Author Description

The aim of this book is to make Book Two of the Argonautica (or The Voyage of Argo) by Apollonius of Rhodes accessible to intermediate students of ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek, while enjoying the only extant example of ancient epic between Homer and Virgil. The Argonautica is a great text for intermediate readers. The sentence structure and syntax are fairly simple, despite the fact that the vocabulary is often exotic and full of novel formations. Apollonius’ Greek is purposefully mannered, based largely on Homeric diction and style, with many direct and indirect illusions to the Iliad and Odyssey, but also marked by the cultural context of his own time.