BOOK
power is soon shown. In spite of all efforts to dislodge her, the Argo
-^ remained fast fixed to the spot on which she was built ; but at the
sound of the harp of Orpheus it went down quickly and smoothly
into the sea. Before she sets out on her perilous voyage, Cheiron
gives them a feast, and a contest in music follows between the
Kentaur, who sings of the wars with the Lapithai, and Orpheus, who,
like Hermes, discourses of all things from Chaos downwards, of Eros
and Kronos and the giants, like the song of the winds which seem to
speak of things incomprehensible by man.
The Argo- Setting out from lolkos, the confederate chiefs reach Lemnos, Voyage. while the island is seemingly suffering from the plagues which pro- duced the myths of the Danaides in Argos. Like them, the Lemnian women all kill their husbands, one only, Thoas, being saved, like Lynkeus, by his daughters and his wife Hypsipyle. These women yield themselves to the Argonautai, as the Danaides take other husbands when they have slain the sons of Aigyptos.^ In the country of the Doliones they are welcomed by the chief Kyzikos, who, how- ever, is subsequently slain by them unwittingly and to their regret In Amykos, the king of the Bebrykes, or roaring winds, they encounter Namuki, one of the Vedic adevas or enemies of the bright gods,^ who slays Polydeukes, the twin brother of Kastor. In the Thrakian Salmydessos they receive further counsel from Phineus the seer, who suffers from the attacks of the Harpyiai, a foe akin to the Bebrykes. In gratitude for his deliverance from these monsters, Phineus tells them that if they would avoid being crushed by the Symplegades, or floating rocks, which part asunder and close with a crash like thunder, they must mark the flight of a dove, and shape their course accord- ingly. The dove loses only the feathers of its tail ; and the Argo, urged on by the power of Here, loses only some of its stern orna- ments, and henceforth the rocks remain fixed for ever.* The inci-
' That this incident is precisely the in the ages during which the myth was same as the story of the sojourn of developed were seen in the Black Sea, Odysseus in the land of the Lotophagoi, and which melted away at the mouth of is manifest from the phrase used in the the Bosporos. In support of the posi- Argonautics. They all, we are told, tion that the myth thus points to phy- forgot the duty set hefore them, nor sical phenomena now no longer known would they have left the island, but for in that sea, Mr. Paley remarks that the strains of Orpheus which recalled their name Kyancai is very significant, them to their sense of right and law, and that " they are described as rolling 490. Thus this incident throws light and plunging precisely as icebergs are on the nature of the enjoyments signi- often seen todo. " " When the Pontus fied by the eating of the lotos. See was a closed lake, as even human tradi- p. 356. tion distinctly states that it once was
' Max Miiller, Chips, &c., ii. 188. (Diod. S. v. 47), it was very likely in-
- It has been supposed that the deed, especially towards the close of a
Symplegades represent icebergs which glacial period, that a great accumulation
