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 67 of 245
Book II · Lines 217–240
Ancient Greek
p. 140The Argonautica: Book II
p. 141whose care above all gods attends you on your journey:
come help me, rescue this ill-fated man from ruin;
do not set out unheeding and leave me behind
just as I am. The Fury has not only planted
her foot upon my eyes; I drag endless age to its end;
besides, the bitterest evil hangs upon all my evils.
The Harpies snatch the food away directly from my mouth,
swooping from some unseen quarter, ruinous destroyers.
No saving scheme is mine. More easily I slip
past my own mind unnoticed, while it thinks of supper,
than those winged creatures: so swiftly through air they fly.
If ever by chance they leave us a small morsel of food,
it breathes this dank, intolerable force of stench;
no mortal drawing near could endure it even briefly,
not even if his heart were hammered out of adamant.
But bitter, insatiable need compels and grips me fast;
I stay, and staying, put food in my evil belly.
These the oracle says the sons of Boreas shall curb;
They will not ward them off as utter strangers to me,
if truly I am Phineus, once renowned among mortals
for wealth and prophecy; my father Agenor begot me.
When I ruled Thrace, I took the Boreads' royal sister,
Cleopatra, rich in bridal gifts, home as my wife.”
So Agenor's son spoke. Deep grief seized every hero,
Socrates
Reading The Argonautica · Book II · Lines 217–240
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