Abstract

Valerius Flacgus has few readers and still fewer admirers, even among classical specialists. Most of us, if we want to refresh our memories of Hylas, will turn to Theocritus' thirteenth Idyll or perhaps to Propertius' statuesque version. Apollonius Rhodius is read mainly in his third book, so that his Hylas story at the end of the first is ignored, and Valerius Flaccus is hardly read at all. In the year 1894 W. C. Summers in A Study of the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus called for a fair reappraisal of the much-neglected poet. The works of the few scholars who have since attempted a literary assessment lie, for the most part, obscurely stored in the stacks of those Teutonic universities that awarded them a Ph.D.