Though this is an artificial statement, framed to reconcile the main incidents of a wonderful story with nature and probability, it still contains many points which can scarcely be explained or believed. It carries us back to a period when navigation was in its infancy among the Greeks; yet their first essay at maritime discovery is supposed at once to have reached the extreme limit, which was long after attained by the adventurers who gradually explored the same formidable sea, and gained a footing on its coasts. The success of the undertaking however is not so surprising as the project itself; for this implies a previous knowledge of the country to be explored, which it is very difficult to account for. But the end proposed is still more mysterious; and indeed can only be explained with the aid of a conjecture. Such an explanation was attempted by some of the later writers among the ancients, who perceived that the whole story turned on the Golden Fleece, the supposed motive of the voyage, and that this feature had not a sufficiently historical appearance. But the mountain torrents of Colchis were said to sweep down particles of gold, which the natives used to detain by fleeces dipped in the streams. This report suggested a mode of translating the fable into historical language. It was conjectured that the Argonauts had been attracted by the metallic treasures of the country, and that the Golden Fleece was a poetical description of the process which they had observed, or perhaps had practised: an interpretation certainly more ingenious, or at least less absurd, than those by which Diodorus transforms the fire-breathing bulls which Jason was said to have yoked at the bidding of Æetes, into a band of Taurians, who guarded the fleece, and the sleepless dragon which watched over it, into their commander Draco; but yet not more satisfactory; for it explains a casual, immaterial circumstance, while it leaves the essential point in the legend wholly untouched. The epithet “golden,” to which it relates, is merely poetical and ornamental, and signified nothing more as to the nature of the fleece than the epithets white or purple, which were also applied to it by early poets. According to the original and genuine tradition, the fleece was a sacred relic, and its importance arose entirely out of its connection with the tragical story of Phrixus, the main feature of which is the human sacrifice which the gods had required from the house of Athamas. His son Phrixus either offered himself, or was selected through the artifices of his stepmother Ino, as the victim; but at the critical moment, as he stood before the altar, the marvellous ram was sent for his deliverance, and transported him over the sea, according to the received account, to Colchis, where Phrixus, on his arrival, sacrificed the ram to Jupiter, as the god who had favoured his escape; the fleece was nailed to an oak in the grove of