Apollonius of Rhodes

Apollonius flourished in the first half of the 3rd century BC, serving as scholar and librarian at the Library of Alexandria under the Ptolemies. His shorter poems traced the foundations of cities like Alexandria and Cnidus, subjects that flattered his royal patrons. The Argonautica was both innovative and rooted in tradition, offering a new kind of epic for a new kind of Greece — Hellenistic, literate, self-conscious. Modern scholars have debated a supposed literary feud with fellow librarian-poet Callimachus, though almost no evidence supports it and almost nothing is known about Apollonius…