SOURCE: An introduction to Apollonius of Rhodes: "Argonautica," Book III, edited by R. L. Hunter, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 9-12.

[In the following excerpt, Hunter discusses what little information can be gleaned from existing fragments concerning Apollonius's writings other than the Argonautica.]

Works other than Argonautica³⁹

… About A.'s [Apollonius's] considerable output in both poetry and prose we are very poorly informed, but even scraps of information can help to place Arg. in its literary and intellectual context.

One late source⁴⁰ refers to A.'s epigrams, but none survive, if the problematic distich about Callimachus is excluded. The citation is for a story of metamorphosis of a kind familiar both in Arg.⁴¹ and A.'s 'foundation poems'. The popularity of the epigram form with Alexandrian poets requires no illustration.⁴²

Three choliambic⁴³ verses survive from a poem called Kanobos (frr. 1-2 Powell), which must have been concerned with the Ptolemaic temple of Sarapis at Kanobos (modern Abukir) on the coast east of Alexandria. Both subject and metre⁴⁴ place this poem in the mainstream of Ptolemaic 'court poetry'. It is likely that the poem included the story of the eponymous Kanobos, Menelaus' steersman, who was killed by a snake as he slept on the Egyptian beach and gave his name to the place where he was buried. In some versions of this story he was loved with an unrequited passion by the Egyptian princess Theonoe, a lady of magical powers; such a scenario brings us tantalisingly close to the story of Jason and Medea.⁴⁵

The other poems of which we know all concern the mythical foundations of cities. This subject for poetry was a very old one, but was much favoured by Alexandrian poets, in keeping with their deep interest in all aspects of Greek cult and history. Callimachus treated the foundation of the Sicilian cities in Aitia 2 and also wrote a prose work on 'Foundations'. To what extent poems of this kind might reflect Ptolemaic political concerns it is impossible to say, but it is not difficult to see a place for such poetry under royal patronage.⁴⁶

The Foundation of Kaunos (a city on the Carian coast opposite Rhodes) seems to have included the stories of Caunus, who left Miletus to escape the incestuous passion of his sister Byblis, and of Lyrcus, a tale of passion and recognition.⁴⁷ In many extant versions of the former tale Byblis is metamorphosed into a fountain after she has killed herself, a myth which resembles that of the tragic Cleite in the first book of Arg. It is noteworthy that Ovid's portrayal of Byblis (Met. 9.454-665) seems clearly indebted to A.'s Medea.⁴⁸ Of the Foundation of Alexandria we know only that it gave the same origin for Egyptian snakes as is found at Arg. 4.1513-17, but the poem clearly dealt primarily with the city's mythical origins, rather than its foundation by Alexander, although it may well have looked forward to contemporary history. The Foundation of Naucratis included the story of Pompilus, a Milesian boatman who was turned into a fish by Apollo because he tried to save a Samian nymph from the god's attentions (frr. 7-9 Powell).⁴⁹ Naucratis was still an important commercial centre in Ptolemaic times, and the Ptolemies built or restored temples there;⁵⁰ the city had a very old Greek settlement, including temples built by the Samians and the Milesians (Hdt. 2.178),⁵¹ and it is presumably in this context that A. used the story of Pompilus.

The only certain fragment (10 Powell) of the Foundation of Rhodes, a reference to the 'Dotian plain' in Thessaly, suggests that this poem told the story of Thessalian settlement in Rhodes and Caria.⁵² One story connected with this migration was of the humble but generous hospitality offered to a shipwrecked couple on Rhodes which led to the establishment of a particular funeral rite:⁵³ this story is so like Callimachus' tales of humble people such as Hecale and Molorchus (SH 254-69) that it is hard to believe that it was not used in a Hellenistic poem. There was, however, a large body of writing on Rhodian affairs from which A. could choose his material.⁵⁴ The same Thessalian migration may have formed the basis of the Foundation of Knidos, which probably treated the story of Triopas, father of Erysichthon, who fled to Caria after incurring Demeter's anger.⁵⁵ Ptolemaic interest in Caria during the third century makes the loss of these poems particularly regrettable.

A.'s other poetic work is thus seen to have been concerned with rare myths, love, metamorphosis, and the origins of cities and cults, all themes which we recognise as common to the main poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde and their successors.

