Callimachus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | c. 310 BC |
| Died | c. 240 BC Alexandria, Ptolemaic Kingdom |
| Period | Hellenistic period |
| Genre | Aetiology,Epigram,Iambus,Hymn,Epyllion |
| Notable works | Aetia Hecale |
Callimachus (/kəˈlɪməkəs/;Ancient Greek:Καλλίμαχος,romanized: Kallimachos;c. 310 – c. 240 BC) was anancient Greekpoet,scholar, andlibrarian who was active inAlexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative ofAncient Greek literature of theHellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which do not survive, in a wide variety of genres. He espoused anaesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of theRoman Empire and, through them, on all subsequentWestern literature.
Born into a prominent family in the Greek city ofCyrene in modern-dayLibya, he was educated in Alexandria, the capital of thePtolemaic kings of Egypt. After working as a schoolteacher in the city, he came under the patronage of KingPtolemy II Philadelphus and was employed at theLibrary of Alexandria where he compiled thePinakes, a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature. He is believed to have lived into the reign ofPtolemy III Euergetes.
Although Callimachus wrote prolifically inprose andpoetry, only a small number of his poetical texts have been preserved. His main works are theAetia, a four-bookaetiological poem, six religioushymns, around 60epigrams, a collection ofsatiricaliambs, and a narrative poem entitledHecale. Callimachus shared many characteristics with his Alexandrian contemporariesAratus,Apollonius of Rhodes andTheocritus, but professed to adhere to a unique style of poetry: favouring small, recondite and even obscure topics, he dedicated himself to small-scale poetry and refused to write longwindedepic poetry, the most prominent literary art of his day.
Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the lateRepublic and the earlyEmpire.Catullus,Horace,Vergil,Propertius, andOvid saw his poetry as one of their "principal model[s]"[1] and engaged with it in a variety of ways. Modern classical scholars view him as one of the most influential Greek poets. According to theHellenistKathryn Gutzwiller, he "reinvented Greek poetry for the Hellenistic age by devising a personal style that came, through its manifestations in Roman poetry, to influence the entire tradition of modern literature".[2]
An entry in theSuda, a 10th-centuryByzantineencyclopaedia, is the main source about the life of Callimachus. Although the entry contains factual inaccuracies, it enables the re-construction of his biography by providing some otherwise unattested information.[3] Callimachus was born into a prominent family inCyrene, a Greek city on the coast of modern-day Libya.[3] He refers to himself as "son of Battus" (Ancient Greek:Βαττιάδης,romanized: Battiades), but this may be an allusion to the city's mythological founderBattus rather than to his father.[4] His grandfather, also named Callimachus, had served the city as a general. His mother's name was Megatima, mistakenly given as Mesatma by theSuda. His unknown date of birth is placed around 310 BC.[3]
During the 280s, Callimachus is thought to have studied under the philosopherPraxiphanes and the grammarian Hermocrates atAlexandria, an important centre of Greek culture.[5] He appears to have experienced a period of relative poverty while working as a schoolteacher in the suburbs of the city.[6] The truthfulness of this claim is disputed by the classicistAlan Cameron who describes it as "almost certainly outright fiction".[7] Callimachus then entered into the patronage of thePtolemies, the Greek ruling dynasty of Egypt, and was employed at theLibrary of Alexandria. According to theSuda, his career coincided with the reign ofPtolemy II Philadelphus, who became sole ruler of Egypt in 283 BC.[6]Classicist John Ferguson puts the latest date of Callimachus's establishment at the imperial court at 270 BC.[6]
Despite the lack of precise sources, the outlines of Callimachus's working life can be gathered from his poetry. Poems belonging to his period of economic hardship indicate that he began writing in the 280s BC, while his poemAetia shows signs of having been composed in the reign ofPtolemy III Euergetes, who ascended to the throne in 246 BC. Contemporary references suggest that Callimachus was writing until about 240 BC, and Ferguson finds it likely that he died by 235 BC, at which time he would have been 75 years old.[8]
