167-650: The Argonautica ( Greek : Ἀργοναυτικά , romanized : Argonautika ) is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The only entirely surviving Hellenistic epic (though Callimachus' Aetia is substantially extant through fragments), the Argonautica tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from remote Colchis . Their heroic adventures and Jason's relationship with
334-512: A laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority ( Theogony 22–35). Fanciful though the story might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode or he would have been presented with a lyre instead. Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days , but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it
501-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
668-610: A cluster of aitia, including the origins of the island Thera, the naming of Anaphe, and the water-carrying festival on Aegina, that are reminiscent of Aitia I and Iamb. 8. This final cluster of aitia can seem like an arbitrary addition to the narrative, as if Apollonius prolonged the story just to add mere curiosities, but they may have been included as a final "programmatic statement" of support for Callimachean Aitia-style aesthetics, expressing Apollonius's debt to Callimachus as mentor: The poem's anti-heroic qualities are generally regarded as further evidence of its 'Callimacheanism'. Jason
835-497: 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
1002-418: A deep interest in a wide range of 'philosophical' issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings of human society. Aristotle ( Metaphysics 983b–987a) believed that the question of first causes may even have started with Hesiod ( Theogony 116–53) and Homer ( Iliad 14.201, 246). He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in
1169-440: A drink then, cheered on by his comrades, returns to the scene of action, where an army of men is springing from the broken soil, ready to attack him. These he routs single-handedly, relying on a trick taught him by Medea (he throws a rock among the soldiers, causing them to fight and kill each other). Dumbfounded, Aeëtes returns to the palace, all the while wondering how best to cheat Jason of his promised reward. The poet calls upon
1336-442: A drug that will help Jason in his trial of strength. Arrangements for a secret meeting are made. The tryst is outside a temple of Hecate , where Medea is the priestess. At first they are as speechless as lofty pines rooted together on a mountainside, until the force of love comes like a sudden gust of wind. He reminds her that he is utterly at her mercy and he promises to make her famous throughout Greece if she assists him. She draws
1503-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
1670-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
1837-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
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#17327646806222004-573: A frightful witch engaged in evil in Book 4. Interpretations of Jason's character however differ from one critic to another. According to a less hostile view, he resembles the ordinary man and his brand of heroism is relevant to the real world, whereas Heracles stands for a primitive and anachronistic kind of heroism, which is why he is abandoned early in the story. On the other hand, epic poets are not supposed to arbitrate moral values, Jason and Heracles each have good and bad qualities and we shouldn't overplay
2171-412: A generation later. According to the astronomical analysis of the poem by Jackie Murray , the poem commemorates the year 238 BCE, implying that it was published at the time of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–221 BCE) as the majority of ancient sources claim. Apollonius's Argonautica was based on multiple ancient sources, including Homer and Pindar . The story of the expedition seems to have been known to
2338-479: A girl's brothers and murdered in reprisal despite his advanced age while the true culprit (his Milesian fellow-traveler) managed to escape. Greeks in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus , Musaeus , Hesiod and Homer —in that order. Thereafter, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe
2505-537: A hive. In the horror of the triumph of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing the "Golden Age" present the social character and practice of nonviolent diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path of living sufficiently. In addition to the Theogony and Works and Days , numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works are generally referred to as forming part of
2672-529: A just and all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". He recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealized view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings in Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for. Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources: Two different—yet early—traditions record
2839-482: A large share of the Greek diaspora, about half of whom came via the Greek colony of Cyrene. The Ptolemaic setting makes sense of many of the poet's enigmatic choices. Thus for example the final cluster of aitia is not an arbitrary addition but neatly associates the story's end with the beginning of Greek settlement in Egypt. The island of Thera was the mother city of Cyrene and symbolized Greek settlement of Libya. Aegina
3006-492: A liveliness, an orderliness and a degree of banality that evoke domesticity in Alexandrian high society. Much of the poem's irony and charm in fact lies in the conflation of these different worlds. Characters have symbolic roles to fulfill. Though Heracles is abandoned at the end of Book 1, he continues to haunt the narrative as a background figure, glimpsed in the distance and reported as an active presence, thus symbolizing
3173-572: A mythic past." Any apparent weaknesses in characterization can also be explained in the Ptolemaic setting – the story isn't really about Jason or about any of the Argonauts, as individuals, but about their historic role in establishing a Greek destiny in Libya. Argonautica' s original audience of ethnic Greeks would have glimpsed their own migrant history in the motley Greek crew of
3340-542: A notable feature of his work too. More particularly, there are some pointed allusions to his work. For example, one line (1.1309) is a verbatim quotation of Callimachus ( Aitia I fr. 12.6 Pf): "And thus were those things to be accomplished in the course of time". The epiphany of Apollo in book 2, over the island of Thynia, is followed by an account of the god's deeds and worship (2.686–719) that recalls an account in Callimachus's Hymn to Apollo (97–104), and book 4 ends in
