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. (4) 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 perhaps
the first poem still extant in which the expression of this
spirit is developed with elaboration. The Medea of Apollonius is
the direct precursor of the Dido of Virgil, and it is the pathos
and passion of the fourth book of the "Aeneid" that keep alive
many a passage of Apollonius.


ENDNOTES:
(1) "Or of Naucratis", according to Aelian and Athenaeus.
(2) Anth. Pal. xl. 275.
(3) iii. 117-124.
(4) e.g. compare "Aen." iv. 305 foll. with Ap. Rh. iv. 355
foll.; "Aen." iv. 327-330 with Ap. Rh. I. 897, 898; "Aen."
iv. 522 foll., with Ap. Rh. iii. 744 foll.



THE ARGONAUTICA