SOURCE: An introduction to The "Argonautica" of Apol-lonius Rhodius: Book III, by Apollonius Rhodius, edited by Marshall M. Gillies, Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc., 1985, pp. xxix-xlv.

[In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1928, Gillies summarizes the Argonautica, considers its relation to other Alexandrine literature, and discusses Apollonius's unprecedented treatment of romance in Book Three.]

(a) The Narratives of the Voyage

… The Argonautica begins, not with the departure of Jason from lolcus, but like a modern serial story, with a rapid synopsis of preceding events. Hard on the conventional invocation and statement of theme, there follows an explanation of Pelias' fear of the one-sandalled man, a brief account of the arrival of Jason in this condition, and a sinister version¹ of the means by which Pelias forced on Jason the Quest of the Golden Fleece. For the building of the Argo, a general reference is given to previous works on the subject, followed by a catalogue of the fifty-two heroes who made up the crew. The preliminaries to the expedition are quickly reviewed—the hopes and fears of the people, the parting of Jason from his parents, the choice of a leader, the launch of the Argo, the sacrifice to Apollo, the quarrel of Idas and Idmon, and the song of Orpheus. Dawn comes at last, and the Argo puts out to sea.

The account of these preliminaries takes up more than a twelfth part of the whole four books, five hundred lines and more of paramount structural importance, which should contain the very essence of the poem. It is only too clear how little they are in keeping with epic standards, and it must be candidly admitted that they are a sorry farrago. The summary of the relations of Jason and Pelias is a wicked adaptation of that last infirmity of Greek drama, the tragic prologue². The catalogue is a mere parade of information obscurely gleaned; tedious in itself, by virtue of its prominent position it further acts as a drag on the narrative proper. The scene between Jason and his parents is neither heroic nor dignified; and the simile of the lonely maiden, the first deliberate piece of ornament in the poem, loses much of its force through the irrelevance of its detail. The appointment of Jason to the command only after the refusal by Heracles of the office, and under threat of violence from the latter if the choice should be opposed, is an insult to the dignity of the hero; the situation is brought about by the anxiety of the poet to combine with the usual account a late legend,³ which actually did give the leadership to Heracles. The vulgar brawl of Idas and Idmon is an unworthy means of drawing attention to the magic powers of the music of Orpheus. It is little wonder that many who have set out conscientiously to read the Argonautica have at this point closed the volume in disgust for ever.

It must be already evident how deeply the style of Apollonius is tainted by the vices of Alexandrianism. The poet is vanquished by the historian, and strict chronological sequence takes the place of the Homeric way of plunging straightway in medias res non secus ac notas. The historian, too, is in conflict with the dramatist; this is shewn, not only in the prologue and succession of five detached incidents, but also in the constant recurrence of a similar form, sometimes modified, sometimes more than obvious. The reproduction of variant legends, the intrusion of scholarly but unpoetic detail, the use of improper ornament, and striving after immediate effect by ruinous means, the emphasis on minutiae and general disregard of narrative dignity—all these shew clearly the cloven hoof of the pedant beneath the mantle of the poet.

The account of the outward voyage is a detailed description, complete except for a map, of the route naturally taken by a Greek vessel from Pagasae to Colchis, through the Golden Horn and along the northern coast of Asia Minor. In striking contrast with this, the narrative of the return throws all geographical possibility to the winds. The Argo sails up the Danube and down a mythical second arm to the Adriatic, up the Po and down the Rhone, and back to Pagasae via the northern coast of Africa, Crete and Aegina. The background of this amazing account is a wealth of conflicting legends, some of which must belong to the earliest stratum of the myth. The poet is attempting to reconcile the Homeric⁴ and Pindaric⁵ versions with those of the colonists who identified their new homes in the west with the mythology of their native land. Political reasons⁶ made it particularly advisable for Apollonius to refer to the connection of the Argo with Cyrene; but it is hard to avoid invidious comparisons of his account with that of Pindar.