3507-467: A proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view rejected by Paul Cartledge , for example, on the grounds that Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification. Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse . He had "a passion for systematizing and explaining things". Ancient Greek poetry in general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates
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#17327646806223674-567: A set of adventures, with surprising discoveries waiting around every headland. Thus Longinus contrasted the Odyssey unfavourably with the Iliad : in the former, he thought the mythical element predominates over the action, whereas he thought the Iliad gains dramatic tension through the development of a single, great contest. Voyage narratives don't fit in well with Aristotelian notions of dramatic unity, or, as one modern scholar recently put it: "It
3841-508: A soothing speech and Aeëtes responds with a mock compromise – he can have what he came for if he first ploughs the Plain of Ares with fire-breathing oxen , next sows four acres with dragon's teeth and finally cuts down the crop of armed men before they can cut him down. It's a task that Aeëtes, son of the Sun ( Helios ), has often performed. Jason accepts the challenge reluctantly. He sets off for
4008-534: A swollen stream. Consequently, Pelias has entrusted him with a suicidal mission to Colchis to bring back the Golden Fleece . A ship, the Argo , has already been constructed by Argus , a shipwright working under Athena 's instructions. Meanwhile, a band of heroes has arrived to help in the venture. The locals marvel at such a gathering – young Jason has been given an impossible mission yet this band of heroes just might help him pull it off. His mother fears
4175-413: A tear as they pull away from his home, Iolcus. The oars churn up the sea, wielded by heroic hands in time to Orpheus's stirring music. Soon the eastern coast of Thessaly is left behind. The first major port they reach is Lemnos , where the women, led by their Queen Hypsipyle , have recently murdered all their menfolk, including husbands, sons, brothers and fathers. The all-female parliament decides that
4342-399: A tone of voice that has been described as having a "grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity" but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days , where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behaviour and happiness through
4509-477: A trap with promises of rewards. Jason murders him and the body is dismembered to avoid retribution from the Erinyes . The leaderless Colchians are easily outwitted and, rather than return home empty-handed to a wrathful Aeëtes, they disperse and settle around the nearby coast. Indignant at the brutal murder, Zeus condemns the Argonauts to wander homeless for a longer term. A gale blows them back north and they enter
4676-620: A visit by three nymphs, the guardians of Libya, with mysterious instructions about how to survive. Peleus interprets the instructions on his behalf: they must carry the Argo across the desert. Twelve days later, their ship on their shoulders, they arrive at Lake Triton and the garden of the Hesperides . They receive some astonishing news from the Hesperides: Heracles raided the garden just the day before. He has already vanished into
4843-408: A woman's help to be unheroic. The day of trial arrives and so do the people of Colchis, gathering on the hillsides as spectators. Aeëtes rides about in his chariot, glorying in his own magnificence. The Argo comes upstream and moors by the river's edge. Jason steps forward. Secretly fortified by Medea's spells, he manhandles the monstrous oxen and sows the deadly field with teeth. He pauses briefly for
5010-429: A young virgin and finally she surrenders to sobs of dismay. Her sister comes in response to the noise. Medea tells her that she is worried about her nephews, since they are doomed if the stranger fails. Chalciope then asks her to help Jason and Medea gladly agrees. Alone in her room again, she continues to be torn between hope and fear. She contemplates suicide, opens her chest of drugs looking for poison but instead selects
5177-623: Is a contested issue in scholarly circles ( see § Dating below ). Epic narrative allowed poets such as Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in Works and Days , as well as some passages in his Theogony , that support inferences made by scholars. The former poem says that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis (on
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5344-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
5511-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
5678-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
5845-490: Is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend ( Works and Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.). One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially
6012-454: Is destined to become the island of Thera, from which Libya would later be settled by Greek colonists. Triton carries off a tripod, as an offering of thanks. The story ends with a visit to the island of Anaphe , where the Argonauts institute rites in honour of Apollo, and Aegina (not far from Jason's home), where they establish a festival competition, fetching water and racing one another with full amphorae on their shoulders. The Argonautica
6179-534: Is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology , farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy , cosmology , and ancient time-keeping . The dating of Hesiod's life
6346-508: Is home to savage Earth-born men ( Γηγενέες ) with six arms each. Their neighbours are the Doliones, a civilized people descended from Poseidon . The savages are hostile but the Argonauts receive a friendly welcome from Cyzicus , the newly wed king of the Doliones who is, like Jason, in his adolescence. The 6-armed giants hurl rocks at the argonauts but Heracles destroys them all. However, the Argonauts and Doliones end up fighting each other in
6513-600: Is modelled on Homer's poetry to a considerable extent. There are of course similarities in plots. The return journey in Book 4, for example, has many parallels in the Odyssey ;– Scylla, Charybdis, the Sirens and Circe are hazards that Odysseus also negotiates. The Argonautica is notable too for the high number of verses and phrases imitating Homer, and for the way it reproduces linguistic peculiarities of old epic, in syntax, metre, vocabulary and grammar. Apollonius in fact
