This is strange. It’s a full-length epic poem about Jason and the quest for the golden fleece – only it’s not really epic and hardly ever heroic. The clue might be in the metre in which the poem was written: rather than the heroic metres of Homer or Virgil, it was written in a metre that was generally reserved for hymnody and lyric. So maybe Apollonius never intended to write an epic, but rather a long lyric or hymn. Indeed, most of the content is actually travel, long descriptions of where the Argonauts go, with the descriptions often being stripped down to list of places visited.

As for Jason and his argonauts, they are the less heroic bunch of heroes ever put into metre. Presumably other earlier versions of the legend (which have sadly all been lost) painted them in a more epic light; surely they must have done because it’s hard to see how this bunch of perpetually moaning adventurers could have come to be seen as among the greatest of the Classical heroes if this is how they behaved in all the tellings of the story. Indeed, Jason does little more than complain and have repeated fits of fear about what lies before them throughout the story. The accomplishment of the quest is mainly down to Medea, who is nevertheless berated for betraying her psychotic father.

It’s not as if the rest of the Argonauts are any braver and more resolute than Jason. They too go into palpitations at the prospect of any danger. The only exception is Heracles, but he is removed from the quest early on and the rest have to carry on without him, carried to the successful conclusion of the quest largely by the efforts of others.

It really is a very strange epic. Excellent translation by the wonderfully named Aaron Poochigian though.