Alexandrian Poet
The Voyage of Argo. By Apollonius of Rhodes. Translated with an hitroduction by E. V. Rieu. (Penguin Books, 3s. 6d.)
cover of this book reproduces the Pistoxenus Painter's exquisite cylix' showing Aphrodite riding on a bird. That bird is not a swan, as Dr. Rieu supposes; it is a goose, and the. choice of illustra- tion is therefore apter than at first sight might be imagined. For. Dr.' Rieu's attempt to show that Apollonius is more than a poet of the second rank does not convince. This writer had ingenuity, learning and 'great technical competence; yet he was in no way fit to be compared with his great contemporaries, Theocritus and Callimachus. True, it• is unfair to judge Apollonius by the stan- dard of the Homeric epic. He aimed to give pleasure by his dexterous command of the highly wrought poetical style which he affected, a style full of Homeric words and reminiscences, yet marked off from Homer's by its stricter metre, its closer texture and its careful avoidance of the literal reproduction of Homeric idiom. He was a learned poet writing for a learned audience, who would delight in their ability to trace his some- times recondite allusions. Like most of his con- temporaries, he excelled in the depiction of scenes from daily life and in the description of amorous passion; so that he is at his best in the compari- sons with everyday scenes which, after Homer's model, he makes frequent use of, and in his famous account of Medea's love for Jason. With the epic and the heroic he, like the other Alex- andrians, had little real sympathy; only, unlike most of the others, he was not wise enough to realise it. But even on his strongest ground he falls well below the best of his contemporaries—only compare the best Apollonian similes with Calli- machus's account of the storm coming over a clear sky and of the early dawn near Marathon, or the Apollonian Medea with Simaetha in the first idyll of Theocritus. Theocritus and Callimachus, like all the best Greek poetry, arc easy to learn by heart; Apollonius is practically impossible.
Dr. Rieu in his introduction makes a brave attempt to get round these awkward facts. The ground is made- easier for him by his omission to describe the style of the original poem or the effects its author intended to create, so that he is free to invest it with 'romantic' character and to give its writer credit for various desirable attri- butes, such as a 'deep understanding of human nature' and a 'quiet sense of humour' which no one who has tried to read him in his proper con- text would agree were there. Dr. Rieu tries to excuse the intolerable colourlessness of the .Apol- Ionian Jason on the ground that the poet has not set out to portray a hero, but an 'ordinary man.' This defence is unconvincing; especially since every other character except Medea is as dull as Jason. Even for Medea, Dr. Rieu claims too much. The lovesick girl of Book III is a different person from the formidable sorceress of Book IV; and the former is as much inferior to Theocritus' Simaetha as is the latter to the Medea of Euripides.
Our chief reason for being grateful for the sur- vival of the Argonautira is that we are able to appreciate the skill with which Virgil has adapted his many borrowings from Apollonius. Yet this lightly wrought, artificial and learned work is not without a characteristic charm;' and it is a pity that Dr. Rieu has made no effort to convey it. The style of the Argonautica is rich, ornate, highly coloured, nothing if not poetical; Dr. Rieu ren- ders it in an easy, fluent, readable, flat and Isabella-coloured prose. He maintains a very fair (though not an impeccable) level of accuracy; and he shows considerable dexterity in transmuting the immensely different idiom of the original into his own. Yet just as his introduction utterly fails to explain the spirit and the purpose of the poet, so his translation gives no notion whatever of. the impression given by the language and the style of the original. Dr. Rieu's version is commendably free from the irritating sort of 'tushery' that marks so many archaising translations of Greek litera- ture. But it includes a number of no less irritating modernisms. Medea and her sister refer to Aeetes as 'Father,' so that we think of corresponding scenes in Wimpole Street;. the Amazons were 'by no means gentle, well-conducted folk'; and so on.
Dr. Rieu's translations of Winter have had a phenomenal success; and it is likely that this book, too, will be successful, probably far more so than would a translation that more faithfully repro- duced the character of the original. Those who know the originals may at first be puzzled by the popularity of these clear and readable, but flat and pedestrian versions of the ancient epics. But their success is not surprising. The preoccupation of serious novelists with psychological niceties, which' only now shows signs of being relaxed, has starved the modern public of the pleasure that every reader gets from a good plot. These render- ings allow him to enjoy a good plot without sub- jecting him to the torture which he with his restricted leisure and his utilitarian bias finds the cruellest of all—that of having to struggle with a style which is intricate enough to make some de- mand on his alertness or ornate enough to make some demand on his [esthetic faculty. Still we should be grateful to Dr. Rieu for what he has done to make ancient epic popular, even while we recognise that he owes much of his success to the same factors that account for the fashion for detective stories.
A brief glossary at the end of the present book explains the more important persons and places, but readers are given less help in understanding the numerous mythological allusions than they might reasonably expect. Some will be interested, though perhaps also disappointed, to learn that the legend that Phrixus's ram flew to Colchis is almost certainly later than Apollonius; Profes- sor Donald Robertson has shown that according to all the best authorities he swain.
HUGH LLOYD-JONES
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