also chooses the less shocking versions of some myths, having Medea, for example, merely watch the murder of Apsyrtus instead of murdering him herself. The gods are relatively distant and inactive throughout much of the epic, following the Hellenistic trend to allegorise and rationalise religion. Heterosexual loves such as Jason's are more emphasized than homosexual loves such as that of Heracles and Hylas, another trend in Hellenistic literature. Many critics regard the love of Medea and Jason in the third book as the best written and most memorable episode. Opinions on the poem have changed over time. Some critics in antiquity considered it mediocre. Recent criticism has seen a renaissance of interest in the poem and an awareness of its qualities: numerous scholarly studies are published regularly, its influence on later poets like Virgil is now well recognised, and any account of the history of epic poetry now routinely includes substantial attention to Apollonius. Foundation-poems A handful of fragments are all that survive of his other work, mostly ktiseis () or 'foundation-poems', apparently dealing with the mythical origins of cities, a theme that Apollonius also touches on in Argonautica (as for example in the foundation of Cius, 1.1321-23). The fragments have been given considerable attention recently, with speculation about their authenticity, about the subject matter and treatment of the original poems, their geo-political significance for Ptolemaic Egypt, and how they relate to Argonautika. The Founding of Alexandria: all that survives is the title and a scholar's marginal note, written in a manuscript of a different author (Nicander), attributing to this Apollonius poem the statement that all biting creatures originated from the blood of the Gorgon. The Founding of Caunus: two comments in Parthenius's Love Stories are the only testament to this poem but they seem to give conflicting accounts. According to one, it deals with the story of Lyrcus; according to the other, it deals with the story of Byblis. This might indicate a loose, episodic structure, rather than a unified narrative. It might then be inferred that this kind of treatment was typical of his other foundation poems as well (the question of unity is one of the main issues even in Argonautica, which is sometimes termed an "episodic epic"). Five hexameter verses attributed to Apollonius may be a fragment of this poem but they seem unrelated to the stories of Lyrcus and Byblis and some scholars think they