THE VOYAGE
OF THE ARGONAUTS
E. H. Bunbury
1879
The Argo, Constantine Volanakis, pre-1907.
EDWARD HERBERT BUNBURY (1811-1895) was a British baron, Liberal Party politician, member of Parliament, and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The following article made up the second chapter of Bunbury's two-volume work, A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans from the Earliest Ages to the Fall of the Roman Empire.
1. It is impossible to consider the state of navigation and geographical knowledge among the Greeks in the earliest ages, without bestowing some attention on the well-known legend of the Voyage of the Argonauts: an enterprise which, if we could believe in its reality, would justly deserve to rank as the first voyage of discovery on record. But it is hardly necessary to add that not only is the legendary tale, in the form with which we are all familiar, one to which it is impossible to attach any historical value, but it is equally impossible for us at the present day to arrive at any distinct idea of the original form in which it first became current among the Greeks, or the period when it was ultimately consolidated into that which has been transmitted to us by the poets of later ages.
It is certain, indeed, that the voyage of the ship Argo, under the command of Jason, and the favouring protection of Hera, was not only known to the author of the Odyssey, but is especially referred to by him as a thing familiar to all, or, as the Germans would term it, "world-famous."It is equally clear that the term of the voyage was already fixed in the land of Aeetes, and there can be no doubt that the quest of the golden fleece was already designated as its object. Indeed this may probably be regarded as having formed from the first the essential nucleus of the legend. But it is a very different thing to assume—as has been done by Strabo and many other writers both in ancient and modern times—that therefore Homer was acquainted with the ordinary tradition that carried the Argonauts to Colchis and the river Pliasis. Demetrius of Scepsis appears to have been the only ancient writer who ventured to doubt this conclusion: for which he is severely taken to task by Strabo, who repeatedly speaks of the voyage of the Argonauts to the Phasis as admitted by all, including Homer, though unquestionably there is no statement in the Homeric poems to that effect. So far as we are dimly able to discern, the earliest form of the legend must have been that preserved to us in a fragment of Mimnermus, which represented Aeetes as dwelling on the banks of the Ocean stream in the farthest East, "where the rays of the sun are stored up in a golden chamber.” He was, in fact, as purely mythical a being as his sister Circe, and, like her, he dwelt beside the Ocean stream, in that which was regarded by the poets as the twilight land of fable. The attempt to identify the place of his abode with Colchis and the land of the Phasis, had doubtless no more real foundation than that which sought for the land of the Phaeacians in Corcyra, and the Ogygian island of Calypso in Malta. But it is not difficult to conceive how such a notion should have acquired currency. As soon as the Greeks began to extend their navigation into the Euxine, they would soon learn that at its eastern extremity lay the land of Colchis; and as this was the remotest region towards the east of which they had any knowledge, it would be a natural conclusion to assume that here must be that far-distant land of the rising sun, to which the celebrated voyage of the Argonauts had been directed.
§ 2. When at a later period the Milesian and other Greek colonies gradually spread themselves along the shores of the Euxine, they would continually seek to identify themselves with the interest that had gathered around so celebrated a legend, and thus we find the tale of the Argonauts mixed up with a number of local traditions, or poetic fictions, which have no more real connection with the original story, than have the settlement of Antenor and Aeneas in Italy with the primitive Tale of Troy. At the same time the traditional tale adapted itself to the realities of the geography; and the voyage of the Argonauts from the Symplegades to Colchis, as we find it described in Apollonius Rhodius (in the third century B.C.), has almost the accuracy of a geographical treatise.
