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This guest author post is written by Ruth Scodel, editor of the new book A Companion to Apollonius of Rhodes from the University of Michigan Press. The book is available in hardcover and accessible ebook.

Some ancient Greek authors, like Homer or Thucydides, are familiar names. There are not only many translations to choose from, but an abundance of introductions for students and general readers. Apollonius of Rhodes is in a very different category. To be sure,there are good recent translations: in prose, Richard Hunter’s, and in verse, Peter Green’s (see notes). Apollonius is one of the Big Three poets of the Hellenistic period (the time after the conquests of Alexander the Great dramatically expanded the Greek world). The others are the better-known Theocritus, the inventor of pastoral poetry, and Callimachus (some of whose epigrams, at least, might well be familiar to many readers, even if they don’t remember his name. Only one work of Apollonius survives, an epic about the Argonauts. At least many people have heard of Jason and the Argonauts, and they’ve heard of the Library of Alexandria, where Apollonius was librarian.

Both Callimachus and Apollonius were associated with the Library, and they read a lot of the books. Their poetry shows it. It’s full of unusual words, literary allusions, and mentions of unusual religious practices around the entire Greek world. Of course that is exactly the aspect of poetry that gives professors work to do, so there is a great deal of published research about it. This scholarship is valuable and necessary. A Companion to Apollonius of Rhodes relies on it and explains it. Even general readers can appreciate the poem more if they understand some of its complexities. But there has been so much emphasis on how learned and clever this poetry is that the pleasure to be had from reading it, even if you don’t catch everything, can be forgotten.

When I was a graduate student, I read only Book III of the Argonautica, where Cupid makes Medea fall in love with Jason. Jason has sailed with the Argonauts to her home, in Colchis (modern Georgia) to win the Golden Fleece, and Medea’s father, King Aeetes, has set impossible tasks for him. Medea is a witch, and he can succeed with her help. She has to choose between her father and the man with whom she is obsessed. This book is the ancestor of all the narratives about women in love in Latin poetry, and through those, of many more in later literature. That is the most famous part of the poem.

Later, I read the other three books, but I never set out to edit a big book of essays about the Argonautica, including its importance for Latin poetry. My research career was mostly about Homer and tragedy. Hellenistic poetry was an area where I dabbled a little. But I was asked to write a chapter about Apollonius and Greek tragedy for a proposed companion, and when I responded with the names of people who were better qualified, it turned out that for various reasons they couldn’t do it. So I researched and wrote the chapter, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected. It seemed to me that while Apollonius evokes tragedy in various ways, especially, of course, Euripides’ Medea, he frequently makes a point of setting up pathetic situations and then not inviting much pathetic response. This was fascinating, and very modern or even postmodern. And the episode in Book IV when Jason and Medea, who feel trapped as they are pursued by Medea’s brother Apsyrtus, trick him into a meeting and murder him, brings out a pattern from tragedy, where crime leads to crime, that could not seem more contemporary (it’s kind of a “Breaking Bad” situation).

So when the original editors had to abandon the project, I offered to take it over, partly because I didn’t want the work of the contributors to be wasted, but mostly because I think students and anyone else who wants to read this strange and wonderful poem, or to understand how and why it was so important for Latin poetry, should have more help available. It has not been easy for me or the U of M Press (there was a pandemic in the way), but if these essays make the Argonautika more accessible, as I hope they will, it will be worth it. Use this new Companion—but read the poem first!

Notes

Richard L. Hunter, 1993. Jason and the golden fleece (The Argonautica), Oxford University Press; Peter Green, 2007. The Argonautika, University of California Press; Aaron Poochigian, 2014, Jason and the Argonauts/ Apollonius of Rhodes. With an introduction and notes by Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Penguin.