A choice is necessary to be made, it must be
allowed that the traditions of Greece are less inconsistent than those of
the more distant regions of the earth. Oriental learning is now employed in
unravelling the mythology of India, and recommending it as containing the
seeds of primaeval history; but hitherto we have seen nothing that should
induce us to relinquish the authority we have been used to respect, or to
make us prefer the fables of the Hindoos or Guebres, to the fables of the
Greeks. Whatever difficulties may occur in the return of the Argonauts,
their voyage to Colchis is consistent: it contains more real geography than
has yet been discovered in any record of the Bramins or the Zendevesta, and
is truth itself, both geographical and historical, when compared with the
portentous expedition of Ram to Ceylon."
In discussing the subject of the Argonautic expedition, we shall
successively consider its probable era - its supposed object - the voyage to
Colchis, and the various tracks by which the Argonauts are said to have
returned.
I. Archbishop Usher fixes the era of this expedition at about 1280 years
before Christ: Sir Isaac Newton, on the other hand, fixes it much later,
about 937 years before Christ. His opinion is grounded principally on a
supposition, that the Greek sphere was invented by two of the Argonauts,
who delineated the expedition under the name of Argo, one of the
constellations.
