i4& A R G 
in earned upon the making of any bargain. In feveral 
manors, tlie acknowledgement paid to the lord on the ad¬ 
mitting of a tenant, is called the God’s penny. 
Argentum Musivum, is a inafs confiding of filver- 
like flakes, ufed for the colouring of plhlber figures, and for 
' other purpofes, as pigment. It cortlifts of an amalgam of 
equal parts of tin, bilmuth, and mercury. It is to be mix¬ 
ed with white of eggs, or fpirit varnilh, and then applied 
to the intended work, which is afterwards to be burniflied. 
Argentum Vivum, Mercury or Quickfilver. See Che¬ 
mist r v. 
ARGES'TES,yi is ufed by Vitruvius for the wind which 
blows from that quarter of the horizon, which is 75 0 from 
the foutli and weftward. Ricciolus ufes the term to de¬ 
note the wind which blows at 22 0 30' from the well to¬ 
wards the aorth, coinciding with that which is otherwife 
called wrjl-north-zoeji. 
AR'GIA, a town of Arabia Deferta, 200 miles fouth- 
fouth-eaft of Ana. 
Argia, in fabulous hidory, the daughter of Adraflus, 
and wife of Polynices, whofe body fhe went to feek with 
Antigone to pay her lad duty : this irritated Creon fo much 
that he killed them both, and Argia was metamorphofed 
into a fountain of that name. 
AR'GIL,_/I [ argilla, Lat.J Potters clay; afatfoftkind 
of earth of which vedels are made. 
ARGIL'A,/. in natural hidory, Clay. 
ARGILLA'CEOUS, adj. Clayey; partaking of the 
nature of argil; confiding of argil, or potters clay. 
ARGIL'LOUS, adj. Confiding of clay; clayiflt; con¬ 
taining clay.—Albuquerque derives this rednefs from the 
land and argillous earth at the bottom. Brown. 
ARGIL'LY, a town of France, in the department of 
the Cote d’Or, and chief place of a canton, in the diftridl 
of Beaune, fifteen miles fouth of Dijon. 
AGI'RO CASTRO, a town of European Turkey, in 
the province of Livadia, twenty-fix miles north-wed of 
Lepanto. 
AR'GISCH, a town of Wallachia, on the frontiers of 
Tranfylvania, eight miles north of Helmandat, and eight 
fouth of Tergowitz. 
ARGI'VI, or Arge'ii, the people of Argei or Argolis. 
See Argeia. 
AR'GLAS, a toivn of Ireland, on the ead coad of the 
county of Down, fix miles fouth-ead of Downpatrick. 
AR'GO, in antiquity, a fhip or veflel celebrated among 
the poets; being that wherein the Argonauts, of whom 
Jafon was the chief, made their expedition in qued of the 
golden fleece. Jafon, having happily accomplilhed his en- 
terprife, confecrated the fliip Argo to Neptune; or, as 
others fay, to Minerva, in the idhmusof Corinth; where, 
they add, it did not remain long before it was tranflated 
into heaven, and made a condellation. The generality of 
authors reprefent the drip Argo as of a long make, refem- 
bling the modern galleys ; and furnifhed with thirty bench¬ 
es of rowers. It could not, however, be of any great bulk, 
lince the Argonauts were able to carry it on their backs 
front the Danube to the Adriatic fea. It is faid to be the 
hi d veflel that ever failed upon the fea. It was called 
Argo from Argus, a famous architeit, who built it of the 
oaks of Dodona’s fored. 
Argo Navis, the Ship Argo , in adronomy, is a con¬ 
dellation in the fouthern hemifphere, whofe dars, in Pto¬ 
lemy’s catalogue, are forty-five; in Tycho’s, eleven ; in 
the Britannic catalogue, and Sharp’s appendix, fixty-four. ’ 
AR'GOB, an ancient canton, lying beyond Jordan, in 
the half-tribe of Manafleh, and in the country of Balkan, 
one of the mod fruitful on the other fide of Jordan. In 
the- region of Argob there were lixty cities, called Bajhan- 
havoih fair, which had very high walls and drong gates, 
without reckoning many villages and hamlets which were 
not incloled, Dent. iii. 4, 14, and 1 Kings, iv. 13. But 
Argob was more particularly the name of the capital city 
of the region of Argob, which Eufebius fays was fifteen 
miles wed from Gerafa, 
ARG 
AR'GOL, a town of France, in the department of Fu 
nifterre, and chief place of a canton, in the didridl of 
Chateaulin, two leagues north-wed of Chateaulin, and five 
and a half north of Quimper. 
