HKB
poem, for its unity might have been found in the working out of the expiation due for the crime of Athamas; but this motive is barely mentioned by our author.
As we have it, the motive of the voyage is the command of Pelias to bring back the golden fleece, and this command is based on Pelias' desire to destroy Jason, while the divine aid given to Jason results from the intention of Hera to punish Pelias for his neglect of the honour due to her. The learning of Apollonius is not deep but it is curious; his general sentiments are not according to the Alexandrian standard, for they are simple and obvious. In the mass of material from which he had to choose the difficulty was to know what to omit, and much skill is shewn in fusing into a tolerably harmonious whole conflicting mythological and historical details. He interweaves with his narrative local legends and the founding of cities, accounts of strange customs, descriptions of works of art, such as that of Ganymede and Eros playing with knucklebones,[1] but prosaically calls himself back to the point from these pleasing digressions by such an expression as "but this would take me too far from my song." His business is the straightforward tale and nothing else. The astonishing geography of the fourth book reminds us of the interest of the age in that subject, stimulated no doubt by the researches of Eratosthenes and others.
[Footnote 1: iii. 117-124.]
The language is that of the conventional epic. Apollonius seems to have carefully studied Homeric glosses, and gives many examples of isolated uses, but his choice of words is by no means limited to Homer. He freely avails himself of Alexandrian words and late uses of Homeric words. Among his contemporaries Apollonius suffers from a comparison with Theocritus, who was a little his senior, but he was much admired by Roman writers who derived inspiration from the great classical writers of Greece by way of Alexandria. In fact Alexandria was a useful bridge between Athens and Rome. The Argonautica was translated by Varro Atacinus, copied by Ovid and Virgil, and minutely studied by Valerius Flaccus in his poem of the same name. Some of his finest passages have been appropriated and improved upon by Virgil by the divine right of superior genius.[1] The subject of love had been treated in the romantic spirit before the time of Apollonius in writings that have perished, for instance, in those of Antimachus of Colophon, but the Argonautica is perhaps the first poem still extant in which the expression of this spirit is developed with elaboration. The Medea of Apollonius is the direct precursor of the Dido of Virgil, and it is the pathos and passion of the fourth book of the Aeneid that keep alive many a passage of Apollonius.
[Footnote 1: e.g. compare Aen. iv. 305 foll, with Ap. Rh. iv. 355 foll., Aen. iv. 327-330 with Ap. Rh. i. 897, 898, Aen. iv. 522 foll., with Ap. Rh. iii. 744 foll.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Two editions of the Argonautica were published by Apollonius. Of these we have only the second. The Scholia preserve a few passages of the first edition, from which the second seems to have differed only slightly. The old opinion that our MSS. preserve any traces of the first edition has long been given up. The principal MSS. are the following:--
The Laurentian, also called the Medicean, XXXII. 9, of the early eleventh century, the excellent MS. at Florence which contains Sophocles, Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius. This is far the best authority for the text (here denoted by L).
The Guelferbytanus of the thirteenth century, which closely agrees with another Laurentian, XXXII. 16, of the same date (here denoted by G and L^2 respectively).
There were in the early eleventh century two types of text, the first being best known to us by L, the second by G and L^2 and the corrections made in L. Quotations in the Etymologicum Magnum agree with the second type and show that this is as old as the fifth century. Besides these there are, of inferior MSS., four Vatican and five Parisian which are occasionally useful. Most of them have Scholia; the best Scholia are those of L.
The principal editions are:--