ARGONAUTICA AND ODYSSEY
 Odysseus before Scylla and Charybdis by Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1794-1796. The incident depicted here may have been one of the elements Homer borrowed from an ancient Argonautica. (Wikimedia Commons) |
The only coursing ship that ever passed this way was Argo, famed of all, when voyaging from Aeëtes: and her the waves would soon have dashed on the great rocks, but Here [Hera] brought her through from love of Jason. -- Homer, Odyssey 12.69-72 (Trans. Palmer) It is undoubted that some form of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts existed prior to the age of Homer, since the above lines from the Odyssey clearly indicate Homer's awareness not just of the myth but of its popularity and widespread distribution in the Greek world. Consequently, beginning in the middle nineteenth century scholars, first German and then English-speaking, began to consider the question of whether Homer's poems were original compositions or whether they owed a debt to an earlier Argonaut epic. Below are several excerpts detailing the nineteenth century controversy. (Unfortunately, much of the German material has never been translated, so one of the few translated summaries must suffice.) To my mind, the issue was settled more or less definitively in 2005 when M. L. West published an important study, "Odyssey and Argonautica," in the Classical Quarterly outlining the many lines of evidence that support the idea that Homer borrowed (or, perhaps stole) elements from the Argonaut myth to construct the Odyssey. |
Homer and Earlier Greek Poems
Bernadotte Perrin and Thomas Day Seymour
1897
The Homeric poems are to modern readers the oldest remains of Greek literature, but they were not the earliest poems of the Greeks. Lyric poetry naturally precedes epic poetry. Every nation has love songs, war songs, and dirges, before it has narrative poems. Those early songs of the Greeks are all lost, although traces of them are found in the Iliad and Odyssey. Doubtless the Greeks had also many brief epic songs, narrating exploits in war and 'hair-breadth 'scapes' in adventure, before any one thought of composing a long epic poem. In the Iliad and Odyssey are found indications of poems about the adventures of Heracles, and the Argonautic Expedition for the Golden Fleece, and of short songs about the expedition against Troy. The earlier and shorter epic poems were used freely by Homer (for this name may be given conveniently to the man who formed the plan of the Odyssey, and to whom its unity is due) in the composition of the Odyssey and again, after him, additions were made by other bards. The Odyssey thus contains Pre-Homeric, Homeric, and Post-Homeric elements.
Source: Bernadotte Perrin and Thomas Day Seymour, "Introduction," in Eight Books of Homer's Odyssey by Homer(Boston: Ginn and Company, 1897), v.
Bernadotte Perrin and Thomas Day Seymour
1897
The Homeric poems are to modern readers the oldest remains of Greek literature, but they were not the earliest poems of the Greeks. Lyric poetry naturally precedes epic poetry. Every nation has love songs, war songs, and dirges, before it has narrative poems. Those early songs of the Greeks are all lost, although traces of them are found in the Iliad and Odyssey. Doubtless the Greeks had also many brief epic songs, narrating exploits in war and 'hair-breadth 'scapes' in adventure, before any one thought of composing a long epic poem. In the Iliad and Odyssey are found indications of poems about the adventures of Heracles, and the Argonautic Expedition for the Golden Fleece, and of short songs about the expedition against Troy. The earlier and shorter epic poems were used freely by Homer (for this name may be given conveniently to the man who formed the plan of the Odyssey, and to whom its unity is due) in the composition of the Odyssey and again, after him, additions were made by other bards. The Odyssey thus contains Pre-Homeric, Homeric, and Post-Homeric elements.
Source: Bernadotte Perrin and Thomas Day Seymour, "Introduction," in Eight Books of Homer's Odyssey by Homer(Boston: Ginn and Company, 1897), v.
