Preface

The Best of the Argonauts is a thoroughly reconceived and rewritten version of my doctoral dissertation, "Allusion and the Narrative Style of Apollonius Rhodius: A Detailed Study of Book 1 of the Argonautica" (diss. Berkeley 1983). In my dissertation, I analyzed the narrative of Book 1 strictly from the point of view of the poet's allusive and structural techniques. The study succeeded in providing me with a methodology for exposing and interpreting allusions in the text to earlier and contemporary writers. I set aside the completed dissertation for several years in order to study allusion in other writers with the hope of returning to Apollonius with a more mature and sophisticated understanding of intertextuality, and indeed, work on Horace (TAPhA 115 [1985] 197–206), Callimachus (ClAnt 5 [1986] 155–70), Ovid (HSCPh 92 [1988] 297–314), Vergil (AJP 109 [1988] 309–20), and Theocritus (QUCC , n.s., 36 [1990] 129–40) has greatly enhanced my ability to identify and discuss the influence that one or more texts exert on another.

In addition to refining my ability to understand and articulate my understanding of Hellenistic narrative technique, I expanded my earlier investigation of the Argonautica by considering Book 1 within the larger context of ancient discourse on the hero. In the process, I discovered a recurring theme that sets Jason's status among the Argonauts against the backdrop of archaic, classical, and Hellenistic conceptions of the heroic figure. Although the issue of Jason as antihero or nonhero is far from new, in Book 1 Apollonius appeals to a central question in the Homeric epics: Who is the best among the heroes? My new work thus combines an analysis of

Apollonius's allusive technique, structural patterns, and concept of the hero. In merging these topics, I happily discovered that many of the allusions I discussed in my dissertation concerned, directly or indirectly, the nature of the Argonautic hero. So, while The Best of the Argonauts is a revised dissertation, its focus is quite different from the earlier version. The style of the present version is better, but I fear that I have not been able to rid my work completely of that most infelicitous of academic dialects, dissertationese, for which I ask the reader's indulgence.

I would like to mention those groups and individuals from whose assistance I benefited. First of all, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of the University of Washington granted me release time from teaching to work on the Argonautica . I continued to receive encouragement and advice on a variety of issues from my professors at the University of California, Berkeley: William S. Anderson, Mark Griffith, Erich S. Gruen, and especially Anthony W. Bulloch, whose belief that my dissertation had some merit gave me the confidence I needed to proceed with revision. My colleagues, past and present, in the Department of Classics (Lawrence J. Bliquez, Sheila M. Colwell, Catherine C. Connors, William R. Dunn, Alain M. Gowing, William C. Grummel, Stephen E. Hinds, Merle K. Langdon, Pierre A. MacKay, John B. McDiarmid, and Paul Pascal) have enhanced my research through their personal warmth and stimulating conversations on this and other related topics. In particular, I would like to thank Mary Whitlock Blundell and Michael R. Halleran for their useful comments on the entire manuscript and Daniel P. Harmon for his painstaking reading of and detailed comments on the final version. I would also like to acknowledge the assiduous reference checking of David Hart, my research assistant, and the technical advice of Pierre and Theo MacKay, who have done such a splendid job of typesetting my manuscript. I am also very grateful to Mary Lamprech and Paul Psoinos of the University of California Press for their thoughtful work and advice, and would like to acknowledge the useful criticisms of the referees, Edward Phinney and Michael Haslam, both of whom allowed themselves to be identified.

Above all, I am deeply indebted to my family, immediate and extended, for their support and affection, and it is to them all that I dedicate this book: to my parents, Jim, Sr., and Marion,

for not insisting that I become a doctor, lawyer, or insurance man; to my sisters, Katie, Mari, and Becki, for continuing to worship their only brother as they should, and their husbands John and David; to my in-laws, Norbert, Rita, Tony, his wife Lillian, Chuck, Michael, and Rosaire Betti, for accepting me as part of the family, even though I am not Italian or from Jessup; to my children, Gerard, Michael, and Elizabeth, for their loving abuse as vengeance for their dad's constant teasing; and to my wife, Louise, for . . .  !