§ 3. But the case was very different with the return to Greece. For some reason, which it is not easy to determine, it seems to have been very early assumed that they could not, or at least did not, return by the same route which they had followed in the first instance; and the ingenuity of the poets and logographers, having a wide field afforded them by the prevailing vagueness of geographical notions, was exercised in devising various routes—all equally imaginary, and equally impossible, by which the ship Argo was supposed to have effected her return to Thessaly. The original idea seems to have been that followed by Hesiod (or by one of the poets whose works were extant under his name), that the Argonauts, after attaining the object of their voyage by possessing themselves of the golden fleece, sailed up the Phasis, and thus passed into the Ocean stream, which was universally considered as flowing round the whole world.' Once embarked upon this circumfluent stream, it was not difficult to carry them wherever it was desired, and they were supposed to have followed it till they found themselves on the south coast of Libya, opposite to the Mediterranean. Here they were instructed by Medea to quit the Ocean, and they carried the Argo "over the desert surface of the land" for twelve days, until they launched it again at the mouth of the Lake Triton. This is the form in which we find the story told by the earliest extant poet who has dwelt upon it at any length, in the fourth Pythian ode of Pindar; but, unfortunately, the lyric character of the composition prevents it from presenting us with anything like a continuous narrative. Another version of the story represented them as sailing up the Tanais, instead of the Phasis, and passing, by means of that river, the sources of which were still unknown, into the great northern Ocean, and thus sailing round till they re-entered the Mediterranean at its western extremity. Later writers, who were aware of the impossibility of this mode of proceeding, introduced an addition similar to that found in the other form of the legend, and described them as transporting the ship upon rollers from one navigable river to another, and thus reaching the outer sea.
§ 4. Apparently the latest form of the legend was that with which we are in modern times most familiar, in consequence of its having been adopted by Apollonius Rhodius in his well-known poem, but which had previously found little favour with the Greeks. According to this, the Argonauts, in order to elude the pursuit of the Colchians, sailed across the Euxine to the mouth of the Ister (Danube), and ascended that river as far as the point where it divided into two branches or arms, one of which flowed into the Euxine, the other into the Adriatic or Ionian Sea. This strange geographical error was, as we shall hereafter see, widely prevalent among the ancient Greeks, even at a period when such a misconception would appear impossible, "and was believed even by such writers as Eratosthenes and Aristotle. It would, therefore, be readily adopted by the rationalizing critics and poets of the Alexandrian school; but it could obviously not have formed any part of the old legend, being an outgrowth, though an erroneous one, of more advanced geographical knowledge.
As if this absurdity had not been enough, Apollonius having thus brought his heroes into the Adriatic, must then conduct them up the Eridanus (which was in his time already identified with the Padus, the great river of Northern Italy), and from thence by a bifurcation similar to that assigned to the Ister, into the Rhodanus or Rhone, which they then descended to the Tyrrhenian or Sardinian Sea. The object of this strange addition to the legend was obviously to bring them to the dwelling of Circe, whose place of abode had been long regarded as fixed on the western coast of Italy, adjoining the Tyrrhenian Sea; while her name was so inseparably associated with the legend of the Argonauts that it was thought absolutely necessary to represent them as paying her a visit. From thence they passed by the promontory of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Planctae or Moving Islands, on their way home; touching also at Phaeacia, as well as at Thera, Anaphe, and other points which were connected by local legends with the tale of the Argonauts.
It is natural to suppose that these Homeric localities, with their accompanying fables, were merely introduced by the poets in imitation of the Odyssey, and formed no part of the original legend. But there seems much reason to believe that there were very early legends connected with the Argonauts in the west as well as the east; and it is remarkable that the only allusion to the voyage of the far-famed ship Argo that is found in Homer is in connection with the dangers of the rocks called Planctae, which were connected by the general consent of ancient writers with the western part of the Mediterranean, in common with Scylla and Charybdis, and the islands of Aeolus and Circe. It was precisely the conflicting character of these two sets of legends, and the necessity of attempting to reconcile them, that involved the logographers and poets in such hopeless confusion; and led to their adopting such strange geographical theories for that purpose. They had attained just sufficient geographical knowledge to see the difficulties that arose, when they attempted to combine into one narrative stories originally quite unconnected with one another, and to give a definite form to what the earliest poets and their hearers were contented to leave wholly vague and unsubstantial.