6680-496: Is not like a traditional epic hero, and the contrast between him and Heracles can be interpreted as a distinction between Homeric and Callimachean poetics. In summary, recent scholarship leads to the conclusion that Argonautica was a successful and fundamental renewal of the Homeric epic, expressed in terms of Callimachean aesthetics: the label Callimachean epic is not misplaced. Jason's character traits are more characteristic of
6847-477: Is precisely this inherent inconsequentiality, the episodic partition imposed by the very nature of travel, which can be seen at the heart of the Western tradition of romance , as opposed to the harsh teleologies of epic ." Argonautica however goes beyond Homer's Odyssey in its fragmentation of the action. Apollonius seems to have rejected the Aristotelian concept of unity, since numerous aitia interrupt
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7014-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
7181-434: Is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have traveled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious. Gregory Nagy , on the other hand, sees both Pérsēs ("the destroyer" from πέρθω , pérthō ) and Hēsíodos ("he who emits
7348-995: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Hesiod Hesiod ( / ˈ h iː s i ə d / HEE -see-əd or / ˈ h ɛ s i ə d / HEH -see-əd ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἡσίοδος Hēsíodos ; fl. c. 700 BC )
7515-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
7682-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
7849-595: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
8016-674: Is the most Homeric of all the poets whose work has come down to us from the Hellenistic age, when Homeric scholarship flourished and almost all poets responded to Homer's influence, including Callimachus. Homeric echoes in Argonautica are quite deliberate and are not slavish imitation. When Jason first meets Hypsipyle in Book 1, he wears a cloak made for him by Athena, embroidered with various scenes alluding to tragic women that Homer's Odysseus met in Hades ( Odyssey 11.225–380). This Homeric echo has ominous connotations, prefiguring Jason's betrayal of Hypsipyle and Medea. Apollonius often implies that he
8183-487: Is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition. Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions. Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod: In addition to these works,
8350-491: Is updating and therefore improving on Homer. Symbolically this is represented by the abandonment of Heracles and the fixing of the Clashing Rocks ;–it is as if Jason and his crew are leaving behind the heroic world of traditional myth. Argonautica includes numerous aitia or mythological accounts of the origins of things (see Argonautica#Itinerary below) and these ensure that the narrative points forward to
8517-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
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#17327646806228684-494: The Homeridae were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense. The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus , though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian Herodotus ( Histories II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and
8851-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
9018-525: The Shield of Heracles (see Hesiod's Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias). Some scholars have detected
9185-454: The Suda lists an otherwise unknown "dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved". Portrait of Hesiod from Augusta Treverorum ( Trier ), from the end of the 3rd century AD. The mosaic is signed in its central field by the maker, 'MONNUS FECIT' ('Monnus made this'). The figure is identified by name: 'ESIO-DVS' ('Hesiod'). It is the only known authenticated portrait of Hesiod. The Roman bronze bust,
9352-481: The conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, metre, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from
9519-481: The harpies . Jason and the Argonauts are destined to rescue him from the harpies and thus he welcomes them as his deliverers. Zetes and Calais , sons of the north wind, duly chase the pests away, and the blind old man gratefully reveals the safest route to Colchis and how best to sail past the Clashing Rocks . Passing through the Clashing Rocks (thanks to the advice of Phineus, the pilot skills of Tiphys, and
9686-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
9853-505: The "Hesiodic corpus" whether or not their authorship is accepted. The situation is summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most : "Hesiod" is the name of a person; "Hesiodic" is a designation for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to the poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned to Hesiod himself. Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles ( Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους , Aspis Hērakleous )
10020-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
10187-663: The 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic ágōn ( ἄγών ), which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either side. Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era. Imitations of his work have been observed in Alcaeus , Epimenides , Mimnermus , Semonides , Tyrtaeus and Archilochus , from which it has been inferred that
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#173276468062210354-512: The 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death), claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle 's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and set them in a place of honour in their agora , next to
10521-587: The 8th century BC. ( Theogony 337–45). Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod ( Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War
10688-496: The Amazons. One is Sthenelus , whose ghost beckons to them from his tomb by the sea, and the others are three men stranded at Sinope . The Argonauts pour libations to the ghost of Sthenelus and the three survivors gain places aboard the Argo. They arrive next at the river Thermodon , where the Amazons have their harbour, and they leave the next day before the women can assemble for battle. The Amazon influence however reaches even to
10855-600: The Argo's passage south. The Argonauts safely pass the Sirens , whose song though not more melodious than Orpheus's music causes Butes to fall overboard; they get past the Wandering Rocks , from which Argo is saved by the Nereids , like girls on the beach passing a ball to and fro. Thus the Argonauts arrive at Drepane ( Corfu ) off the western coast of Greece. It is here they encounter the other Colchian fleet. Alcinous ,
