Argonautica

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 the 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 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 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:
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 the genre of realism than epic, in that he was, in the words of J. F. Carspecken:
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.
The stranding of the Argonauts on the Libyan coast, their carrying of Argo across the desert and the deaths there of Mopsus and Canthus give a Greek perspective to this Egyptian symbolism, with the Golden Fleece figuring as a solar emblem. Thus the action of the Argonautica can seem highly organized, as an attempt to soften the boundaries between Alexandria's indigenous ethnic population and its immigrant Greeks, by means of a shared mythology and worldview.
Though critics have concentrated on Homeric echoes in Argonautica, direct borrowings from tragedy, such as Euripides' Medea, can be found. Argonautica is often placed in a literary tradition that leads to the Ancient Greek novel. Apollonius chooses the less shocking versions of some myths, having Medea, for example, merely watch the murder of Absyrtus instead of murdering him herself. The gods are relatively distant and inactive throughout much of the epic, following the Hellenistic trend to allegorize and rationalize religion.
For a discussion of poetic style and technique in Argonautica see Apollonius of Rhodes#Poetic style
The Argonauts are listed here in the order in which they are catalogued in lines 1–227 of Book 1.
The Argonauts are joined by others during the voyage:
Here follows a list of places where the narrative states or implies that Argo came to shore. Time is here seen from the perspective of the poet – the time at which Apollonius wrote is governed by the present tense and by qualifiers like "now" and "to this day", the mythical action of the poem is governed by the past tense, whereas our own time is denoted 'modern'.