Argonautic Elements in Homer's Odyssey
Hermann Bonitz
1860
[Adolf] Kirchhoff, in his book Die Homerische Odyssee und ihre Entstchung (1859), has given the result of several years of study in such form as to show to the eye his theory, printing separately the several successive layers of which the poem consists. "The Odyssey, as we have it, is neither the single creation of one poet, only disfigured by interpolations here and there, nor a collection of independent poems from dilferent authors and dates, strung together in the order of events, but a systematic enlargement and remodelling in a later age of an originally simpler nucleus. This nucleus,which I call 'the earlier revision,' in which form the poem was known until about 660 B.C., is not itself simple, but consists of an earlier and a later part, which belong to different times, different authors, and different points on the coast of Asia Minor. The first and earliest part of the whole poem, 'the Return of Odysseus,' is an original unit which cannot be further analyzed. It formed, without the addition of the second part, a complete independent whole. It is not, however, a popular epic in the usual sense of the term, but belongs to the period when the artistic epic was being developed." […]
The reasonings on which a part of these conclusions were based are stated in seven essays, which appeared first in different periodicals and afterwards without change in Die Composition der Odyssee, gesammelte Aufsatze von Kirchhoff (Berlin, 1869). […]The first essay shows, with a conclusiveness rare in such matters, that the part of the first book from line 88 on is a distorted and clumsy reproduction of the corresponding passage in the second book. The establishment of this point not only shuts out the possibility of maintaining original unity of conception for the Odyssey, but also settles that "the passage referred to of the second book, with all that can be shown to stand in original and organic connection with it, proceeds from a different and an earlier poet than the corresponding part of the first book with its belongings; the poet of the latter knew the passage in the second book and used it (in part in its precise words) in his own way and to his own ends." His object plainly was to connect the narrative of the journey of Telemachos with that of the return of Odysseus.—In the fifth essay Kirchhoff undertakes to show, starting out from a remark of Aristarchus in reference to Od. 12 : 374-390, that the passage in the narrative of Odysseus extending from 9 : 565 to 12:446 (with the exception of the original part of the νέκνια—see essay fourth) was originally composed in the third person as told by the poet, and then rewritten in the first person as told by Odysseus himself. Thus we have in the present narrative an original nucleus and a subsequent addition. The νέκνια incorporated into this addition is shown in the fourth essay to belong to the original nucleus. In the latter part of the third essay it is shown that several features borrowed from the myth of the Argonauts have been taken up into this subsequent addition. […]
The cyclic "Nostoi" (essay IV.),which belong to about 700 B.C., show knowledge of the third and fourth books of the Odyssey and of the original "Return of Odysseus" in the ninth book (including as above part of the νέκνια), but decidedly none of the enlarged version of his adventures contained in books X.-XII. From this it is certain that at that date the poem on the journey of Telemachos and the original "Return of Odysseus" were in existence, and also that the later additions to the latter had not yet been incorporated with it; it is also probable that these additions did not yet exist even as an independent poem. This latter point is raised from probability to certainty by a consideration from another source (essay III.). The later additions show a connection in the localities mentioned with a form of the Argonaut myth which cannot be earlier than the colonization of Kyzikos; it follows that "the origin of the poem which forms the basis of books X.-XII. of the Odyssey falls at the earliest towards the end of the period 750-680 B.C., and its revision in the present form—that is, the final shaping of the first half of our Odyssey—not much before 660 B.C." On the other hand (essay II.), the Eoai, which belong between 620 and 580 B.C., recognize the contents of the Odyssey as we have it in such a way as to warrant the inference that the final revision of the poem was somewhat generally known by 580 B.C.
Source: Hermann Bonitz, The Origin of the Homeric Poems: A Lecture, trans. Lewis R. Packard (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), 105-109 passim.
