Perhaps the one we are about to describe, may, in
the opinion of some, be deemed equally so; but to us it appears to have
some plausibility. The tradition to which we allude is, that the Argonauts
sailed up some sea or river from the Euxine, till they reached the Baltic
Sea, and that they returned by the Northern Ocean through the straits of
Hercules, into the Mediterranean. The existence of an ocean from the east
end of the Gulf of Finland to the Caspian or the Euxine Sea, was firmly
believed by Pliny, and the same opinion prevailed in the eleventh century;
for Adam of Bremen says, people [could sail->could formerly sail] from the
Baltic down to Greece. Now the whole of that tract of country is flat and
level, and from the sands near Koningsberg, through the calcareous loam of
Poland and the Ukraine, evidently alluvial and of comparatively recent
formation.
If the Trojan war happened, according to the Arundelian Marbles, 1209 years
before Christ, this event must have been subsequent to the Argonautic
expedition only about fifty years: yet, in this short space of time, the
Greeks had made great advances in the art of ship building, and in
navigation. The equipment of the Argonautic expedition was regarded, at the
period it took place, as something almost miraculous; yet the ships sent
against Troy seem to have excited little astonishment, though, considering
the state of Greece at that period, they were very numerous.
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