycia, and even in Lemnos and Thrace; and, according to a legend adopted by Virgil, the Teucrians of Troas

• Pol., ii., 10.

† Apollod., ., 2, 1. Diod., v., 59, 79; and Hoeck, Kreta, v. i. p. 215-394.

before the time of Homer, over Chryse and Cilla, as well as the neighbouring island of Tenedos. Still more celebrated in after times were his oracles at Didyma, or Branchidæ, near Miletus; at Claros, near Colophon; and at Pa* П., xiv., 321.

+ Diod., iv., 60; v., 80. Strabo, x., p. 475. Apollod, iii., c. 1. C. O. Mueller (Dorians)." ♦ II., i., 38.

slight evidence will be left for the Dorian colony of Tectamus. The passage of the Odyssey is by no means conclusive. The poet knew of Dorians in Crete in his own day; and even if he was aware that their settlements were comparatively recent, he might not scruple to complete his description by enumerating them with the other inhabitants of the island. Indeed, if he had the age of Ulysses in view, and had ever heard of Cnossus as the capital of a Dorian state, to which the rest of Crete was subject in the reign of Minos, he would scarcely have thrown the different races so indiscriminately together. Yet this passage was probably the occasion of the story about the colony of Tectamus; and the epithet given to the Dorians seems to have suggested the fiction that Minos divided the island into three districts, and founded a city in each.*

tara, near the mouth of the Xanthus, in Lycia, then, this argument should appear to fail, very which appear to have been all connected with Cretan settlements. A very early intercourse between Crete and the Delphic oracle is intimated by one of the Homeric hymns, in which Apollo himself is introduced conducting a band of Cretans, who came from Cnossus, the city of Minos, to Crissa, and to his sanctuary at the foot of Parnassus, where he constitutes them his ministers. And the substance of this legend seems to be confirmed both by the name of Crissa, and by other similar traditions; as that the Cretan Chrysothemis was the first who won the meed of poetry at Delphi, by a hymn in honour of the god, and that his father Carmanor had purified Apollo and Artemis after they had slain the Python.* Even the Athenian tribute, and the Cretan expedition of Theseus, present some features which appear to indicate an affinity with the religion of Delphi. The number of seven youths and seven virgins is the same If, however, Minos and his people are not to as that with which the wrath of Apollo and Ar- be considered as Dorians, it appears to follow temis was anciently propitiated at Sicyon;t that the political institutions of Minos can have and, according to Aristotle, the descendants of been but very slightly connected with those the Athenian captives, who were not sacrificed, which afterward existed in the Dorian states but only detained in Crete to the end of their of Crete, and we therefore reserve our descriplives in sacred servitude, were afterward sent tion of the latter for the period when they were to Delphi with a company of other hierodules, most probably first introduced into the island. whom the Cretans, in fulfilment of an ancient In this respect no reliance can safely be placed vow, dedicated to the service of Apollo. The- on the authority of those ancient writers who seus, too, is said to have led a suppliant proces- represent Minos as having furnished a model sion to the temple of the same god at Athens, which was imitated by Lycurgus. The Cretan before he embarked on his voyage to Crete; Dorians, who found the fame of Minos as a and, according to the Athenian tradition, it was powerful king, a wise lawgiver, and a righteous to discharge a vow which he made on his re-judge, widely spread over their new country, turn, that the sacred vessel called the Theoris may naturally have been inclined to attach so sailed every year from Athens with offerings for the altar of Apollo at Delos. (

glorious a name to their own institutions. Nor need it be denied that there was an historical ground for this celebrity; but in a rude age small improvements in the frame of society might afford a sufficient foundation for it. Hence it may easily be believed that, as Aristotle seems to intimate,† several usages were here and there retained during the Dorian period, which had been transmitted from the time of Minos. On the other hand, it is extremely diffi

such as was established in the Dorian states of Crete, could have been combined with that naval dominion which Minos is said to have acquired: the later colonists, indeed, are expressly related to have preferred inland situations; nor is it very intelligible how the people of Minos, if it was a detachment from a small tribe which was long unable to maintain its ground against its neighbours in Greece, could so early have undertaken foreign conquests, and have planted so many distant colonies.

This will suffice to illustrate the nature of the arguments which have been drawn from the religious institutions of Crete, for the opinion that a Dorian colony existed there in the days of Minos. Their force is very much weakened, both by the great obscurity which hangs over the origin of all such institutions in Greece, and by some indications which point to a different conclusion. There is scarcely sufficient evi-cult to conceive that a system of government, dence that the Cretan settlers in Asia introduced that worship of Apollo which we find established in later times. But, even when this is admitted, it still remains uncertain how far this worship was ever peculiar to the Dorian race. On the other hand, though there are traces of a very ancient connexion between Crete and Delphi, it is by no means clear that the religion of Delphi was predominant in the island in the age of Minos; and the legend of Minos himself seems rather to belong to a totally different circle of mythology. The fables of his birth, and those of the mythical persons by whom he is surrounded-Europa and Pasipha, Ariadne and the Minotaur-transport us into a region wholly foreign to the worship of the Delphic god. Minos is a son of Jupiter, not, as a Dorian hero would probably have been represented, of Apollo; nor is it from Apollo, as the Spartan lawgiver, but from Jupiter, that he is said to have derived his political wisdom. If,

