Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/87

CHAP. ii. 40. INTRODUCTION. 73 " [The temple of] Apollo and [the Isle of] Anaphe, 1 Near to Laconian Thera." 2 In the verses which commence, " I sing how the heroes from Cytaean ^Eeta, Return'd again to ancient ^Emonia." 3 And again concerning the Colchians, who, " Ceasing to plough with oars the Illyrian Sea, 4 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 incredi- ble 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 JE>etes and Jason also, when he talks of Argo, and on the au- thority of [the actual city of -fl2a], feigns his city of ^Ea3a, 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 ^etes," e he adds the fiction of the entrance of the Argonauts into the exterior ocean as the sequel to their wanderings on their re- turn home. Here, supposing the previous statements admit- ted, the truth of the phrase " the renowned Argo," 7 is evident, 1 Hodie The Isle of Nanfio. 2 Now the Island of Callistb, founded by Theras the Lacedaemonian more than ten centuries before the Christian era. 3 A name of Thessaly. 4 The Gulf of Venice. 5 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. 6 Odyssey x. 137. 7 Odyssey xii. 70.