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September 05, 2005
Argonauts
One book I recently finished is the Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodus. You made not have heard of this epic poem before and for good reason. Although the basic story is decent, Apollonius was not that great of a poet. Over the past few years I have listened to several ancient poems: The Odyssey and Iliad by Homer and the Aeneid by Virgil. I have enjoyed each of them enough to want to listen to them again, especially the Aeneid since I was only vaguely familiar with the story the first time and will probably get more out of it now.
I hope I never read the Argonautica again. It tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts, but leaves out important chunks of the story. For instance it starts with Jason coming out of the ocean with one sandal and because I remembered from reading this story years ago that this was prophesied to the relevant king I knew this was important, but the poem only implies its importance. Maybe Apollonius assumed that all of his listeners already knew the story and did not need to be reminded that a man with one sandal was prophesied to cause king Pelias death or that Jason had carried the goddess Hera in disguise across a river on his back (which is how he lost the sandal), but it felt incomplete without that information laid out bluntly. Considering the poem is over 150 pages long and contains lots of stuff that could have been left out I do not think that it is too much to ask that he include the prophecy and other interesting details. The ending was also way too abrupt and contained no resolution and in ancient poetry like the ones mentioned above the resolution was usually some of the most interesting stuff, whether it is Troy burning down, Odysseus killing his wife's suitors or Rome being founded by Aeneis. From this poem you have no idea how Jason ended up or that he was killed by a beam falling on his head years latter when visiting the Argo.
Although the poem is not that good overall, Apollonius did do some scenes decently and others were even pretty good. The scene of the defeat of the harpies and King Phineus was decent and the deadly boxing match between King Amycus and Polydeuces was fairly exciting. According to the introduction of the book many of Apollonius' contemporaries did not like the poem that much either and the first version he wrote was heavily criticized by them. This book also made me think more highly of the Old Jason and The Argonauts movie, which had the giant metal guy with a weak ankle full of lava and the skeletons that came up from the ground after dragon's teeth were sown into the ground. In the poem and other versions it was giants that came up from the ground, but the movie director probably realized that claymation skeletons would look cooler and would almost make more sense than giants. On the plus side for Apollonius, he did get to run the Alexandrian library and his name was pretty cool so he had that going for him.
Posted by Pete at September 5, 2005 10:35 AM
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Comments
I had to read the Argonautica a few semesters ago for a graduate seminar, and I remember it was pretty tough going. Still, in many ways it's a valuable reflection of its time (all that Alexandrian literary business) and it certainly was influential on later, better writers like Virgil.
(And that old "Jason and the Argonauts" movie is just classic, isn't it? Even my professor who taught the class loves it...and owns it!)
Posted by: Mad Minerva at September 11, 2005 05:58 AM