The Orphic Argonautica

by Jason Colavito

The Orphic Argonautica was once believed to be among the oldest Greek poems. When its real age (c. 500 CE) became know, scholars condemned the work and consigned it to centuries of obscurity. Now, read the mysterious poem long-closed to English-speaking readers. This edition contains a full English translation of the epic poem along with selections from Hyginus, Dares Phrygius, Lactantius, and the First and Second Vatican Mythographers to give a compelling picture of the Argonaut myth in the age when Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. This edition also includes a full introduction tracing the history of and the controvesy over the epic poem, extensive annotations to explain and clarify the poem, and several appendixes reproducing nineteenth-century scholarship on the Orphic Argonautica.

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

First published November 5, 2011

Reviews

[Blrp · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like a dry retelling of most of the events of the Argonautika; "then this happened, then that happened", without the storytelling that makes it exciting. The Colchis part was so heavily abridged as to not make sense at all; it's like they were assuming the reader already knew what "really happened" and so they decided to just skip crucial details entirely. The refocusing of the story on Orpheus wasn't that extensive and seemed more interesting in theory than it ended up being, and I rate the story changes as ranging from "whatever" to "ugh".

If you have some weird urge to catch 'em all when it comes to ancient Greek epic, this is a short and largely painless read. Otherwise, don't bother.

[Mark Dickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not written for someone without existing knowledge of Greek mythology (as all of the footnotes also assume a degree of knowledge) but certainly provides some insight into Orphic traditions which I found interesting.

Also, nobody but scholars would want multiple translations of the same work one after the other in the same book.