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Argonautica

Greek epic poem dated to the 3rd century BC

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Background

The Argonautica was an adventure for the poet, one of the major scholars of the Alexandrian period – it was a bold experiment in re-writing Homeric epic in a way that would meet the demanding tastes of his contemporaries. According to some accounts, a hostile reception even led to Apollonius's exile to Rhodes. The literary fashion was for small, meticulous poems, featuring displays of erudition and paradoxography (the account of marvels and oddities), as represented by the work of Callimachus. In adapting the epic genre to this audience, Apollonius went a long way towards inventing the romance novel, including narrative techniques like the "interior monologue", whereby the author identifies with a character's thoughts and feelings. The re-evaluation of his work in recent times has led to a mass of innovative studies, often jostling each other for attention, so that Argonautica has become a daunting adventure for many modern scholars too:

Scholars that row against this current feel as if they are sailing through the Clashing Rocks; they have barely struggled halfway through one wave and there rolls the next one tossing them backwards twice as far as they had progressed ... Even if the attempt to pass through the clashing mountain of books succeeds, there is no hope of a pause and scholars find themselves in the grip of a debilitating Ancient Greek: ἀμηχανία [helplessness].

— Reinhold F. Glei.

Since scholarship is a key feature of this unique story, here is a preview of some of the main issues in the poet's treatment of the Argonaut myth, as addressed by recent scholarship.

Some issues

  • A "Callimachian epic"? Callimachus set the standards for Hellenistic aesthetics in poetry and, according to ancient sources, he engaged in a bitter literary feud with Apollonius. Modern scholars generally dismiss these sources as unreliable and point to similarities in the poetry of the two men. Callimachus, for example, composed a book of verses dealing with aitia, the mythical origins of contemporary phenomena. According to one survey, there are eighty aitia in Argonautica. Yet Argonautica is clearly intended to be fundamentally Homeric and therefore seems at odds with the fashionable poetics of Callimachus.
  • The epic hero? Addressing the issue of heroism in Argonautica, the German classicist H. Fränkel once noted some unheroic characteristics of Jason and his crew. In particular, their frequent moods of despair and depression, summed up in the word helplessness (Ancient Greek: ἀμηχανία). By contrast, the bullying Argonaut Idas seemed to Fränkel an ugly example of the archaic warrior. It looks as if Apollonius meant to underscore the obsolescence of traditional heroism in the Hellenistic period. These arguments have caused much discussion among scholars about the treatment and nature of heroism in Argonautica.
  • Characters without character? Another fruitful discussion gained impetus from an article by D. A. Van Krevelen, who dismissed all the characters, apart from Medea, as flimsy extras without any interesting qualities.
  • An "episodic epic"? In addition to aitia, Argonautica incorporates descriptions of wonders and marvels, and digressions associated with Hellenistic "science", including geography, ethnography, anthropology and comparative religion. So the question arises: is the poem a unified narrative, or is the epic plot merely a coathanger for erudite and colourful episodes?

Date of the poem

There is some dispute about the date when the poem was originally published. It could have been during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283–246 BC), or a generation later.

According to the astronomical analysis of the poem by Jackie Murray, the poem commemorates the year 238 BC, implying that it was published at the time of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–221 BC) as the majority of ancient sources claim.

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