The actual details of these voyages are beyond the scope of this enquiry; but a rough analysis will shew how, in the account of the outward voyage, the dramatic form is still predominant. There is a sharp division between the sections which deal with the known waters of the Aegean, and the less familiar geography of the Euxine. In each section, five main incidents are treated at length, and separated by short narrative interludes:

First Section

The Visit to Lemnos 619-908. 290 lines
 Narrative 909-935. 27 lines
the Fight with the Doliones 936-1152. 217 lines
 Narrative 1153-1171. 19 lines
The Loss of Hylas 1172-1357. 186 lines
 Narrative 1358-1362. 5 lines
The Fight with Amycus II. 1-163. 163 lines
 Narrative 1358-1362. 5 lines
The Visit to Phineus 178-536. 359 lines
 Narrative 537-548. 12 lines

Second Section

The Symplegades 549-647. 99 lines
 Narrative 648-668. 21 lines
Apollo Eoos 669-719. 51 lines
 Narrative 720-751. 32 lines
The Visit to Lycus 752-898. 147 lines
 Narrative 899-910. 12 lines
Sthenelus, Sinope and Amazons 911-1001. 91 lines
 Narrative 1002-1029. 28 lines
The Island of Ares 1030-1230. 201 lines
 Narrative 1231-1285. 55 lines

It can hardly be doubted that here is an obvious affinity with the stereotyped structure evolved by the drama in its decline from the Golden Age, of five acts separated by brief choral interludes.

(b) The Third Book

In contrast with the rapid narratives of the voyage, the action of the third book is almost stationary. The scene is laid at Colchis throughout, and changes only within the narrowest of limits. The theme is indicated in the invocation of Erato as patroness of Love; to her Apollo, the patron proper of the quest, for the moment gives place⁷.

Here and Athene plan together to aid Jason, and go to secure the aid of Cypris, who bribes her son Eros to fire Medea with love for Jason. Meanwhile the Argonauts in council are persuaded by Jason to postpone the use of force, until they have first approached Aeetes with a formal demand for the Fleece. The routine of Ptolemaic court ceremonial is duly observed; Jason as captain of the expedition leads an embassy to the palace, where on his behalf Argus, the grandson of Aeetes, explains the position to the king. Aeetes at first gives way to anger, but on reflection resolves to appoint an ordeal which shall be the ruin of Jason. This ordeal, in keeping with the best traditions of mythology, is threefold, the yoking of the fiery bulls, the ploughing of the Field of Ares, and the battle with the Earth-born Men. Jason reluctantly consents, and on his return to the ship explains the situation to the crew. Various heroes offer to perform the tasks if Jason himself should feel unequal to them; but Argus persuades them first to let him find if his mother Chalciope can secure the aid of her sister, the sorceress Medea. To this end, he returns to the palace, while Aeetes orders a watch to be kept on the Argo, and devises treachery against the crew.

But meanwhile Eros, in obedience to his mother's request, had played his part. Medea, the younger daughter of Aeetes, had by the divine purpose of Here been kept from her usual attendance as priestess at the temple of the goddess, and was the first person to be seen by Jason and his companions as they crossed the outer court on arrival at the palace. When she saw them, she cried aloud, and her cry brought forth from the palace Chalciope to welcome her sons, the attendants of Chalciope, and last of all Aeetes, and Eidyia the queen. During the ensuing turmoil, Eros entered unseen and fired his shaft at Medea; the effect is immediate, "all remembrance left her, and her soul was melted with the sweet pain":

As when a woman, toiling with her hands
At weaving, rises early from her sleep
And piles dry twigs around a smouldering
  brand
To furnish light under her roof by night;
And as the fire out of the tiny brand
Wakens to wondrous size, and utterly
Consumes both torch and twigs together—
  thus,
Crouched in Medea's heart, burned secretly
Love the Destroyer, and her tender cheeks
Ever were changing colour, now were pale,
Now red, in the distraction of her soul⁸.

Medea was present throughout the formal audience in the palace, but her thoughts were fixed on Jason alone; and as he retired from the palace, "her soul, creeping like a dream, flitted in his footsteps as he went⁹." Chalciope, in fear of the wrath of Aeetes, went straightway with her sons to the sanctuary of her own chamber; Medea too went to hers, "and brooded in her soul on the many cares that the Loves awaken":

Before her eyes the vision still appeared,
Himself just as he was, the clothes he wore,
The words he spoke, how he had sat, and how
He moved towards the door. Thus pondering,
She thought no man like him had ever been;
Ever his voice was ringing in her ears,
And the words, sweet as honey to the mind,
That he had spoken¹⁰.

