In the verses which commence,
And again concerning the Colchians, who,
Near to the tomb of fair Harmonia,
Who was transform′d into a dragon′s shape,
Founded their city, which a Greek would call
The Town of Fugitives, but in their tongue
Is Pola named.”
Some writers assert that Jason and his companions sailed high up the Ister, others say he sailed only so far as to be able to gain the Adriatic: the first statement results altogether from ignorance; the second, which supposes there is a second Ister having its source from the larger river of the same name, and discharging its waters into the Adriatic, is neither incredible nor even improbable.[5]
40. Starting from these premises, the poet, in conformity both with general custom and his own practice, narrates some circumstances as they actually occurred, and paints others in the colours of fiction. He follows history when he tells us of Æetes and Jason also, when he talks of Argo, and on the authority of [the actual city of Æa], feigns his city of Ææa, when he settles Euneos in Lemnos, and makes that island friendly to Achilles, and when, in imitation of Medea, he makes the sorceress Circe
“Sister by birth of the all-wise Ætes,”[6]
he adds the fiction of the entrance of the Argonauts into the exterior ocean as the sequel to their wanderings on their return home. Here, supposing the previous statements admitted, the truth of the phrase “the renowned Argo,”[7] is evident,
- ↑ Hodie The Isle of Nanfio.
- ↑ Now the Island of Callistè, founded by Theras the Lacedæmonian more than ten centuries before the Christian era.
- ↑ A name of Thessaly.
- ↑ The Gulf of Venice.
- ↑ The erroneous opinion that one of the mouths of the Danube emptied itself into the Adriatic is very ancient, being spoken of by Aristotle as a well-known fact, and likewise supported by Theopompus, Hipparchus, and many other writers.
- ↑ Odyssey x. 137.
- ↑ Odyssey xii. 70.
