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 190 of 245
Book IV · Lines 457–480
Ancient Greek
p. 390The Argonautica: Book IV
p. 391swiftly crossed the heaving sea aboard his own ship,
and under black night set foot upon the sacred island.
All alone, going straight to meet her, he tested with words
his own sister, as a tender child will test a winter
torrent that not even men in their strength can cross,
to learn whether Medea planned a trick against the strangers.
Thus brother and sister settled every point in full.
At once the son of Aeson leapt from his thick-set ambush,
lifting a naked sword in his hand; at once the maiden
turned back her eyes and covered them over with linen,
so she would not see her own brother's murder as he was struck.
Jason, a butcher, poised to strike a mighty bull,
watched, then struck Apsyrtus against the sacred temple wall
that the Brygi dwellers opposite once built for Artemis.
There in its vestibule he fell upon his knees; at last the hero,
breathing his life away, with both his hands held up
the black blood welling from the wound; and his sister's veil
pale as silver; then his blood stained her robe as she shrank.
The Fury, subduer of all, looked sharply askance
with pitiless eye on the foul, murderous deed they wrought.
The hero, son of Aeson, cut the dead man's extremities,
three times licked blood, three times spat pollution from his teeth,
as law requires a killer to atone for murder by treachery.
He buried the fresh corpse in the earth, where even now
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book IV · Lines 457–480
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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