The Study of Latin Honours at Victoria College leads into some of the byways of Latin literature, though by the guiding hand of some handbook carefully delineating the limits of each author concerned so that the student will not, in his ignorance, magnify his stature. There is, in golden letters, the phrase of Quintilian's 'si vacet'. All these minor poets should only be read then: 'si vacet'—if you have some leisure: to hunt, perhaps, for a felicitous line or phrase or other small matter. This for the student is adequately frightening, for leisure he has not.

The other approach to the minor Roman poets is if one happens to be concerned with their subject matter. Following up the classical references to the romance of the Argonautical journey, I came upon Flaccus who wrote the Argonautica under Claudius' principate and died young, and against whom I was also warned. The classical sources wrote as if they had found some delight in reading Flaccus' version, but according to the handbooks he suffered from most of the Silver Latin flaws which are extremely frightening to the student—long-windedness, involvedness and obscurity, which means a great expense of time for little pleasure.

I accordingly went over the first three books seeking for that which poets can impart to a romance: a new way of viewing the situation of the characters. I copied some lines which now are on my table, and I find Flaccus is rather close to me and a good friend. In copying I must have been helped by a destiny that brings people together for I was quite unconscious of it then.

The first passage comes from the first book, the moment when Jason hears his uncle's command that to obtain the throne he has first to conquer the golden fleece. One imagines the bold powerful young man but unaccustomed to the world and the court and romantic, having both the vigour and the vulnerability of one brought up in a Centaur's den, who has made many boastful statements and who is now

These airy phantasies have accuracy beyond that of the mythological priggery which they pretend to be.

As this might seem preposterous to the contemporary critic, Flaccus invented elaborate divine intervention stories to rationalize experiences such as this. Everyone was compelled to do this; the field of experience of the first century a.d. contained as much of the chimerical as ours and one had to speak of illusions brought about by a god for a certain reason to bring these experiences within the scheme of things.

The Vergilian touch is in the words 'barbarus, ignotae'. In a scene of this kind the most

memorable, the essential detail is that the girls spoke a language the Lemnian women could not understand. The consciousness of such details is strong in Flaccus, partly because he could not help being inspired by Vergil.

It takes Flaccus a full hundred lines of the most involved divine intervention narrative to justify this description of experience. It may be there is a pattern in these quotations: that Flaccus was conscious of a split between the world of reason and of sometimes beautiful sometimes terrifying phantasy. In any case he lends to the occurrences I quoted a new life in which all layers of the mind are represented and in which, even more important, a general consciousness of the meaning of the Argonautic expedition is conveyed. There is a distinction not to be bridged between his version and a concoction like for instance Robert Graves' The Golden Fleece in that Flaccus retains the view of the expedition as an adventure and a dream.

rota Candida Phoebi,/tale iubar diffundit aquis: nil umbra comaeque/turbavitque sonus surgentis ad oscula Nymphae.⁵

Why is the nymph so utterly unconscious of the harm she is doing? Because Juno has fooled her, being opposed to the expedition: he has told her that her bridegroom was near.

In spite of this rationalization Flaccus gives the essential: the experience of Hylas and the waternymph corresponds to true human experience, although of a peculiar kind, and not to be described more clearly than Flaccus did in the symbol quoted. Hylas, then, fits well into some Orphic analysis of the Argonautic adventure: a certain kind of love bound to be experienced at a certain stage in the journey. It is not known whether this was Flaccus' intention.