Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/273

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

MEMORIALS LEBT BY THE ARGONAUTS. 241 account, she was translated to the stars by Athene, and became a constellation. 1 Traces of the presence of the Argonauts were found not only in the regions which lay between lolkos 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 wander- ings of the dispersed Greeks and Trojans after the capture of Troy. The number of Jasonia, or temples for the heroic worship of Jason, was very great, from Abdera in Thrace, 2 eastward along the coast of the Euxine, to Armenia and Medea. 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 Athene. 3 They had founded the great temple of the Idasan mother on the mountain Dindymon, near Kyzikus, and the Hieron of Zeus Urios on the Asiatic point ai the mouth of the Euxine, near which was also the harbor of Phryxus. 4 Idmon, the prophet of the expedition, who was believed to have died of a wound by a wild boar on the Mary- andynian coast, was worshipped by the inhabitants of the Pontic Herakleia with great solemnity, as their Heros Poliuchus, and that too by the special direction of the Delphian god. Autolykus, another companion of Jason, was worshipped as CEkist by the inhabitants of Sinope. Moreover, the historians of Herakleia pointed out a temple of Hekate in the neighboring country of 1 Diodor. iv. 53. Eratosth. Catasterism. c. 35. 2 Strabo.xi. p. 526-531. 3 Apollon. Rhod. i. 955-960, and the Scholia. There was in Kyzikus a temple of Apollo under different tTnuhrjaeis ; Borne called it the temple of the Jasonian Apollo. Another anchor however was preserved in the temple of Rhea on the banks of the Phasis, which was affirmed to he the anchor of the ship Argo. Arrian paw it there, hut seems to have doubted its authenticity CPeriplus, Euxin. Pont. p. 9. Geogr. Min. v. 1). 4 Neanthes ap. strabo. i. p. 45. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1125, and Schol. Stcph. Bvz. v. 4>pffof. Apollonius mentions the fountain called Jasonerc, on the hill of Dindymon. Apollon. Rbod. ii. 532, and the citations from Timosthenes and Herodorus in die Scholia. See also Appian. Syriac. c. 63. TOL. I. 11 IGOC-