"The connexion between Virgil and Apollonius is closer than could have been presumed from any mere general considerations. After the Iliad and Odyssey, the Argonautics is the only poem which the intelligent criticism of antiquity declares to have furnished an actual model to the author of the Aeneid, and the similarity is one which the reader of the two works does not take long to discover. Not only is the passion of Medea in Apollonius' Third Book confessedly the counterpart of the passion of Dido in Virgil's Fourth, but the instances are far from few where Virgil has conveyed an incident from his Alexandrian predecessor, altering and adapting, but not wholly disguising it. The departure of Jason from his father and mother resembles the departure of Pallas from Evander; the song of Orpheus is contracted into the song of Iopas, as it had already been expanded into the song of Silenus; the reception of the Argonauts by Hypsipyle is like the reception of the Trojans by Dido, and the parting of Jason from the Lemnian princess reappears, though in very different colours, in the parting of Aeneas from the queen of Carthage; the mythical representations in Jason's scarf answer to the historical representations which distinguished the shield of Aeneas from that of Achilles; the combat of Pollux with Amycus is reproduced in the combat of Entellus with Dares; the harpies of Virgil are the harpies of Apollonius, while the deliverance of Phineus by the Argonauts may have furnished a hint for the deliverance of Achemenides by the Trojans, an act of mercy which has another parallel in the deliverance of the sons of Phrixus; Phineus' predictions are like the predictions of Helenus; the cave of Acheron in Asia Minor suggests the cave of Avernus in Italy; Evander and Pallas appear once more in Lycus and Dascylus; Here addresses Thetis as Juno addresses Juturna; Triton gives the same vigorous aid in launching the Argo that he gives to the stranded vessels of Aeneas, or that Portunus gives to the ship of Cloanthus in the Sicilian race."
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John Conington, P. Vergili Maronis Opera, Vol. II (1872), Introduction, pp. 19–20
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Argonautica
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