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 118 of 245
Book III · Lines 145–168
Ancient Greek
p. 244The Argonautica: Book III
p. 245So she spoke; and the words were great delight to Eros' hearing.
He dropped all of his toys and, catching his mother's tunic
on this side and that, held fast to the robe of the goddess.
He begged for the ball straightway; but she, speaking gently,
faced him, drawing his cheeks near, then holding him close,
kissed him, then gently replied to the child with a smile:
Let your beloved head and mine bear witness together:
surely I shall give you the gift; I will not deceive you,
if you will plant your arrow in the maiden, daughter of Aeetes.
She spoke; then he gathered all of the knucklebones together,
counted each carefully, then dropped them all in his mother's
gleaming robe-fold; at once with a golden baldric he fastened
his quiver, where it leaned on a tree, then lifted the curved bow.
He left the palace of Zeus and crossed the fruitful orchard.
Then he went out through the high, airy gates of Olympus.
From there the road from heaven begins its downward course;
for twin poles lift up the heads of unscalable mountains,
the earth's high peaks, where the sun, when first he has risen,
reddens at dawn, beneath the first bright shafts of sunlight.
Far below, now the life-bearing earth and men's cities
shone into view with the sacred streams of the rivers; then
mountain ridges and sea all around as he crossed the vast aether.
Far off, the heroes sat on the benches of their own vessel,
hidden in river marshland, and gathered there in council.
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book III · Lines 145–168
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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