Fearing that he is doomed to be slain, either by the bulls or at the hand of Aeetes himself, she mourns for Jason as one already dead; in the privacy of her chamber she reveals her feelings in a moving prayer:

Wretched am l! Why comes this grief to me?
Be he the best of heroes, or the worst,
Who is about to perish, let him go.
Yet, too, I would he had escaped unharmed!
Yes, may this be so, goddess reverend,
Daughter of Perses; may he reach his home,
Saved from destruction. But if he is doomed
To perish, overmastered by the bulls,
Then may he first learn this, that I at least
Rejoice not in his cruel calamity¹¹.

It is tempting to speculate how far Apollonius meant the reader to remember the presence of Medea throughout the proceedings in the palace, and, if he did, how far Medea was moved, apart from the mere celestial mechanism of the shaft of Eros, by anything deeper than the mere nobility and fine appearance of Jason. A modern writer, with the modern passion for psychological analysis, would hardly have missed the opportunity offered by lines 422-425, of describing how Medea's wavering emotions were finally fixed by the sight of the hero in a moment of ordinary human hesitation before so terrible an ordeal. But the genius of Apollonius did not consist in psychological subtleties of so advanced a character; subtle indeed he is within his own limits, but beyond these he must not be pressed.

At last deep sleep relieves Medea from her waking sorrows, but even in sleep her senses are alert to her undoing. She dreams that she herself is the real object of Jason's quest; that she performs the tasks in place of him; and that her parents accordingly refuse to carry out their promise. Strife arises, and the final decision is laid on her; she sets aside her parents, and chooses the stranger. Her parents cry aloud in anger; and with the cry, Medea awakes from sleep. Once more she vainly tries to assure herself of her purely impersonal concern for Jason; and in the hope that Chalciope, on behalf of her sons, will implore the aid of Medea's magic drugs, she resolves to visit her sister:

            Ah, miserable me,
What gloomy dreams have frightened me. I
 fear
That from the heroes' voyage there may come
Some great calamity. My heart with dread
Is trembling for the stranger. Let him woo
Some maid of the Achaeans, far away
In his own country. Mine be maidenhood,
Mine be my parents' home. Yet with my heart
Made reckless, I shall stay no more aloof,
But I shall put my sister to the test,
In hope that she, through grief for her own
  sons,
May beg my succour in the ordeal. This
Might quench the bitter pain within my
  heart¹².

With this intention, time and again Medea tries to make her way to her sister's room, and time and again shame forces her to return. At last, worn out by the conflict of modesty and desire, she throws herself upon her bed, and gives way to a storm of tears. One of her handmaidens sees her in this condition, and hastens to tell Chalciope, who at that very moment was sitting with her sons, trying to devise some means of approach to Medea to win her aid. She hastens in dismay to her sister's room, and, all unconscious of her feelings towards Jason, assumes that her terror is on behalf of her own sons. Medea, whose emotions had been too much centred on Jason to have had a single thought for them, seizes the heaven-sent excuse. Urged on by a passion beyond her control, she tells of her awful dream; but with the cunning of despair she tints the whole account with gloomy forebodings for their safety. Chalciope, in terror for her sons, begs her sister, for their sake, to help the stranger; and Medea promises to bring her charms at dawn to the temple of Hecate, and give Jason instructions for their use.

But with the departure of her sister, Medea is left once more a prey to shame and fear. In the stillness of night she wavers to and fro, resolved now to help Jason, now to end her misery, now to withhold her aid and to endure her fate in silence. She pictures the destruction of Jason, and a fresh sorrow added to her burden; she imagines her own suicide, and the taunts of the Colchian women after her death. Resolved at last in desperation to end her life, she takes her casket of drugs and begins to unloosen the bonds. "But suddenly over her soul there came an awful fear of hateful Hades. For a long time she held back in speechless horror, while around her thronged visions of all the pleasing cares of life. She thought of all the pleasant things that are among the living; she thought, as a maiden does, of her happy comrades; and the sun grew sweeter than ever to behold, the more she weighed each prospect in her mind. She put the casket once more from off her knees, all changed by the promptings of Here¹³." Dawn comes at last, and Medea takes her charms and drives with her maidens to keep her tryst with Jason.

