THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 229
fact that two most ancient trade routes met on the upperDanube^
The ship passed down the Adriatic, round Italy, through Scylla
and Charybdis, and rounding Sicily crossed the sea to Libya,
thus reversing the course followed in the other voyages to which
we have referred. Here was the spot where in the after time
Cyrene was to stand on " a white breast of the swelling earth,"
and here as the Minyans were w^eighing anchor was delivered
to Euphemus from Taenarum in Laconia the augury, which
seventeen generations later was to be fulfilled by the coming
of Battus, the descendant of :
Euphemus " Then came to us
the solitary god, having put on the splendid semblance of a
noble man and he ;
began friendly speech, such as well doers
use when they bid newcomers to the feast. But the plea
of the sweet hope of home suffered us not to stay.
Then he
said that he was Eurypylos son of the earth-embracer, immortal
Ennosides
;
and for that he was aware that we hasted to be
gone, he straightway caught up of the chance earth at his feet
a gift that he would fain bestow. Nor was the hero unheeding,
but leaping on the shore and striking hand in hand he took to
him the fateful clod-."
The legend embodied by Pindar in his great ode is remarkable
in more than one way, but the feature which is most
important for our present purpose is the assumption that even
in the far back days, when the piece of Dodonean oak in the
Argo's prow dii'octed her course to Libya, already there was in
that land a people, who are not represented as savage and
barbarous, but regarded as children of
Poseidon and friendly to
the Minyans.
That there had been older dwellei's at Cyrene before the
settlement of Battus is indicated not only by this legend, but
by a statement in the Fifth Pythian: "we honour at the
ban(iuet the fair-buih city of Cyrene, which the spear-loving
strangers haunt, tlie Ti-ojan seed of Antenor. For with Helen
they came thither aftei- they had seen their native city smoking
in the fires of war. And now to that chivalr(us race do the
'
routes.)
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Kidj^'cway, Mc/ullir Ctirri-ncij. pji. 1(1.") >7/