the golden fleece. Aeetes required of Jason that he should first yoke to a plough his bulls, given him by Hephaestus, which snorted fire and had hoofs of brass, and with them plough the field of Ares. That done, the field was to be sown with the dragons’ teeth brought by Phrixus, from which armed men were to spring. Successful so far by means of the mixture which Medea, daughter of Aeetes, had given him as proof against fire and sword, Jason was next allowed to approach the dragon which watched the fleece; Medea soothed the monster with another mixture, and Jason became master of the fleece. Then the voyage homeward began, Medea accompanying Jason, and Aeetes pursuing them. To delay him and obtain escape, Medea dismembered her young brother Absyrtus, whom she had taken with her, and cast his limbs about in the sea for his father to pick up. Her plan succeeded, and while Aeetes was burying the remains of his son at Tomi, Jason and Medea escaped. In another account Absyrtus had grown to manhood then, and met his death in an encounter with Jason, in pursuit of whom he had been sent. Of the homeward course various accounts are given. In the oldest (Pindar) the “Argo” sailed along the river Phasis into the eastern Oceanus, round Asia to the south coast of Libya, thence to the mythical lake Tritonis, after being carried twelve days over land through Libya, and thence again to Iolcus. Hecataeus of Miletus (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 259) suggested that from the Oceanus it may have sailed into the Nile, and so to the Mediterranean. Others, like Sophocles, described the return voyage as differing from the outward course only in taking the northern instead of the southern shore of the Euxine. Some (pseudo-Orpheus) supposed that the Argonauts had sailed up the river Tanaïs, passed into another river, and by it reached the North Sea, returning to the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules. Again, others (Apollonius Rhodius) laid down the course as up the Danube (Ister), from it into the Adriatic by a supposed mouth of that river, and on to Corcyra, where a storm overtook them. Next they sailed up the Eridanus into the Rhodanus, passing through the country of the Celts and Ligurians to the Stoechades, then to the island of Aethalia (Elba), finally reaching the Tyrrhenian Sea and the island of Circe, who absolved them from the murder of Absyrtus. Then they passed safely through Scylla and Charybdis, past the Sirens, through the Planctae, over the island of the Sun, Trinacria and on to Corcyra again, the land of the Phaeacians, where Jason and Medea held their nuptials. They had sighted the coast of Peloponnesus when a storm overtook them and drove them to the coast of Libya, where they were saved from a quicksand by the local nymphs. The “Argo” was now carried twelve days and twelve nights to the Hesperides, and thence to lake Tritonis (where the seer Mopsus died), whence Triton conducted them to the Mediterranean. At Crete the brazen Talos, who would not permit them to land, was killed by the Dioscuri. At Anaphe, one of the Sporades, they were saved from a storm by Apollo. Finally, they reached Iolcus, and the “Argo” was placed in a groove sacred to Poseidon on the isthmus of Corinth. Jason’s death, it is said, was afterwards caused by part of the stern giving way and falling upon him.
The story of the expedition of the Argonauts is very old. Homer was acquainted with it and speaks of the “Argo” as well known to all men; the wanderings of Odysseus may have been partly founded on its voyage. Pindar, in the fourth Pythian ode, gives the oldest detailed account of it. In Greek, there are also extant the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius and the pseudo-Orpheus (4th century A.D.), and the account in Apollodorus (i. 9), based on the best extant authorities; in Latin, the imitation of Apollonius (a free translation or adaptation of whose Argonautica was made by Terentius Varro Atacinus in the time of Cicero) by Valerius Flaccus. In ancient times the expedition was regarded as a historical fact, an incident in the opening up of the Euxine to Greek commerce and colonization. Its object was the acquisition of gold, which was caught by the inhabitants of Colchis in fleeces as it was washed down the rivers. Suidas says that the fleece was a book written on parchment, which taught how to make gold by chemical processes. The rationalists explained the ram on which Phrixus crossed the sea as the name or ornament of the ship on which he escaped. Several interpretations of the legend have been put forward by modern scholars. According to C. O. Müller, it had its origin in the worship of Zeus Laphystius; the fleece is the pledge of reconciliation; Jason is a propitiating god of health, Medea a goddess akin to Hera; Aeetes is connected with the Colchian sun-worship. Forchhammer saw in it an old nature symbolism; Jason, the god of healing and fruitfulness, brought the fleece—the fertilizing rain-cloud—to the western land that was parched by the heat of the sun. Others treat it as a solar myth; the ram is the light of the sun, the flight of Phrixus and the death of Helle signify its setting, the recovery of the fleece its rising again.