§ 5. It would be a mere waste of time to attempt to extract from these different versions of the Argonautic legend, in the form which it ultimately assumed, any indications of the primitive geographical notions with which it was associated, for we are wholly unable to distinguish these from the almost equally confused and irrational views, which were still current among the Alexandrian poets. The earliest writers, so far as we know, who treated the subject at any considerable length were Eumelus of Corinth, and the author of the poem called Naupactica; the former of whom may be assigned to a period about B.C. 761-744, while the latter may probably be referred to the same century. From the very scanty fragments of them that are preserved, it is pretty clear that the general framework of the fable had already at this period assumed the form with which we are familiar; but no geographical details are cited from either poet; and the scope of their works, which was in both cases a genealogical or mytho-historical one, renders it extremely doubtful whether they troubled themselves to relate the voyage in such a manner as would have thrown any considerable light upon the subject, even if they had been preserved to us. The hypothesis of some modern writers that the poem called Argonautica, still extant under the assumed name of Orpheus, was really the production of Onomacritus, who flourished in the time of the Pisistratids, is wholly destitute of support from any ancient authority; and the work in question may safely be assigned, on its own internal evidence, to a period not earlier than the second century of the Christian era.
Of course it is impossible to assert that there may not have been some voyage or naval expedition at a very remote period, which attained to such a celebrity as to become the nucleus around which crystallized so many local and poetical legends; and it is difficult to explain on any other hypothesis why the original legend should assume a form so totally different from all others transmitted to us from the early ages. This is the more remarkable because the people to whom the enterprise is uniformly ascribed by the poetical traditions, in the form in which alone we possess them, is that of the Minyans, a race inhabiting Boeotia in very early ages, whose power and wealth are attested both by the Homeric poems6 and by existing remains, but who were certainly not in historical times connected with maritime pursuits or naval enterprise. But it may be safely affirmed that, if there ever was a voyage of the Argonauts which gave rise to the traditionary tale, it was of a comparatively very limited character; and that the idea of Colchis and the Phasis was not connected with it till long afterwards. It may also be regarded as certain that it was to a great extent interwoven with legends and traditions that arose after the great extension of Greek navigation and commerce in the Euxine, which did not take place till the seventh century B.C. But to suppose the original legend to have grown up in consequence of these exploring voyages, and that the tale of the Argonauts is merely a mythical representation of the progress of Greek discovery in the Euxine, not only takes no account of its inseparable connection with the Minyans, but is at variance with the fact that we know the legend of such a voyage to have been already familiar to the Greeks in the age of the Homeric poems, long before either the Milesians or Megarians had penetrated into the Euxine.
All that can be said is, that, as the legendary traditions of the Trojan War implied of necessity a state of things in which navigation had already become sufficiently familiar among the Greeks for them to transport a considerable army across the ^Egean to the shores of the Hellespont, so there existed another set of traditions, unquestionably also of early date, that pointed to some enterprise of a more distinctly naval character, of sufficient importance to be connected with the names of heroes and demigods, and to become in like manner the basis upon which was accumulated a mass of mythical fictions.
NOTE A.
ARGONAUTICA OF ORPHEUS.
I should have been content to leave the consideration of the supposed antiquity of the Argonautica, as was done by K. O. Müller and Mr. Grote, as a question that had been decided beyond appeal by the successive investigations of Schneider, Hermann, and Ukert: had it not been for its having been brought forward afresh by M. Vivien de St. Martin in his recent work on the historical progress of Geography. Admitting that the arguments of the German critics, derived from grammatical and metrical details, may be conclusive against assigning an early date to the poem in its present shape, he still maintains that it may be merely a rifacciamento of an earlier work, and that the poem now extant is in substance the same as that of which he ascribes the composition to Onomacritus. Two arguments appear to me conclusive against this hypothesis: the one, that, as stated in the text, this supposed redaction by Onomacritus of a poem on the Argonautic voyage is a pure fiction: that is to say, a mere arbitrary hypothesis, assumed without a particle of evidence. There is some ancient authority, though very vague and indefinite, for Onomacritus having composed hymns in the name of Orpheus, or worked up previously existing poems of a religious character into a more definite shape; and it is not improbable that the poems current under the name of Orpheus in the time of Aristophanes belonged to this class. But there is absolutely none for Onomacritus having handled the subject of the Argonautics, a poem of a totally different character. Nor, in the second place, is there any mention of the existence of any such poem before the Alexandrian period, or indeed till long after; and the existing Scholia on Apollonius, which are of unusual fulness and value, while repeatedly referring to the different versions of the tale found in different authors, never allude to the existence of a poem on the subject under the imposing name of Orpheus. This consideration alone appears to me conclusive against its being of older date than the late Alexandrian period.
