Mnemosyne, Supplements / Supplements, Late Antique Literature The Argonautika by Orpheus

This book discusses the complex relationship between the Argonautika by Orpheus, the Homeric epics, and Apollonius’ Argonautica. It demonstrates that Homer’s works and the Hellenistic Argonautica are presented simultaneously as models for, and later imitations of, the Argonautika by Orpheus. Is it possible to be better than Homer? For most literary critics in late antiquity, the answer was an unequivocal no, but the anonymous author of the Argonautika by Orpheus disagreed. This book, the first English monograph on this late antique epic poem, demonstrates that the idea of competing with Homer is central to the Argonautika by Orpheus. Through a series of case-studies on the poem’s diction and compositional technique, it proposes a novel approach. Since the mythological bard Orpheus is ostensibly the poem’s author, readers are invited to view it from two perspectives simultaneously: as a late antique epic modelled on Homer’s works, but also a prehistorical model for Homer’s works.