It is not necessary that we should attempt to substitute a new hypothesis for the opinion which we found ourselves compelled to reject. But, if we might hazard a conjecture on the subject, we should be inclined to suspect that the maritime greatness of Crete belonged principally to the Phoenicians, with whom Minos appears, both from the common account of his origin, and from the general aspect of the legends concerning him, to have been much more nearly connected than with the Dorians. Not, however, as if Phoenicians had ever formed a

⚫ Strabo, x., p. 476. Diod., v., 78. † Pal, ii., 10. Paus., iii., 2, 7.

considerable part of the population of Crete. been pared down into an historical form, and its We would only suggest that the age of Minos marvellous and poetical features have been all may not improbably be considered as represent- effaced, so that nothing is left but what may aping a period when the arts, introduced by Pho- pear to belong to its pith and substance, it benician settlers, had raised one of the Cretan comes, indeed, dry and meager enough, but not tribes, under an able and enterprising chief, to much more intelligible than before. It still rea temporary pre-eminence over its neighbours, lates an adventure, incomprehensible in its dewhich enabled it to establish a sort of maritime sign, astonishing in its execution, connected empire. This supposition may, perhaps, afford with no conceivable cause, and with no sensible the easiest explanation of the singular legend effect. The narrative, reduced to the shape in that Minos perished in Sicily, whither he had which it has often been thought worthy of a sailed in pursuit of Dædalus. This story seems place in history, runs as follows: In the generato have had its origin in the progress of the tion before the Trojan war, Jason, a young Phoenician settlements towards the west. Dæd- Thessalian prince, had incurred the jealousy of alus flies before Minos, first to Sicily, and then his kinsman Pelias, who reigned at lolcos. The to Sardinia.* In Sicily he leaves wonderful crafty king encouraged the adventurous youth monuments of his art among the rude natives, to embark in a maritime expedition full of diffiand particularly exerts his skill in strengthen-culty and danger. It was to be directed to a ing and adorning the temple of Venus at Eryx,† point far beyond the most remote which Greek which was most probably founded by Phoni-navigation had hitherto reached in the same cians. According to the Cretan tradition, the disaster of Minos was attended with the total downfall of Crete's maritime power; and the language of Herodotus seems to imply that it was only after this event that the island was occupied by a Hellenic population; his silence, at all events, proves that he had never heard of a migration of Dorians from Thessaly to Crete.‡

Our plan obliges us to pass over a great number of wars, expeditions, and achievements of these ages, which were highly celebrated in heroic song, not because we deem them to contain less of historical reality than others which we mention, but because they appear not to have been attended with any important or lasting consequences. We might otherwise have been induced to notice the quarrel which divided the royal house of Thebes, and led to a series of wars between Thebes and Argos, which terminated in the destruction of the former city, and the temporary expulsion of the Cadmeans, its ancient inhabitants. Hercules and Theseus undertook their adventures either alone, or with the aid of a single comrade; but in these Theban wars we find a union of seven chiefs; and such confederacies appear to have become frequent in the latter part of the heroic age. So a numerous band of heroes was combined in the enterprise which, whatever may have been its real nature, became renowned as the chase of the Calydonian boar. We proceed to speak of two expeditions much more celebrated, conducted, like these, by a league of independent chieftains, but directed, not to any part of Greece, but against distant lands; we mean the voyage of the Argonauts, and the siege of Troy, which will conclude our review of the mythical period of Grecian history.

The Argonautic expedition, when viewed in the light in which it has usually been considered, is an event which a critical historian, if he feels himself compelled to believe it, may think it his duty to notice, but which he is glad to pass rapidly over as a perplexing and unprofitable For even when the ancient legend has

nddle.

quarter; to the eastern corner of the sea, so celebrated in ancient times for the ferocity of the barbarians inhabiting its coasts, that it was commonly supposed to have derived from them the name of Axenus, the inhospitable, before it acquired the opposite name of the Euxine, from the civilization which was at length introduced by Greek settlers. Here, in the land of the Colchians, lay the goal, because this contained the prize, from which the voyage has been frequently called the adventure of the golden fleece. Jason having built a vessel of uncommon size-in more precise terms, the first fiftyoared galley his country had ever launchedand having manned it with a band of heroes, who assembled from various parts of Greece to share the glory of the enterprise, sailed to Colchis, where he not only succeeded in the principal object of his expedition, whatever this may have been, but carried off Medea, the daughter of the Colchian king Æetes.

Though this is an artificial statement, framed to reconcile the main incidents of a wonderful story with nature and probability, it still contains many points which can scarcely be explained or believed. It carries us back to a period when navigation was in its infancy among the Greeks; yet their first essay at maritime discovery is supposed at once to have reached the extreme limit which was long after attained by the adventurers who gradually explored the same formidable sea, and gained a footing on its coasts. The success of the undertaking, however, is not so surprising as the project itself, for this implies a previous knowledge of the country to be explored, which it is very difficult to account for. But the end proposed is still more mysterious, and, indeed, can only be explained with the aid of a conjecture. Such an explanation was attempted by some of the later writers among the ancients, who perceived that the whole story turned on the golden fleece, the supposed motive of the voyage, and that this feature had not a sufficiently historical appearance. But the mountain torrents of Colchis were said to sweep down particles of gold, which the natives used to detain by fleeces dipped in the streams. This report suggested a mode of translating the fable into historical language. It was conjectured that the Argonauts had been attracted by the metallic treasures of the country, and that the golden fleece was a