Now the heroes, when their return seemed safe for them, fared onward and made their hawsers fast to the land of the Hylleans.  For the islands lay thick in the river and made the path dangerous for those who sailed thereby.  Nor, as aforetime, did the Hylleans devise their hurt, but of their own accord furthered their passage, winning as guerdon a mighty tripod of Apollo.  For tripods twain had Phoebus given to Aeson’s son to carry afar in the voyage he had to make, at the time when he went to sacred Pytho to enquire about this very voyage; and it was ordained by fate that in whatever land they should be placed, that land should never be ravaged by the attacks of foemen.  Therefore even now this tripod is hidden in that land near the pleasant city of Hyllus, far beneath the earth, that it may ever be unseen by mortals.  Yet they found not King Hyllus still alive in the land, whom fair Melite bare to Heracles in the land of the Phaeacians.  For he came to the abode of Nausithous and to Macris, the nurse of Dionysus, to cleanse himself from the deadly murder of his children; here he loved and overcame the water nymph Melite, the daughter of the river Aegaeus, and she bare mighty Hyllus.  But when he had grown up he desired not to dwell in that island under the rule of Nausithous the king; but he collected a host of native Phaeacians and came to the Cronian sea; for the hero King Nausithous aided his journey, and there he settled, and the Mentores slew him as he was fighting for the oxen of his field.

Now, goddesses, say how it is that beyond this sea, near the land of Ausonia and the Ligystian isles, which are called Stoechades, the mighty tracks of the ship Argo are clearly sung of?  What great constraint and need brought the heroes so far?  What breezes wafted them?

When Apsyrtus had fallen in mighty overthrow Zeus himself, king of gods, was seized with wrath at what they had done.  And he ordained that by the counsels of Aeaean Circe they should cleanse themselves from the terrible stain of blood and suffer countless woes before their return.  Yet none of the chieftains knew this; but far onward they sped starting from the Hyllean land, and they left behind all the islands that were beforetime thronged by the Colchians—­the Liburnian isles, isle after isle, Issa, Dysceladus, and lovely Pityeia.  Next after them they came to Corcyra, where Poseidon settled the daughter of Asopus, fair-haired Corcyra, far from the land of Phlius, whence he had carried her off through love; and sailors beholding it from the sea, all black with its sombre woods, call it Corcyra the Black.  And next they passed Melite, rejoicing in the soft-blowing breeze, and steep Cerossus, and Nymphaea at a distance, where lady Calypso, daughter of Atlas, dwelt; and they deemed they saw the misty mountains of Thunder.  And then Hera bethought her of the counsels and wrath of Zeus concerning them.  And she devised an ending of their voyage and stirred up storm-winds before them,