The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Argonautica, by Apollonius Rhodius

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Title: The Argonautica

Author: Apollonius Rhodius

Posting Date: July 21, 2008 [EBook #830]
Release Date: February, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARGONAUTICA ***

Produced by Douglas B. Killings

THE ARGONAUTICA

by Apollonius Rhodius

(fl. 3rd Century B.C.)

Originally written in Ancient Greek sometime in the 3rd Century B.C.
by the Alexandrian poet Apollonius Rhodius ("Apollonius the Rhodian").
Translation by R.C. Seaton, 1912.

PREPARER'S NOTE: Words in CAPITALS are Greek words transliterated into
modern characters.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

ORIGINAL TEXT--

Seaton, R.C. (Ed. & Trans.): "Apollonius Rhodius: Argonautica" (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge MA, 1912). Original Greek text with
side-by-side English translation.

OTHER TRANSLATIONS--

Rieu, E.V. (Trans.): "Apollonius of Rhodes: The Voyage of the Argo"
(Penguin Classics, London, 1959, 1971).

RECOMMENDED READING--

Euripides: "Medea", "Hecabe", "Electra", and "Heracles", translated by
Philip Vellacott (Penguin Classics, London, 1963). Contains four plays
by Euripides, two of which concern characters from "The Argonautica".

*****

INTRODUCTION

Much has been written about the chronology of Alexandrian literature and
the famous Library, founded by Ptolemy Soter, but the dates of the chief
writers are still matters of conjecture. The birth of Apollonius Rhodius
is placed by scholars at various times between 296 and 260 B.C., while
the year of his death is equally uncertain. In fact, we have very little
information on the subject. There are two "lives" of Apollonius in the
Scholia, both derived from an earlier one which is lost. From these we
learn that he was of Alexandria by birth, [1001] that he lived in the
time of the Ptolemies, and was a pupil of Callimachus; that while still
a youth he composed and recited in public his "Argonautica", and that
the poem was condemned, in consequence of which he retired to Rhodes;
that there he revised his poem, recited it with great applause, and
hence call