THE INTRODUCTION

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

APOLLONIUS, the scholar and rival of Callima chus, was a native of Alexandria, born under the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, near 300 years before Christ. He was distinguished by the name of Rhodius, either from the name of his mother Rhoda, or from having taught rhetoric at Rhodes: upon his return from thence to Alexandria, he was appointed by Ptolemy Evergetes to succeed Eratosthenes in the care of the public library. He was buried in the same tomb with Callimachus.

The subject of Apollonius's Argonautics is one of the most remarkable in all antiquity :-The expedition of the Golden Fleece, undertaken about 30 years before the Trojan War.-Sir Isaac Newton, in his Chronology, places this expedition about 43 years after the death of Solomon; that period being in the middle of the greatest dis

tractions of Egypt. Then it was, he conceives, that the Greeks, hearing of these distractions, contrived the Argonautic expedition, and sent the Flower of Greece in the ship Argo, to persuade the nations upon the sea-coasts of the Euxine and Mediterranean seas to revolt from Egypt, and set up for themselves; as the Libyans, Ethiopians, and the Jews had before done. The origin of this expedition is wrapt up in such incredible fables, as give it less the air of an historical event, than of an Arabian tale. I will beg leave, however, to lay it before the Reader in its fabulous dress, as a necessary Introduction to the following Poem.

Phrixus, son of Athamas king of Thebes, is feigned to have fled with his sister Helle, from the persecutions of their step-mother Ino, upon a Ram that had a Golden Fleece. In their passage from Europe to Asia, Helle is said to have fallen into the sea, which was called from her name the Hellespont. Phrixus arrives at Colchis, a country in the Northern part of Asia; where, by command of the Gods, he sacrifices the Ram to Jupiter, the protector of his flight, and hangs up the Fleece in a wood consecrated to Mars. He afterwards marries Calciope, daughter of Æeta the king of that country; who, having been warned by an oracle that he is in danger of

being

Jason

being plundered of the Golden Fleece, keeps
it guarded by a watchful Dragon, and brazen-
footed Bulls breathing fire. The savage charac-
ter of Æeta, and the many dangers which were
supposed to attend the pursuit of the Golden
Fleece, caused this to be esteemed the most ha-
zardous enterprise that could be undertaken.
Pelias, therefore, who wanted to possess himself
of the Kingdom of Thessalia, which, upon the
death of his brother son, he held in trust for
Jason, his nephew, sent him upon an expedition
to fetch the Golden Fleece from Colchis.
had a warlike vessel, built for this purpose, of
pine-trees from the forest of Dodona, and em-
barked in it under the protection of Juno, with
upwards of fifty illustrious Greeks; who, from
Argo, the name of the Ship, were called the
Argonauts: the principal among them were
Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Orpheus and Ty-
phis, with several of the Fathers of those Heroes,
who are celebrated by Homer in the Trojan war,
Their various adventures in the course of their.
voyage, and their attainment of the Golden
Fleece, by assistance of Medea, the daughter of
Æeta, compose the argument of Apollonius's
poem. An argument, which, however trivial it
may appear, was by no means unimportant to
the ancients, as may be judged by its having

employed

employed the

pen

of several the most eminent of their Poets, Dionysius, and Pindar, besides Apollonius, among the Greeks, and Valerius Flaccus (a close copier of the latter poet) among the Romans.

It was certainly no unworthy object of the Greek Poets to trace out the achievements of their countrymen from the remotest origins; and to endeavour, through the fabulous mythology of those ages, to throw some light, however glimmering, upon the annals of their country. It is by their means that we may perceive a kind of historical series carried on from the Argonautic expedition, through the Theban and Trojan wars, to the origin of almost all the States of Greece; till at length some degree of certainty be found on which the truth of history may may rest. It is observable, that both Herodotus and Thucydides, in deducing the Grecian affairs from the darkest antiquity, down to the historical age, prove the wars, which originally embroiled Europe and Asia, to have taken rise from those naval plunders and rapines which were anciently considered as so many great and glorious exploits. The former of these Historians remarks, that as the Phoenicians were the first who brought their mercantile traffic into Greece, they were the first

likewise

likewise who offered acts of violence in carrying off Io, the daughter of Inachus; and that the Greeks, to revenge this injury, passed over into Phoenicia, and bore away Europa. He adds, that the Greeks were afterwards the aggressors in carrying away Medea, the king's daughter, from Colchis, being allured thither by the riches of that country, which were figured under the fable of the Golden Fleece.

Phrixus is supposed to be the first who trafficked at Colchis, the fiction of his being borne on a Ram taking rise from the figure of that animal being painted on the prow of the vessel in which he sailed.

As to the fable of the Golden Fleece, there are various expositions of it: It is by Suidas and others applied to chemistry, denoting by the several passages of a tedious voyage the long process to be pursued before perfection in the chemical art, meant by the Golden Fleece, can be acquired. Some accounts of this story imply, that it might simply have arisen from the valuable commodity of wool among the ancients; as, before the use of money, their riches were estimated by the possessions of their flocks and herds. Strabo and Pliny, describing the immense wealth

of