Medea’s help Jason is able to overcome the test set by Medea’s father Aeetes who
is the guardian of the Fleece. The whole plot, therefore, turns on their love affair by
virtue of which it can be called a romantic epic. In this it differs from its Homeric
predecessors. At the pivotal point, the tormenting conflict of loyalties which Medea’s
passion engenders is convincingly presented with sympathetic psychological insight.
Once resolved, she has thoughts for Jason alone. The poet vividly portrays her
anxious absorption as she awaits his arrival and in a startling simile expresses both
the present torment of her feeling as she is about to betray her father and also predicts
the destructive effect that her passion will bring in the future.
Meanwhile the maid her secret thoughts enjoyed,
And one dear object all her soul employed:
Her train’s gay sports no pleasure can restore.
Vain was the dance, and music charmed no more;
She hates each object, every face offends,
In every wish her soul to Jason sends;
With sharpened eyes the distant lawn explores,
To find the hero whom her soul adores;
At every whisper of the passing air,
She starts, she turns, and hopes her Jason there;
Again she fondly looks, nor looks in vain,
He comes, her Jason shines along the plain.
As when refulgent Sirius lifts his golden ray,
He shines terrific! For his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues and death;
Such to the nymph approaching Jason shows,
Bright author of unutterable woes;
Before her eyes a swimming darkness spread
Her flushed cheeks glowed, her very heart was dead:
(Francis Fawkes 1780, translating Argonautica 3, 948–963)The conservative style of this translation with its traditional neoclassical idiom
(rhyming couplets) is in marked contrast to the more modern idiom in which
Callimachus is translated above. This difference in the translations reflects a genuine
difference in the styles of these two ancient authors.
On a smaller scale, Hellenistic poets invented the short mythological narrative
subsequently called the epyllion, adiminutive from epos(epic) meaning little or brief
epic. One of the most famous of the epyllia(no longer surviving) was the Hecaleof
Callimachus featuring Theseus and his victory over the bull of Marathon. He empha-
sized not the heroic victory but the heroic poverty of Hecale, who gave the hero
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