11022-533: The Argo, and similarly Hellenized Egyptians would have glimpsed themselves in the Colchian diaspora depicted in Book 4. According to Herodotus, Colchis was colonized by Egyptians (see details in Itinerary ). In that case, the Colchian fleets that settle in and around Greece may be thought to prefigure the Greek colonization of Egypt. Apollonius conflates Greek and Egyptian mythology. Islands symbolized creation in
11189-478: The Argo, exulting in its sheen like a young girl who has caught moonbeams in the folds of her gown. The fugitive Argo is pursued by two Colchian fleets, ships numerous as flocking birds. One of the fleets sails into the Propontis through the now-motionless Clashing Rocks. The second is led by Medea's half-brother, Apsyrtus, and it takes the same route as the Argo, up the river Ister ( Danube ). A distant branch of
11356-509: The Argonauts ( Herodotus 4.179). Both these accounts found their way into Argonautica . Paradoxically, this highly episodic poem, fragmented in time and with events unfolding in a changing landscape, can yet be thought to have more unity than any other epic. Its unity comes from its location within the milieu of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Occupying the eastern corner of Libya, Alexandria was founded only about sixty years before Apollonius wrote his epic and it comprised, in addition to native Egyptians,
11523-616: The Argonauts for a strong talk. He tells them that they are not behaving like heroes and the Golden Fleece won't bring itself back to Greece. Thus chastised, they immediately prepare to leave. Jason tells the queen that, if she bears him a son, she should send him to his parents when he reaches maturity. He is the first back on board when the Argo sets sail again. Traveling through the Hellespont , they reach an island/peninsula that
11690-505: The Argonauts see the eagle of Zeus flying to and from the Caucasus mountains, where it feeds on the liver of Prometheus . It glides through the air as large as another ship, disturbing the Argo's sails as it passes overhead. (There could be a discrepancy in timing between myths. Heracles joined the Argonauts after completing some of his labors, but the eagle was killed and Prometheus was freed by Heracles during his fourth labor.) Soon after,
11857-694: The Egyptian scheme of things, being associated with the ground emerging from the Nile floods. Thera and Anaphe, as emergent islands, are recreations of the myth. Egyptians considered Libya's western desert to be the land of the dead. The Sun, who traversed the sky in a boat during the day, returned at night in the same boat via the underworld, a cycle associated with cosmic life and death. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
12024-551: The Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia , where he eventually established himself and his family. The family association with Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with Eastern myths, evident in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them. In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days
12191-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
12358-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
12525-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
12692-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
12859-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
13026-472: The Libyan nymphs, thus leading to the Argo being carried across the desert. By this means the audience is encouraged to interpret the poet's own complex meanings – 'heroes' like Peleus are people just like us and their powers of insight are ours too. Some of the episodic quality of Argonautica can be put down to its genre, as a voyage narrative. Homer's Odyssey also features some disunity, as
13193-557: The Mariandynians and an enemy to the now defunct king of the Bebrycians. He receives them very hospitably. Their departure is delayed when the prophet Idmon is killed by a wild boar and Tiphys dies of illness. Two tombs are built (some more lasting memorials of their voyage) and the Argonauts set off again. Their next two landfalls bring them into contact with some old comrades of Heracles, left behind after his campaign against
13360-477: The Muse to describe Medea's state of mind: is it shame, alarm or love that leads her to flee Colchis? Her treason is already known to her father and self-poisoning seems like an option again. She decides instead to flee Colchis with her nephews, the sons of Phrixus, camped with the Argonauts by the river. Doors open for her by magic as she hurries barefoot though the palace, and the moon laughs at her outdoors, recalling
13527-600: The Near East .) Works and Days is a poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece , which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of new land. Works and Days may have been influenced by an established tradition of didactic poetry based on Sumerian, Hebrew, Babylonian and Egyptian wisdom literature. This work lays out
13694-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
13861-461: The aid of Athena ), they enter the Black Sea and arrive at a deserted island, Thynias, where they observe Apollo flying overhead on his way north to visit the Hyperboreans . The island shakes with his passing. There they build an altar and a shrine (lasting memorials of their voyage). Next stop is an outlet of the river Acheron , one of the entries to Hades , where they meet Lycus , king of
14028-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
14195-406: The author of the Odyssey (xii. 69, &c.), who states, that the ship Argo was the only one that ever passed between the whirling rocks ( petrai planktai Πλαγκταὶ; Planctae , after the encounter with the Clashing Rocks ). Jason is mentioned several times in the Iliad (vii. 467, &c., xxi. 40, xxiii. 743, &c.), but not as the leader of the Argonauts. Hesiod (Theog. 992, &c.) relates
14362-473: The better and the Argonauts set off again. Their next landfall is in Mysia , where Heracles's handsome young companion Hylas is abducted by a water nymph while filling an urn at her spring. Heracles and his comrade Polyphemus are still searching for him when the rest of the Argonauts set sail again. When at last the absences are noticed, Telamon accuses Jason of leaving Heracles behind on purpose. Just then
14529-477: The catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant. The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging to the same dialect group. However whilst his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of
