Apollonius Rhodius, Herodotus and Historiography

Argues that Herodotus is key to understanding genre and the relationship between past and present in Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Receiving Herodotus; 3. Creating authorities; 4. Explaining the past; 5. Telling stories; 6. Greeks and non-Greeks; 7. Kings and leaders; 8. Conclusions and consequences.

About the author

A. D. Morrison is Professor of Greek at the University of Manchester. He is the author of The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2007) and Performances and Audiences in Pindar's Sicilian Victory Odes (2007) and co-editor of Ancient Letters (2007) and Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science (2013). He is currently working on a commentary on selected poems of Callimachus for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series and a 'New Survey' on Hellenistic poetry for Greece & Rome and is co-directing the AHRC project on Ancient Letter Collections (2016–21).

Summary

Examines the relationship of Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica with Herodotus' Histories. Argues that it uses Herodotean historiography as a key intertext in order to manipulate the reader's generic expectations for an epic poem and to complicate the relationship between the contemporary Hellenistic Mediterranean and the distant mythological past.

Product details

• Authors: A D Morrison, A. D. Morrison, A. D. (University of Manchester) Morrison
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9781108492324
• ISBN: 978-1-108-49232-4
• No. of pages: 254
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Antiquity; HISTORY / Ancient / General, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Ancient History, Ancient history: to c 500 CE, Ancient (Classical) Greek, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Literary studies: poetry and poets