The internal evidence appears to me equally decisive. M. de St. Martin finds in it the primitive simplicity and didactic character of the earliest poets. To me it appears, in common with several distinguished critics, to have the jejune and prosaic tameness so characteristic of the declining Greek poetry of the second and third century after the Christian era. And this character is as strongly marked in the conception and mode of treatment of the subject as in the details of style and diction. For these last I must refer my readers to Hermann's elaborate dissertation, appended to his edition of the Orphica; an excellent summary of the whole subject, from the critical point of view, is given by Bernhardy in his Ghrundriss der Griechischen Literatur (2nd edition, Halle, 1856, vol. iL pp. 347-353).
From the geographical point of view it matters little whether the poem is to be ascribed to the Alexandrian or to the Christian period. In either case it is equally worthless, and unworthy of careful examination. But the evidence that it is not (as M. de St. Martin maintains) "certainly anterior to Herodotus," appears to me overwhelming. The confusion of the writer's geography, which is regarded by M. de St. Martin as arising from his great antiquity, bears a striking resemblance to that found in several of the later geographers. It is not merely that he has erroneous ideas, even in regard to regions like the north coasts of the Aegean; that he represents the Araxes, Thermodon, Phasis, and Tanais, as all having a common origin; and that in describing the voyage from the Maeotis to the Northern Ocean, he jumbles together the names of Scythian tribes derived from all kinds of sources, and enumerates the Geloni, Sauromatae, Getae, and Arimaspians, among the nations dwelling around the Palus Maaotis, while he transfers the Tauri, noted for their human sacrifices, to the shores of the channel leading into the Northern Ocean. But he describes the Argonauts as passing through a narrow channel into the Ocean, "which is called by the Hyperborean tribes the Cronian Sea and the Dead Sea." Both these names were familiar to the geographers and poets of later, times; but no trace of them is found before the Alexandrian period. Here they visit in succession the Macrobians. Cimmerians, and the land" of Hermionia, where is the mouth of Acheron and the descent into the infernal regions: but they are especially warned to avoid the island of Ierne, in order to do which they by great exertions double the Sacred Cape, and after twelve days' voyage reach the fir-clad island, sacred to Demeter, where the poet places the fable of the Rape of Persephone. Thence in three days they come to the island of Circe, after which they pass by the Columns of Hercules into the Sardinian Sea. Here we find mentioned the customary legends of the Sirens, Charybdis, &c, but mixed up with the names of the Latins, Ausonians, and Tyrrhenians, as inhabitants of its shores: and the mention of Lilybaeum in Sicily is associated with the burning Aetna, and the fable of Enceladus. It is remarkable that the "far-stretching Alps" are mentioned among the ranges of mountains—associated with the Rhipeean mountains and the Calpian ridge—that overshadowed the land of the Cimmerians, and helped to shut out from it the light of the sun. Absurd as is this statement, it shows a familiarity with the name of the Alps as a great mountain chain, though it was certainly unknown as such to the Greeks in the days of Herodotus. The mention of Ierne (or, as it is called in one passage, the lernian Islands) is still more decisive. There is no evidence of any knowledge of the British Islands among the Greeks before the time of Pytheas, while the name of Ierne (Ireland) is not mentioned till a considerably later period.
Confused and extravagant as are the geographical notions contained in the above narrative, it does not appear to me possible to pronounce upon their evidence alone, that the poem cannot belong to the Alexandrian period instead of the Roman Empire. Its assignment to the later age must rest upon considerations of style and language, as well as upon the all-important fact that no allusion to its existence is found in any ancient author, or even in any of the scholiasts or grammarians down to a very late date.
