third book.  The first and second books are taken up with the history of the voyage to Colchis, while the fourth book describes the return voyage.  These portions constitute a metrical guide book, filled no doubt with many pleasing episodes, such as the rape of Hylas, the boxing match between Pollux and Amycus, the account of Cyzicus, the account of the Amazons, the legend of Talos, but there is no unity running through the poem beyond that of the voyage itself.

[Footnote 1:  Anth.  Pal. xi. 275.]

The Tale of the Argonauts had been told often before in verse and prose, and many authors’ names are given in the Scholia to Apollonius, but their works have perished.  The best known earlier account that we have is that in Pindar’s fourth Pythian ode, from which Apollonius has taken many details.  The subject was one for an epic 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