Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Argonautica
Ancient Greek with an independent metrical English translation
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Facing Pages · Branch 130 of 245
Book III · Lines 433–456
Ancient Greek
p. 268The Argonautica: Book III
p. 269addressed Jason, chafing, with grim and terrible language:
Go now among your companions, fully bent on labor.
If dread holds you back from lifting the yoke onto the oxen,
or turn back, shrinking in dread from that murderous harvest, I will
make all things my concern, so another man afterward also
may shudder to seek out a man who is better than he is.
Bluntly he spoke. Jason rose from his throne, and beside him
Augeias and Telamon; Argus followed close behind,
alone: meanwhile he had signaled his brothers to stay there;
then Jason and the other three walked out from the palace.
Wondrously over them all stood out the son of Aeson,
in beauty and grace; and the maiden kept her eyes upon him,
holding her gleaming veil aside, she watched him sidelong,
her heart smoldering in pain. Her mind, like a dream that was crawling,
fluttered behind in the tracks of his feet as he went from her sight.
Thus those men left the halls in bitterness and frustration.
Chalciope, guarding herself from Aeetes' consuming anger,
quickly had gone to her chamber together with all of her sons.
Medea too followed after. Inwardly, many reflections
she turned, all the cares that the Loves impel a person to heed.
Straight before her eyes still every detail appeared to her:
Jason's form and bearing, and each robe he was wearing,
what he said, how he sat on the throne, how he went through the doorway.
Thinking it over, she could not imagine that any man living
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book III · Lines 433–456
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