The young poet found literary life in Alexandria made impossible for him, and (invited perhaps by sympathisers) he sailed thence to Rhodes. He there produced a revised version of his epic, and was comforted by the applause with which the Rhodians received it. Honoured by all, and presented with the freedom of the city, he gratefully took for his country the land where he was appreciated, and was proud to be known as “Apollonius of Rhodes.” He lived there many years, a renowned poet, and a popular professor of rhetoric. Meanwhile at Alexandria his old enemy died: the old literary cliques were no more: the fame of the prophet who had been without honour in his own country had recrossed the sea: men longed to atone for the neglect which was a discredit to themselves; and Apollonius was given to understand that a warm welcome was prepared for him in the land of his birth. The temptation to triumph on the scene of his humiliation was irresistible. He returned to Egypt: he read his poem to enthusiastic audiences: the opportune death of Eratosthenes, who had succeeded Callimachus as President and Chief Librarian, created a vacancy for which Apollonius was acclaimed the only possible successor. So, installed as the head of the culture and learning of the Greek world, he lived days of peaceful industry and satisfied ambition, till, full of years and honours, he passed away, and, as though to symbolise forgiveness and oblivion of old feuds, was buried beside his old master, Callimachus.
Like all the Alexandrian scholars, he was busy with his pen to the last. His most important works, besides the Tale of the Argonauts, were the “Foundations,” poems embodying the stories or legends of the origin or foundation of famous cities, such as Rhodes, Cnidus, Alexandria. But of them all only nine and a half lines survive, and it is on the Argonautica that his fame must rest. The poem is, like the epics of Virgil, Tasso, Tennyson, the work of a student, and not, like those of Homer, the work of a man who had been a part of the life he described. Apollonius connected the Argonauts with all the legends or myths belonging to the places they might be supposed to have visited, gathering materials for this part of his work from the rich libraries in which he wrote. Hence we find traces of his having more matter than he quite knew what to do with; and his digressions on the origins of cities, names, rites, and so forth, are occasionally such as the average reader will skip. Still, all together, they do not occupy proportionally as much space as the similarly little-read Catalogue of the Ships in the Iliad.
There can be no doubt that the Argonautica was for the ancients the one great epic between Homer and Virgil. Even contemporaries wrote commentaries on it. It was popular among the Romans. P. T. Varro earned fame by his translation of it, and Val. Flaccus wrote a Latin Argonautica, which was but a free translation of the Greek original. But his noblest eulogy will be found in the pages of Virgil, who drew no small part of his inspiration from him, transferring to his Aeneid at least a score of episodes, similes, or picturesque touches.
On the other hand, Apollonius is very far from being an imitator of Homer. He is, indeed, considering the atmosphere in which his genius was trained, amazingly original; and it is not the least proof of his genius that he recognised that his strength lay in the very things which were either neglected, or lightly touched on, by Homer. The elaborate picturesqueness and unfailing verve with which he describes the coasting voyages, the weird desolation of the Libyan sands, the gauntlet-fight, the battle with the giants, the passage of the Clashing Crags, and that of the Wandering Rocks, the ploughing with the brazen bulls, and many other such incidents, are examples of work of which Homer gives but slight and occasional examples: while the great and crowning achievement of the poem, the story of Medea’s passion, with its fierce fervour, its thrilling pathos, its lovely tenderness and virginal purity, its strangely modern introspectiveness and analysis of motives, is absolutely without parallel, not in Homer alone, but in any Greek poet whose works have come down to us. Even Virgil, with all his human sympathy, with all the advantage of having such a model before him, cannot rise to the same height: the love of Dido is a pale reflex of that of Medea. It is curious, too, to note that, even in the minor matter of similes, Apollonius remains original. In only one (Bk. II 541–548, where he somewhat expands Homer’s thought) can he be charged with imitation.
The argument has been well summed up by Prof. R. Ellis:—“For Apollonius the problem was how to write an epic which should be modelled on the Homeric epics, yet be so completely different as to suggest, not resemblance, but contrast. We think no one who
