a company of illustrious Greeks who embarked along with Jason in the ship Argo. "The designs of the Argonauts," says Dr Gillies, in his History of Greece, "are veiled under the allegorical, or at least doubtful, phrase of carrying off the golden fleece; which, though easily explained, if we admit the report that the inhabitants of the eastern banks of the Euxine extended fleeces of wool in order to collect the golden particles which were carried down by the torrents from Mount Caucasus, is yet described in such various language by ancient writers, that almost every modern who examines the subject thinks himself entitled to offer, by way of explanation, some new conjecture of his own. But in opposition to the most approved of these conjectures, we may venture to affirm that the voyage to Colchis was not undertaken with a view to establish extensive plans of commerce, or to search for mines of gold, far less to learn the imaginary art of converting other substances into that precious metal; all such motives supposing a degree of speculation and refinement unknown in that age to the gallant but uninstructed youth of Thessaly. The real object of the expedition may be discovered by its consequences. The Argonauts fought, conquered, and plundered; they settled a colony on the shores of the Euxine, and carried into Greece a daughter of the king of Colchis, the celebrated Medea, a princess of Egyptian extraction, whose crimes and enchantments are condemned to eternal infamy in the immortal lines of Euripides."

Argonauts of St Nicholas was the name of a military order instituted by Charles III., king of Naples, in the year 1382, for the advancement of navigation, or, as some say, merely for preserving amity among the nobles. They wore a collar of shells inclosed in a silver crescent, whence hung a ship with this device, Non credo tempori, I do not trust time. Hence these Argonaut knights came to be called knights of the shell. They received the order of St Basil, archbishop of Naples, and held their assemblies in the church of St Nicholas their patron.