Note on the text: I have removed the primarily Greek language footnotes for this version. They may be viewed on Google Books.
Source: E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans from the Earliest Ages to the Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1879).
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
1. It is impossible to consider the state of navigation and geographical knowledge among the Greeks in the earliest ages, without bestowing some attention on the well-known legend of the Voyage of the Argonauts: an enterprise which, if we could believe in its reality, would justly deserve to rank as the first voyage of discovery on record. But it is hardly necessary to add that not only is the legendary tale, in the form with which we are all familiar, one to which it is impossible to attach any historical value, but it is equally impossible for us at the present day to arrive at any distinct idea of the original form in which it first became current among the Greeks, or the period when it was ultimately consolidated into that which has been transmitted to us by the poets of later ages.
It is certain, indeed, that the voyage of the ship Argo, under the command of Jason, and the favouring protection of Hera, was not only known to the author of the Odyssey, but is especially referred to by him as a thing familiar to all, or, as the Germans would term it, "world-famous."It is equally clear that the term of the voyage was already fixed in the land of Aeetes, and there can be no doubt that the quest of the golden fleece was already designated as its object. Indeed this may probably be regarded as having formed from the first the essential nucleus of the legend. But it is a very different thing to assume—as has been done by Strabo and many other writers both in ancient and modern times—that therefore Homer was acquainted with the ordinary tradition that carried the Argonauts to Colchis and the river Pliasis. Demetrius of Scepsis appears to have been the only ancient writer who ventured to doubt this conclusion: for which he is severely taken to task by Strabo, who repeatedly speaks of the voyage of the Argonauts to the Phasis as admitted by all, including Homer, though unquestionably there is no statement in the Homeric poems to that effect. So far as we are dimly able to discern, the earliest form of the legend must have been that preserved to us in a fragment of Mimnermus, which represented Aeetes as dwelling on the banks of the Ocean stream in the farthest East, "where the rays of the sun are stored up in a golden chamber.” He was, in fact, as purely mythical a being as his sister Circe, and, like her, he dwelt beside the Ocean stream, in that which was regarded by the poets as the twilight land of fable. The attempt to identify the place of his abode with Colchis and the land of the Phasis, had doubtless no more real foundation than that which sought for the land of the Phaeacians in Corcyra, and the Ogygian island of Calypso in Malta. But it is not difficult to conceive how such a notion should have acquired currency. As soon as the Greeks began to extend their navigation into the Euxine, they would soon learn that at its eastern extremity lay the land of Colchis; and as this was the remotest region towards the east of which they had any knowledge, it would be a natural conclusion to assume that here must be that far-distant land of the rising sun, to which the celebrated voyage of the Argonauts had been directed.
§ 2. When at a later period the Milesian and other Greek colonies gradually spread themselves along the shores of the Euxine, they would continually seek to identify themselves with the interest that had gathered around so celebrated a legend, and thus we find the tale of the Argonauts mixed up with a number of local traditions, or poetic fictions, which have no more real connection with the original story, than have the settlement of Antenor and Aeneas in Italy with the primitive Tale of Troy. At the same time the traditional tale adapted itself to the realities of the geography; and the voyage of the Argonauts from the Symplegades to Colchis, as we find it described in Apollonius Rhodius (in the third century B.C.), has almost the accuracy of a geographical treatise.
