Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Argonautica
Ancient Greek with an independent metrical English translation
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Facing Pages · Branch 104 of 245
Book II · Lines 1105–1128
Ancient Greek
p. 214The Argonautica: Book II
p. 215a dark and murky gloom stood firmly fixed all around them.
Drenched through, and trembling before a hateful destruction,
the sons of Phrixus were borne helplessly under the waves.
The wind's force tore their sails away and even the ship
itself split into two, tossed hard among the breakers.
Then, through the gods' prompting, those only four together
reached for a single huge beam among the many timbers
scattered when the ship broke, fastened with sharpened bolts.
The waves and blasts drove them toward the island, barely
short of death, the brothers struggling in desperate distress.
Boundless rain burst suddenly and drenched the sea,
the island and all land outstretched opposite the island,
all lands where overbearing Mossynoeci held sway.
The rushing wave hurled the brothers with the massive timber,
four shipwrecked sons of Phrixus onto the island's shoreline,
beneath black night; the boundless rain sent down by Zeus
ceased at sunrise; soon the two bands met close together,
and Argus came foremost among them and began to speak:
We beg by Zeus the Watcher: tell us who stands here,
to show kindly favor and supply our needed help.
For violent tempests bore down hard across the sea,
have scattered every timber of our broken, wretched vessel,
aboard which we pressed our seaward course on urgent business.
Therefore we clasp your knees now, seeking your consent,
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book II · Lines 1105–1128
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Apollonius’s Argonautica follows Jason and the Argonauts from their gathering at Pagasae through the voyage to Colchis and the difficult return home. This exact line-for-line edition pairs the Ancient Greek poem with an independent metrical English translation prepared by Diotimos Editions, preserving one English verse for every Greek reading line across all four books.
Historical Text and Translation
The Greek reading text follows the Perseus transcription derived from George W. Mooney’s 1912 edition, pinned to a stable canonical-greekLit commit. Mooney and LSJ provide the principal controls for Books I–III; Peter Hulse’s Dickinson commentary directly supports Book IV. Deleted records and canonical numbering gaps remain documented rather than being silently repaired. The supplied release identifies itself as a complete source-audited working edition and recommends independent classicist review before print publication.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this independent translation directly from the Greek. Its six-beat English house form preserves the poem’s source order, imagery, learned names, narrative delays, shifts of register, and line-by-line correspondence while allowing syntax to move across adjacent verses where the Greek requires it.
Rights
Apollonius’s ancient Greek source work is in the public domain. The 2026 English translation and Diotimos editorial matter are original to this edition and remain © 2026 Diotimos. The pinned Perseus Greek transcription is reused under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- public-domain-base-witnessPinned Perseus Greek transcription — canonical-greekLit
- print-control-and-commentaryGeorge W. Mooney’s 1912 Argonautica — Internet Archive
- book-four-commentaryApollonius Argonautica, Book IV — Dickinson College Commentaries
- lexical-controlLiddell–Scott–Jones Greek-English Lexicon — Scaife ATLAS
- greek-transcription-licenseCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0