The Argonautica recounts the mythical voyage of the Argonauts who, on the order of King Pelias, undertake a long and dangerous voyage to Colchis, located on the southeast corner of the Black Sea (modern Georgia), in search of the Golden Fleece and, eventually, succeed in returning with it to Greece (for an overview of the myth see Gantz 1993: 34073). They are led by Jason, a young hero who succeeds in winning the Fleece from Aeetes, king of Colchis, with the help of Medea, the Colchian princess expert in magic powers with whom he gets involved in a love affair, and who accompanies him back to Greece, thus providing the setting for Euripides’ great tragic play of betrayal and infanticide, Medea.
In length the poem may be said to fit perfectly Aristotle’s prescription that an epic should be ‘‘about as long as the number of tragedies presented at one sitting’’ (Poet. 1459b 21f.). It is without question meticulously structured. Books 1 and 2 give the reasons for the voyage, describe the gathering of the crew and relate the voyage to Colchis. They include the encounter with Hypsipyle and the Lemnian women (Arg. 1.609-914); the crew’s loss of Hylas and Herakles (1.1207-357); the boxing match between Polydeuces and Amycus (2.1-97); the encounter with the Harpies and Phineus, and his prophecy (2.178-447); the passage through the Clashing Rocks, or Symplegades (2.549-606); and the long voyage along the southern coast of the Black Sea (2.619-1261). Book 3 is dedicated to the story of Jason and Medea and the completion of the hero’s trials. It includes a memorable depiction of Aeetes, father of Medea and tyrannical ruler of Colchis (3.302-438; also 4.212-40); a dramatic account of the young princess falling in love with the foreign hero (3.275-98, 439-824); and the aristeia of Jason when he yokes the bulls and defeats the earthborn men (3.1246-407). Book 4 relates the actual taking of the Fleece (99-182) and the return journey, which follows a quite different route from the outward voyage, bringing the Argonauts home to Greece via the Danube, the Rhone, the western coast of Italy, Corfu, North Africa, and Crete. It includes the murder of Apsyrtus (410-81), the encounter with Circe in Italy (659-752), Orpheus’ singing match with the Sirens (885-922), the stay in the land of the Phaeacians (982-1223), the beaching of the ‘‘Argo’’ on the Libyan shore and the subsequent carrying of the ship back to the sea (1232-587), and eventually the return to Greece via Crete, where the giant Talos is defeated by Medea’s magical powers (1638-688). The poem ends with the Argonauts setting foot safely back in Greece, and the poet looking forward to future recitations of his work (1773-774). In the final line he addresses his heroes: ‘‘and happily did you step out onto the beach of Pagasae’’ (4.1781). The reader is thus offered both easy, natural closure and the possibility of endless repetition of the poem and its story. Apollonius here draws attention to issues such as the relationship between his poem and the Argonautic myth as a whole and the very difficulty of deciding on a beginning and an end in order to mark out his poem within that whole.
The structure ofthe work as a whole is on the one hand straightforward, recounting the events of the voyage in chronological order. But it is also elaborately and intricately worked out, with numerous subtle thematic patterns offering the reader several ways of finding cohesion within the events actually narrated in the poem (see Hurst 1967; Pietsch 1999; Clare 2002). At the same time, Apollonius also creates connections between his poem and those events that form part of the myth as a whole but that he decides not to relate (e. g., How did a Golden Fleece end up in Colchis? What happened to Medea when she arrived in Greece?). And so by the way in which he draws attention to this process of selectivity he is able to emphasize both the arbitrary nature of his chosen beginnings and ends and his control over the many versions of story he has inherited (see Hunter 1993b: 122-4; Wray 2000; Clare 2002: 9-32; Goldhill 1991).
In dealing with these questions, Apollonius’ technique suggests both a familiarity with Homeric book divisions and a close engagement with literary criticism concerning narrative form and poetic unity (Hunter 2001). Apollonius offers subtle play on his readers’ expectations concerning the poetics of narrative, combining Homeric form, characterized by a strong sense of epic scale and comprehensiveness, with modernist techniques favoring a more selective or discontinuous approach. Similarly, as a narrator he subtly reworks Homeric norms, moving away from the essentially univocal and distanced Homeric mode to a more uneven and intrusive narratorial role. A good example of both Apollonius’ reliance on and deviation from Homeric style may be seen in the use of the Muses. Strikingly, they do not appear in the opening line of the poem, as they do in the Homeric epics, but are first mentioned only in line 1.22, where the poet says, ‘‘Let the Muses be the hypophetores of my song.’’ The term hypophetores is difficult, and debate has raged over whether it means ‘‘producers’’ or ‘‘interpreters.’’ The latter seems more likely, since it suggests that initially the voice of the poet assumes responsibility for the story and, subsequently, allows us to see a subtle development in the handling of the Muses (Feeney 1991: 90-3). By the opening ofBook 3, Erato is asked to ‘‘stand beside’’ the poet and tell the love story of Medea and Jason. By the opening ofBook 4 the poet admits his inability to continue the narrative and transfers full responsability for knowledge and recounting of human motivations to a Muse, probably Erato again. When the Muses appear for the final time in the poem, the poet sings in obedience to them (4.1381f.). These changes in the relationship with a Muse or the Muses chart an intense engagement with such key issues as the fictionality of the narrative, its status as truth, and the very act of narration itself; such experimental variation is a feature of Apollonius’ technique on all levels. And here, as everywhere else in the Argonautica, Homer is the starting point for gauging the nature and extent of Apollonian experimentation.