Traces of the presence of the Argonauts were found not only in the
regions which lay between Iôlkos and Kolchis, but also in the western
portion of the Grecian world—distributed more or less over all the
spots visited by Grecian mariners or settled by Grecian colonists, and
scarcely less numerous than the wanderings of the dispersed Greeks
and Trojans after the capture of Troy. The number of Jasonia, or
temples for the heroic worship of Jasôn, was very great, from Abdêra
in Thrace,[578] eastward along the coast of the Euxine, to Armenia
and Media. The Argonauts had left their anchoring-stone on the coast
of Bebrykia, near Kyzikus, and there it was preserved during the
historical ages in the temple of the Jasonian Athênê.[579] They had
founded the great temple of the Idæan mother on the mountain Dindymon,
near Kyzikus, and the Hieron of Zeus Urios on the Asiatic point at the
mouth of the Euxine, near which was also the harbor of Phryxus.[580]
Idmôn, the prophet of the expedition, who was believed to have died
of a wound by a wild boar on the Mariandynian coast, was worshipped
by the inhabitants of the Pontic Hêrakleia with great solemnity, as
their Heros Poliuchus, and that too by the special direction of the
Delphian god. Autolykus, another companion of Jasôn, was worshipped
as Œkist by the inhabitants of Sinopê. Moreover, the historians of
Hêrakleia pointed out a temple of Hekatê in the neighboring country of
Paphlagonia, first erected by Mêdea;[581] and the important town of
Pantikapæon, on the European side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, ascribed
its first settlement to a son of Æêtês.[582] When the returning ten
thousand Greeks sailed along the coast, called the Jasonian shore,
from Sinopê to Hêrakleia, they were told that the grandson of Æêtês
was reigning king of the territory at the mouth of the Phasis, and the
anchoring-places where the Argô had stopped were specially pointed
out to them.[583] In the lofty regions of the Moschi, near Kolchis,
stood the temple of Leukothea, founded by Phryxus, which remained
both rich and respected down to the times of the kings of Pontus, and
where it was an inviolable rule not to offer up a ram.[584] The town
of Dioskurias, north of the river Phasis, was believed to have been
hallowed by the presence of Kastôr and Pollux in the Argô, and to have
received from them its appellation.[585] Even the interior of Mêdea and
Armenia was full of memorials of Jasôn and Mêdea and their son Mêdus,
or of Armenus the son of Jasôn, from whom the Greeks deduced not only
the name and foundation of the Medes and Armenians, but also the great
operation of cutting a channel through the mountains for the efflux
of the river Araxes, which they compared to that of the Peneius in
Thessaly.[586] And the Roman general Pompey, after having completed
the conquest and expulsion of Mithridatês, made long marches through
Kolchis into the regions of Caucasus, for the express purpose of
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