Like Callimachus, A. was a scholar as well as a poet, and a poet who used his scholarship in his poetry. The fragments of his many lost prose works show us the scholar at work on poetry and thus deserve a special mention here.⁵⁶ A. dealt with Homeric problems by taking issue with his predecessor Zenodotus in a work entitled Pros Zēnodoton; he wrote a work on Archilochus⁵⁷ and also one in at least three books on Hesiodic problems. Extant citations show him discussing major questions such as the authenticity of the Shield of Heracles and the ending of the Works and Days. Here we can see that A., like Callimachus, was not merely engaged with earlier poetry as all poets had to be, but also sought to impose order on it as scholarship demands.…

Notes

…³⁹ The standard collection of poetic fragments is J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925) 4-8; cf. also J. Michaelis, De Apollonii Rhodii fragmentis (diss. Halle 1875).

⁴⁰ Antoninus Liberalis 23 (superscription, on the authority of Pamphilus).

⁴¹ Cf. 1.1063-9 (Cleite), 4.596-611 (the Heliades).

⁴² For a general survey cf. Fraser (1972) I 553-617, Hopkinson (1988) 243-71.

⁴³ The 'choliamb' differs from the iambic trimeter in that the penultimate syllable of the verse is long.

⁴⁴ Cf. Herondas and Callimachus, Iambi.

⁴⁵ The basic discussion is E. Maass, Aratea (Berlin 1892) 359-69, rejected on insufficient grounds by Wilamowitz (1924) II 255-6; cf. also D. A. van Krevelen, Rh.M 104 (1961) 128-31. For A.'s interest in snakebite cf. Arg. 4.1502ff. (Mopsus) and fr. 4 Powell. It may be worth suggesting that 4.1516 … of the blood dripping from the Gorgon's head from which snakes were created, contains an alternative etymology for … the name of the snake which bit Kanobos; for the usual etymology, 'whose bite makes your blood flow', cf. Nic. Ther. 282-319, Lucan 9.806-14.

⁴⁶ On this genre cf. B. Schmid, Studien zu griechischen Ktisissagen (diss. Freiburg i.d. Schweiz 1947); Cairns (1979) 68-70; T. J. Cornell, 'Grülnder', Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum XII 1107-45.

⁴⁷ Parthenius, Erot. Path. 1 and 11.

⁴⁸Arg. 3.636 ∼ Met. 9.474, Arg. 3.645-55 ∼ Met. 9.522-7 (Ovid transfers Medea's hesitation on the threshold to Byblis' hesitations while writing). Clausen (1987) 8 discusses the apparent reworking of Arg. 1.1064-6 (Cleite) by Parthenius himself in verses on Byblis quoted in Erot. Path. 11; the Foundation of Kaunos, however, can hardly be left out of consideration.

⁴⁹ Fr. 8 (nymph to Pompilus) 'you who know the swift depths of the grim-sounding sea' is presumably ominously prophetic: as a fish, his knowledge will be even greater.

⁵⁰ Cf. RE XVI 1958.

⁵¹ On the early history of the Greek settlement cf. M. M. Austin, Greece and Egypt in the archaic age (P.C.P.S. Suppl. 2, 1970) 22-33.

⁵² Cf. Diod. Sic. 5.58, Ath. 6.262e-3a (= FGrHist 485 F 7 from Dieuchidas, an important Megarian historian of the late fourth century, and just the sort of source A. might have used); Schmid op. cit. 7-8, 73-8.

⁵³ Ath. 6.262f-3a.

⁵⁴ Cf. FGrHist 507-28. To be noted also is the story from Polyzelos (Ath. 8.361c, FGrHist 521 F 6) of how the Greeks gained lalysos through the love of the local princess for the opposing commander: here is obvious material for poetry, cf. R. 0. A. M. Lyne, Ciris, a poem attributed to Vergil (Cambridge 1978) 7. The motif, in fact, is found in an anonymous Foundation of Lesbos, from which 21 hexameters survive (= Apollonius fr. 12 Powell), which told how a princess of Methymna betrayed her city to Achilles, who rewarded her by having her stoned to death. The style of the preserved verses is not obviously Apollonian; for discussion cf. Wilamowitz (1924) 1 50 n. 3, D. N. Levin, T.A.P.A. 93 (1962) 154-9, Fränkel (1968) 48 n. 59b.

⁵⁵ Cf. Call. h. 6.24, 30; Diod. Sic. 5.61.2; Wyss on Antimachus fr. 72. In his encomium of Philadelphus, Theocritus mentions the shrine of Apollo in Caria which Triopas founded (17.68).

⁵⁶ For more detailed discussion cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 144-8.

⁵⁷ For possible echoes of Archilochus cf. 296-8n., 583n.…