In his latest Dispatches from the Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers Apollonius of Rhodes’ classic tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece

In the world of classical Greek epic poetry, two poems are universally renowned: The Iliad and The Odyssey. Both, of course, are attributed to Homer – whoever he may have been. But there is another classical epic poem, written a few centuries later, which has been largely forgotten – although the story it tells is one of the most celebrated tales from Greek mythology. This poem is The Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts’ search for the Golden Fleece. Its author was a rather intriguing poet named Apollonius of Rhodes.

Well, he’s known as ‘Apollonius of Rhodes’, although here we come upon our first problem. He was more closely associated with Alexandria, it would seem, than Rhodes – and, indeed, rose to become the chief librarian at the famed Library of Alexandria. He also began his life in Alexandria. The story goes that Apollonius, while living at Alexandria rather than Rhodes, wrote a much longer epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts, for which he received a fair bit of flack. Later in life, when he had moved to Rhodes, he revised the poem – and, according to one theory, drastically cut it down to create the much shorter work we now have – and was hailed as a genius. He later returned to Alexandria, where, his reputation secure, he was made director of the great Library of Alexandria. In the realm of epic poetry, it would seem, Apollonius was the first great exemplar of the dictum Less is more. Read the rest of this entry →