Author: APOLLONIUS RHODIUS
Biography:
APOLLONIUS RHODIUS (b c. 295 BCE: EB)
Apollonius reveals nothing about his personal life in his writings, and the two biographies that have survived from ancient times contradict one another and appear to be fanciful. Did he acquire his surname “of Rhodes” because his mother had been born on that Greek island? Because he went into voluntary exile there? Because he retired there? Or simply because he once wrote about it? Besides his great work, the epic Argonautica, he composed epigrams, grammatical and critical studies, and a work on the mythical origins of cities. He may have been a pupil of Callimachus (b 310 BCE) but the story of a feud between them is probably apocryphal. It does seem to be true that from about 260 to 247 he was the head of the great library of Alexandria. Of the four translators included in the entries here, three have headnotes of their own: J. Ekins, E. B. Greene, and William Preston. For Francis Fawkes see the headnote to Musaeus. Comparing the translations of Fawkes and Greene, which appeared almost simultaneously in 1780, MR praised Fawkes’s “easy, fluent, and perspicuous” verses but complained that Greene’s notes and apparatus were long-winded, and that some passages of the translation made no sense. (EB 16 Feb. 2025; Harvey; Introductions of 1771, 1780 [Greene], 1780 [Fawkes], 1803; MR 66 [1782], 109-13) HJ
Other Names:
- Apollonius Rhodius