There are numerous treatises on the subject: F. Vater, Der Argonautenzug (1845); J. Stender, De Argonautarum Expeditione (1874); D. Kennerknecht, De Argonautarum Fabula (1886); M. Groeger, De Argonautarum Fabularum Historia (1889); see also Grote, History of Greece, part i. ch. 13; Preller, Griechische Mythologie; articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, and Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités.
ARGONNE, a rocky forest-clad plateau in the north-east of France, extending along the borders of Lorraine and Champagne, and forming part of the departments of Ardennes, Meuse and Marne. The Argonne stretches from S.S.E. to N.N.W., a distance of 63 m. with an average breadth of 19 m., and an average height of 1150 ft. It forms the connecting-link between the plateaus of Haute Marne and the Ardennes, and is bounded E. by the Meuse and W. by the Ante and the Aisne, which rises in its southern plateau. The valleys of the Aire and other rivers traverse it longitudinally, a fact to which its importance as a bulwark of north-eastern France is largely due. Of the numerous forests which clothe both slopes of the plateau, the chief is that of Argonne, which extends for 25 m. between the Aire and the Aisne.
For Dumouriez’s Argonne campaign in 1792, see French Revolutionary Wars.
ARGOS, the name of several ancient Greek cities or districts, but specially appropriated in historic times to the chief town in eastern Peloponnese, whence the peninsula of Argolis derives its name. The Argeia, or territory of Argos proper, consisted of a shelving plain at the head of the Gulf of Argolis, enclosed between the eastern wall of the Arcadian plateau and the central highlands of Argolis. The waters of this valley (Inachus, Charadrus, Erasinus), when properly regulated, favoured the growth of excellent crops, and the capital standing only 3 m. from the sea was well placed for Levantine trade. Hence Argos was perhaps the earliest town of importance in Greece; the legends indicate its high antiquity and its early intercourse with foreign countries (Egypt, Lycia, &c.). Though eclipsed in the Homeric age, when it appears as the seat of Diomedes, by the later foundation of Mycenae, it regained its predominance after the invasion of the Dorians (q.v.), who seem to have occupied this site in considerable force. In accordance with the tradition which assigned the portion to the eldest-born of the Heracleid conquerors, Argos was for some centuries the leading power in Peloponnesus. There is good evidence that its sway extended originally over the entire Argolis peninsula, the land east of Parnon, Cythera, Aegina and Sicyon. Under King Pheidon the Argive empire embraced all eastern Peloponnesus, and its influence spread even to the western districts.
This supremacy was first challenged about the 8th century by Sparta. Though organized on similar lines, with a citizen population divided into three Dorian tribes (and one containing other elements), with a class of Perioeci (neighbouring dependents) and of serfs, the Argives had no more constant foe than their Lacedaemonian kinsmen. In a protracted struggle for the possession of the eastern seaboard of Laconia in spite of the victory at Hysiae (apparently in 669), they were gradually driven back, until by 550 they had lost the whole coast strip of Cynuria. A later attempt to retrieve this loss resulted in a crushing defeat near Tiryns at the hands of King Cleomenes I. (probably in 495), which so weakened the Argives that they had to open the franchise to their Perioeci. By this time they
