Before Chrlft 12 26 — 1194. 17 



which occafion he fubjeded the Athenians to very humiliating condi- 

 tions of peace ; and another to Sicily, in which he loft his life. 



1226 — Hitherto the Grecian failors had contented themfelves with 

 coafting along or crofling the numerous fmall bays of their own wind- 

 ing fliore. But now a very long voyage was proje^ed, to be carried on 

 by the combined efforts of all Greece. The young chiefs united them- 

 felves with Jafon, the fon of yEfon king of ThelTaly, in the famous expe- 

 dition to Colchis, the object of which was to obtain fome deiirable ob- 

 jed, concealed by the poets under the fabulous or enigmatical name of 

 the golden fleece. Ancgsus, king of Samos, a Phoenician or of Phoenician 

 parentage, was their aftronomer. The Argo *, according to the poets 

 their only vefTel, or, according to fome other authors the admiral of the 

 fleet, was the mofl capital fhip, that had ever failed, or rowed out of a 

 Grecian port, in fo much that the poets, nor being able to find a ftation 

 fufficiently honourable for her in this world, have tranfportedher to the 

 heavens, where they have made her a conftellation. This voyage, when 

 we make a due allowance for the comparatively-miferable condition of 

 the veflel, or vefTels, the want of inilruments, and of the fkill in pilotage 

 fo needful in a voyage of twelve or fourteen hundred miles, which may 

 be the diftance along the fhores from lolcos in Theffaly to /Ea at the eaft 

 end of the Black fea, was a more arduous undertaking to the ignorant 

 Grecian Argonauts (fo thefe adventurers were called) than a voyage 

 round the world, and even into the fouthern polar regions, is to our 

 modern ikilful navigators. 



1 1 94. — In the following age the whole confederate force of Greece . 

 was engaged in a much greater maritime undertaking than that of the 

 Argonauts, though not fo diftant. Paris, the fon of Priam king of Troy, 

 having carried off" Helen, the wife of Menelaus king of Sparta, all the 

 princes of Greece refolved to revenge the affront : and uniting their ef- 

 forts, after ten years fpent in preparation, they muftered a fleet of 1,186 

 vefTels, onboard which they embarked an army of about 100, coo men, 

 led by all the petty princes of Greece under the fupreme commiand of 

 Agamemnon king of Argos, the brother of the injured hufband. 



The Greeks, having eflfecSed their landing on the Trojan fhore, fpent ten 

 years more in hoftilities, though they never once attempted a regular fiege. 

 During this time, while their own fliips, hauled up on the dry beach, 

 muft have been ready to fall in pieces from the repeated drenching of 

 rains and parching of funfhine, their camp was fupplied with provliions 

 by the natives of Thrace and the iflands. [^Hom.ll. vii, v. 467 ; \x,v. 71.] 



* Much hns been faiJ about ihe name of this eJ the uiodel of her cunftruflion, as v.xU as her 

 far-famed (liip. If we advert that the PhoEniciaus • name, which has fadly puzzled the modern Greek 



called their warhke fh Ins flz-co, to diftingullh'them etymologills. [See Bochart, Ccog./acr. c&/. -j^ni 



from their Ihips of burthen, which were built much K^/lus, vo. Gaiiius.'] Quere, if Noah's Aik and 

 broader, and therefor were called golin, we need be the Grecian x\rgo be not the fiiir.e name ? 

 at no lols to perceive, whence the Greeks borrow- 



Vol. I. , C 



