There is a further differentia of the saga as compared with the märchen. Wherever magic enters into the saga to affect the course of events, the chief vehicle of magical powers is not the hero himself--at most, he has been equipped by others with magical powers and implements. Such demoniacal powers as the saga may introduce into its narrative are usually vested in accessory persons. This fact is closely connected with the self-dependent character of the hero-personality, who may, it is true, employ magic in so far as he has received such power from external sources, but who himself possesses none but human attributes. The saga of the Argonauts, for example, is so replete with magic as not to be surpassed in this respect even by the magical märchen. Moreover, the various elements incorporated in the saga are all pure märchen motives--the golden fleece, the talking ship, the closing cliffs, as well as the sorceress Medea and the whole wonderland of Colchis. Those who man the Argo, however, are not magicians, but heroes in the strictly human sense of the word. The same fact stands out even more strikingly in the case of the saga of Odysseus, at any rate in the form in which the Homeric epic presents it. We may here discern an entire cycle of tales, whose separate elements are also to be found elsewhere, some of them in wide distribution. But in the midst of this märchen-world stands the absolutely human hero, contrasting with whom the fabulous events of the narrative run their course as a fantastic show. The hero overcomes all obstacles that block the course of his journey by his own never-failing shrewdness and resourcefulness. Herein again the märchen-myth gives evidence of being preparatory to the hero saga. At the time when the hero ideal arose, the old märchen ideas were as yet everywhere current. Together with the belief in demons and magic, they, also, found their way into the heroic age. For a long time they continued to be favourite secondary themes, introduced in portraying the destiny of heroes. Nevertheless märchen ideas became subordinate to the delineation of heroic figures, whose surpassing strength was described, very largely, in terms of victory over demoniacal powers. Thus, in the course of the development, the heroic elements gradually increased; the märchen ideas, on the other hand, disappeared, except when some poet intentionally selected them for the enrichment of his tale, as was obviously done by the author of the Odyssey.