Hermann Bonitz
1860
[Adolf] Kirchhoff, in his book Die Homerische Odyssee und ihre Entstchung (1859), has given the result of several years of study in such form as to show to the eye his theory, printing separately the several successive layers of which the poem consists. "The Odyssey, as we have it, is neither the single creation of one poet, only disfigured by interpolations here and there, nor a collection of independent poems from dilferent authors and dates, strung together in the order of events, but a systematic enlargement and remodelling in a later age of an originally simpler nucleus. This nucleus,which I call 'the earlier revision,' in which form the poem was known until about 660 B.C., is not itself simple, but consists of an earlier and a later part, which belong to different times, different authors, and different points on the coast of Asia Minor. The first and earliest part of the whole poem, 'the Return of Odysseus,' is an original unit which cannot be further analyzed. It formed, without the addition of the second part, a complete independent whole. It is not, however, a popular epic in the usual sense of the term, but belongs to the period when the artistic epic was being developed." […]
The reasonings on which a part of these conclusions were based are stated in seven essays, which appeared first in different periodicals and afterwards without change in Die Composition der Odyssee, gesammelte Aufsatze von Kirchhoff (Berlin, 1869). […]The first essay shows, with a conclusiveness rare in such matters, that the part of the first book from line 88 on is a distorted and clumsy reproduction of the corresponding passage in the second book. The establishment of this point not only shuts out the possibility of maintaining original unity of conception for the Odyssey, but also settles that "the passage referred to of the second book, with all that can be shown to stand in original and organic connection with it, proceeds from a different and an earlier poet than the corresponding part of the first book with its belongings; the poet of the latter knew the passage in the second book and used it (in part in its precise words) in his own way and to his own ends." His object plainly was to connect the narrative of the journey of Telemachos with that of the return of Odysseus.—In the fifth essay Kirchhoff undertakes to show, starting out from a remark of Aristarchus in reference to Od. 12 : 374-390, that the passage in the narrative of Odysseus extending from 9 : 565 to 12:446 (with the exception of the original part of the νέκνια—see essay fourth) was originally composed in the third person as told by the poet, and then rewritten in the first person as told by Odysseus himself. Thus we have in the present narrative an original nucleus and a subsequent addition. The νέκνια incorporated into this addition is shown in the fourth essay to belong to the original nucleus. In the latter part of the third essay it is shown that several features borrowed from the myth of the Argonauts have been taken up into this subsequent addition. […]
The cyclic "Nostoi" (essay IV.),which belong to about 700 B.C., show knowledge of the third and fourth books of the Odyssey and of the original "Return of Odysseus" in the ninth book (including as above part of the νέκνια), but decidedly none of the enlarged version of his adventures contained in books X.-XII. From this it is certain that at that date the poem on the journey of Telemachos and the original "Return of Odysseus" were in existence, and also that the later additions to the latter had not yet been incorporated with it; it is also probable that these additions did not yet exist even as an independent poem. This latter point is raised from probability to certainty by a consideration from another source (essay III.). The later additions show a connection in the localities mentioned with a form of the Argonaut myth which cannot be earlier than the colonization of Kyzikos; it follows that "the origin of the poem which forms the basis of books X.-XII. of the Odyssey falls at the earliest towards the end of the period 750-680 B.C., and its revision in the present form—that is, the final shaping of the first half of our Odyssey—not much before 660 B.C." On the other hand (essay II.), the Eoai, which belong between 620 and 580 B.C., recognize the contents of the Odyssey as we have it in such a way as to warrant the inference that the final revision of the poem was somewhat generally known by 580 B.C.
Source: Hermann Bonitz, The Origin of the Homeric Poems: A Lecture, trans. Lewis R. Packard (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), 105-109 passim.
THE VOYAGE OF THE ARGONAUTS
F. A. Paley
1879
It is a very significant circumstance also, that the epithet applied in the "Odyssey" to the enchantress Circe, Aeaean, is the same as that given in the “Argonautics.” But Aeaea and Aeetes were words intimately connected with the Argonautic geography and the story of Jason; they have no direct relation to Ulysses. The word Aea, means "mainland," and it seems to have been primarily applied to the continent that stretched away still eastward after navigators had touched the eastern shores of the Pontus. It is to be distinguished from Aeaea, which is described as an island. Most of our readers are familiar with the opening verses of the Medea of Euripides; "O that the hull of the Argo had never scudded through the looming rocks of the Symplegades to Aea in Colchis” or, as the words are more commonly rendered, "to the land of the Colchians.” Of course, King Aeetes is the "lord of the mainland;” he is named in connexion with Phrixus in Pindar (“Pyth,” iv. 160), and as ruling the Colchian people near the Phasis (ibid. 213). This Phasis, we may here just remark, is unconsciously spoken of at many a dinner-table where the guests are asked if they will take some pheasant. For the Romans got this bird, it would appear, from that locality, and thence called it phasianus, as we read of it in Martial. The epithet was applied, however, much earlier, for Aristophanes, appears to describe by it a particular breed of horses.
