144 COSMOS. 



the reciprocal reflection of passing events and ancient cosmical 

 views, and the progressive modification w^hich the latter efiect- 

 ed in these mythical representations of history. In the wslyl- 

 derings of the heroes returning from Troy, Aristonicus makes 

 Menelaus circumnavigate Africa more than five hundred years 

 before Neco sailed from Gadeira to India.* 



At the period which we are here considering, of the history 

 of Greece before the Macedonian expeditions into Asia, there 

 occurred three events which exercised a special influence in 

 extending the views of the Greeks regarding the universe. 

 These events were the attempts to penetrate beyond the basin 

 of the Mediterranean toward the east ; the attempts toward 

 the west ; and the establishment of numerous colonies from 

 the Pillars of Hercules to the northeastern extremity of the 

 Euxine, which, by the more varied form of their political con- 

 stitution, and by their furtherance of mental cultivation, were 

 more influential than those of the Phoenicians and Cartha- 

 ginians in the iEgean Sea, Sicily, Theria, and on the north 

 and west coasts of Africa. 



The advance toward the East, about twelve centuries be- 

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

 Miamoun (Sesostris), is known in history as the expedition 

 of the Argonauts 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 fulfillment of a national 

 desire to open the inhospitable Euxine. The myth of Prome- 

 theus, and the unbinding of the fire-kindling Titan on the 

 Caucasus by Hercules, during his expedition to the East ; the 

 ascent of lo from the Valley of the Hybritesf to the heights 

 of the Caucasus : the myth of Phryxus and Helle, all indicate 



* Strabo, lib. i., p. 38, Casaub. 



t Probably the Valley of the Don or of the Kuban. See ray Asie Cen- 

 trale, t. ii., p. 164. Pherecydes expressly says {Fragm. 37, ex Schol. 

 Apollon., ii., 1214) that the Caucasus burned, and that, therefore, Ty- 

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

 mentioned, s. 298, explains the ideal relation of the " fire-kindler" 

 {■KvpKaevg), Prometheus, to the burning mountain. Although the geog- 

 nostical constitution of the Caucasus (which has been recently so ably 

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

 the Thianschan, in the interior of Asia (which I think I have shown in 

 my Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 55-59), render it in no way improbable that 

 reminiscences of great volcanic eruptions may have been preserved in 

 the nost 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. 



