Orpheus' Argonautica is a little-known re-telling of Jason's iconic quest to the ends of the Earth in search of the mythical Golden Fleece. Despite the fact that the narrator adopts the voice of Orpheus, the quintessential poet and mystic of ancient Greece, our author's identity and chronology are unknown. This document will demonstrate that certain features of the poem's language are not "irregular," as has been asserted in recent centuries. It will also place our poem within the literary tradition of Orpheus, exploring this mythical figure from the sixth century BCE through the fourteenth century CE. We will show the author's fluency in the intertextual game of allusion, revealing a likely familiarity with Latin literature, as well. Finally there is included an annotated English translation of the poem which should be accessible to experts and laypersons alike. / text

In this thesis, Hospitality in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica Books One and Two, I offer a detailed and systematic analysis of the epic motifs used by Apollonius Rhodius. Careful comparison with its principal models, the Homeric epics, shows the poet's sophisticated manipulation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and reveals much of his narrative technique. Read in the context of its sources, it is possible to focus with more precision on Apollonius' innovations. For this study, I have selected the major hospitality scenes of the first two books, which are concerned with the outward journey to Colchis. Reference is, however, made throughout to the hospitality scenes in Books Three and Four. The hospitality theme is one of the most important in an epic concerning the voyage heroes make in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Hospitality scenes are characterised by a certain repetition of motifs: e.g. arrival, reception, meal, storytelling and exchange of gifts. These elements are always adapted according to the particular poetic context and purpose of a scene. With their elaborate structure hospitality scenes provide fascinating material for the study of the reworking of the Homeric epics, crucial for the understanding of Apollonius' work.

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This thesis is a study of the influence of cosmology on Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, an epic hexameter poem written in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. I examine ancient Greek ideas of cosmogony and cosmology, which range from the earliest extant Greek texts (Homer and Hesiod) to contemporaries of Apollonius (Aratus). My argument is that cosmology is deeply embedded in the text, and that Apollonius creates a nexus of cosmic intertexts which provides a scientific and intellectual backdrop against which the events of the narrative take place. The narrative’s events all occur within a cosmos, which is alluded to throughout the epic; the reader sees snap-shots of the development of this cosmos alongside the development of the Argo’s journey, which creates an analogous progression between the two. Particularly salient for this thesis is the connection to Empedoclean ideas of love and strife as cosmic forces, as these comprise two of the major themes of the narrative. Accordingly, a key point of contact between narrative and cosmology lies in these forces, as the narrator consciously recalls them and the cosmos they control in the process of weaving his narrative. The three passages I examine all focus on this cosmic system, as the cosmic backdrop evolves and changes alongside the narrative itself. The cosmic analogy, therefore, is not static but changes in line with the narrative. This study will form the only extended analysis of cosmology in the Argonautica. The influence of cosmological material on the text (within the wider issue of philosophical influence) has attracted marginal attention, scholars often noting some of the more overt connections without a great deal of analysis. Works that acknowledge the presence of cosmological material at sporadic points include: Fränkel (1968); Hunter (1989 and 1993), Clauss (1993 and 2000); Levin (1970 and 1971). More detailed studies of aspects of cosmological material in the Argonautica include: Bogue (1979); Nelis (1992); Kyriakou (1994); Pendergraft (1995); Murray (2014); Santamaría Álvarez (2014). These studies all confirm the importance of cosmological ideas on the text, but focus on a particular manifestation of these ideas. This thesis will build on these ideas in an attempt to create a cohesive study of cosmology throughout the narrative and consider how this material affects our reading of the narrative itself and its poetic agenda, along with how this use feeds into Apollonius’ poetic values and contemporary poetic trends in general. The thesis is divided into three main chapters, in which I examine three key passages of the Argonautica to make my argument. In Chapter One I examine Orpheus’ song (1.496-511), in which the cultic bard Orpheus calms a fight between two Argonauts by singing a cosmogony. The song establishes cosmic forces that run analogous to the forces at work in the narrative and demonstrates how the growing influence of love in the cosmos parallels the increased reliance on love for the success of the Argonauts’ mission. In Chapter Two I examine Jason’s cloak (1.721-767), a passage that comprises the only extended ecphrasis in the Argonautica. The images woven into his cloak continue the cosmic theme begun in the song of Orpheus, since they demonstrate the world in a later stage of development, as human and divine events unfold and time progresses towards the Argonauts’ contemporary world. In Chapter Three I examine Eros’ sphere (3.129-141), an intricate toy offered to him by Aphrodite in exchange for his shooting Medea with an arrow to make her fall in love with Jason. The ball’s shape and its details both suggest that what Eros holds in his hand is some sort of divine three-dimensional model of the universe. I have chosen these three passages because a cosmological mode of reading is particularly strong in them; they bring to the forefront the cosmological undertone which underlies the wider narrative. My conclusion is that the three passages are all connected throughout the narrative by their cosmic material, material which underscores the Argonauts’ narrative and facilitates them anchoring their time to the grand timeframe of the cosmos. Both cosmic and narrative events run concurrently, as the evolution of the cosmos from its origins to the Argonauts’ present day runs alongside the evolution of the narrative. This duality shows how the Argonautic poet employs cosmology and in doing so creates a continuous parallel narrative that runs throughout the text. Since he uses three connected parallel narratives (song, garment, and toy), the reflective capacity of the passages is not merely a one-off, but consecutive, as all three comprise different moments in the same cosmic scheme. The boundaries between parallel narrative and main narrative are thus broken down in the passages as the narrator establishes the idea that cosmology does not only run parallel to the events of the narrative, but prefigures them and enriches the reader’s understanding of the narrative world. In sum, the cosmic readings of the passages demonstrate that what the narrator is drawing the reader towards is a cosmic subtext that is unfixed and undergoes change.

