Callimachus (Greek: Καλλίμαχος; ca. 305 BC- ca. 240 BC) was a native of Cyrene and claimed to be a descendant of Battus. He was a noted poet, critic, and scholar of the Alexandrian library, and enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy II; although he was never made chief librarian, he was responsible for producing the catalogue of all the volumes contained in the Library. His Pinakes (tablets), 120 volumes long, provided the complete and chronologically arranged catalogue of the Library, laying the foundation for later work on the history of Greek literature. As one of the earliest critic-poets, he typifies Hellenistic scholarship.

Elitist and erudite, asserting "I abhor all common things," Callimachus is best known for his short poems and epigrams. During the Hellenistic period, a major trend in Greek-language poetry was to reject the epic that attempted to model itself after Homer. Instead, Callimachus urged poets to "drive their wagons on untrodden fields," rather than following in the well worn tracks of Homer, idealizing a form of poetry that was brief, yet carefully formed and worded, a style at which he excelled. In the prologue to his Aitia, he claims that Apollo visited him and admonished him to "fatten his flocks, but to keep his muse slender," a clear indication of his choice of carefully crafted and allusive material. "Big book, big evil" (mega biblion, mega kakon) was another one of his verses, attacking long, old-fashioned poetry using the very style Callimachus proposed to replace it. Callimachus also wrote poems in praise of his royal patron and a wide variety of other poetic styles, as well as prose and criticism.

Because of Callimachus' strong stance against the epic, he and his younger student Apollonius of Rhodes, who favored epic and wrote the Argonautica, had a long and bitter feud, trading barbed comments, insults, and ad hominem attacks for over thirty years. It is now known, through a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus listing the earliest chief librarians of the Library of Alexandra, that Ptolemy II never offered the post to Callimachus, but passed him over for Apollonius Rhodius. Some classicists, including Peter Green, speculate that this contributed to the poets' long feud.

Though Callimachus was an opponent of 'big books,' the Suda puts his number of works at (a possibly exaggerated) 800, suggesting that he found large quantities of small works more acceptable. Of these only six hymns, sixty-four epigrams, and some fragments are extant; a considerable fragment of the Hecale, one of Callimachus' few longer poems treating epic material, has also been discovered in the Rainer papyri. His Aitia ("Causes"), another rare longer work which survives in tattered papyri and quotations in later authors, was a collection of elegiac poems in four books, dealing with the foundation of cities, religious ceremonies, local traditions, and other customs. One passage of the Aitia, the so called Coma Berenices, has been reconstructed from papyrus remains and the celebrated Latin adaptation of Catullus (Catullus 66). The extant hymns are extremely learned, and written in a style that some have criticised as labored and artificial. The epigrams are more widely respected, and have been incorporated in the Greek Anthology.

According to Quintilian (10.1.58) he was the chief of the elegiac poets; his elegies were highly esteemed by the Romans (see Neoterics), and imitated by Ovid, Catullus, and especially Propertius. Many modern classicists regard Callimachus for his major influence on Latin poetry.

Bibliography

Text

(in classical Greek)

Pfeiffer, Rudolf. Callimachus. V. 1, Fragmenta. (Oxford 1949, repr. 1965); V. 2, Hymni et epigrammata (Oxford 1953).

Commentary

• Bing, Peter. Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos 1-99: Introduction and Commentary (U. Michigan Ann Arbor, 1981).
  
• Bulloch, A. W. Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn (Cambridge 1985).
  
• Hollis, Adrian Swayne. Callimachus: Hecale (Oxford 1990).
  
• Hopkinson, Neil. Callimachus: Hymn to Demeter (Cambridge 1984).
  
• Kerkhecker, Arnd. Callimachus' Book of Iambi (Oxford 1999).
  
• McKay, K. J. Erysichthon: A Callimachean Comedy (Brill 1962).
  
• McKay, K. J. The Poet at Play: Kallimachus, The Bath of Pallas (Brill 1962).
  
• McLennan, G. R. Callimachus: Hymn to Zeus (Edizioni dell'Ateneo & Bizzarri 1977).
  
• Williams, Frederick. Callimachus: Hymn to Apollo (Oxford 1978).
  
  

T ranslations

• Nisetich, Frank. The Poems of Callimachus (Oxford 2001). ISBN 0-19-814760-0
  
• Lombardo, Stanley and Diane Rayor. Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments (Johns Hopkins 1988). ISBN 0-8018-3281-0
  
  

Criticism and History

• Bing, Peter. The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets (Göttingen 1988).
  
• Cameron, Alan. Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995).
  
• Green, Peter. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age Ch. 11: The Critic as Poet: Callimachus, Aratus of Soli, Lycophron and Ch. 13: Armchair Epic: Apollonius Rhodius and the Voyage of Argo.
  

The Poems of Callimachus Frank J. Nisetich,(Translator), Oxford University Press (June , 2001)

Timeline related to Ancient Greek Literature

Neoteroi