Jason and the Argonauts

King Pelias insisted, so they drove the tautly fitted Argo up through the narrows of the Pontic Sea and past the Cobalt Clashing Rocks to win the golden fleece. Now in a riveting verse translation, Jason and the Argonauts (also known as the Argonautica) is the only surviving full account of Jason's voyage on the Argo in quest of the golden fleece with the aid of the sorceress-princess Medea. Written in Alexandria in the third century BCE, Apollonius' strikingly modern telling of a classic myth is an exemplary product of an emerging multicultural metropolis. Though Apollonius used the manner and matter of Homeric epics, he wrote from a personal viewpoint, critically observing one of the most beloved heroes of Greek mythology. In its combination of the fantastical and the real, the Argonautica is truly without exact parallel in classical or contemporary Greek literature and provides an experience close to magical. Translated by Aaron Poochigian Introduction and Notes bv Benjamin Acosta-Hughes