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Thesis (doctoral)--Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, 1991. / Summary in Dutch. Includes bibliographical references (p. [327]-345).

A syntagmatic analysis of the Argonauts’ encounters with the Lemnian women and the Doliones in Apollonius of Rhodius’ Argonautica Book 1. Combining intertextuality with cognitive narratology, I approach the text from the perspective of the reader. Beginning with a study of the poem’s programmatic proem before moving to a study of the Argonauts’ first encounters on their outward journey, I map the reader’s experience on their own voyage through a difficult and elliptical narrative. To tackle the demands of a densely allusive text and the manipulations of a subjective narrator, I employ a plurality of readers: the general reader is accompanied on this exploration by two fictional readers. Charting the varying interpretations of the attentive reader and the experienced reader (Homeric auditor and Homeric scholar respectively) enables me to combine investigation of text and intertexts as moderated by the narrator with analysis of the ways they modify the expectations of the reader as they progress in a linear fashion from episode to episode. By consideration of where interpretations overlap and where they differ according to what the reader brings to the text and of how the narrative conditions its readers on the journey, I demonstrate the value of the reader-orientated approach to tackling the complexities of the narrative and the demands it places on all its readers.

This report examines heroism in Apollonius’ Argonautica and argues that a different heroic model predominates in each of the first three books. Unlike Homer’s epics where Achilles with his superhuman might and Odysseus with his unparalleled cunning serve as the unifying forces for their respective poems, there is no single guiding influence in the Argonautica. Rather, each book establishes its own heroic type, distinct from the others. In Book 1, Heracles is the central figure, demonstrating his heroic worth through feats of strength and martial excellence. In Book 2, Polydeuces, the helmsmen, and—what I have called—the “Odyssean” Heracles use their mētis to guide and safeguard the expedition. And in Book 3, Jason takes center stage, a human character with human limitations tasked with an epic, impossible mission. This movement from Book 1 (Heracles and biē) to Book 2 (Polydeuces/helmsmen and mētis) to Book 3 (Jason and human realism) reflects the epic tradition: the Iliad (Achilles and biē) to the Odyssey (Odysseus and mētis) to the Argonautica (Apollonius’ epic and the Hellenistic age). Thus, the Argonautica is an epic about epic and its evolving classification of what it entails to be a hero. The final stage in this grand metaphor comes in Book 3 which mirrors the literary environment in Apollonius’ own day and age, a time invested in realism where epic had been deemed obsolete. Jason, as the representative of that Hellenistic world, is unable to successively use Iliadic or Odyssean heroics because he is as human and ordinary as Apollonius’ audience. Jason, like his readers, cannot connect to the archaic past. Medea, however, changes this when she saves Jason’s life by effectively rewriting him to become a superhuman, epic hero. She is a metaphor for Apollonius himself, a poet who wrote an epic in an unepic world. The final message of Book 3, therefore, is an affirmation not of the death of epic but its survival in the Hellenistic age. / text

Includes bibliography.