14696-696: The coast of Anatolia , a little south of the island of Lesbos ) and crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet near Thespiae in Boeotia named Ascra , "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" ( Works 640). Hesiod's patrimony ( property inherited from one's father or male ancestor ) in Ascra, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon , occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses , who at first seems to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or ‘kings’ but later became impoverished and ended up scrounging from
14863-644: The conventional dialect of epic verse, which was Ionian. Comparisons with Homer, a native Ionian, can be unflattering. Hesiod's handling of the dactylic hexameter was not as masterful or fluent as Homer's and one modern scholar refers to his "hobnailed hexameters". His use of language and meter in Works and Days and Theogony distinguishes him also from the author of the Shield of Heracles . All three poets, for example, employed digamma inconsistently, sometimes allowing it to affect syllable length and meter, sometimes not. The ratio of observance/neglect of digamma varies between them. The extent of variation depends on how
15030-410: The dangerous Colchian princess/sorceress Medea were already well known to Hellenistic audiences, which enabled Apollonius to go beyond a simple narrative, giving it a scholarly emphasis suitable to the times. It was the age of the great Library of Alexandria , and his epic incorporates his research in geography, ethnography, comparative religion, and Homeric literature. However, his main contribution to
15197-422: The dark, mistaking one another for enemies. Cyzicus is killed by Jason. His widow Cleite hangs herself in despair. Shared grief and a magnificent funeral reconcile the two sides. Meanwhile, the Argonauts are kept there by adverse winds. Finally the seer Mopsus learns from omens that they are meant to establish a cult of the mother of the gods ( Rhea / Cybele ). The cult is soon established, the weather changes for
15364-404: The definite article associated with digamma, oἱ. Though typical of epic, his vocabulary features some significant differences from Homer's. One scholar has counted 278 un-Homeric words in Works and Days , 151 in Theogony and 95 in Shield of Heracles . The disproportionate number of un-Homeric words in W & D is due to its un-Homeric subject matter. Hesiod's vocabulary also includes quite
15531-429: The deserted Island of Ares, where they have built a temple to the god of war. When the Argonauts arrive, it is only defended by birds. They fight off the birds and then chance upon four survivors of a shipwreck. These are the four sons of the exiled Greek hero, Phrixus , and they are also grandsons of Aeëtes , king of Colchis. Jason welcomes them as god-sent allies in his quest for the Golden Fleece. Approaching Colchis,
15698-443: The differences between them. Jason is a democratic-minded hero with a weakness for women, or he is just the chance result of the poet's literary experiments. His lack of heroic stature seems quite appropriate to the melancholy world Apollonius depicts. In this world, people are alienated from each other and from their environment, as symbolized by the Libyan desert, where the Argonauts scatter so as to die privately: "effort no longer has
15865-512: The different subject matter between this poem and the Works and Days , most scholars, with some notable exceptions, believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M. L. West writes, "Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him." An example: Hateful strife bore painful Toil, Neglect, Starvation, and tearful Pain, Battles, Combats... The Theogony concerns
16032-409: The distance and so they must depart without him yet again. Meanwhile, they lose another two comrades, Mopsus and Canthus, one dying from snake bite, the other from a wound inflicted by a local shepherd belonging to the ancestral family of the native Garamantes and Nasamones. Shortly afterwards, Triton reveals a route from the lake to the open sea and entrusts Euphemus with a magical clod of earth that
16199-413: The drug out from between her breasts and hands it to him. If he ever forgets her kindness, she warns him, she will fly to Greece on the wind and there rebuke him to his face. He urges her to forget the wind and sail back with him instead, as his future wife. She doesn't commit herself to anything and returns home as if in a dream. He returns to the crew, welcomed by all but Idas, who considers his reliance on
16366-777: The earliest known source for the myths of Pandora , Prometheus and the Golden Age . The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis . This cultural crossover may have occurred in the eighth- and ninth-century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria . (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox 's Travelling Heroes and Peter Walcot's Hesiod and
16533-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
16700-479: The epic tradition lies in his development of the love between hero and heroine – he seems to have been the first narrative poet to study "the pathology of love". His Argonautica had a profound impact on Latin poetry: it was translated by Varro Atacinus and imitated by Valerius Flaccus , it influenced Catullus and Ovid , and it provided Virgil with a model for his Roman epic, the Aeneid . The Argonautica
16867-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
17034-521: The evidence is collected and interpreted but there is a clear trend, revealed for example in the following set of statistics. Hesiod does not observe digamma as often as the others do. That result is a bit counter-intuitive since digamma was still a feature of the Boeotian dialect that Hesiod probably spoke, whereas it had already vanished from the Ionic vernacular of Homer. This anomaly can be explained by
17201-509: The fact that Hesiod made a conscious effort to compose like an Ionian epic poet at a time when digamma was not heard in Ionian speech, while Homer tried to compose like an older generation of Ionian bards, when it was heard in Ionian speech. There is also a significant difference in the results for Theogony and Works and Days , but that is merely due to the fact that the former includes a catalog of divinities and therefore it makes frequent use of
17368-503: The farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter. The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal" typical of a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women." He was in fact a " misogynist " of the same calibre as the later poet Semonides . He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and "how
