c. 305–240 BCE · poet · scholar · cataloguer of the Library
Callimachus of Cyrene
Καλλίμαχος
In Alexandria: c. 280–240 BCE
The great poet of the Ptolemaic court (Aitia, Hymns, Hecale, Iambi, epigrams) and the compiler of the Pinakes, a 120-book bio-bibliography of Greek literature. The papyrus list of heads does not name him, and he was probably never head; the Latin Scholium Plautinum calls him royal librarian. "A big book is a big evil" is his.
Their life and work
Born at Cyrene, he taught letters at Eleusis, a village by Alexandria, before the court took him up (Suda). His Hymns and some sixty epigrams survive whole; the Aetia, the Iambi and the Hecale survive in quotations and on papyri, gathered in Pfeiffer's edition. The Pinakes listed authors class by class, each with a short life and the opening words and length of every work; about twenty-five fragments remain.
Whether he ever ran the Library is disputed. The papyrus list of heads leaves him out; a Latin note on Plautus, drawing on Tzetzes, calls him the royal librarian, and Tzetzes' own Greek calls him a young man of the court. Most scholars think he worked among the books without heading them. Known: probable, disputed
Our device: Their emblem is a tag hanging from a roll. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Hymns · c. 280–245 BCE · Survives whole
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Epigrams · c. 280–240 BCE · Survives in large part
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Iambi · c. 270–250 BCE · Survives in fragments
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Aetia · c. 270–245 BCE · Survives in fragments
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Ibis · 3rd century BCE · Lost
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Mouseion · 3rd century BCE · Lost
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Collection of Wonders in All the Earth, Arranged by Place · c. 260–240 BCE · Survives in fragments
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Hecale · c. 260–240 BCE · Survives in fragments
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Pinakes · c. 260–240 BCE · Survives in fragments
- Callimachus of Cyrene, Table and Register of Dramatic Poets, in Chronological Order from the Beginning · c. 260–240 BCE · Lost
- Callimachus of Cyrene, The Lock of Berenice · c. 245 BCE · Survives in fragments
Moments
- c. 270s–240s BCE · Callimachus compiles the Pinakes Known: attested
- c. 260s–245 BCE · Apollonius of Rhodes at the head of the Library Known: probable, disputed
In the show
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Sources (7)
- Suda Kallimachos, κ 227 (opens in a new tab)
- R. Pfeiffer (ed.), Callimachus, vol. I: Fragmenta (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949) frr. 429–453
- R. Blum, Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography, trans. H. H. Wellisch (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991; German 1977)
- A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
- P.Oxy. X 1241 (ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri X, London 1914) col. ii (opens in a new tab)
- Tzetzes, Prolegomena de comoedia Koster XIa I–II
- R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)