§ 3. But the case was very different with the return to Greece. For some reason, which it is not easy to determine, it seems to have been very early assumed that they could not, or at least did not, return by the same route which they had followed in the first instance; and the ingenuity of the poets and logographers, having a wide field afforded them by the prevailing vagueness of geographical notions, was exercised in devising various routes—all equally imaginary, and equally impossible, by which the ship Argo was supposed to have effected her return to Thessaly. The original idea seems to have been that followed by Hesiod (or by one of the poets whose works were extant under his name), that the Argonauts, after attaining the object of their voyage by possessing themselves of the golden fleece, sailed up the Phasis, and thus passed into the Ocean stream, which was universally considered as flowing round the whole world.' Once embarked upon this circumfluent stream, it was not difficult to carry them wherever it was desired, and they were supposed to have followed it till they found themselves on the south coast of Libya, opposite to the Mediterranean. Here they were instructed by Medea to quit the Ocean, and they carried the Argo "over the desert surface of the land" for twelve days, until they launched it again at the mouth of the Lake Triton. This is the form in which we find the story told by the earliest extant poet who has dwelt upon it at any length, in the fourth Pythian ode of Pindar; but, unfortunately, the lyric character of the composition prevents it from presenting us with anything like a continuous narrative. Another version of the story represented them as sailing up the Tanais, instead of the Phasis, and passing, by means of that river, the sources of which were still unknown, into the great northern Ocean, and thus sailing round till they re-entered the Mediterranean at its western extremity. Later writers, who were aware of the impossibility of this mode of proceeding, introduced an addition similar to that found in the other form of the legend, and described them as transporting the ship upon rollers from one navigable river to another, and thus reaching the outer sea.
§ 4. Apparently the latest form of the legend was that with which we are in modern times most familiar, in consequence of its having been adopted by Apollonius Rhodius in his well-known poem, but which had previously found little favour with the Greeks. According to this, the Argonauts, in order to elude the pursuit of the Colchians, sailed across the Euxine to the mouth of the Ister (Danube), and ascended that river as far as the point where it divided into two branches or arms, one of which flowed into the Euxine, the other into the Adriatic or Ionian Sea. This strange geographical error was, as we shall hereafter see, widely prevalent among the ancient Greeks, even at a period when such a misconception would appear impossible, "and was believed even by such writers as Eratosthenes and Aristotle. It would, therefore, be readily adopted by the rationalizing critics and poets of the Alexandrian school; but it could obviously not have formed any part of the old legend, being an outgrowth, though an erroneous one, of more advanced geographical knowledge.
As if this absurdity had not been enough, Apollonius having thus brought his heroes into the Adriatic, must then conduct them up the Eridanus (which was in his time already identified with the Padus, the great river of Northern Italy), and from thence by a bifurcation similar to that assigned to the Ister, into the Rhodanus or Rhone, which they then descended to the Tyrrhenian or Sardinian Sea. The object of this strange addition to the legend was obviously to bring them to the dwelling of Circe, whose place of abode had been long regarded as fixed on the western coast of Italy, adjoining the Tyrrhenian Sea; while her name was so inseparably associated with the legend of the Argonauts that it was thought absolutely necessary to represent them as paying her a visit. From thence they passed by the promontory of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Planctae or Moving Islands, on their way home; touching also at Phaeacia, as well as at Thera, Anaphe, and other points which were connected by local legends with the tale of the Argonauts.
It is natural to suppose that these Homeric localities, with their accompanying fables, were merely introduced by the poets in imitation of the Odyssey, and formed no part of the original legend. But there seems much reason to believe that there were very early legends connected with the Argonauts in the west as well as the east; and it is remarkable that the only allusion to the voyage of the far-famed ship Argo that is found in Homer is in connection with the dangers of the rocks called Planctae, which were connected by the general consent of ancient writers with the western part of the Mediterranean, in common with Scylla and Charybdis, and the islands of Aeolus and Circe. It was precisely the conflicting character of these two sets of legends, and the necessity of attempting to reconcile them, that involved the logographers and poets in such hopeless confusion; and led to their adopting such strange geographical theories for that purpose. They had attained just sufficient geographical knowledge to see the difficulties that arose, when they attempted to combine into one narrative stories originally quite unconnected with one another, and to give a definite form to what the earliest poets and their hearers were contented to leave wholly vague and unsubstantial.
