their shoulders through
the sweltering Libyan deserts, of the island of Circe, the enchantress;
of the rock, with its grateful haven, which in the height of a tempest
rose out of the sea to receive them; of the arrow shot by Apollo from
his golden bow; of the brazen man, the work of Hephaestos, who stood on
the shore of Crete, and hurled at them as they passed vast fragments of
stone; of their combat with him and their safe return to Iolcos; and of
the translation of the ship _Argo_ by the goddess Athene to heaven.

[Sidenote: Union of the geographical and the marvellous.]

Such were some of the incidents of that celebrated voyage, the story of
which enchanted all Greece before the Odyssey was written. I have not
space to tell of the wonders that served to decorate the geography of
those times. On the north there was the delicious country of the
Hyperboreans, beyond the reach of winter; in the west the garden of the
Hesperides, in which grew apples of gold; in the east the groves and
dancing-ground of the sun; in the south the country of the blameless
Ethiopians, whither the gods were wont to resort. In the Mediterranean
itself the Sirens beguiled the passers-by with their songs near where
Naples now stands; adjoining were Scylla and Charybdis; in Sicily were
the one-eyed Cyclops and cannibal Laestrygons. In the island of Erytheia
the three-headed giant Geryon tended his oxen with a double-headed dog.
I need not speak of the lotus-eaters, whose food made one forget his
native country; of the floating island of Aeolus; of the happy fields in
which the horses of the sun were grazing; of bulls and dogs of immortal
breed; of hydras, gorgons, and chimeras; of the flying man Daedalus, and
the brazen chamber in which Danae was kept. There was no river, no
grotto that had not its genius; no island, no promontory without its
legend.

[Sidenote: Earliest Greek theological ideas indicate a savage state.]

It is impossible to recall these antique myths without being satisfied
that they are, for the most part, truly indigenous, truly of European
growth. The seed may have been brought, as comparative philologists
assert, from Asia, but it had luxuriantly germinated and developed under
the sky of Europe. Of the legends, many are far from answering to their
reputed Oriental source; their barbarism and indelicacy represent the
state of Europe. The outrage of Kronos on his father Uranos speaks of
the savagism of the times; the story