Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Argonautica
Ancient Greek with an independent metrical English translation
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English Page · Branch 173 of 245
Book IV · Lines 49–72
Ancient Greek
p. 356The Argonautica: Book IV
p. 357recognized Medea; she sped unseen past every guard.
From there she determined to go to the temple, for she knew well
the roads, since often before she had wandered around among corpses
and roots wrested hard from the earth, as women who practice
magic; stark, shuddering fear convulsed her spirit.
But the Titaness goddess Moon, just rising far off
from the horizon saw the distraught girl and fiercely exulted
and gladly said these words to the depths of her own heart:
So I am not alone in wandering to the Latmian cave,
nor am I the only one burning for beautiful Endymion.
How often, you bitch, at the sound of your treacherous singing,
I burned, remembering love, through night's deep darkness, so
you might cast spells undisturbed, the work that delights you.
But now you share, it seems, in this same madness yourself.
Jason was given to become a grievous anguish for you
by a cruel god. Go on; steel your heart all the same,
wise though you are, bear pain freighted with many groans.
So she spoke, and at once her feet carried her hastening onward.
Gladly she rose and stood high on the bank of the river,
seeing across it the blaze of the fire which, after the ordeal,
the heroes kept alight all night for joyful celebration.
Then her sharp voice, pitched high through the darkness,
she called far across to the youngest of Phrixus's children,
Phrontis; with all of his brothers he recognized the girl's voice
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book IV · Lines 49–72
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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