Few facts can be securely established about the life of Apollonius Rhodius. He was born sometime in the early part of the third century B.C., perhaps at Alexandria in Egypt. He studied with the poet-scholar Callimachus. According to one tradition, the two quarreled about literary aims and values, but since Apollonius's Argonautica seems to conform to Callimachus's's advertised claims for poetry, the quarrel probably never happened. There is also a tradition that Apollonius's career started badly but that later his poetry received a more favorable reception. He was probably the director of the great library that Ptolemy II Philadephus (308-246 B.C.) built and stocked in Alexandria. Because the director was generally a tutor to the heir to the throne, Apollonius likely filled that role as well. He was called "the Rhodian" to distinguish him from other figures in history who bore the same name; the only...