§ 5. It would be a mere waste of time to attempt to extract from these different versions of the Argonautic legend, in the form which it ultimately assumed, any indications of the primitive geographical notions with which it was associated, for we are wholly unable to distinguish these from the almost equally confused and irrational views, which were still current among the Alexandrian poets. The earliest writers, so far as we know, who treated the subject at any considerable length were Eumelus of Corinth, and the author of the poem called Naupactica; the former of whom may be assigned to a period about B.C. 761-744, while the latter may probably be referred to the same century. From the very scanty fragments of them that are preserved, it is pretty clear that the general framework of the fable had already at this period assumed the form with which we are familiar; but no geographical details are cited from either poet; and the scope of their works, which was in both cases a genealogical or mytho-historical one, renders it extremely doubtful whether they troubled themselves to relate the voyage in such a manner as would have thrown any considerable light upon the subject, even if they had been preserved to us. The hypothesis of some modern writers that the poem called Argonautica, still extant under the assumed name of Orpheus, was really the production of Onomacritus, who flourished in the time of the Pisistratids, is wholly destitute of support from any ancient authority; and the work in question may safely be assigned, on its own internal evidence, to a period not earlier than the second century of the Christian era.
Of course it is impossible to assert that there may not have been some voyage or naval expedition at a very remote period, which attained to such a celebrity as to become the nucleus around which crystallized so many local and poetical legends; and it is difficult to explain on any other hypothesis why the original legend should assume a form so totally different from all others transmitted to us from the early ages. This is the more remarkable because the people to whom the enterprise is uniformly ascribed by the poetical traditions, in the form in which alone we possess them, is that of the Minyans, a race inhabiting Boeotia in very early ages, whose power and wealth are attested both by the Homeric poems6 and by existing remains, but who were certainly not in historical times connected with maritime pursuits or naval enterprise. But it may be safely affirmed that, if there ever was a voyage of the Argonauts which gave rise to the traditionary tale, it was of a comparatively very limited character; and that the idea of Colchis and the Phasis was not connected with it till long afterwards. It may also be regarded as certain that it was to a great extent interwoven with legends and traditions that arose after the great extension of Greek navigation and commerce in the Euxine, which did not take place till the seventh century B.C. But to suppose the original legend to have grown up in consequence of these exploring voyages, and that the tale of the Argonauts is merely a mythical representation of the progress of Greek discovery in the Euxine, not only takes no account of its inseparable connection with the Minyans, but is at variance with the fact that we know the legend of such a voyage to have been already familiar to the Greeks in the age of the Homeric poems, long before either the Milesians or Megarians had penetrated into the Euxine.
All that can be said is, that, as the legendary traditions of the Trojan War implied of necessity a state of things in which navigation had already become sufficiently familiar among the Greeks for them to transport a considerable army across the ^Egean to the shores of the Hellespont, so there existed another set of traditions, unquestionably also of early date, that pointed to some enterprise of a more distinctly naval character, of sufficient importance to be connected with the names of heroes and demigods, and to become in like manner the basis upon which was accumulated a mass of mythical fictions.
NOTE A.
ARGONAUTICA OF ORPHEUS.
I should have been content to leave the consideration of the supposed antiquity of the Argonautica, as was done by K. O. Müller and Mr. Grote, as a question that had been decided beyond appeal by the successive investigations of Schneider, Hermann, and Ukert: had it not been for its having been brought forward afresh by M. Vivien de St. Martin in his recent work on the historical progress of Geography. Admitting that the arguments of the German critics, derived from grammatical and metrical details, may be conclusive against assigning an early date to the poem in its present shape, he still maintains that it may be merely a rifacciamento of an earlier work, and that the poem now extant is in substance the same as that of which he ascribes the composition to Onomacritus. Two arguments appear to me conclusive against this hypothesis: the one, that, as stated in the text, this supposed redaction by Onomacritus of a poem on the Argonautic voyage is a pure fiction: that is to say, a mere arbitrary hypothesis, assumed without a particle of evidence. There is some ancient authority, though very vague and indefinite, for Onomacritus having composed hymns in the name of Orpheus, or worked up previously existing poems of a religious character into a more definite shape; and it is not improbable that the poems current under the name of Orpheus in the time of Aristophanes belonged to this class. But there is absolutely none for Onomacritus having handled the subject of the Argonautics, a poem of a totally different character. Nor, in the second place, is there any mention of the existence of any such poem before the Alexandrian period, or indeed till long after; and the existing Scholia on Apollonius, which are of unusual fulness and value, while repeatedly referring to the different versions of the tale found in different authors, never allude to the existence of a poem on the subject under the imposing name of Orpheus. This consideration alone appears to me conclusive against its being of older date than the late Alexandrian period.