17535-696: The fight begins. Amycus is a man-mountain but the young Argonaut is skilled with his fists and eventually lands a lethal blow. The Bebrycians rush on the victor, weapons drawn, but they are intercepted and chased off by his rampant crewmates. Some sheep are herded on board and the Argo leaves the following day. Their next stop is on the opposite coast, near the home of Phineus , once a king of the Thynians . He too doesn't ask who these travellers are. He already knows. His powers of prophecy are so great that Zeus has punished him for giving away divine secrets, afflicting him with extreme old age, blindness and daily visits from
17702-489: The first fleet and settle nearby rather than return home. The Argonauts can't return home either: another gale drives them off course, this time south towards the Syrtes , an interminable sandbank off Libya. Here they can see no means of escape and they resign themselves to an inglorious end, parting from each other to die in private, while Medea and her maids lament their fate in a forlorn group. Jason's isolation soon ends with
17869-418: The five Ages of Man , as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses ) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in
18036-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
18203-427: The four castaways) and Aeëtes, the king. Meanwhile, Eros invisibly joins the throng, squats at Jason's feet and fires off the fateful arrow, departing then with a laugh. Medea's heart floods with the sweet pain of love. Aeëtes however is filled with rage when his grandsons ask him to hand the Golden Fleece to Jason for return to Iolcus. He accuses them of conspiring with foreigners to steal away his kingdom. Jason delivers
18370-482: The genre of realism than epic , in that he was, in the words of J. F. Carspecken: chosen leader because his superior declines the honour, subordinate to his comrades, except once, in every trial of strength, skill or courage, a great warrior only with the help of magical charms, jealous of honour but incapable of asserting it, passive in the face of crisis, timid and confused before trouble, tearful at insult, easily despondent, gracefully treacherous in his dealings with
18537-444: The gift of a fabulous ball, composed of gold and intricately fashioned so as to leave a trail like a falling star when thrown at the sky. Jason advises his comrades that they should try persuasion before attempting to take the Golden Fleece by force and then he leads Phrixus' sons home to the palace of Aeëtes. Their unexpected arrival is greeted by Medea with a cry that brings everyone running, including her sister Chalciope (mother of
18704-473: The grip of a debilitating Ancient Greek : ἀμηχανία [helplessness]. 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. 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 BCE), or
18871-452: The help of Aphrodite . Athena likes the plan but, being a virgin conscious of appearances, asks Hera to do all the talking. They find the goddess of love indolently combing her hair in her apartment. She has been bickering with her young son Eros and doubts if the unruly child will fire any arrows at Medea just to please her. Hera, an experienced mother, advises her to avoid quarrels with the boy and Aphrodite subsequently buys his support with
19038-579: The heroes enter the Phasis , the main river of Colchis, and furtively anchor in a backwater. The third book begins by invoking Erato , the Muse of love poetry. The Argo is still hidden in a Colchis backwater when the goddesses Hera and Athena retire to a private room on Olympus to consider in secret how best to help Jason. Hera thinks the daughter of the Colchian king might prove useful if she could be made to fall in love with him. She then suggests enlisting
19205-417: The heroes should be encouraged to stay. Jason, as leader, is summoned and he goes to town wrapped in a magnificent cloak made for him by Athena. Hypsipyle falls in love on the spot and he settles into the palace. His crew is taken home by the other women – all but Heracles and some comrades, who prefer to stay with the ship. Thus the voyage is postponed day after day. Finally Heracles assembles all
19372-427: The heroes, Idas , accuses him of cowardice; the prophet Idmon in turn accuses Idas of drunken vainglory. A fight almost breaks out but Orpheus soothes everyone with a song about the cosmos and how the gods and all things were created. At dawn, Tiphys , the ship's helmsman, rouses the crew. The ship itself calls to them, since its keel includes a magical beam of Dodonian oak. The shore cables are loosed. Jason sheds
19539-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
19706-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
19873-467: The latest possible date for him is about 650 BC. An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC ( Theogony 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine , a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in
20040-460: The love-sick Medea... This hostile view can be extended to the whole crew: the Bebrycian episode, where Polydeuces beats the native king to death, and where the Argonauts turn piratical, may be understood as the start of their moral decline, which intensifies and culminates in the murder of Medea's brother. Medea too may forfeit our sympathy, appearing to change from a likeable heroine in Book 3 to
20207-456: The many times that she was captured and brought to earth by Medea's cruel love spells (a reference to the moon's passion for Endymion ). Arriving at the camp, Medea warns the others about her father's treachery and offers to help steal the Golden Fleece from its guardian serpent. Jason solemnly pledges to marry her, she puts the snake to sleep with a spell and then the hero takes the Fleece back to
20374-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
20541-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
20708-594: The more serious relationship between the hero and heroine. The entire crew of the Argo acquires comic significance whenever fantastic or 'fairy-tale' elements are incorporated into the epic plot, such as the encounters with the Clashing Rocks, The Wandering Rocks, the Argo's voyage overland etc. They appear comic precisely because these fairy-tale elements are in contrast to the Argonauts' unheroic stature, as people like you and me . The gods in particular are characterized by Alexandrian realism. Homer's gods also are more like people than divinities but Apollonius provides them with
