Symplegades
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In Greek mythology, the Symplegades were a pair of rocks at the Hellespont that clashed together randomly. They were defeated by Jason and the Argonauts, who would have been lost and killed by the rocks except for Phineas' advice. Jason let a dove fly between the rocks; it lost only its tail feathers. The Argonauts rowed mightily to get through and lost only part of the stern ornament. After that, the Symplegades stopped moving permanently.
The Romans called them cyaneae insulae.
Lord Byron refers to the Symplegades in the concluding stanzas of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
- And from the Alban Mount we now behold
- Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
- Beheld it last by Calp's rock unfold
- Those waves, we follow on till the dark Euxine roll'd
- Upon the blue Symplegades …
[edit] References
Apollonius Rhodius. Argonautica II, 317-340, 549-610