The Roman 'Argonautica': Valerius Flaccus and the epic tradition

The Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus has been faulted both for an overly-simplistic dependence upon Vergil and for lack of cohesiveness. While many critics have pointed to occasional moments of poetic brilliance, Valerius has generally been regarded a distinctly second-rate poet. This dissertation argues that this attitude has led critics to underestimate the weight of Valerius' engagement with his poetic predecessors and even to miss overarching themes that lend the epic the cohesiveness they seek.;The primary tool in finding new interpretations of Valerius is paying dose attention to his allusions, which generally function not simply as "references" to previous authors or means of achieving a Vergilian gravity, but as dynamic interactions with the Latin epic tradition which force reconsideration both of the superficial meaning of Valerius' text and of the source-text. Thus the characterization of Jason, often taken as largely positive, is constantly undercut by reference to negative or deceptive characters in prior epics. More powerfully, we see that Valerius constantly explores the tension between amor and arma which underlies the Aeneid and other Latin epics and that the character of Medea becomes a focal point for this tension and a paradigm for the powerful female characters in other epics which are chronologically anterior but mythologically posterior to Valerius'.;Study of Valerius' engagement with his predecessors is crucial to an understanding of the overarching themes of the Argonautica, for the central, unifying idea behind his epic is not the voyage itself, but the effects of that voyage. The Argonauts' journey opens the doors between the East and West and sets in motion the events that will lead to the Trojan War, Aeneas' flight, and the foundation of Rome. The point of this historical scheme is not simply to make a Roman epic out of the Argonautica, but to allow Valerius to mitigate his position as an epigonal poet. While his poem chronologically follows the Iliad and Aeneid , he recasts its mythological material to make of it a prolegomena to Homer and Vergil.