AR'GOLIS, a province of Peloponnefus, between Arca¬ 
dia and the AEgean fea, whofe chief city was called Argos. 
AR'GON, the fon of Alcaeus, and one of theHeraclides, 
who reigned in Lydia 505 years before Gyges. 
ARGONAU'TA, J. a genus of Ihell-filh, for which 
fee Nautilus. 
ARGONAU'TIC, adj. Something belonging to the 
Argonauts. The argonautic expedition is one of the great- 
ed epochas or periods of hidory which Sir Ifaac Newton 
endeavours to fettle, and from thence to rectify the ancient " 
chronology. This he dtevvs, by feveral authorities, to 
have been one generation or about thirty years earlier than 
the taking of Troy, and forty-three years later than the death 
of Solomon. Dr. Bryant, however, rejects the hidory of 
the argonautic expedition as a Grecian fable, founded in¬ 
deed on a tradition derived from Egypt, and ultimately re¬ 
ferring to Noah’s prefervation, &c. in the ark. But, al¬ 
though we are not to believe all the romantic dories which 
poets, and even fome grave hidorians, have told us of thofe 
famous adventurers, yet it feems unreafonable to diferedit 
entirely the Argonautic expedition. 
ARGONAU'TIC A, f. in literary hidory, denotes poems’ 
on the fubjedt and expeditions of the Argonauts. We 
have the Argonautics of Orpheus in epic verfe, publidied 
by H. Stephanus; the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus, in 
eight books of Latin heroics, in imitation of Apollonius, 
with refpedb to which Burman obferves that the imitator 
has often furpafled the original; the Argonautics of Apol¬ 
lonius Rhodius, an heroic poem, confiding of four books> 
opus, as Quintilian calls it, non contemnendum. 
AR'GONAUTS, in antiquity, a company of illudrious 
Greeks, who embarked with Jafon, in the fhip Argo, with 
a defign to obtain the golden fleece. The occafion of this 
expedition is thus reprefented by Greek writers: Phryxus,, 
flying with his fifler Helle from the rage of their ftepmo- 
ther Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, went on-board a fhip, 
whofe enfign was a golden ram, and failed to Colchis, (now 
Mingrelia, part of Georgia.) Helle was drowned by the 
way, in that fea which from her was called the Hdlefpont, 
now the Dardanelles. This, according to fome, was the 
ground of the poetical foble, that a ram with a golden 
fleece fwarn away with them to Colchis ; and that the Ar¬ 
gonauts undertook their famed expedition, in order to find 
that fleece. But Strabo and Arrian inform us, that it was 
a practice of the Colchians to colledb gold on mount Cau- 
cafus by extending fleeces acrofs the beds of the torrents ; 
and, as the water palled, the metallic particles remained 
entangled in the wool: hence, according to thofe hilbori- 
ans, the adventure was named the expedition of the golden 
jleece. Sir Ifaac Newton thinks that this expedition was 
really an embafly lent by the Greeks, during the inteftine 
divifions of Egypt in the reign of Amenophis, to perfuade 
the nations upon the coafts of the Euxine and Mediterra¬ 
nean feas, to take that opportunity of fhaking off the yoke 
of Egypt, which Sefoltris had laid upon them ; and that 
fetching the golden fleece was only a pretence to cover 
their true defign. 
But the moft judicious and fatisfadbory account of the 
Argonautic expedition, fee ms to be that given by Dr. 
Gillies in his Hiftory of Greece. “ The northern diftridbs 
of Theflaly being peculiarly expofed to the dangerous fu¬ 
ry of invaders, the petty princes of that province entered 
into a confederacy for their mutual defence. They afletn- 
bled in fpring and autumn at Thermopylae, a place after¬ 
wards fo illuftrious, and then governed by Amphictyon, a 
defeendant of Deucalion, whole name is immortalized in 
the Amphidbyonic council. The advantages which the 
confederates derived from this meafure, were foon per¬ 
ceived by their neighbours. The central Hates gradually 
acceded to their alliance; and, about the middle of the 
fourteenth century before Chrift, Acrifius king of Argos, 