20875-402: The most ancient detailed account of the expedition of the Argonauts which is extant, is that of Pindar ( Pythian Odes iv.) The poem begins with an invocation to Apollo and briefly recounts his prophetic warning to Pelias , king of Iolcus , that his downfall will be the work of a man with only one sandal. Jason has recently emerged as the man in question, having lost a sandal while crossing
21042-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
21209-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
21376-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
21543-565: The only one to survive. Apollonius is too much of an individual for us to deduce from his work the nature of the other epics. It is known that Callimachus was an influential critic of contemporary epics but that need not have included Argonautica, which seems to have been responsive to his views. Thus even though modelled on the Homeric epic, it is much shorter, with four books totaling fewer than 6,000 lines (Homer's Iliad for example runs to more than 15,000). Apollonius may have been influenced here by Callimachus ' advocacy of brevity. Possibly he
21710-440: The origins of the world ( cosmogony ) and of the gods ( theogony ), beginning with Chaos , Gaia , Tartarus and Eros , and shows a special interest in genealogy . Embedded in Greek myth , there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus , the accepted version that linked all Hellenes . It's
21877-399: The power to transform, and weakness is as influential as strength." For many readers, the strangely unheroic quality of the poem is only redeemed by the romance between Jason and Medea in Book 3, and even the history of scholarship on Apollonius has had its focus there. Sensitive descriptions of heterosexual love first emerge in Western literature during the Hellenistic period and Argonautica
22044-518: The river eventually leads the Argonauts into the Sea of Cronus (Adriatic), where Apsyrtus finally corners them on the Brygean Islands. Peace talks result in a deal – Jason can keep the fleece, since he won it after all, but Medea's fate must be decided by a mediator chosen from the neighbouring kings. Fearing the worst, Medea comes up with an alternative plan. She lures Apsyrtus into
22211-499: The river Eridanus ( Po ), whose different branches eventually bring them into The Sardinian Sea (Gulf of Lyons), on the western side of Ausonia (Italy). Here the enchantress Circe absolves the lovers of blood-guilt. Meanwhile, Hera has a friendly chat with the sea nymph Thetis . The goddess advises the nymph that her infant son Achilles is destined to marry Medea in the Elysian fields and then she sends her on an errand to secure
22378-401: The role is performed by the doomed seers Mopsus and Idmon, and especially the singer Orpheus. Whereas the companions of Homer's Odysseus pass the Sirens in safety by stuffing their ears with wax, the Argonauts are saved from the Sirens by the music that Orpheus plays to drown them out. Two types of song are represented here, one from the Homeric world, voiced through the Sirens, and the other from
22545-598: The sea divinity Glaucus emerges from the depths, assuring them that the loss of their three crewmen is the work of the gods. He vanishes back into the water and they continue the voyage without their three comrades. The Argonauts reach a gulf in the Propontis, home to the Bebrycians , whose king Amycus demands a boxing match with the champion of these "sea-wanderers" ( Ancient Greek : ἁλίπλαγκτοι ). He does this with all travellers and he doesn't even ask who they are. Angered by such disrespect, Polydeukes volunteers and
22712-525: The ship to inform his crew and Medea's thoughts flutter at his departing heels ( νόος ... ἑρπύζων πεπότητο μετ' ἴχνια ), torn between love and anguish. That night, in a dream, she envisions herself performing Jason's task for him. She wakes fearing the wrath of Aeëtes and the danger to her reputation if she helps Jason without good cause. The safety of her sister's four sons depends on his success. She wonders if Chalciope can be enticed into asking her to help Jason for their sake. Even this seems too bold for
22879-405: The silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different world-views, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy. The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite
23046-642: The site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides , reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea , and so he fled to Locris , where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in
23213-503: The so-called Pseudo-Seneca , of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought not to be of Seneca the Younger . It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. In fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the bust was not of Seneca when an inscribed herma portrait of Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow Richter's identification. Hesiod employed
23380-458: The story of Jason saying that he fetched Medeia at the command of his uncle Pelias , and that she bore him a son, Medeius , who was educated by Cheiron . The first trace of the common tradition that Jason was sent to fetch the golden fleece from Aea , the city of Aeëtes , in the eastern boundaries of the earth, occurs in Mimnermus (Strabo, Geography, 1.2.40), a contemporary of Solon ; but
23547-420: The story with 'flashbacks' to myths predating the Argonaut story, and with 'fast-forwards' to customs in the poet's own time. The narrator's choice of material is thus of immediate interest to the reader, since it interrupts the action, unlike the traditional method of Homer, where the poet keeps a low profile. One of Homer's virtues as a narrator, from Aristotle's point of view, was in letting characters do much of
23714-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
23881-450: The talking. The dominant presence in Argonautica is the poet himself – 71% of the verses are spoken by him, rather than by his characters, whereas only 55% of the Iliad and 33% of the Odyssey are in Homer's own voice. Some of the episodic quality comes also from the poet's literary eclecticism. For instance, the role of the Argo in the Greek settlement of northern Africa
24048-405: The technical aspect of her magical powers, such as her mastery of drugs, a touch of realism that may seem to downplay her role as a sorceress. Unconvincing characterization may also be explained as a comic effect. Heracles can be seen as something of a buffoon. His homosexual or pederastic relationship with Hylas is covered only obliquely and even then in a humorous way, as if to set the stage for
