his honour were for ever passing through its streets;[1] and the fountain in its midst was known as "the fountain of Apollo." This connection between Apollo and the distant Cyrenè naturally produced legends which should explain it. One such legend was that of Battus and his visit to Delphi; another was the tale already mentioned of the loves of Apollo and the nymph Cyrenè.
But there was a third local legend, unconnected with the name of Apollo, and carrying us back into a more remote antiquity,—a time prior to the origin of the Delphian temple. Jason and his Argonauts had passed, it was said, over the deserts of Libya. Their ship had been miraculously drawn for twelve days across the sands by Medea's magic spells, and they had at last reached the fountains of the lake Tritonis. Here they were greeted by a local deity, a son of Poseidon, who presented to one of the crew—the Lacedæmonian hero Euphemus—a clod of earth, telling him to treasure it, and convey it to his home. Had he done so, his descendants in the fourth generation would have obtained the sovereignty of Libya. But through some negligence on the part of Euphemus's followers the symbolic clod was allowed to fall overboard, and was carried by the tide to Thera. In consequence the descendants of Euphemus were not allowed to enter on their sovereignty in Africa till they had first colonised Thera; and thus it was from Thera instead of Laconia, and in the seventeenth instead of the fourth generation, that Battus, the
- ↑ Pyth. v. 90.