According to theSuda, Callimachus wrote more than 800[9] individual works in prose and poetry.[2] The vast majority of his literary production, including all prose output, has been lost with the exception of hisEpigrams andHymns. All other works mentioned below have been preserved infragments.[9] Callimachus was an admirer ofHomer, whom he regarded as impossible to imitate. This could be the reason why he focused on short poems.[10]
Epigrams, brief, forceful poems originally written on stone and onvotive offerings, were already established as a form of literature by the 3rd century BC.[11] Callimachus wrote at least 60 individual epigrams on a wide range of topics. While some of them arededicatory orsepulchral, others touch onerotic and purely literary themes.[12] Most of them were transmitted in thePalatine Anthology, a 10th-centurymanuscript discovered in 1606 atHeidelberg containing a collection of Greek epigrams and poems.[13] Often written from a first-person perspective, theEpigrams offer a great variety of styles and draw on different branches of the epigrammatic tradition.[14] According to the Callimachus scholar Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, "[t]heir intelligent play on language, meter, and word placement" have placed the poems among the most prominent works of theHellenistic period.[15]
Among the oldest forms of religious writing,hymns were "formal addresses to a god or group of gods on behalf of a community".[16] Cultic hymns were written and performed in honour of a particular god; examples of this genre can be found in mostGreek lyric poets. A typical hymn would contain aninvocation of the god, praise of his or her attributes, and a concluding prayer with a request for a favour.[17] Callimachus wrote six such hymns,[18] which can be divided into two groups: hisHymn to Apollo,to Demeter andto Athena are consideredmimetic because they present themselves as live re-enactments of a religious ritual in which both the speaker and the audience are imagined to take part. TheHymn to Zeus,to Artemis, andto Delos are viewed as non-mimetic since they do not re-create a ritual situation.[19]
It is contested among scholars of ancient literature whether Callimachus's hymns had any real religious significance. The dominant view holds that they were literary creations to be read exclusively as poetry, though some scholars have linked individual elements to contemporary ritual practice. This issue is further complicated by Callimachus's purposeful amalgamation of fiction and potential real-world performance.[20]
The Greek wordαἴτιον (aition, 'cause')[21] means an attempt to explain contemporary phenomena with a story from themythical past. The title of Callimachus's work can be roughly translated into English as "origins".[22] TheAetia contains a collection of origin stories. Ranging in size from a few lines to extensive narratives, they are unified by a common metre—theelegiac couplet. With few exceptions, the collection is the earliest extant source for most of the myths it presents.[22] Throughout the work, the poet's voice repeatedly intrudes into his narratives to offer comments on the dramatic situation. This pattern is described by theHellenistKathryn Gutzwiller as one of the poem's most influential features.[23]
The poem is thought to have had about 4,000 lines and is organised into four individual books, which are divided in halves on stylistic grounds.[9] In the first book, Callimachus describes a dream in which, as a young man, he was transported by theMuses toMount Helicon inBoeotia. The young poet interrogates the goddesses about the origins of unusual present day customs. This dialogue frames all aetiologies presented in the first book.[24] The stories in the book include those ofLinus and Coroebus,[25] Theiodamas, king of theDryopes[26] and the voyage of theArgonauts.[27] The second book continues the first's dialectic structure. It may have been set at asymposium atAlexandria, where Callimachus worked as alibrarian andscholar.[24] Since most of its content has been lost, little is known about Book 2.[28] The only aetiology commonly assumed to have been placed in the book are the storiesBusiris, king ofEgypt, andPhalaris, the tyrant ofAkragas, who were known for their excessive cruelty.[29]
The second half of theAetia does not follow the pattern established in Books 1 and 2. Instead, individual aetiologies are set in a variety of dramatic situations and do not form a contiguous narrative.[30] The books are framed by two well known narratives: Book 3 opens with theVictory of Berenice. Composed in the style of aPindaric Ode, the self-contained poem celebrates queen Berenice's victory in theNemean Games.[31] Enveloped within theepinician narrative is an aetiology of the games themselves.[32] The end of Book 4 and theAetia as a whole is marked by another court poem, theLock of Berenice. In it, Callimachus relates how the queen gave a lock of her hair as avotive offering which later became a constellation, theComa Berenices ("Hair of Berenice").[33]Another notable story from the second half of the work is the love story ofAcontius and Cydippe.[34]
