Is it underrated? Virgil borrowed so much from it and yet no one seems to talk about it
>>24864359I'm a big fan. What do you think Virgil borrowed beside the Furies?
>>24864359How can it be underrated? Unless you mean to say it can stand up to Homer and Virgil, because it doesn't, and they're talked about more because they're Homer and Virgil. It is, however, a great poem.
>>24864631>doesn't stand up to VirgilFalse
Virgil is rewriting naevius but op is a stupid faggot and didnt know this
>>24864359>is it underrated It sucked, Apollonius loses his groove sometime after Book 2 and never recovers
>>24865578>still hasn't explained howYou're a pleb and a coward!
>>24864596Aeneas = JasonDido = Medea and Hypsipyle
>>24865656The myth of Aeneas predates virgil considerably, the Iliad even says his life was saved from Troy because the gods loved Trojans above all others and wanted to ensure he would refound their stock. Aeneas leaves Dido out of a sense of duty, Jason leaves Medea for personal advantage. If anything she functions as a sort of Calypso within the story. His sacrifice of being with her was seen as an example of patriotism and piety, since he was only doing it out of piety. He already had it made and was forfeiting it all
Theocritus/Bion/Moschus, Theognis, Phocyldes, Planudes translation of Cato, HesiodAristophanes 9 plays (not the 2 women ones)Nicander SophoclesPlanudes AnthologyEuripides (except Electra)Pindar, Callimachus, Dionysius Periegetes, LycophronHomer, Hymns, BatrachomyomachiaOppian and Pseudo-OppianAeschylusMusaeus, Orphic Argonautica, Orpheus Hymns, Proclus Hymns, Orphic LithicaApolloniusThe Greek translation of TeseidaThere you go, read them all in that oder. Apollonius is the crown of the classical greek poets, so yes quite underrated.
>>24865670>Aeneas leaves Dido out of a sense of duty, Jason leaves Medea for personal advantageI meant Dido's rage was from Medea, her being left is similar to Hypsipyle
>>24865700Which ones did Aristotle like
>>24864359We are so BACK BABY
>>24865655The plot just loses all its cohesion and sense of direction after they arrive in Colchis and especially after they finally get the fleece. The characters are conceptually interesting but written in the lamest way possible. Jason isn’t that interesting of a hero, he’s not strong or particularly clever nor does he have any real struggle. Medea just uses her bullshit sorcery to solve their problems yet makes foids seethe because of her lack of agency, which I suppose isn’t Apollonius’ fault but certainly makes any serious discussion about the epic annoying. The supporting cast is admittedly very cool but Apollonius does very little with them, outside of the boxing match and the ship carrying they lack the likability of the supporting heroes of the Iliad. I know Epics can struggle to have a satisfying ending but it’s especially bad in the Argonautica, I don’t care about how it’s connected Euripides’ tragedy, the epic should still be able to stand on its own, but it doesn’t. It’s just plain boring to read, and it’s surprising how a scholar like Apollonius, who had a millennia worth of scholarship and literature to draw from, was able to take such a conceptually interesting idea and completely squander it.
>>24866682You can apply this ridiculous critique to any ancient work. You're also describing sitcoms like The Office as your ideal not actual books.
I like how Jason is basically a normal guy trapped in an epic poem. When odysseus is trapped by Calypso, he pines for home. When the argonauts are in that city with all the women and they ask them to abandon their quest and marry them, Jason's like "yeah sure that sounds good" until Heracles yells at him.Also, the first thing he does when leaving on the quest, basically before they're even out of the harbor, is cry. When someone like Odysseus or Achilles cries it's after something unbearable has happened. Jason hasn't even had any trials yet and he's already bawling.
>>24866520all, since the same Venetian aliens who wrote Aristotle also wrote the playwrights
>>24867328How does the Iliad have any of the problems I mentioned? The Argonautica might technically be an epic but what Apollonius is doing in a lot of ways is very different to what Homer was doing.
>>24867441Apollonius is the fusion of all the Greek styles and the final classical Greek poet, if you’ve read the list above >>24865700you’d appreciate it more, which is the publication order in Venice in the 1500s. Also English translations are notoriously terrible, from outright prose to shitty iambics in the 1800s, as a sort of character study/entertainment it’s lacking sure but all of these are products of a different culture. Theres also 1-2 Byzantine poems worth checking out but I forgot the names. The argonautica as a myth is interesting to Theocritus’ interpretation of Castor/Pollux to Pindar’s ode on Jason to the Orphic argonautica it’s good to appreciate in a historical mythological context.
>>24867556>>24867441Just being honest when I first read Apollonius I didn’t like it either but in the context of Surviving Greek poets I have grown to appreciate it as a look into the culture. I never enjoyed Homer either.
>>24867556>the final classical Greek poetHe is Hellenistic, way too late for classical. He lived in Alexandria.
>>24867744Or you can be intentionally obtuse. Callimachus and Lycophron also lived in Alexandria, they’re a clear continuation of the lineage. Either way these manuscripts are all dated to the Byzantines as “copies,” so the actually chronology is irrelevant and probably muffled. Most scholars agree Homer wasn’t real.
>>24867752>Callimachus and Lycophron also lived in AlexandriaAlexandria didn't *exist* in the classical era.
>>24867758You’re being needlessly pedantic to have a gotcha. The Apollonius, Homer, Lycophron manuscripts in full are dated to 10th century Byzantines the actual history is irrelevant compared to the chronology and this hard divide of Homeric, classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Greeks like Oppian is unnecessary when there’s hardly any surviving Greek poets and the manuscripts are dated to the Byzantines Regardless.
>>24867770the world of Appolonius and the world of Homer were very different worlds, and it shows in their poems.
>>24867778Yes and both are periods of Ancient Greece that a modern scholar should be able to synthesize and comprehend not get clung up that Apollonius isn’t a sitcom like The Office which was your main gripe. >>24866682
>>24867787> Apollonius isn’t a sitcom like The Office which was your main gripe>>24867744 was my first post itt, friend
>>24867850The Alexandrian poets, like Callimachus, Lycophron, Apollonius are worth studying as continuations of the Greek lineage via the Byzantine preservation of such and the Ventian publishing of such. The Roman poets like Dionysius Periegetes and Oppian do not indulge the myths, but have a more natural and scientific approach, which is why I used Classical Greek to loosely refer to pre-Roman Greek poets, as Apollonius is the last to write on the myths and be published in Venice aside from the anonymous Byzantine translation of Boccacio's Theseus poem. The Orphic Argonautica/Hymns was regarded as more ancient than Homer in the 18-1900s, but only recently has been said to from the Roman Empire Greeks, and it's first person from Orpheus himself, so I didn't use that as the Crown.
>>24867352The original lost poems about Heracles are foundational to the culture, referencing among other things the expansion of the Greek and Phoenician sphere to its limits.He's like a patriarch of the culture while Jason is a product of it but Jason follows in his footsteps, tracing a later expansion of Greek colonies around the Black Sea, west up the rivers, south to Massalia and then returning to the pillars, Lake Tritonis, the garden of Eden/Hera and the daughters of Atlas.The bulk of the expansion was around the Black Sea where they mined gold from rivers by trapping it in sheep fleece.
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