It appears on the whole very probable that the author of the “Odyssey,” by whatever name he is to be called, and at whatever period he composed that immortal poem, really was indebted to some still earlier epics about the Argo for his account of Circe and her island home in Aeaea. But, if he took from thence his character of Circe, we are bound, in logical consistency, to believe that he may also have derived his Scylla and Charybdis, his sirens and his king Alcinous with the good queen Arete, from the same source. It is quite surprising how large a portion of the Homeric story is common to the two poems. Thus, the nymph Calypso (Ap. iv. 574), the island of Thrinacia and the oxen of the Sun (ibid. 965), Aeolus the god of the winds {ibid. 765), besides the many coincidences already pointed out, seem to be consciously claimed by both poets as peculiarly their own. There seems only one explanation; both poems are based independently on the same earlier ballads.
Read the whole article here.
Source: F. A. Paley, "Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts," The Dublin Review (Jan. 1879).
F. A. Paley
1879
It is a very significant circumstance also, that the epithet applied in the "Odyssey" to the enchantress Circe, Aeaean, is the same as that given in the “Argonautics.” But Aeaea and Aeetes were words intimately connected with the Argonautic geography and the story of Jason; they have no direct relation to Ulysses. The word Aea, means "mainland," and it seems to have been primarily applied to the continent that stretched away still eastward after navigators had touched the eastern shores of the Pontus. It is to be distinguished from Aeaea, which is described as an island. Most of our readers are familiar with the opening verses of the Medea of Euripides; "O that the hull of the Argo had never scudded through the looming rocks of the Symplegades to Aea in Colchis” or, as the words are more commonly rendered, "to the land of the Colchians.” Of course, King Aeetes is the "lord of the mainland;” he is named in connexion with Phrixus in Pindar (“Pyth,” iv. 160), and as ruling the Colchian people near the Phasis (ibid. 213). This Phasis, we may here just remark, is unconsciously spoken of at many a dinner-table where the guests are asked if they will take some pheasant. For the Romans got this bird, it would appear, from that locality, and thence called it phasianus, as we read of it in Martial. The epithet was applied, however, much earlier, for Aristophanes, appears to describe by it a particular breed of horses.
It appears on the whole very probable that the author of the “Odyssey,” by whatever name he is to be called, and at whatever period he composed that immortal poem, really was indebted to some still earlier epics about the Argo for his account of Circe and her island home in Aeaea. But, if he took from thence his character of Circe, we are bound, in logical consistency, to believe that he may also have derived his Scylla and Charybdis, his sirens and his king Alcinous with the good queen Arete, from the same source. It is quite surprising how large a portion of the Homeric story is common to the two poems. Thus, the nymph Calypso (Ap. iv. 574), the island of Thrinacia and the oxen of the Sun (ibid. 965), Aeolus the god of the winds {ibid. 765), besides the many coincidences already pointed out, seem to be consciously claimed by both poets as peculiarly their own. There seems only one explanation; both poems are based independently on the same earlier ballads.
Read the whole article here.
Source: F. A. Paley, "Pre-Homeric Legends of the Voyage of the Argonauts," The Dublin Review (Jan. 1879).
Remarks on Prof. Paley's "Post-Epic or Imitative Words in Homer," etc.
H. Hayman
1879
The legend of the Argo lies further back in mythology than the tale of Troy, and was therefore probably the subject of earlier ballads. But this fact has no tendency even to prove an actual date for our Odyssey. Would any one, from the "brief allusions" to the story of Antenor's migration to the Adriatic coast which Virgil contains, infer the existence of an older epic having that for its subject?
Source: H. Hayman, "Remarks on Prof. Paley's 'Post-Epic or Imitative Words in Homer,' etc.," Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society (October 1880): 278-279.
H. Hayman
1879
The legend of the Argo lies further back in mythology than the tale of Troy, and was therefore probably the subject of earlier ballads. But this fact has no tendency even to prove an actual date for our Odyssey. Would any one, from the "brief allusions" to the story of Antenor's migration to the Adriatic coast which Virgil contains, infer the existence of an older epic having that for its subject?
Source: H. Hayman, "Remarks on Prof. Paley's 'Post-Epic or Imitative Words in Homer,' etc.," Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society (October 1880): 278-279.
