C. VALERI FLACCI

ARGONAVTICON

LIBER PRIMVS.

I sing of the seas first opened to great nautis sailors (emendation: natis sons)
and the prophetic ship, which [crossed] the shores of the Scythian Phasis

1. Prima refers to pervia for the reason that it is the first; cf. VI, 686; Silius Italicus, Punica IV, 167: spicula prima — moriens — sanguine tinguis you, dying, dye the first arrows with blood. Freta is said of the sea in general, not of the Euxine Sea alone, of which he speaks, of course, in Claudian, On the Pollentine War 1 sq.: Intacti cum claustra freti coeuntibus aequor Armatum scopulis audax irrumperet Argo When the bold Argo burst through the barriers of the untouched strait, the sea armed with clashing rocks, etc.; cf. Phaedrus IV, 7, 10; Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto III, 1, 1; perhaps also Martial VII, 19, 2. But the Roman poets generally report that the Argo was the first ship of all: Catullus 64, 11; Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 721; VIII, 302; Amores I, 15, 21; II, 11, 1; Tristia III, 9, 8; Propertius IV, 22, 14; Manilius I, 412; Lucan III, 193 sqq.; VI, 400; Seneca, Medea 3; 301; 363; 665; Statius, Achilleid I, 64 sq.; Dracontius X, 34 ed. Baehr.; cf. Diodorus IV, 41; Eratosthenes, Catasterismi p. 174 ed. Robert; Apollonius, scholia I, 4. Natis is correctly emended in the Vatican manuscript 1653; the Vatican reading nautis, if we preserve it, has nothing to which deum [gods] can refer. A smaller part of the Argonauts were sons of gods, but cf. III, 504; 667 seqq.; IV, 438; V, 504; Apollonius III, 365, who increases the matter in a similar way; Catullus 64, 23; Theocritus, Idyll XXII, 29; they are named ἡμίθεοι demigods in Pindar, Pythian Odes IV, 12 and 184; semigod kings in Statius, Thebaid III, 518 and Achilleid II, 363; semigod heroes in Thebaid V, 373.

2. Regarding the fatidica rate prophetic ship, cf. verse 301. Ora is read as the bank of a river in Ovid, Metamorphoses VII, 438, although it is explained differently there, but it exists besides in Valerius himself II, 11; Ausonius, Mosella 82; 202; as, on the other hand, ripa is said of the sea in Horace, Odes II, 18, 22; III, 27, 24; Avienus, Ora Maritima 1318.