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 126 of 245
Book III · Lines 337–360
Ancient Greek
p. 260The Argonautica: Book III
p. 261he vows they shall not escape the heart-harrowing anger of Zeus,
and merciless wrath, nor dire curse and unbearable payment
owed for Phrixus, till the Fleece reaches the land of Hellas.
Pallas Athena built their ship, one utterly unlike
any ship owned by men who inhabit the country of Colchis.
We met the vilest: raging sea and blasting wind
split our ship; Argo's dowels held her fast,
holds, though every storm should bear down together upon her.
She runs with equal swiftness, driven on by the wind
and when men with tireless hands urge her onward with oars.
All Achaea's foremost heroes he gathered onto the ship
and reached your city, sorely tried by many wanderings
past many towns and gulfs of the hateful sea, if you grant him
the Fleece. Yet whatever seems good to you, so shall it happen;
for he comes with no violent hand; instead, he is eager
to pay a worthy return for the gift; he has heard from me how
the Sauromatians hate you, and he will bend them beneath your sceptres.
And if you truly desire to learn each name and birthline,
who each of them is, I shall tell you the whole and conceal none.
This man, for whose sake the others assembled from Hellas,
they call Jason, Aeson's son, grandson of Cretheus.
If in truth his descent is directly from Cretheus' own blood,
then he must be our own kinsman in the line of our fathers.
For both Cretheus and Athamas were brothers, sons of Aeolus,
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book III · Lines 337–360
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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