Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

150 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
The
-Golden
Fleece.
myths fall into a regular series, and are repeated until we
find ourselves on the confines of genuine history, which cuts
the threads of the mythical drama just where it happens to
meet them ; and we leave the subject in the full confidence
that the radiant maiden would have been stolen and the chil-
dren of the sun banished from the west yet many times
more under different names and circumstances sufficiently
varied, had not men been awakened to the need of providing
in contemporary writing a sure means for the preservation
of historical facts.
Into the Argonautic story, as into the mythical histories
or sagas which follow it, a number of subordinate legends
have been interwoven, many of which have been already
noticed as belonging to the myths of the heavens and the
light, clouds, waters, winds, and darkness ; and we have now
only to follow the main thread of the narrative from the
moment when Phrixos, 1 the child of the mist, has reached
the Kolchian land and the home of king Aietes, a name in
which Ave recognise one of the many words denoting the
breath or motion of the air. Helle, the warm and brilliant-
tinted maiden, has died by the way, and the cold light only
remains when the golden-fleeced ram, the offspring of Poseidon
and Theophane, the lord of the air and the waters, and
the bright gleaming sky, reaches its journey's end. The
treasures of the day, brought to the east, are now in the
words of Mimnermos represented by < a large fleece in the
town of Aietes, where the rays of Helios rest in a golden
chamber.' These treasures must be sought out so soon as
the man destined to achieve the task is forthcoming. He is
found by the same tokens which foretold the future greatness
of Oidipous, Perseus, Telephos, Romulus, or Cyrus. Pelias,
the chief of Iolkos, who had driven away his brother Neleus,
had been told that one of the children of Aiolos would be his
destroyer, and decreed therefore that all should be slain.
Iason only (a name which must be classed with the many
others, Iasion, Iamos, Iolaos, Iaso, belonging to the same
1 The name belongs apparently to the freeze, the story of the spoiling of the
same root with Prokris, vol. i., p. 430, corn being the result of a false etymo-
•and is tniis connected with (pfjlcraw, our logy.