Eager to find any classic worthy of that name, and in English, I just succumbed to an illustrated edition of the myth about the Argonauts in one of the best Zagreb bookstores.[1] About a half of the book’s eighty glossy pages are covered with illustrations, most of which I find awfully kitschy. I could not but buy the book at once, though. A map of the Mediterranean showing the most plausible route of the Argo was decisive in my decision.[2] It shows the ship reaching the Adriatic by way of Isonzo in Italian or Soča in Slovenian, which is to the west of Istria. But the story indicates that there were two islands near the mouth of the river, which would fit Riječina to the east of the peninsula much better.[3] In fact, there are no islands near the mouth of Isonzo or Soča on the border between Italy and Slovenia. The two islands near the mouth of Riječina are Krk and Cres, of course (“Our Troy,” July 9, 2015). At any rate, the map is amazing to behold. It shows that Jason, the hero of the myth that precedes Homer’s opus by a few centuries, far outstripped Odysseus in his peregrinations. The route of the Argo meanders through much of the world known to the denizens of Bronze Age Greece. Both the Adriatic and the Black Sea are parts of that marvelous world. Which goes a long way toward an explanation of my choice of the book to buy a short while ago.

Footnotes

1. Smith, Neil, Jason and the Argonauts, illustrated by José Daniel Cabrera Peña, Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2013.

2. Op. cit., p. 16.

3. Op. cit., p. 62.