Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Argonautica
Ancient Greek with an independent metrical English translation
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Ancient Greek Page · Branch 111 of 245
Book II · Lines 1273–1285
Ancient Greek
p. 228The Argonautica: Book II
p. 229to Earth, the local gods, and souls of heroes dead;
he begged them to be kind helpers, causing no harm,
and there receive Argo's hawsers with favoring signs.
At once Ancaeus spoke this counsel in their midst:
Now we have reached the Colchian land and flowing waters
of Phasis; now the hour has come to counsel here
whether with gentle words we shall make trial of Aeetes,
or some effective, different approach will serve us well.
He spoke; then Jason, following Argus's counsel,
ordered the crew to moor their ship afloat on anchors,
once they had rowed deep in a dense tree-shadowed backwater.
It lay nearby; through darkness there they made their camp.
Soon radiant Dawn appeared to all their waiting eyes.
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book II · Lines 1273–1285
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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