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First complete edition in English of Apollonius's myth of the Argonauts, the only surviving Hellenistic epic. This translation, by the poet Francis Fawkes, was edited and published posthumously by the classical scholar Henry Meen. Included is Meen's translation of Colluthus's The Rape of Helen, a c.500 AD-prequel to the Iliad and notably one of the last Greek epic poems. Prior to this publication, the Argonautica had only appeared in English in extracts, translated by William Broome (1727), Gilbert West (1749), and Jeffrey Ekins (1771). Fawkes's translation was followed, later the same year, by another complete translation by Edward Burnaby Greene, which was dismissed as inferior by contemporary critics. "In his lifetime, Fawkes's reputation as a translator was high. He enjoyed the friendship and occasional collaboration of other literary figures, including Samuel Johnson and John Jortin, who both shared his affection for ancient and modern Latin" (ODNB). Fawkes had also published translations of Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, Moschus, Musaeus, and Theocritus. Colluthus was a Greek poet who lived under the reign of Athanasius I (491-518), during the late Roman Empire. His short poem on the abduction of Helen is considered, with Museus's Hero and Leander, the last representative of the Greek poem in the epic-mythological tradition. It was previously translated into English by Sir Edward Sherbourne in 1651. The inspiration for the poem "comes from a well known story First complete edition in English of Apollonius's myth of the Argonauts, the only surviving Hellenistic epic. This translation, by the poet Francis Fawkes, was edited and published posthumously by the classical scholar Henry Meen. Included is Meen's translation of Colluthus's The Rape of Helen, a c.500 AD-prequel to the Iliad and notably one of the last Greek epic poems. Prior to this publication, the Argonautica had only appeared in English in extracts, translated by William Broome (1727), Gilbert West (1749), and Jeffrey Ekins (1771). Fawkes's translation was followed, later the same year, by another complete translation by Edward Burnaby Greene, which was dismissed as inferior by contemporary critics. "In his lifetime, Fawkes's reputation as a translator was high. He enjoyed the friendship and occasional collaboration of other literary figures, including Samuel Johnson and John Jortin, who both shared his affection for ancient and modern Latin" (ODNB). Fawkes had also published translations of Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, Moschus, Musaeus, and Theocritus. Colluthus was a Greek poet who lived under the reign of Athanasius I (491-518), during the late Roman Empire. His short poem on the abduction of Helen is considered, with Museus's Hero and Leander, the last representative of the Greek poem in the epic-mythological tradition. It was previously translated into English by Sir Edward Sherbourne in 1651. The inspiration for the poem "comes from a well known story from the Cypria, but also Triphidorus's lines: Cassandra's reaction to the Trojan horse entering the city in the Sack of Troy is rewritten by Colluthus as Cassandra's reaction to Paris bringing Helen inside Troy. Thus, the poet continues the Iliad in an inverse way, by trying to depict what happened before and what caused the fall of Troy" (Karavas, p. 61). In his notes, Meen traces a parallelism between Colluthus and Apollonius's texts: "the subjects of the two poems are not wholly dissimilar. In the one is celebrated the rape of Medea, in the other the rape of Helen; two events of equal celebrity in ancient story" (p. 385). READ MORE Octavo (204 x 129 mm). Nineteenth-century green quarter cloth, red morocco label on spine, edges sprinkled red. Engraved frontispiece. With the modern bookplate of the Raglan family of Cefn Tilla Court, Monmouthshire, on front pastedown. Board edges worn, minor rubbing to boards and label, a few spots of foxing on initial and final leaves, small worm trail to inner margin of gatherings L-Q, otherwise generally clean. A very good copy. Orestis Karavas, "Triphidorus's The Sack of Troy and Colluthus's The Rape of Helen: A Sequel and a Prequel from Late Antiquity", in Robert Simms, Brill's Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic, 2018.