At the close of hisAetia, Callimachus wrote that he would proceed to a more pedestrian field of poetry.[35] By this, he referred to his collection of 13Iambs, drawing on an established tradition ofiambic poetry whose defining feature was their aggressive, satirical tone. Although the poems are poorly preserved, their content is known from a set of ancient summaries (diegeseis). In theIambs, Callimachus critically comments on issues of interest, revolving mostly aroundaesthetics and personal relationships.[36] He uses the polemical tone of the genre to defend himself against critics of his poetic style and his tendency to write in a variety of genres. This is made explicit in the final poem of the collection, where the poet compares himself to acarpenter who is praised for crafting many different objects.[37]
TheIambs are notable for their vivid language. Callimachus couches his aesthetic criticism in vivid imagery taken from the natural and social world: rival scholars are compared to wasps swarming from the ground and to flies resting on a goatherd. He often mixes different metaphors to create effects of "wit and incongruity", such as when a laurel tree is described as "glaring like a wild bull".[38] Ferguson also notes the poems' witty use of proverbs in dialectic passages of dialogue.[38]
Callimachus made only one attempt at writing a narrative poem, a mythologicalepic entitledHecale. Since the poem is estimated to run to have had around 1000 lines, it constitutes anepyllion, a shorter form of epic poetry dealing with topics not traditionally present in larger-scale works.[37] It recounts a story about the Greek heroTheseus, who, after liberating the city ofMarathon from a destructive bull, was hosted by a poor but kindly old woman namedHecale. They form a friendship as she recounts her former life as a member of theupper class. At the end of the poem, Theseus establishes an annual feast and a sanctuary toZeus in honour of his host.[39]
Since most of Callimachus's poetry is critical of epic as a genre, there has been some speculation about why he chose to write an epic poem after all. The author of ascholium, an ancient commentary on the work of Callimachus, stated that Callimachus abandoned his reluctance after being ridiculed for not writing lengthy poems. This explanation was probably derived from the poet's own intimation at the start of theAetia and is therefore of limited authority.[40] According to Cameron, Callimachus may have conceived theHecale as a model epic according to his own tastes.[41]
When working at theLibrary of Alexandria, Callimachus was responsible for the library's cataloguing.[42] In this function, he compiled a detailed bibliography of all existing Greek literature deriving from the library's shelf-lists.[43] His catalogue, namedPinakes after the plural of the Greek for 'tablet' (Ancient Greek:πίναξ,romanized: pinax),[44] amounted to 120 volumes or five times the length ofHomer'sIliad. Although thePinakes have not survived the end of antiquity, scholars have reconstructed their content from references in surviving classical literature. Authors and their works were divided into the broad categories of 'poetry' and 'prose'.[43] Both categories were further broken down into precise subcategories. For poets, these included, among others, 'drama', 'epic', and 'lyric'; for prose writers, 'philosophy', 'oratory', 'history', and 'medicine'. Entries were sorted alphabetically, giving an author's biography and a list of his works.[45] According to the classicistLionel Casson, thePinakes were the first comprehensive bibliographic resource for Greek literature[46] and a "vital reference tool" for using the Alexandrian Library.[47]
In his poetry, Callimachus espoused anaesthetic philosophy that has become known as Callimacheanism.[48] He favoured small-scale topics over large and prominent ones,[49] and refinement over long works of poetry.[9] At the beginning of theAetia, he summarised his poetic programme in an allegory spoken by the godApollo: "my good poet, feed my victim as fat as possible, but keep your Muse slender. This, too, I order from you: tread the way that wagons do not trample. Do not drive in the same tracks as others or on a wide road but on an untrodden path, even if yours is more narrow."[50] The allegory is directed against the predominant poetic form of the day:heroic epic, which could run to dozens of books in length. Contained in the allegory are two reasons why Callimachus did not write in this genre: firstly, to Callimachus, poetry required a high level of refinement which could not be sustained over the course of a drawn-out work;[51] secondly, most of his contemporaries were writers of epic, creating an over-saturation of the genre which he sought to avoid.[52] Instead, he was interested in recondite, experimental, learned and even obscure topics. His poetry nevertheless surpasses epic in its allusions to previous literature.[9]