Sanskrit and Its Kindred Literatures
Laura Elizabeth Poor
1880
That the Iliad and the Odyssey are taken from the vast stores of mythical tradition common to all the Aryan nations, may be corroborated by evidence taken from other poems. Even in Greek literature, there are several other voyages, singularly resembling each other in their objects and their details; something bright is taken away, and a collected body of chieftains go in search of it. The story was first told in the voyage of the Argonauts for the golden fleece. In Sanskrit, Indra is often called a bull, who carried away Dahana, the dawn. In Greek, the sun becomes a ram with a golden fleece; he carries away Phrixos and Hclle, who are the children of Niphele. This is the same root as Niobe, as Niblungs in Norse, and our word "nebulous"; it means the mist. Phrixos and Helle are the twilight, children of the darkness, who carries away the golden sunlight. So Jason collected a band of bright powers, all chieftains; they are solar heroes, seeking for the light on which their life depends. They sail in the good ship Argo, which like Skidbladnir in Teutonic mythology, contracts or expands as necessity requires. This is another of those cloud-ships which we found in the Odyssey. They have a weary voyage, with many dangers. Jason is aided by the wise Medeia. She means the dawn, which penetrates everywhere, sees and knows all; for wisdom is always the attribute of the light, as we saw in Phoibos and» Athene. She even brings the dead to life in her magic caldron. This is exactly what is said in the dawn hymns of the Rig Veda. "She awakens the sleeping to a new life." The myth is still true to itself. Jason, the sun, conquers and gets back the golden fleece. But on their journey home, like Odysseus and his companions, perils and dangers attack them. Finally, he abandons Medeia, the wise woman. So the sun must leave the dawn, and go on to another land, and a checkered career. But the wise dawn becomes also cruel, and sends to Jason's new bride, Glauke, a glittering dress, which burned to her bones when she put it on. It is here, that same shirt of flame which enwrapped, and ate into, and killed Herakles, — another name given to the glittering, flame-colored clouds of sunset. How strikingly this resembles the Odyssey! I will not describe the other voyages: these are types of all.
Source: Laura Elizabeth Poor, Sanskrit and Its Kindred Literatures (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880), 191-192.
Laura Elizabeth Poor
1880
That the Iliad and the Odyssey are taken from the vast stores of mythical tradition common to all the Aryan nations, may be corroborated by evidence taken from other poems. Even in Greek literature, there are several other voyages, singularly resembling each other in their objects and their details; something bright is taken away, and a collected body of chieftains go in search of it. The story was first told in the voyage of the Argonauts for the golden fleece. In Sanskrit, Indra is often called a bull, who carried away Dahana, the dawn. In Greek, the sun becomes a ram with a golden fleece; he carries away Phrixos and Hclle, who are the children of Niphele. This is the same root as Niobe, as Niblungs in Norse, and our word "nebulous"; it means the mist. Phrixos and Helle are the twilight, children of the darkness, who carries away the golden sunlight. So Jason collected a band of bright powers, all chieftains; they are solar heroes, seeking for the light on which their life depends. They sail in the good ship Argo, which like Skidbladnir in Teutonic mythology, contracts or expands as necessity requires. This is another of those cloud-ships which we found in the Odyssey. They have a weary voyage, with many dangers. Jason is aided by the wise Medeia. She means the dawn, which penetrates everywhere, sees and knows all; for wisdom is always the attribute of the light, as we saw in Phoibos and» Athene. She even brings the dead to life in her magic caldron. This is exactly what is said in the dawn hymns of the Rig Veda. "She awakens the sleeping to a new life." The myth is still true to itself. Jason, the sun, conquers and gets back the golden fleece. But on their journey home, like Odysseus and his companions, perils and dangers attack them. Finally, he abandons Medeia, the wise woman. So the sun must leave the dawn, and go on to another land, and a checkered career. But the wise dawn becomes also cruel, and sends to Jason's new bride, Glauke, a glittering dress, which burned to her bones when she put it on. It is here, that same shirt of flame which enwrapped, and ate into, and killed Herakles, — another name given to the glittering, flame-colored clouds of sunset. How strikingly this resembles the Odyssey! I will not describe the other voyages: these are types of all.
Source: Laura Elizabeth Poor, Sanskrit and Its Kindred Literatures (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880), 191-192.
The Return of the Heroes from Troy
George William Cox
1881
The return of the heroes from Troy is an event answering precisely to the return of Iason (Jason) and his comrades from Kolchis: as they bring back the golden fleece, so Menelaos returns Helen and her treasures to Sparta. These legends are uniform and consistent only so far as they represent the heroes returning from the east to the west. Otherwise the incidents, and the names of persons and places, are changed almost at will. The tombs of Odysseus, Aineias (Aeneas), and many others, were shown in many places, for it was as easy to take them to one country as to another.