The internal evidence appears to me equally decisive. M. de St. Martin finds in it the primitive simplicity and didactic character of the earliest poets. To me it appears, in common with several distinguished critics, to have the jejune and prosaic tameness so characteristic of the declining Greek poetry of the second and third century after the Christian era. And this character is as strongly marked in the conception and mode of treatment of the subject as in the details of style and diction. For these last I must refer my readers to Hermann's elaborate dissertation, appended to his edition of the Orphica; an excellent summary of the whole subject, from the critical point of view, is given by Bernhardy in his Ghrundriss der Griechischen Literatur (2nd edition, Halle, 1856, vol. iL pp. 347-353).
From the geographical point of view it matters little whether the poem is to be ascribed to the Alexandrian or to the Christian period. In either case it is equally worthless, and unworthy of careful examination. But the evidence that it is not (as M. de St. Martin maintains) "certainly anterior to Herodotus," appears to me overwhelming. The confusion of the writer's geography, which is regarded by M. de St. Martin as arising from his great antiquity, bears a striking resemblance to that found in several of the later geographers. It is not merely that he has erroneous ideas, even in regard to regions like the north coasts of the Aegean; that he represents the Araxes, Thermodon, Phasis, and Tanais, as all having a common origin; and that in describing the voyage from the Maeotis to the Northern Ocean, he jumbles together the names of Scythian tribes derived from all kinds of sources, and enumerates the Geloni, Sauromatae, Getae, and Arimaspians, among the nations dwelling around the Palus Maaotis, while he transfers the Tauri, noted for their human sacrifices, to the shores of the channel leading into the Northern Ocean. But he describes the Argonauts as passing through a narrow channel into the Ocean, "which is called by the Hyperborean tribes the Cronian Sea and the Dead Sea." Both these names were familiar to the geographers and poets of later, times; but no trace of them is found before the Alexandrian period. Here they visit in succession the Macrobians. Cimmerians, and the land" of Hermionia, where is the mouth of Acheron and the descent into the infernal regions: but they are especially warned to avoid the island of Ierne, in order to do which they by great exertions double the Sacred Cape, and after twelve days' voyage reach the fir-clad island, sacred to Demeter, where the poet places the fable of the Rape of Persephone. Thence in three days they come to the island of Circe, after which they pass by the Columns of Hercules into the Sardinian Sea. Here we find mentioned the customary legends of the Sirens, Charybdis, &c, but mixed up with the names of the Latins, Ausonians, and Tyrrhenians, as inhabitants of its shores: and the mention of Lilybaeum in Sicily is associated with the burning Aetna, and the fable of Enceladus. It is remarkable that the "far-stretching Alps" are mentioned among the ranges of mountains—associated with the Rhipeean mountains and the Calpian ridge—that overshadowed the land of the Cimmerians, and helped to shut out from it the light of the sun. Absurd as is this statement, it shows a familiarity with the name of the Alps as a great mountain chain, though it was certainly unknown as such to the Greeks in the days of Herodotus. The mention of Ierne (or, as it is called in one passage, the lernian Islands) is still more decisive. There is no evidence of any knowledge of the British Islands among the Greeks before the time of Pytheas, while the name of Ierne (Ireland) is not mentioned till a considerably later period.
Confused and extravagant as are the geographical notions contained in the above narrative, it does not appear to me possible to pronounce upon their evidence alone, that the poem cannot belong to the Alexandrian period instead of the Roman Empire. Its assignment to the later age must rest upon considerations of style and language, as well as upon the all-important fact that no allusion to its existence is found in any ancient author, or even in any of the scholiasts or grammarians down to a very late date.
Note on the text: I have removed the primarily Greek language footnotes for this version. They may be viewed on Google Books.
Source: E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans from the Earliest Ages to the Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1879).
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