Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Argonautica
Ancient Greek with an independent metrical English translation
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Facing Pages · Branch 176 of 245
Book IV · Lines 121–144
Ancient Greek
p. 362The Argonautica: Book IV
p. 363by Hermes, who met him kindly on the road. There the heroes
set those two ashore, obeying the counsels of Argus.
They followed a narrow path and came into the sacred grove,
seeking the measureless oak with the Fleece cast over it,
like some cloud that glows as the sun is ascending at morning,
reddens, aflame with dawn's bright, burning sunbeams.
Straight in their path he thrust his vast, immeasurable neck,
the keen serpent who saw them first with his sleepless eyes
He saw them near and hissed monstrously; round him the long
banks of the river and measureless grove rang out.
People heard it who lived far from Titanian Aea,
in Colchian lands beside the outflow of the river Kyrus,
which parts away from the stream of the roaring river Araxes
and carries its holy current to meet the Phasis; together
the two, joined into one, pour out in the Caucasian Sea.
New mothers awakened in fear, and around their children,
tiny infants sleeping within each mother's cradling arms,
mothers threw arms round babies trembling at the hiss.
As when a smoldering forest breathes out soot-black smoke,
in eddies winding upward, countless, without end,
one rises swiftly upon another, forever forward,
from deep below they climb high on their spiraling eddies,
so then that monstrous thing writhed its measureless coils,
all roofed over with a canopy of parched scales.
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book IV · Lines 121–144
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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