ARGONAUTICA, or The Quest of Jason For The Golden Fleece.

Number 1148 of 1500 copies signed by the illustrator. Illustrated by A. Tassos in the classical Greek style. With the monthly newsletter. Folio, bound in the original gray cloth, lettered and decorated in black, maroon, and white, protected by the rare original glassine jacket and housed in the original maroon slipcase. xvii, 307 pp. A very fine copy, essentially as pristine and mint, the rare original glassine jacket well preserved though with some chipping to its spine panel. An especially handsome, clean and well preserved copy.

Edizione: illustrated and signed. translated into english prose by edward p coleridge; with a preface by moses hadas. mr. tassos's drawings in the greek style are reproduced in black and brown, many as full-page illustrations with tint blocks.<br> the argonautica, written by apollonius rhodius in the 3rd century bc,the only entirely surviving hellenistic epic, tells the myth of the voyage of jason and the argonauts to retrieve the golden fleece from remote colchis. their heroic adventures and jason's relationship with the colchian princess/sorceress medea were already well known to hellenistic audiences, which enabled apollonius to go beyond a simple narrative, giving it a scholarly emphasis suitable to the times. it was the age of the great library of alexandria, and his epic incorporates his research in geography, ethnography, comparative religion, and homeric literature. however, his main contribution to the epic tradition lies in his development of the love between hero and heroine – he seems to have been the first narrative poet to study "the pathology of love". his argonautica had a profound impact on latin poetry: it was translated by varro atacinus and imitated by valerius flaccus, it influenced catullus and ovid, and it provided virgil with a model for his roman epic, the aeneid. see bulloch, a.w. hellenistic poetry. pp. 588, 591; race, w.h. apollonius rhodius. p. xiv.