_The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave_ _Broke foaming o’er the blue Symplegades;_ _’Tis a grand sight from off “The Giant’s grave”_ _To watch the progress of those rolling seas_ _Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave_ _Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease;_ _There’s not a sea ..._ _Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine._[34] _Inter utrumque fremunt immani turbine venti._ _Nescit cui domino pareat, unda maria._ _Nam modo purpureo vires capit Eurus ab ortu;_ _Nunc Zephyrus, sero vespere missus, adest;_ _Nunc gelidus sicca Boreas bacchatur ab Arcto;_ _Nunc Notus adversa praelia fronte gerit._ _Tristia_, lib. L, Elegia II. The “blue Symplegades,”--at least what is left of them--to which Byron here refers, are famous for their connection with one of the oldest and most interesting of Greek legends--that of the Argonauts. According to the story which Apollonius of Rhodes has so well developed in his _Argonautica_, the Symplegades were two floating and ever-clashing rocks, at the junction of the Euxine and the Bosphorus, which were fabled to close upon and crush all ships that attempted to pass between them. When Jason with his fifty-oared ship, the _Argos_, and his fifty heroes set out for Colchis to fetch back the golden fleece he was obliged to pass between these great colliding rocks. Thanks, however, to the instructions he had received from the seer, Phineus, who had been delivered from the tormenting Harpies by two of the Argonauts, he was able to effect this hitherto impossible passage and to proceed without interruption to his destination. After this event the eyotlike rocks became fixed in the positions they now occupy. The one, however, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus has, owing to the action of the elements, long since disappeared beneath the waves. The other, on the European side, is also rapidly disintegrating, and soon will litter the floor of the sea. But the story of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece will endure as long as men shall retain a love for the fascinating in myth and legend and the beautiful in art and literature. Although the Cyanean Islands--as the Symplegades are now called--and the shores of the Euxine are exceptionally rich in places and things of great historic and mythological interest, they are in this respect surpassed by the Bosphorus. Nowhere in the world do myth and legend, traditional associations and historic souvenirs cluster in such numbers and varieties as they do about every rock and bay and promontory of this famous waterway that connects the Euxine with the Sea of Marmora.