In this scene, the genius of Apollonius reaches its highest point. It is by far the longest passage in the whole Argonautica of real and living poetry; its subtle balance and symmetry are such as only the closest analysis can reduce to a formal pattern¹⁴; and it is executed with a delicacy of feeling which it is almost an impertinence to praise. The Medea of Apollonius stands self-revealed, as a modest maiden caught in the toils of a new and overmastering passion, and in following the development of her character, we are impressed above all with her essential humanity. We forget the formal intervention of Eros, we forget her formal allegiance to Here and the occasionally inartistic workings of the divine mind of her patroness; we see portrayed, in a manner undreamt of in the Golden Age, the eternal conflict of love and family, love and duty, love and self, and the inevitable victory at every stage of the greater passion.

The decision once made, the reaction sets in; from the uttermost depths of despondency, Medea is borne with a rush to the heights of impatient assurance: "there in her chambers she sped to and fro, and trod the ground forgetful of the awful agony that had been hers, and heedless of sorrows to come, destined to be greater still¹⁵." Accompanied by her maidens, she goes to keep her tryst, like Artemis driving in her chariot to the chase; and as she goes, such people as meet her on the way, partly in deference to royalty, partly through fear of her magic glance, "give way, shunning the eyes of the royal maiden¹⁶." On arrival at the shrine, Medea reveals her intentions to her companions, and begs them to withdraw when Jason comes. Jason, accompanied by Mopsus, sets forth; but the latter is warned off by a crow, in obedience, as the poet is rather too prone to insist at every stage¹⁷, to the purpose of Here, and Jason goes on alone.

At last Medea sees him come, and at the sight "her heart leapt from her bosom, a mist came over her eyes, and a hot blush covered her cheeks. She had no strength to move her knees this way or that, but her feet were rooted to the ground.… Silent and speechless the two stood face to face. Like oaks or lofty pines, that stand side by side deep-rooted on the mountains, peaceful when the wind is still, but again, when stirred by the breath of the wind, murmur unceasingly—so too, stirred by the breath of Love, they two were destined to tell their tale at length¹⁸." Jason, though his heart is as yet untouched by Love, shews himself none the less to be a considerate and courteous gentleman. Realising the embarrassment of the maiden, he proceeds at once to speak, and to urge his plea for her assistance, tactfully reminding her of a precedent already established in the annals of her family by Ariadne, daughter of Helios, who had rescued Theseus from the Minotaur¹⁹. Medea, unable yet to speak, gives him the charm without a word; "and truly in her joy she would have drawn the very soul from her breast and given it to him, had he but needed it …²⁰." "For a while in modesty both kept their eyes fixed on the ground, but ever were casting glances at each other, smiling beneath their radiant brows the smile of Love²¹." At last Medea finds words, and explains the use of the charms; then, after a silence, she adds: "Remember, then, if ever thou shalt return to thy home, Medea's name, as ever shall I remember thine, though thou be far away²²." She urges him to speak further of her kinswoman Ariadne, and of his home, and at her tears, Love at last steals over Jason too, and he replies.

He describes his fatherland, but says little more of Ariadne than to express a hope that, as Minos her father was once reconciled to Theseus for her sake, so too Aeetes may be joined in friendship to himself and Medea. But Medea assures him that any such hope is vain, and threatens in her misery, should Jason forget her, to appear some day as a suppliant in his home. By one delicate suggestion after another she makes it clear to Jason that her assistance will involve her, has indeed already involved her, in irreconcilable enmity with her father; and thus she leads him up at last to a formal proposal of marriage. Formal indeed it is: "If thou shalt come to my home and to the land of Hellas, honoured and reverenced shalt thou be by men and women. They shall worship thee as a goddess, since by thy counsel to some their sons came home again, and to some their brothers, kinsmen and stalwart husbands were saved from a dread calamity. In our bridal chamber shalt thou prepare our couch, and nothing shall come between us and our love until the doom of death shall enfold us²³."

