This article is about the poet. For the Athenian polemarch at the Battle of Marathon, see Callimachus (polemarch). For the sculptor, see Callimachus (sculptor).

Callimachus (ca. 305 BC- ca. 240 BC) was a native of Cyrene and a descendant of Battiadae. He was a noted poet, critic, and scholar of the Library of Alexandria, 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, instead idealizing a form of poetry that was brief, yet carefully formed and worded, and Callimachus excelled at this style. "Big book, big evil" was 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 student Apollonius Rhodius, who favored epic and wrote the Argonautika, 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 Callimachus' younger student Apollonius Rhodius. Some classicists, such as Peter Green, speculate that this constributed to the poet's 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 Catallus' few longer poems treating epic material, has also been discovered in the Rainer papyri. His Coma Berenices is known only from a fragmentary papyrus text and the celebrated Latin imitation of Catullus (Catullus 66). His Aitia ("Causes"), another rare longer work, was a collection of elegiac poems in four books, dealing with the foundation of cities, religious ceremonies, local traditions, and other customs. 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

Works

• Bing, Peter. Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos 1-99: Introduction and Commentary (1981).
• Hollis, A.S. Hecale (Oxford 1990).
• Hopkinson, Neil. Callimachus: Hymn to Demeter (1984).
• Kerkhecker, A. Callimachus: Book of Iambi (1999).
• Pfeiffer, Rudolf. Callimachus. V. 1, Fragmenta. (Oxford 1949, repr. 1965); V. 2, Hymni et epigrammata (Oxford 1953).
• Williams, F. Callimachus: Hymn to Apollo (1978).

Translations

• Frank Nisetich. Poems of Callimachus (Oxford 2001) (ISBN 0198147600).

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.

Ancient Greek poets | Ancient Greek writers

كليماخوس | Kallimachos | Calímaco | Callimaque de Cyrène | Callimaco | קאלימאכוס | კალიმაქე | Callimachus | Kallimakhosz | Callimachus (letterkundige) | Kallimach z Cyreny | Kallimakhos | Kallimachos från Kyrene | Каллімах