From what was probably a maritime adventure that plundered some wealthy country at a period when navigation was in its infancy among the Greeks, we get the fable of the Argonautic Expedition. The generally accepted story of this expedition is as follows: Pe'lias, a descendant of Æ'o-lus, the mystic progenitor of the Great Æol'ic race, had deprived his half-brother Æ'son of the kingdom of Iol'cus in Thessaly. When Jason, son of Æson, had attained to manhood, he appeared before his uncle and demanded the throne. Pelias consented only on condition that Jason should first capture and bring to him the golden fleece of the ram which had carried Phrix'us and Hel'le when they fled from their stepmother I'no. Helle dropped into the sea between Sigæ'um and the Cher'sonese, which was named from her Hellespon'tus; but Phrixus succeeded in reaching Col'chis, a country at the eastern extremity of the Euxine, or Black Sea. Here he sacrificed the ram, and nailed the fleece to an oak in the grove of Mars, where it was guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Joined by the principal heroes of Greece, Hercules among the number, Jason set sail from Iolcus in the ship Argo, after first invoking the favor of Jupiter, the winds, and the waves, for the success of the expedition. The ceremony on this occasion, as descried by the poets, reads like an account of the "christening of the ship" in modern times, but we seem to have lost the full significance of the act.
And soon as by the vessel's bow
The anchor was hung up,
Then took the leader on the prow
In hands a golden cup,
And on great father Jove did call;
And on the winds and waters all
Swept by the hurrying blast,
And on the nights, and ocean ways,
And on the fair auspicious days,
And sweet return at last.
From out the clouds, in answer kind,
A voice of thunder came,
And, shook in glistening beams around,
Burst out the lightning flame.
The chiefs breathed free, and, at the sign,
Trusted in the power divine.
Hinting sweet hopes, the seer cried
Forthwith their oars to ply,
And swift went backward from rough hands
The rowing ceaselessly.
—PINDAR. Trans. by Rev. H. F. CARY.
After many adventures Jason reached Col'chis, where, by the aid of magic and supernatural arts, and through the favor of Me-de'a, daughter of the King of Colchis, he succeeded in capturing the fleece. After four months of continued danger and innumerable hardships, Jason returned to Iolcus with the prize, accompanied by Medea, whom he afterward deserted, and whose subsequent history is told by the poet Euripides in his celebrated tragedy entitled Medea.
Growing out of the Argonautic legend is one concerning the youth Hy'las, a member of the expedition, and a son of the King of Mys'ia, a country of Asia Minor. Hylas was greatly beloved by Hercules. On the coast of Mysia the Argonauts stopped to obtain a supply of water, and Hylas, having gone from the vessel alone with an urn for the same purpose, takes the opportunity to bathe in the river Scaman'der, under the shadows of Mount Ida. He throws his purple chlamys, or cloak, over the urn, and passes down into the water, where he is seized by the nymphs of the stream, and, in spite of his struggles and entreaties, he is borne by them "down from the noonday brightness to their dark caves in the depths below." Hercules went in search of Hylas, and the ship sailed from its anchorage without him. We have a faithful and beautiful reproduction of this Greek legend, both in theme and spirit, in a poem by BAYARD TAYLOR, from which the following extracts are taken:
Hylas.
Storm-wearied Argo slept upon the water.
No cloud was seen: on blue and craggy Ida
The hot noon lay, and on the plains enamel;
Cool in his bed, alone, the swift Scamander.
"Why should I haste?" said young and rosy Hylas;
The seas are rough, and long the way from Colchis.
Beneath the snow-white awning slumbers Jason,
Pillowed upon his tame Thessalian panther;
The shields are piled, the listless oars suspended
On the black thwarts, and all the hairy bondsmen
Doze on the benches. They may wait for water
Till I have bathed in mountain-born Scamander."
He saw his glorious limbs reversely mirrored
In the still wave, and stretched his foot to press it
On the smooth sole that answered at the surface:
Alas! the shape dissolved in glittering fragments.
Then, timidly at first, he dipped, and catching
Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters
Swirled round his limbs, and deeper, slowly deeper,
Till on his breast the river's cheek was pillowed;
And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple
Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet's bosom
His white, round shoulder shed the dripping crystal.
There, as he floated with a rapturous motion,
The lucid coolness folding close around him,
The lily-cradling ripples murmured, "Hylas!"
He shook from off his ears the hyacinthine
Curls that had lain unwet upon the water,
And still the ripples murmured, "Hylas! Hylas!"
He thought—"The voices are but ear-born music.
Pan dwells not here, and Echo still is calling
From some high cliff that tops a Thracian valley;
So long mine ears, on tumbling Hellespontus,
Have heard the sea-waves hammer Argo's forehead,
That I misdeem the fluting of this current
For some lost nymph"—again the murmur, "Hylas!"