24215-471: The thrifty poet ( Works 35, 396). Unlike his father Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Amphidamas of Chalcis and there won a tripod in a singing competition. He also describes meeting the Muses on Mount Helicon , where he had been pasturing sheep, when the goddesses presented him with
24382-453: The time, Homer's Ionian . It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passing them on orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise: the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it
24549-531: The tomb of Minyas , their eponymous founder. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" ( οἰκιστής , oikistēs ). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Yet another account taken from classical sources, cited by author Charles Abraham Elton in his Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules by Hesiod , depicts Hesiod as being falsely accused of rape by
24716-457: The virtuous king of Drepane, offers to mediate between the two sides, later confiding in his virtuous wife, Arete, that he means to surrender Medea to the Colchians, unless she happens to be married. The queen reveals this to the lovers and they are duly married in a sacred cave on the island, where the bridal bed is draped with the Golden Fleece. Disappointed, the Colchians follow the example of
24883-651: The voice" from ἵημι , híēmi and αὐδή , audḗ ) as fictitious names for poetical personae . It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Anatolia westwards to mainland Greece, the opposite direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Hesiod himself gives no explanation for it. However, around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of seagoing merchants from his original home in Cyme in Anatolia to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with
25050-409: The way traditional epic offers the poem a literary background. As one scholar recently observed: "This is just the way in which old epic with its generic conventions and its ideology is present in the Argonautica : dimly visible... but still present." Characters also function as the poet's alter ego. Homer in the Odyssey also uses the device, through the singers Demodocus and Phemius. In Argonautica ,
25217-432: 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
25384-453: The world of Ptolemaic Alexandria, through the identification Orpheus=Apollonius. The contest symbolizes the updating of epic. Apollonius takes the symbolic role of characters further than Homer. The seers Idmon and Mopsus, able to interpret signs, might also be understood to represent the ideal audience, able to interpret symbols. Other characters however can also fulfill this role, such as Peleus, who successfully interprets Jason's encounter with
25551-404: The world of the third century audience rather than back to Homer. Cultured Alexandrians considered themselves heirs of a long literary tradition and this is evoked when Apollonius crowds his poem with as much research material as he could borrow from mythical, historiographical and ethnographic sources. Argonautica was just one of many narrative epics written in the Hellenistic period – and
25718-513: The worst. He bids her to stay strong and calm. Jason urges the heroes to elect a leader for the voyage. They all nominate Heracles . Heracles however insists on Jason as leader and the others submit to this choice. Rejoicing in his election, Jason orders the crew to haul the ship down to the water. The Argo is then moored for the night so that they can enjoy a farewell feast. Two bulls are sacrificed to Apollo, wine flows and conversation becomes animated. Jason however becomes withdrawn and glum. One of
25885-431: Was a common topic of Greek literature. Pindar , a poetic model for Apollonius and Callimachus, composed three odes for the ruling elite of Cyrene, including Pythian 4 , where he mentions the clod of earth that Euphemus received from Triton and which became the island Thera, the mother city of Cyrene. The historian Herodotus mentioned the tripod that Triton received, a pledge of Libya 's future colonization by descendants of
26052-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
26219-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
26386-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
26553-466: 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
26720-470: Was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer . Several of Hesiod's works have survived in their entirety. Among these are Theogony , which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and the events that led to Zeus 's rise to power, and Works and Days , a poem that describes the five Ages of Man , offers advice and wisdom, and includes myths such as Pandora's box . Hesiod
26887-405: Was innovative in making it an epic topic. Medea is generally agreed to be the most interesting and lifelike character in the poem yet even she may be considered unconvincing in some respects. Her role as a romantic heroine seems at odds with her role as a sorceress. These contradictory roles were embedded in the traditional accounts that Apollonius inherited. On the other hand, Apollonius emphasizes
27054-601: Was once home to the Argonauts Peleus and Telamon, exiled thence for murdering their brother, thus symbolizing the Greek diaspora. The island of Anaphe is where the Aitia of Callimachus begins with a tale of the Argonauts, and his final aition is in Alexandria, so that Argonautica' s progression from Iolcus to Anaphe becomes part of a cycle: "Taken together these two poems de facto complete the prophecy that begins in
27221-426: Was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained rhapsodes could do. It certainly was not in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute it to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on
27388-463: Was responding too to Aristotle 's demand for "poems on a smaller scale than the old epics, and answering in length to the group of tragedies presented at a single sitting", since theatre audiences at the Dionysia typically sat through four plays per day and Argonautica' s four books are about the same total length. The influence of Callimachus is seen in the widespread use of aitia since these were
27555-700: Was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony , a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis. Three works have survived which were attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days , Theogony , and Shield of Heracles . Only fragments exist of other works attributed to him. The surviving works and fragments were all written in
27722-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
27889-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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