A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 / Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and / Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth / Century, By William Stevenson

by Robert Kerr; William Stevenson

Having rendered it probable, from general considerations, that the object was the obtaining of the precious metals, we shall next proceed to strengthen this opinion, by showing that they were the produce of the country near the Black Sea. The gold mines to the south of Trebizond, which are still worked with sufficient profit, were a subject of national dispute between Justinian and Chozroes; and, as Gibbon remarks, "it is not unreasonable to believe that a vein of precious metal may be equally diffused through the circle of the hills." On what account these mines were shadowed out under the appellation of a Golden Fleece, it is not easy to explain. Pliny, and some other writers, suppose that the rivers impregnated with particles of gold were carefully strained through sheeps-skins, or fleeces; but these are not the materials that would be used for such a purpose: it is more probable that, if fleeces were used, they were set across some of the narrow parts of the streams, in order to stop and collect the particles of gold.

III. It is said that there was an ancient law in Greece, which forbad any ship to be navigated with more than fifty men, and that Jason was the first who offended against this law. There can be little doubt, from all the accounts of the ancients, that Jason's ship was larger than the Greeks at that period were accustomed to. Diodorus and Pliny represent it as the first ship of war which went out of the ports of Greece; that it was comparatively large, well built and equipped, and well navigated in all respects, must be inferred from its having accomplished such a voyage at that era.

In their course to the Euxine Sea, they visited Lemnos, Samothrace, Troas, Cyzicum, Bithynia, and Thrace; these wanderings must have been the result of their ignorance of the navigation of those seas. From Thrace they directed their course, without further wanderings, to the Euxine Sea. At the distance of four or five leagues from the entrance to the sea, are the Cyanean rocks; the Argonauts passed between them not without difficulty and danger; before this expedition, the passage was deemed impracticable, and many fables were told regarding them: their true situation and form were first explored by the Argonauts. They now safely entered the Euxine Sea, where they seem to have been driven about for some time, till they discovered Mount Caucasus; this served as a land mark for their entrance into the Phasis, when they anchored near OEa, the capital of Colchis.

IV. The course of the Argonauts to Colchis is well ascertained; and the accessions to the geographical knowledge of that age, which we derive from the accounts given of that course, are considerable. But with respect to the route they followed on their return, there is much contradiction and fable. All authors agree that they did not return by the same route which they pursued in their outward voyage. According to Hesiod, they passed from the Euxine into the Eastern Ocean; but being prevented from returning by the same route, in consequence of the fleet of Colchis blockading the Bosphorus, they were obliged to sail round Ethiopia, and to cross Lybia by land, drawing their vessels after them. In this manner they arrived at the Gulph of Syrtis, in the Mediterranean. Other ancient writers conduct the Argonauts back by the Nile, which they supposed to communicate with the Eastern Ocean; while, by others, they are represented as having sailed up the Danube to the Po or the Rhine.

Amidst such obscure and evidently fictitious accounts, it may appear useless to offer any conjecture; but there is one route by which the Argonauts are supposed to have returned, in favour of which some probability may be urged. All writers agree in opinion that they did not return by the route they followed on going to the Euxine; if this be true, the least absurd and improbable mode of getting back into the Mediterranean is to be preferred: of those routes already mentioned, all are eminently absurd and impossible. Perhaps the one we are about to describe, may, in the opinion of some, be deemed equally so; but to us it appears to have some plausibility. The tradition to which we allude is, that the Argonauts sailed up some sea or river from the Euxine, till they reached the Baltic Sea, and that they returned by the Northern Ocean through the straits of Hercules, into the Mediterranean. The existence of an ocean from the east end of the Gulf of Finland to the Caspian or the Euxine Sea, was firmly believed by Pliny, and the same opinion prevailed in the eleventh century; for Adam of Bremen says, people [could sail->could formerly sail] from the Baltic down to Greece. Now the whole of that tract of country is flat and level, and from the sands near Koningsberg, through the calcareous loam of Poland and the Ukraine, evidently alluvial and of comparatively recent formation.

If the Trojan war happened, according to the Arundelian Marbles, 1209 years before Christ, this event must have been subsequent to the Argonautic expedition only about fifty years: yet, in this short space of time, the Greeks had made great advances in the art of ship building, and in navigation. The equipment of the Argonautic expedition was regarded, at the period it took place, as something almost miraculous; yet the ships sent against Troy seem to have excited little astonishment, though, considering the state of Greece at that period, they were very numerous.

It is foreign to our purpose to regard this expedition in any other light than as it is illustrative of the maritime skill and attainments of Greece at this era, and so far connected with our present subject. The number of ships employed, according to Homer, amounted to 1186: Thucydides states them at 1200; and Euripides, Virgil, and some other authors, reduce their number to 1000. The ships of the Boeotians were the largest; they carried 120 men each; those of the Philoctetæ were the smallest, each carrying only fifty men. Agamemnon had 160 ships; the Athenians fifty; Menelaus, king of Sparta, sixty; but some of his ships seem to have been furnished by his allies; whereas all the Athenian vessels belonged to Athens alone. We have already mentioned that Thucydides is contradicted by Homer, in his assertion that the Greek ships, at the siege of Troy, had no decks; perhaps, however, they were only half-decked, as it would appear, from the descriptions of them, that the fore-part was open to the keel: they had a mainsail, and were rowed by oars. Greece is so admirably situated for maritime and commercial enterprize, that it must have been very early sensible of its advantages in these respects. The inhabitants of the isle of Egina are represented as the first people in Greece who were distinguished for their intelligence and success in maritime traffic: soon after the return of the Heraclidæ they possessed considerable commerce, and for a long time they are said to have held the empire of the adjoining sea. Their naval power and commerce were not utterly annihilated till the time of Pericles.

The Corinthians, who are not mentioned by Homer as having engaged in the Trojan war, seem, however, not long afterwards, to have embarked with great spirit and success in maritime commerce; their situation was particularly favourable for it, and equally well situated to be the transit of the land trade of Greece. Corinth had two ports, one upon each sea. The Corinthians are said to have first built vessels with three banks of oars, instead of galleys.

Although the Athenians brought a considerable force against Troy, yet they did not engage in maritime commerce till long after the period of which we are at present treating.

Of the knowledge which the Greeks possessed at this time, on the subject of geography, we must draw our most accurate and fullest account from the writings of Homer and Hesiod. The former represents the shield of Achilles as depicting the countries of the globe; on it the earth was figured as a disk surrounded by the ocean; the centre of Greece was represented as the centre of the world; the disk included the Mediterranean Sea, much contracted on the west, and the Egean and part of the Euxine Seas. The Mediterranean was so much contracted on this side, that Ithaca, and the neighbouring continent, or at the farthest, the straits which separate Sicily from Italy, were its limits. Sicily itself was just known only as the land of wonders and fables, though the fable of the Cyclops, who lived in it, evidently must nave been derived from some obscure report of its volcano. The fables Homer relates respecting countries to the west of Sicily, cannot even be regarded as having any connection with, or resemblance to the truth. Beyond the Euxine also, in the other direction, all is fable. Colchis seems to have been known, though not so accurately as the recent Argonautic expedition might have led us to suppose it would have been. The west coast of Asia Minor, the scene of his great poem, is of course completely within his knowledge; the Phoenicians and Egyptians are particularly described, the former for their purple stuffs, gold and silver works, maritime science and commercial skill, and cunning; the latter for their river Egyptos, and their knowledge of medicine. To the west of Egypt he places Lybia, where he says the lambs are born with horns, and the sheep bring forth three times a year.