ABSTRACT
The rise of Homeric scholarship as an academic discipline coincides with the heyday of Hellenistic poetry. However, apart from holding promise of insights into Apollonius' poetic technique, an inquiry into the scholarly aspects of the Argonautica opens up also the possibility of approaching two central issues of ancient Homeric scholarship. First, one can only shed some light on the pre-Aristarchean period of the ancient Homeric exegesis by indirectly tracing the Hellenistic poet-scholars' achievement through their literary work. Secondly, important information may be gathered from the Argonautica about the Homeric text of the early Hellenistic period. When Apollonius employs in his epic rare Homeric words which occur in earlier or contemporary poets, he will not, as a rule, stick to the meaning the words have in those texts. Of special interest are the relations between Apollonius' Homeric interpretation and Hellenistic vulgate exegesis.
