Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Argonautica
Ancient Greek with an independent metrical English translation
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Facing Pages · Branch 226 of 245
Book IV · Lines 1323–1346
Ancient Greek
p. 462The Argonautica: Book IV
p. 463heroine guardians, Libya's own divine daughters.
Rise now; do not remain so stricken with grief.
Raise your companions now. When Amphitrite presently loosens
the swift-running chariot of her mighty husband, lord Poseidon,
then pay the due recompense back to your own mother
for her long travail in bearing every hero in her belly;
and still regain your home in sacred Achaean country.
They spoke, then vanished from sight at the same spot where they stood,
their voices and forms both disappearing together; but Jason
looked about, sat down upon the earth, and spoke:
Be gracious, glorious goddesses who range the lonely desert;
I cannot grasp the full meaning of your word of homecoming.
Surely I will gather all my comrades together and tell them,
Perhaps we can find some saving sign; many minds are better.
He spoke, sprang upward, and shouted afar to his comrades,
his shoulders dust-begrimed, like a lion roaming wild woodlands
seeking his mate, he roars with heavy, thunderous voice;
the mountain ravines tremble, even when they are far off,
and the cattle that graze in the fields shudder greatly in fear,
as do the herdsmen; but Jason's voice was in no way dreadful
to them: a dear comrade was calling his friends together.
They gathered close by him with downcast looks; then Jason
made the grieving men sit near the ship with the women
and spoke, unfolding every event in ordered sequence:
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book IV · Lines 1323–1346
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