Although Callimachus attempted to differentiate himself from other poets, his aesthetic philosophy is sometimes subsumed under the term ofAlexandrianism, describing the entirety of Greek literature written in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. In spite of their differences, his work shares many characteristics with that of his contemporaries including thedidactic poetAratus, the epicistApollonius of Rhodes, and thepastoral poetTheocritus. They all interacted with earlier Greek literature, especially the poems of Homer andHesiod. Drawing on the Library of Alexandria, they all displayed an interest in intellectual pursuits, and they all attempted to revive neglected forms of poetry.[53]
Callimachus used both direct and indirect characterization in his works.[54] The use of comparisons and similes is rather sparse.[54] The use of intertextuality is observed inHymn 6, where descriptions of other characters are offered in order to provide contrast to the characterization of the main character.[54] Frequent allusions to theOdyssey and theIliad appear, for example reference to Antilochus inHymn 6. Some Homeric influences can be seen through the use of Homerichapaxes, such as katōmadian.[54]
Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the lateRepublic and the earlyEmpire.Catullus,Horace,Vergil,Propertius, andOvid saw his poetry as one of their "principal model[s]".[1] Due to the complexity of his poetic production, Roman authors did not attempt to reproduce Callimachus's poems but creatively reused them in their own work.[55] Vergil, in hisAeneid, an epic about the wanderings ofAeneas, repeatedly alludes to Callimachus when contemplating the nature of his own poetry. Having followed Callimachus's example by rejecting traditional epic poetics in his 6thEclogue, Vergil labels hisAeneid as a "better work" (Latin:maius opus). Vergil's formulation leaves open whether he sought to write an epic with the refinement called for by Callimachus or whether he had turned his back on Callimacheanism as his career progressed.[56]
Having referred to himself as a "Roman Callimachus" (Latin:Romanus Callimachus), theelegist Propertius follows the example of Callimachus'sAetia by introducing obscure mythological material and numerous recondite details into his erotic history of Rome. At the same time, he challenges Callimachean learnedness by depictinglowbrow details of contemporarynightlife such asstrippers anddwarfs kept for entertainment purposes.[57] Ovid described Callimachus as "lacking in genius but strong in art" (Latin:Quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet).[58] His statement, though seemingly a criticism of the poet, pays homage to Callimachus's belief that technical skill and erudition were the most important attributes of a poet.[59]
Classical scholars place Callimachus among the most influential Greek poets.[60] According to Kathryn Gutzwiller, he "reinvented Greek poetry for the Hellenistic age by devising a personal style that came, through its manifestations in Roman poetry, to influence the entire tradition of modern literature".[2] She also writes that his lasting importance is demonstrated by the strong reactions his poetry elicited from contemporaries and posterity.[59]Richard L. Hunter, an expert on Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, states that the selective reception of Callimachus through Roman poets has led to a simplified picture of his poetry. Hunter writes that modern critics have drawn up afalse dichotomy between the "content-laden and socially engaged poetry of thearchaic andclassical periods"[61] and a sophisticated, but meaningless style proposed by Callimachus.[62] Echoing Hunter's assessment in their 2012 book on the reception of Callimachus, the Hellenists Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan Stephens comment that the scarcity of primary evidence and the reliance on Roman accounts has created a label of Callimacheanism that does not accurately represent his literary work.[48]
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