Source: George William Cox, An Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology and Folklore (London: C. Keegan Paul & Co., 1881), 276.
George William Cox
1881
The return of the heroes from Troy is an event answering precisely to the return of Iason (Jason) and his comrades from Kolchis: as they bring back the golden fleece, so Menelaos returns Helen and her treasures to Sparta. These legends are uniform and consistent only so far as they represent the heroes returning from the east to the west. Otherwise the incidents, and the names of persons and places, are changed almost at will. The tombs of Odysseus, Aineias (Aeneas), and many others, were shown in many places, for it was as easy to take them to one country as to another.
Source: George William Cox, An Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology and Folklore (London: C. Keegan Paul & Co., 1881), 276.
Homer and the Epic
Andrew Lang
1893
The greater part of [the Odyssey's books] x., xi., xii.—namely, the Laestrygonian adventure, Circe, portions of the scenes in Hades, the Sirens, the Rocks Wandering, the eating of the cattle of the Sun, Scylla and Charybdis—can be dated by Kirchhoff. 'The motive of this part of Odysseus's narrative betrays a close connection with the story of the Argonauts' (p. 287). Thus Circe is a sister of Aeetes, the wizard king of the Argonaut saga. The Rocks Wandering were only escaped previously by Jason's vessel, 'Argo, that all men wot of,' as the poet specially remarks (xii. 70). In the Laestrygonia of the Odyssey is a spring, Artacia. There was such a spring at Cyzicus, and in Cyzicus the Argonauts met giants like the I.aestrygonians. This Artacia is an historical spring; Alaeus mentioned it. These Argonautic details, then, were by a late and arbitrary process foisted into the Odyssey, a poem of the Trojan cycle. Moreover, the passages must be later than knowledge of the fountain of Artacia, and the 'localising' of Argonautic adventures at Cyzicus, consequently, later than the Greek colonisation of Cyzicus. That is dated by some in the seventh, by others in the twenty-fourth Olympiad. Hence, Kirchhoff would not date our present Odyssey as it stands earlier than the thirtieth Olympiad. Indeed, it was known between Olympiads 30-48, when the chest of Cypselus was made, for that chest was adorned, among other works of art, with a representation of Odysseus asleep with Circe.
Now, no doubt, the Odyssey was known in the time of the making of the chest of Cypselus. But the arguments of Kirchhoff are singularly unconvincing. The incidents of the Argonautic legend are of extreme and universal antiquity as fairy tales and heroic legends. The chief of the plot of the saga is found in Samoa, North America, Russia, Finland, Scotland, Madagascar. The Rocks Wandering are known to the Aztecs. The Sirens are familiar in the folk-lore of most peoples. Jason is mentioned in the Iliad in vii. 469, xxi. 41, xxiii. 747. The Laestrygonian giants are placed on a fiord, in the land of the Midnight Sun; they are clearly derived (as has been said) from vague travellers' tales, borne along the Amber Route from the Baltic. They have no connection with Asia Minor. In brief, this part, like other parts of the Odyssey, connects with its hero a mass of primaeval fairy tales of dateless antiquity. The saga of the Argonauts also dealt with some of these, and with some other fairy tales, as of Phrixus and Helle, and especially with the widely diffused tale of the wanderer who achieves adventures by aid of the magician's daughter. Poems on these topics were known to the author of the Odyssey, but we do not possess the original lays of Argo which he knew. We have only the Alexandrine and late imitative epic of Apollonius Rhodius, and the legend in Pindar, and the so-called Orphic poem, and hints in Hesiod. Because Homer refers to Jason, and knows primitive legends used in the Argonautic cycle, it does not follow that the author of this piece of the Odyssey was using contemporary epics, and working after the localising of part of the Argo saga at Cyzicus. In Solon's time Mimnermus did not localise the home of the wizard king at Colchis, but placed it vaguely on 'the brink of Ocean.' The fountain Artacia (from the isle Artace) has very little to do with the Argonaut saga. The Laestrygonians have nothing to do with Cyzicus at all. The Asiatic coasts were known long before the Greek colonies were planted there. The adventure of the Argonauts at Cyzicus is quite a late piece of poetry. In brief, so sweeping a theory of lateness in the Odyssey has rarely been based on such insignificant evidence. It is very much easier to believe that the poet for good artistic reasons delayed the eclaircissement of Odysseus, than that a later poet worked in a huge cantle for the purpose of plagiarising from an Argonautic poem, itself late.
