standard, for they are simple and obvious. In the mass of material from
which he had to choose the difficulty was to know what to omit, and much
skill is shewn in fusing into a tolerably harmonious whole conflicting
mythological and historical details. He interweaves with his narrative
local legends and the founding of cities, accounts of strange customs,
descriptions of works of art, such as that of Ganymede and Eros playing
with knucklebones,[1] but prosaically calls himself back to the point
from these pleasing digressions by such an expression as "but this would
take me too far from my song." His business is the straightforward tale
and nothing else. The astonishing geography of the fourth book reminds
us of the interest of the age in that subject, stimulated no doubt by
the researches of Eratosthenes and others.

[Footnote 1: iii. 117-124.]

The language is that of the conventional epic. Apollonius seems to have
carefully studied Homeric glosses, and gives many examples of isolated
uses, but his choice of words is by no means limited to Homer. He freely
avails himself of Alexandrian words and late uses of Homeric words.
Among his contemporaries Apollonius suffers from a comparison with
Theocritus, who was a little his senior, but he was much admired by
Roman writers who derived inspiration from the great classical writers
of Greece by way of Alexandria. In fact Alexandria was a useful bridge
between Athens and Rome. The _Argonautica_ was translated by Varro
Atacinus, copied by Ovid and Virgil, and minutely studied by Valerius
Flaccus in his poem of the same name. Some of his finest passages have
been appropriated and improved upon by Virgil by the divine right of
superior genius.[1] The subject of love had been treated in the romantic
spirit before the time of Apollonius in writings that have perished, for
instance, in those of Antimachus of Colophon, but the _Argonautica_ is