the Greeks sailed in vessels of a rounder form, Jason being the first
who sailed in a ship built in the form of a galley. After many
adventures, on arriving at the Isle of Lemnos, they found that the
women had killed their husbands in a fit of jealousy, on which the
Argonauts took wives from their number, and Jason received for his
companion Hypsipyle, the daughter of Thoas. Putting to sea again, they
were driven on the coast of Bithynia, where they delivered Phineus,
its king, from the persecution of the Harpies, who were in the habit
of snatching away the victuals from his table. These monsters, of
hideous form, with crooked beaks and talons, huge wings, and the faces
of women, the Argonauts, and especially Calais and Zethes, pursued as
far as the islands called Strophades, in the Ionian sea, where Iris
appearing to them, enjoined them to pursue the Harpies no further,
promising that Phineus should no longer be persecuted by them. To
explain this story, some suppose that the Harpies were the daughters
of Phineus, who by their dissipation and extravagance, had ruined him
in his old age, which occasioned the saying, that they snatched the
victuals out of his mouth. Le Clerc thinks, that the Harpies were vast
swarms of grasshoppers, which ravaged all Paphlagonia, and caused a
famine in the dominions of Phineus; the word 'arbati,' whence the term
'Harpy' is derived, signifying 'a grasshopper;' and that the North
wind blowing them into the Ionian sea, it gave rise to the saying,
that the sons of Boreas pursued them so far. Diodorus Siculus does not
mention the Harpies, though he speaks of the arrival of the Argonauts
at the court of Phineus.

After some other adventures, the Argonauts arrived at Colchis. AEetes,
or AEeta, the king, having been forewarned by an oracle, that a
stranger should deprive him of his crown and life, had established a
custom of sacrificing all strangers found in his dominions. His
daughter Medea, falling in love with Jason, promised him her
assistance in preserving them from the dangers to which they were
exposed, on the condition of his marrying her. Having engaged to do
so, she conducted him by night to the royal palace, and gave him a
false key, by means whereof he found the royal treasures, and carrying
them off, embarked with Medea and his companions. By way of explaining
the miraculous portion of the story, we may, perhaps,