Source: Andrew Lang, Homer and the Epic (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1893), 277-279.
Andrew Lang
1893
The greater part of [the Odyssey's books] x., xi., xii.—namely, the Laestrygonian adventure, Circe, portions of the scenes in Hades, the Sirens, the Rocks Wandering, the eating of the cattle of the Sun, Scylla and Charybdis—can be dated by Kirchhoff. 'The motive of this part of Odysseus's narrative betrays a close connection with the story of the Argonauts' (p. 287). Thus Circe is a sister of Aeetes, the wizard king of the Argonaut saga. The Rocks Wandering were only escaped previously by Jason's vessel, 'Argo, that all men wot of,' as the poet specially remarks (xii. 70). In the Laestrygonia of the Odyssey is a spring, Artacia. There was such a spring at Cyzicus, and in Cyzicus the Argonauts met giants like the I.aestrygonians. This Artacia is an historical spring; Alaeus mentioned it. These Argonautic details, then, were by a late and arbitrary process foisted into the Odyssey, a poem of the Trojan cycle. Moreover, the passages must be later than knowledge of the fountain of Artacia, and the 'localising' of Argonautic adventures at Cyzicus, consequently, later than the Greek colonisation of Cyzicus. That is dated by some in the seventh, by others in the twenty-fourth Olympiad. Hence, Kirchhoff would not date our present Odyssey as it stands earlier than the thirtieth Olympiad. Indeed, it was known between Olympiads 30-48, when the chest of Cypselus was made, for that chest was adorned, among other works of art, with a representation of Odysseus asleep with Circe.
Now, no doubt, the Odyssey was known in the time of the making of the chest of Cypselus. But the arguments of Kirchhoff are singularly unconvincing. The incidents of the Argonautic legend are of extreme and universal antiquity as fairy tales and heroic legends. The chief of the plot of the saga is found in Samoa, North America, Russia, Finland, Scotland, Madagascar. The Rocks Wandering are known to the Aztecs. The Sirens are familiar in the folk-lore of most peoples. Jason is mentioned in the Iliad in vii. 469, xxi. 41, xxiii. 747. The Laestrygonian giants are placed on a fiord, in the land of the Midnight Sun; they are clearly derived (as has been said) from vague travellers' tales, borne along the Amber Route from the Baltic. They have no connection with Asia Minor. In brief, this part, like other parts of the Odyssey, connects with its hero a mass of primaeval fairy tales of dateless antiquity. The saga of the Argonauts also dealt with some of these, and with some other fairy tales, as of Phrixus and Helle, and especially with the widely diffused tale of the wanderer who achieves adventures by aid of the magician's daughter. Poems on these topics were known to the author of the Odyssey, but we do not possess the original lays of Argo which he knew. We have only the Alexandrine and late imitative epic of Apollonius Rhodius, and the legend in Pindar, and the so-called Orphic poem, and hints in Hesiod. Because Homer refers to Jason, and knows primitive legends used in the Argonautic cycle, it does not follow that the author of this piece of the Odyssey was using contemporary epics, and working after the localising of part of the Argo saga at Cyzicus. In Solon's time Mimnermus did not localise the home of the wizard king at Colchis, but placed it vaguely on 'the brink of Ocean.' The fountain Artacia (from the isle Artace) has very little to do with the Argonaut saga. The Laestrygonians have nothing to do with Cyzicus at all. The Asiatic coasts were known long before the Greek colonies were planted there. The adventure of the Argonauts at Cyzicus is quite a late piece of poetry. In brief, so sweeping a theory of lateness in the Odyssey has rarely been based on such insignificant evidence. It is very much easier to believe that the poet for good artistic reasons delayed the eclaircissement of Odysseus, than that a later poet worked in a huge cantle for the purpose of plagiarising from an Argonautic poem, itself late.
Source: Andrew Lang, Homer and the Epic (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1893), 277-279.
