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The Geography of the Orphic Argonautica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. R. Bacon
Affiliation:
Girton College, Cambridge

Extract

The author of the Orphic Argonautica was, except by personal election, no poet. He was, however, a very devout reader of poetry and, had he only been Irradiated by the same Celestial Light, might well have been a Milton, for he went to work in very much the same way. Books, and not personal experience, were his guides. His mind was stored with the lines and phrases of other poets; he read his authors attentively: but he did not always understand them, and he lacked the Miltonic art of giving borrowed gems new value from their setting.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1931

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References

1 Platt also takes Helike as a place-name, whereas it is surely the constellation of the Bear, as in line 1104. Cf. Ap. Rh. II. 360 ‘Eλίχες κατεναντίον’ Αρχτον.