The Argonautica: Jason and the Golden Fleece (Unabridged‪)‬

The Argonautica, also known as Jason and the Golden Fleece or Jason and the Argonauts, is the only surviving epic poem from Hellenistic Greece. It is a masterpiece whose story was well known to the audiences of the time. Virgil and other later poets were greatly influenced by it. Its author, Apollonius, was a well-known third century BC scholar living in Alexandria during the great age of Ptolomaic scholarship, and his bold attempt at writing a Homeric epic about Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece faced a daunting audience of knowledgeable contemporaries, whose tastes had moved away from long poems and toward short, perfectly crafted poetry.

In a way, The Argonautica can be styled the first romance novel in which the author employs techniques which explore his characters’ inner thoughts and feelings. In fact, recent scholarship has now placed Apollonius in the pantheon among Greece’s greatest poets. This production presents two different, masterful translations of The Argonautica, one in prose form and the other in verse form. First up is the prose translation by R. C. Seaton. It runs six hours and 39 minutes. It is immediately followed by a verse translation by Arthur S. Way which runs eight hours and 13 minutes.