billybookblog

*contains spoilers* It is interesting to note that both the title of this piece, ‘Jason and the Golden Fleece’, and its author, Apollonius of Rhodes, are known in a variety of forms: as a quick example, the ‘Argonautica’ and Apollonius Rhodius, respectively. It is also interesting that Apollonius spent most of his time in Egypt as scholar and librarian of the Library of Alexander under the patronage of the Ptolemies, and the nature of how he acquired the epithet of Rhodes is forever disputed – scholars suggest that he moved to Rhodes from Alexandra after a period of feeling unappreciated there, or that he was exiled for the poor reception of this particular piece, whilst others claim that it may have simply come about after Apollonius wrote of or dedicated a poem to the isle. A student (or merely appreciator, depending on how one chooses to interpret the parchments) of Callimachus, ‘Jason and the Golden Fleece’ is Apollonius’s greatest surviving text. Written around the third century B...

*contains spoilers* In the concluding line of his very short epilogue to his very long epic poem (made up of very short stories), Ovid confidently claims that his “…fame shall live to all eternity”. This, of course, is well deserved, as ‘Metamorphoses’ is a work of real genius. Imbued in this statement, however, is a continuation of the teasing irony that weaves its way through the piece, as Ovid assures the infinity of something having knowingly propounded only a few pages before ‘The Doctrines of Pythagoras’ that nothing is forever and that everything changes. Ovid is Publius Ovidius Naso, born a generation after the renowned Virgil at a time when Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) had just secured his position at the seat of power in Rome. Even at the height of his fame as Rome’s greatest living poet, Ovid was exiled by Augustus and spent the rest of his days in Tomis, though he continually pleaded his innocence in the political scandal for which he was punished. His grandest work, ‘M...