Then, calm as ever, Jason announces that the hour is late, and the lovers part; Jason returns to the ship, and Medea to her companions. "But these she noticed not as they thronged around, for her soul had soared aloft among the clouds; of their own accord her feet mounted the swift chariot…²⁴" When she reached the palace, Chalciope in grief for her sons rushed forth to question her; "but Medea, distraught by swiftly changing thoughts, neither heard her words nor was willing to answer her questions. She sat on a low stool at the foot of her couch, and leant her cheek on her left hand; her eyes were wet with tears as she pondered in what an evil deed she had resolved to share²⁵."

Thus ends Medea's share in the narrative of the third book; but Jason, as instructed by her, sacrifices to Hecate and anoints himself and his weapons with the charms. Thus protected, he goes to the ordeal, yokes the bulls and ploughs the field, sows the dragon's teeth and slays the Earth-born Men. Aeetes returns to the palace, and at this point the third book ends; the slaying of the dragon, the actual winning of the Fleece, the departure of Medea with the Argonauts and her marriage with Jason, belong to the narrative of the fourth book.

This theme has clearly the material for great poetry, and, within his own limitations, Apollonius has made good use of it. The first thing that strikes the intelligent reader of the Argonautica is that the style of the third book is quite different from that of the preceding two, and for that matter from that of the fourth book also. The poet has a definite plot to work out, and is less prone in consequence to serial narrative, and the whole section goes somehow with a swing that is wanting in the descriptions of the voyage. There is less digression into unfamiliar mythology, less etymology, and less parade of knowledge for its own sake; at last the poet seems to have risen superior to the pedant that is in him.

It is not that the pedant is by any means dead. Witness still the etymologies of proper names²⁶, the accumulation of titles in a simile²⁷, and mere parade of knowledge²⁸; the elaborate descriptions of buildings²⁹, customs³⁰, and marvels³¹; the digressions into magic and religious ritual³², and use of conventional devices like mist and sudden omens³³; the use of oratio obliqua, anatomical details, and plural Erotes³⁴. The taint of the Museum is in the blood of all her sons, and not even the Alexandrine leopard can change his spots. But on the other side of the account, we can credit Apollonius with innumerable beauties of detail, such as the bird's-eye view from Olympus, the simile of the aged woman, the description of the peace of night, and the curious but effective introduction of the abusive crow³⁵.

Nor is the third book immune from the disturbing influences of other forms of Alexandrine literature. There is a typical example of the "messenger's speech," in the explanation by Argus of Jason's quest³⁶, while the long speech of Aeetes in oratio obliqua is prosaic and inartistic in the extreme³⁷. It is particularly noticeable that many of the best episodes can be detached completely from their context without injury to the narrative, and resemble in form the idyll or the epyllion; this is especially true of the visit to Cypris, the account of Eros and Ganymede at dice, and the fine description of Medea's turmoil of doubt and indecision³⁸.

The most striking feature of the third book is the departure from Homeric standards in the introduction of romance. To some extent this is inherent in the character of the legend, which is of a type familiar from the folklore and mythology of every people. A hero sets out for a mystic country at the end of the world to win a prize; he travels there on a wonderful ship, and on arrival is set some task or tasks quite beyond his powers. The difficulty is overcome in one of three ways; either a god takes pity on him, or members of the animal kingdom come to his aid in grateful remembrance of some earlier service, or it may be that the daughter of his taskmaster is herself fired with pity for the hero in his distress, and gives him secret aid³⁹.

It is this third and most romantic form that is developed in the Argonautica. The principal result is to concentrate interest on Medea to the exclusion of Jason, which is in itself a departure from earlier epic standards. Female characters in the Homeric poems, however sympathetically drawn, are always subordinate to the male; Jason, on the other hand, is never quite equal to the emergency, and can never rise above his immediate troubles⁴⁰. This weakness of character is to some extent the fatal result of Alexandrine erudition. Earlier poets were content to rely on divine intervention or supernatural explanations in times of stress; the Alexandrine tries at the same time to observe the conventions and to trace troubles to natural causes, and falls between the stools of poetry and science.

