PART
4
Ch.XXVI.11
Prehistoric
monuments of metallurgic art in
(Chryseion Koas The Golden Fleece)
XXVI. 11. Phrixus (Phrixios),
an ancient patronymic name, at north of the
As the name Nephele was only a
simple Greek translation, so too the Greek authors had altered the name of Phrixios.
As we well know, the ancient Greeks
often changed the Pelasgian B in F, saying Phriges instead of Briges,
Phlippos
instead of Bilippos, Phereniche instead of Bereniche, Phuxios instead of Buxios,
etc. In the same way they have modified also the Pelasgian name of Phrixus.
In the locality Nehoias on the tableland of Buzeu, exists even today a group of Mosneni, which bear the old, ancestral
name of Briciu (Iorgulescu, Dict. Geogr. Buzeu, p. 554).
The Mosneni from the mountainous parts of Tera Romaneasca (TN the
Romanian Country) and
They still preserve to this day the
characteristic Daco-Getic sharing institution, regarding the immovable
property, preserved from their forefathers [1].
[1. The numerous groups of Mosneni
(Mosteni, Mosinasi) settled in the
upper region of Buzeu river (Phasis), were also known to antique geography
under the name of Moscheni, Mossyni and Mossynoeci (Pliny, lib.
VI. 10.3, 4.2, 4.4, V. 33; Scylax,
86; Stephanos Byzanthinos).
According to Strabo (XII. 3.
18), they lived in the area of the mountain Scudises, today Spedis,
on the tableland of Buzeu, and belonged to a mountain population (munteni). Apollonius Rhodius (II. v. 379) mentions the Mossynoeci close to the Amazons
and the Colchi. Their dwellings were
in a wooded region on the lower part of a mountainous region (
.te nemontai).
We have here again only a periphrasis of the old geographic name of Muntenia (TN another name for
Valachia or Tera Romaneasca).
The houses of these Mossynoeci were of timber, but of a particular
architecture. They were built high, in the shape of towers, or cule as they are called today.
These Mosneni (Moscheni,
Mossynoeci), exactly like their Colchi neighbors, like the Amazons, and like
the Chalybi, had been displaced in the epoch of the decadence of Greek
geography and transported to the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea, where
their name had been applied to some obscure tribes near the northern frontiers
of Armenia.
Another group of Mosteni is
mentioned in ancient geography near the Columns of Hercules, or the cataracts
of Istru (called Mastienoi by Stephanos
Byzanthinos and Massieni by Avienus
(Or. Marit. v. 421 seqq)].
According to folk traditions from
the tableland of Buzeu, there were some ties of kinship between the legendary Domna Nega and the Briciu family from Nehoias. In fact we have here only one big Negoias family. (A folk tradition tells
us that Domna Nega, chased by
Tatars, runs to Nehoias, to the
Vladoian family, family from which the Briciu
family later emerged).
We can therefore state in all probability
that, from a historical and etymological point of view, the name Phrixus from the Argonautic legend is
identical with the name Briciu of a
group of mosneni from the locality Nehoias.
Phrixus, the son of king
Athamas and Nephele, astride the ram
with the golden fleece,
flies over the agitated waves of the sea, and over far-reaching plains,
in order to find a safe heaven and a life in
(Vase painting from Gerhard, Phrixos der Herold, Berlin, 1842) [2]
[2. This vase painting, in Etruscan style, presents one of the most
beautiful renderings of the legend of Phrixus. Noble Pelasgian type, slender
figure, Phrixus appears here with his hair tied with a white ribbon, emblem of
his descent from a royal family. His curly hair, reaching to his shoulders,
gives his figure a particular grace. We find the same physical type represented
even today in the Romanian shepherds from the
The famous Colchic ram, as represented in the vase painting, belongs to
the race of sheep with the horns turned
inwards from the region of the
Carpathians. It is the race of the Dacian
sheep, which we also see figured on the bas-reliefs of the Trajans Column
(Froehner, Pl. 35. 54. 76 and 133)].