312 On the Painting of an ancieyit Vase. goddess, was one of the New Islands, vyjcfoi veai^ that is of those which suddenly emerged from the sea near Lemnos, in consequence of volcanic eruptions Chryse, which was once not far from Lemnos, as we are informed by Pausanias (viii, SS. 4) had in that writer's time again sunk into the sea. That this very island of Chryse, and not any other place of the same name, was meant in the legend of Philoctetes, is clear and unquestionable, from the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and the Scholia, as has been shewn by several learned commentators. But who that cruel Chryse was, who inflicted those suf- ferings on the son of Poeas, when he came to the island which was named after her, is a question on whicn we have no precise information, except that the commentators with some scholiasts assert, that Upvarj is an epithet of Minerva, de- rived from the island. But they do not consider, that older and learned Scholiasts, as the author of the larger Scholia on the Philoctetes, as well as Eustathius on Homer, very cau- tiously mention both traditions about Chryse, telling us that according to some authors she is a nymph, according to others AOrjva Xpvar] : that the Scholia, and other accounts, which exclusively identify Chryse with Minerva, appear to be of later origin, and that a local epithet of Minerva, who it is well known had many such, is scarcely to be found in the works of the ancients, whether poets or prosewriters, without the addition of her proper name. Our painting seems to add a new and almost irresistible weight to the opinion, that the legend of a nymph Chryse, 5 These islands were caUed i/eat, like the Monte nuovo near Naples, which is of similar origin. The Greeks derive the name from vcco, merely as in other instances, for the sake of tacking a legend to it. They are unquestionably the same as those of which Philostratus speaks in the passage above quoted. They are moreover men- tioned by Herodotus, Antigonus, Stephanus, Suidas, and Pliny. To them pro- bably belonged also the island Hiera, which lies at about three German miles south of Lemnos, and is now called by the modern Greeks Agiostrati (not Agiostati, as the name is written in Arrowsmith's great map of the world). Cellarius, and some modern geographical writers after him, hold this island to be the Chryse which lay close to liemnos : though Pausanias, whom they cite, should have restrained them from making so erroneous an assertion, as well by his remark as to the short distance between the two lastmentioned islands, as by his positive statement that Chryse had disappeared. [On the site of Chryse, see Choiseul-Gouffier Tottr pittoresque dans la Grece T. ti. and Dureau de la Malle, in Malte-Brun's Annales geographiques T.ix.]