It was the tragedy of Medea to love passionately without being loved in return. Her destiny was fixed in legend and literature, and it was not for Apollonius to alter it. But to him she is primarily a maiden tortured by the pains of love, though there are occasional glimpses of the more familiar Medea. There is an echo of Euripides in her appeal to Jason in this book⁴¹, and a still more bitter tone in the fourth book, in her denunciation of the treachery of Jason, and her appeal to the heroes at Phaeacia against their decision to surrender her to the pursuing Colchians⁴². It is by design of Here that Medea is fired with love for Jason, and she is no more than an instrument of the divine vengeance to be wreaked on a king in distant Thessaly who had insulted the goddess⁴³. Thus tradition thrust upon the poet the ironical situation, that the Queen of Heaven, the Patroness of Marriage and Divine Example of conjugal fidelity, sacrifices the love of a maiden to the safety of her protégé, and binds them in a marriage that is doomed to failure.

(c) Romance and the Epic

It is difficult to be sure how far Apollonius is original in his treatment of the romantic issue. Much of our information cannot be traced further back than to one or other of the many contemporary catalogues of unhappy love affairs⁴⁴. There was a promising situation in the Aethiopis, in the love of Achilles for the Amazon Penthesileia; but we cannot take the later⁴⁵ romantic versions as evidence.…

But Stesichorus in the Kalykē would seem to have anticipated the romantic movement by several centuries, as witness Athenaeus⁴⁶: "Calyce was depicted as pure and modest in character, not anxious at all costs for intercourse with her lover, but as praying, if so it might be, to become his lawful wife, and if this might not be, to die." This has something in common with the Argonautica; it recalls Medea's dream that Jason had come solely to win her as his lawful wife⁴⁷, and her passionate prayer that she had died before meeting him⁴⁸. The characters of Stesichorus, like those of the Argonautica, were purely mythological; but he lacked the tradition which gave some sanction to the methods of Apollonius, of Sappho and the personal lyric.

The position with regard to tragedy is well summed up by Ovid⁴⁹: "Omne genus scripti gravitate tragoedia vincit; Haec quoque materiam semper amoris habet." Even Euripides, the most romantic of the tragedians, was never quite free of the idea that a romantic situation was a means to the end of developing a plot, and could not be an end in itself. But the New Comedy, which drew its inspiration from Euripides, found the material for nearly all its plots in the love adventure; but this soon came to be formed to a conventional pattern, and lost its freshness and appeal.

It is in the third book of the Argonautica, for the first time in all Greek literature, that romance is treated objectively as a definite end in itself. Apollonius has rejected the conventions of an earlier age, and has developed his theme in its simplest and noblest form. He has discarded the nurse whom Euripides first made familiar in his tragedies as the confidante of a lovesick mistress, and the recipient of her guilty confessions. He has dispensed with the attendant of the New Comedy, whose furtive services were essential to the consummation of even the most romantic union. He has risen above the atmosphere of secrecy and guilty repression in which the old bawd of the mime performed her similar function. The Medea of Apollonius turns for sympathy to her own sister, and uses the fears of a mother for the accomplishment of a purpose which she is too modest to reveal. The storm of passion takes place in the breast of the maiden, and in the privacy of her own chamber; it is only by accident that her handmaiden intrudes upon her grief; and she, instead of conspiring with her mistress to form a secret plan, reports the matter to Medea's sister, and herself withdraws from the action.

This extinction of the go-between was a simple, but a great, achievement. What Terpander is said to have done for the lyric by the discovery of the octave; what Aeschylus did for the drama by the introduction of a second actor; what Aristophanes did for Comedy by the rejection of the Megarian farce—no less was done for romance by Apollonius in this purifying of the conventional form. Through the medium of the Argonautica, Greek romance was elevated to the epic in an atmosphere of purity, dignity, and wholesomeness, which the greater Vergil, greater in much else but inferior in this, would have done well to emulate.

