508 COSMOS. 



and by their furtherance of mental cultivation, were more in- 

 fluential than those of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in 

 the ^Egean Sea, Sicily, Theria, and on the north and west 

 coasts of Africa. 



The advance towards the East, about twelve centuries before 

 our era, or one hundred and fifty years after Rameses Miamoun 

 (Sesostris), is known in history as the expedition of the Argo- 

 nauts to Colchis. The true version of this event, which is 

 clothed in a mythical garb, and concealed under a blending of 

 ideal images, is simply the fulfilment of a national desire to open 

 the inhospitable Euxine. The myth of Prometheus, and the 

 unbinding of the fire-kindling Titan on the Caucasus by Her- 

 cules, during his expedition to the East; the ascent of lo 

 from the valley of the Hybrites* to the heights of the Cauca- 

 sus ; the myth of Phryxus and Helle ; all indicate the same 

 direction of the course on which the early Phoenician naviga- 

 tors had adventured. 



Before the migrations of the Dorians and Eolians the 

 Bo3otian Orchomenus, near the eastern extremity of the Lake 

 of Copais, was already a rich commercial city of the Mynians. 

 The Argonautic expedition began at lolcus, the principal seat 

 of the Thessalian Mynians, on the Pagasaean Gulf. The 

 locality of the myth, considered with respect to the aim of the 

 undertaking, after having been variously modified f at different 



* Probably the valley of the Don, or of the Kuban; see my Asie 

 centrale, t. ii. p. 164. Pherecydes expressly says (Fragm. 37, ex Schol. 

 Apollon., ii. 121 4), that the Caucasus burned, and, that, therefore, Typhon 

 fled to Italy; a notice from which Klausen, in the work already men- 

 tioned, s. 298, explains the ideal relation of the "fire-kindler" (irvpKaivo), 

 Prometheus, to the burning mountain. Although the geognostical con- 

 stitution of the Caucasus (which has been recently so ably investigated 

 by Abich), and its connection with the volcanic chain of the Thian- 

 schan, in the interior of Asia (which, I think, I have shown in my Asie 

 centrale, t. ii. pp. 55-59), render it in no way improbable that remi- 

 niscences of great volcanic eruptions may have been preserved in the 

 most ancient traditions of men; yet we may rather assume that a 

 bold and somewhat hazardous spirit of etymological conjecture may 

 have led the Greeks to the hypothesis of the burning. On the Sanscrit 

 etymologies of Graucasus (or shining mountain), see Bohlen's and Bur- 

 nouf 's statements, in my Asie centrale, t. i. p. 109. 



t Otfried Muller, Minyer, s. 247, 254, and 274. Homer was not 

 acquainted with the Phasis, or with Colchis, or with the Pillars of Her- 

 cules; but the Phasis is named by Hesiod. The mythical traditions 



