Page:The Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.djvu/13



HE author of this poem was the son of Silleus and Illeus. He was born at Alexandria in Egypt, and educated under Callimachus. He received the name of Rhodius, or the Rhodian, either from his mother, whose name was Rhoda, or, more probably, from the city Rhodes. During his stay in this place he finished his Argonautic poem, and founded a school of rhetoric. Ptolemy Euergetes, in whose reign our poet flourished, two hundred and forty-four years before Christ, recalled him from his retirement at Rhodes, and appointed him successor to Eratosthenes in the care of the Alexandrian library. The favours which had been conferred on Callimachus in the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, were continued to him by his successor Ptolemy Euergetes. So that Callimachus, no less than his scholar, was protected and patronized by his prince. This circumstance, with others, gave occasion to those jealousies and dissensions, which subsisted between these rival poets. Callimachus is supposed to have alluded, in the