It is not within the scope of this introduction to analyse at greater length the processes by which the character of Medea is developed; the third book of itself should make these evident to the reader. There is an impressiveness in the strangely modern tone of the whole treatment, and the loss is indeed ours if we fail to appreciate its signal merits. The fault is as much in ourselves as in Apollonius, if the blatant pedantry of occasional passages can blind us to the insight and daring of a pioneer, who took a legend with all the limitations of earlier tradition, with all the hindrances of familiarity and famous predecessors, with all the conventions inherited and respected by an age in which the spirit of creative literature was all but dead, and yet by the infusion of a new romantic spirit made the dry bones live.

(d) Callimachus and the Argonautica

The enquiry thus ends where it began, with the crucial problem of the Argonautica, and of Alexandrine literature in general, the relations of Apollonius and Callimachus. It is more than doubtful if there is real authority for referring to epic poems in general, and to the Argonautica in particular, the famous statement of Callimachus that "a great book was a great evil⁵⁰"; this may be no more than the petulant comment of a librarian on the inconvenient size of a papyrus roll. There would seem to be some reference to Apollonius in the final lines of Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo⁵¹; but little can be founded on the assumed resemblance in the Argonautica⁵², and it is dangerous to take too seriously the comment of a scholiast that the passage was directed against those who had mocked at the inability of Callimachus to compose a large poem, and so finally drove him to the composition of the Hecale⁵³.

It is reported⁵⁴ that Apollonius, while still a youth, recited his poem at Alexandria, and was received with such derision that he retired to Rhodes. There, in the more congenial atmosphere of a school which was famous for its studies in rhetoric, and which had produced among others the epic poet Antagoras, he gave with great success a recitation of his poem in a revised form. From Rhodes he returned⁵⁵, as is now known also from an independent source⁵⁶, to assume the office of Librarian at Alexandria, where a final recitation of the revised work was received with applause by a community which had derided its earlier form.

So far our authorities serve us, but now we come to the parting of the ways. We can support the view that the day of the great epic was past, pointing to the tendency of the times to shorter and more polished works, to the Alexandrine respect for Homer, and to the many shortcomings of the Argonautica in comparison with the Homeric poems. We can imagine a conceited youth of eighteen years, a pedant before his time, obstinately refusing to accept the verdict of his peers, angrily retiring to a more congenial environment, and there polishing up his slighted masterpiece with such effect that a second edition, well received at Rhodes, made the pendulum of time swing so quickly back at Alexandria, that the critics who had once denounced him as a feeble imitator of Homer were loud in acclaiming him as a worthy successor to the great master. This we may believe, and in so doing join the side of the big battalions.

But an appreciation of the literary tendencies of this age can help us to see the matter in a more reasonable light. We can imagine a youth of eighteen, fired alike with the spirit of Homer and the glamour of romance, determined to fuse these hitherto separate elements into one harmonious whole. We can picture the startled indignation of his learned audience, on hearing the instrument of the great Homer tuned to a strain thought proper only to the vulgar stage. We can imagine the derision which would greet the fumbling efforts of a raw youth in this new and dangerous medium, the conviction of the author that he was right, and a revision of his poem in a self-imposed exile with as much determination as Vergil spent in polishing up the Georgics. We can picture him in the Library at Rhodes, surrounded by textbooks and works of reference, lavishing the resources of pedantry on the narratives of the voyage, sweetening the romantic pill to the pedestrian taste of his critics. We can, finally, imagine these same critics, less opposed with the lapse of time to a form which they had once stigmatised as an impudent innovation, willing now to receive with approbation the maturer work of one whose genius they had formerly been unable to appreciate.

The careful reader of the Argonautica cannot fail to notice that the whole tone of the third book is different from that of the other three; the style is more fluent, the narrative runs more easily, and acts of wilful pedantry are far less frequent. On the one hand, it is tempting to infer that the writing of the third book was to Apollonius the more congenial task, as seeming to offer a fuller scope to his own peculiar abilities. On the other hand, in the form which has come down to us the third book can hardly be in any great degree the work of a raw youth, for the psychology which it reveals is of too suggestively mature a character. Light would be thrown on the darkest problems of Alexandrine literature, if we could but be sure that the opposition to the Argonautica was caused only technically by the crude immaturity of a youthful experiment in the forbidden department of epic composition, and actually by the adaptation of the epic to romance. But it must be borne in mind that this is no more than a theory⁵⁷, which, though it accords with existing evidence, is based purely on speculation and inference. Yet it may be that some day the turn of a spade will reveal conclusive evidence in its support.…

