The Historians' History of the World 03

The legend of his Cretan expedition most probably preserves some genuine historical recollections. But the only fact which appears to be plainly indicated by it, is a temporary connection between Crete and Attica. Whether this intercourse was grounded solely on religion, or was the result of a partial dominion exercised by Crete over Athens, it would be useless to inquire; and still less can we pretend to determine the nature of the Athenian tribute, or that of the Cretan worship to which it related. That part of the legend which belongs to Naxos and Delos was probably introduced after these islands were occupied by the Ionians. A part is assigned in these traditions to Minos, who is represented by the general voice of antiquity as having raised Crete to a higher degree of prosperity and power than it ever reached at any subsequent period [and whom we shall also discuss later in connection with Cretan history].

Temple of Theseus, Athens

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

Our plan obliges us to pass over a great number of wars, expeditions, and achievements of these ages, which were highly celebrated in heroic song, not because we deem them to contain less of historical reality than others which we mention, but because they appear not to have been attended with any important or lasting consequences. We might otherwise have been induced to notice the quarrel which divided the royal house of Thebes, and led to a series of wars between Thebes and Argos, which terminated in the destruction of the former city, and the temporary expulsion of the Cadmeans, its ancient inhabitants. Hercules and Theseus undertook their adventures either alone, or with the aid of a single comrade; but in these Theban wars we find a union of seven chiefs; and such confederacies appear to have become frequent in the latter part of the heroic age. So a numerous band of heroes was combined in the enterprise, which, whatever may have been its real nature, became renowned as the chase of the Calydonian boar. Plassmanf suspects that this was in reality a military expedition against some of the savage Ætolian tribes, and that the name of one of them (the Aperantii) suggested the legend. We proceed to speak of two expeditions much more celebrated, conducted like these by a league of independent chieftains, but directed, not to any part of Greece, but against distant lands; we mean the voyage of the Argonauts, and the siege of Troy, which will conclude our review of the mythical period of Grecian history.

THE ARGONAUTS

The Argonautic expedition, when viewed in the light in which it has usually been considered, is an event which a critical historian, if he feels himself compelled to believe it, may think it his duty to notice, but which he is glad to pass rapidly over as a perplexing and unprofitable riddle. For even when the ancient legend has been pared down into a historical form, and its marvellous and poetical features have been all effaced, so that nothing is left but what may appear to belong to its pith and substance, it becomes indeed dry and meagre enough, but not much more intelligible than before. It relates an adventure, incomprehensible in its design, astonishing in its execution, connected with no conceivable cause, and with no sensible effect. The narrative, reduced to the shape in which it has often been thought worthy of a place in history, runs as follows:

In the generation before the Trojan war, Jason, a young Thessalian prince, had incurred the jealousy of his kinsman Pelias, who reigned at Iolcus. The crafty king encouraged the adventurous youth to embark in a maritime expedition full of difficulty and danger. It was to be directed to a point far beyond the most remote which Greek navigation had hitherto reached in the same quarter; to the eastern corner of the sea, so celebrated in ancient times for the ferocity of the barbarians inhabiting its coasts, that it was commonly supposed to have derived from them the name of “Axenus,” the inhospitable, before it acquired the opposite name of the “Euxine,” from the civilisation which was at length introduced by Greek settlers. Here, in the land of the Colchians, lay the goal, because this contained the prize, from which the voyage has been frequently called the adventure of the golden fleece. Jason having built a vessel of uncommon size,—in more precise terms, the first 50-oared galley his countrymen had ever launched,—and having manned it with a band of heroes, who assembled from various parts of Greece to share the glory of the enterprise, sailed to Colchis, where he not only succeeded in the principal object of his expedition, whatever this may have been, but carried off Medea, the daughter of the Colchian king, Æetes.