Here we must try to explain a point on which Mr. Murray remarks, "There has been an extraordinary reluctance among scholars to ... admit the possibility of 'Homer,' as the phrase is, borrowing from the supposed later author 'Eumelus,' or even from 'Hesiod.'" The reluctance is natural and justifiable; because when we say "Eumelus" or "Hesiod," we mean just what we have received from antiquity under the names of these men. Their work, as it reaches us, is un-Homeric, is later, we say, than the _Iliad_. But if "Eumelus" be a mythical name for a supposed author of a body of Corinthian heroic poetry: if the Eumelian matter which we have received was not that, then we know nothing about that, and cannot say whether our Homer borrowed from some other Eumelian _epê_ or not. Mr. Murray, as to Homer's debt to "Eumelus," writes: "If anything were needed to make it clearer still, it would be that the Verses of Eumelus are quoted as the earliest authority for the story of the Argo and Medea, and the composer of our _Odyssey_ speaks of the Argo as a subject of which 'all minds are full'"[23] The reader naturally gathers that our Homer took his information about Argo from "Eumelus." We can only say, "not from the Eumelus known to us in Greek literary tradition." Thus Hesiod[24] tells of the birth of Circe and Aietes her brother (the father of Medea) in precisely the same terms as Homer does, and as Eumelus does not.[25] Both poets say that Helios, by _Perses_ (Homer), or _Perseis_ (Hesiod), a daughter of Oceanus, was the father of Circe and Aietes. Homer does not mention Medea, but Hesiod says that she was the daughter of Aietes. Now Eumelus, in what we have of him, says nothing of Circe, but makes Aietes the son of Helios and Antiope, _not_ of Perses as in Homer. Manifestly, then, Homer did not take his version from _this_ Eumelus; while, when Homer and Hesiod precisely agree, if either borrowed from the other, it were quite arbitrary to say that Homer borrowed from Hesiod, who knows Latium and Etruria. Homer certainly did not borrow here from our Eumelus, for he differs from Eumelus; nor is Eumelus quoted, as far as I am aware, "as the earliest authority for" the story of Argo. The scholiast on Pindar, as I, for one, understand him, quotes Eumelus for something quite different, namely, for his peculiar account (adopted by Pindar when praising a Corinthian athlete) of Medea as rightful Queen of Corinth; a point on which no Greeks agreed with the patriotic chronicler, the Corinthian Eumelus, as Pausanias observes. Homer knows about the ship Argo, and her escape from the clash of the Rocks Wandering, through the favour of Hera.[26] The dangers of these rocks are described by Circe to Odysseus, for he must pass by that perilous path of the sea; and Circe ought to know, for she is sister of King Aietes, from whose land Argo was sailing when she met the rocks. But where did Aietes dwell? On that point Homer says nothing and knew nothing.