The ancient critics⁵⁸, Quintilian and Longinus, realised that a direct comparison of the Argonautica with the Homeric poems could only be made through a misunderstanding of the style and aim of our poet; for Homer is unrivalled in the genus grande dicendi, while Apollonius conforms to the genus medium. But Apollonius was appreciated at Rome, and the Latin poets, more especially Catullus, Propertius and Ovid, were thoroughly familiar with his poem, and reproduce its better parts with almost monotonous frequency. Above all Vergil, whose genius surely might have freed him from dependence on his predecessors, deliberately imitates Apollonius, and that so closely that the text of a simile in this book can actually be restored from the version in the Aeneid⁵⁹. But modern critics have set the fashion of disparaging this poet, and of admitting his merits only in so far as they can be shewn to be inferior to those of Homer or Vergil. It is the purpose of this edition of the third book to make the best part of the Argonautica more accessible to the student of the classics, to put the evidence before him from a less conventional point of view, and to stimulate him to form his own judgment of a work which is unique of its kind, and which has long been in exile from its proper place among the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature.

Notes

¹ This is given at greater length in 3. 333 f.

² Mackail, Lectures on Greek Poetry, p. 255; cf. Arg. 1. 609 f.

³ Preller-Robert, die gr. Heldensage, pp. 840 f.

⁴Od. 12. 70.

⁵Pythian 4.

⁶ V. supr. p. xii.

⁷Arg. 3. 1; 1. 1.

⁸ 289-298.…

⁹ 446-7.

¹⁰ 451-8.

¹¹ 464-470.

¹² 636-644.

¹³ 809-818.

¹⁴ v. notes on 616 f.

¹⁵ 835-7.

¹⁶ 886.

¹⁷ 931, cf. 818, 922, 1134.

¹⁸ 962-972.

¹⁹ 997 f.

²⁰ 1015-6.

²¹ 1022-4.

²² 1069-1071.

²³ 1122-1130.

²⁴ 1150-2.

²⁵ 1157-1162.

²⁶ 5, 245-6 and note ad loc.

²⁷ 1241.

²⁸ 277.

²⁹ 235 f.

³⁰ 200 f.

³¹ 137, 220, 854.

³² 846 f., 1030 f

³³ 210, 541.

³⁴ 579 f., 761, 687.

³⁵ 164, 291, 744, 930.

³⁶ 332, cf. pp. xv, xxix supr.

³⁷ 579 f.

³⁸ 6-110, 111-166, 616-824.

³⁹ K. Meuli, Odyssee und Argonautika, pp. 1-24, Argonautensage und Helfermärchen.

⁴⁰ Cf. Sonnenburg in Neue Jahrbücher 33 (1909), pp. 715 f.

⁴¹ 1111 f.

⁴² 4. 355 f., 1031 f.

⁴³ 60-5, 1134-6.

⁴⁴ v. supr. p. xxiv.

⁴⁵ Prop. 3. 11, 13; Qu. Sm. 1. 659 f.; Nonnus Dion. 35. 27 f.

⁴⁶ 14. 618 D, Bergk 4, frag. 43; cf. also Mimnermus, supr. p. xxiii.

⁴⁷ 3. 619 f

⁴⁸ib. 774.

⁴⁹Trist. 2. 381-2.

⁵⁰ Ath. 2. 72 A. …

⁵¹ 105 f.

⁵² 3. 932 and note ad loc.

⁵³ On Call. H. Ap. 106, cf. supr. p. xxi.

⁵⁴ First Life in scholia of Codex Laurentianus.

⁵⁵ Second Life ib., and Suidas.

⁵⁶ v. supr. p. xi.

⁵⁷ Cf. E. A. Barber in The Hellenistic Age, p. 55.

⁵⁸ Mooney's introd. pp. 41 f.

⁵⁹Arg. 3. 756.