The Shelves · Lyric (melic) poetry

Aetia (Causes)

Αἴτια

Known · Attestedin Alexandria?Conjecturedvery likely class

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I · The entry, in his form

In the table of Lyric (melic) poetry: “elegy”

Conjecturedvery likely class

Callimachus of Cyrene

c. 305–240 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.

Aetia

Αἴτια

Opening words

Πολλάκι μοι Τελχῖνες ἐπιτρύζουσιν ἀοιδῇ

Often the Telchines mutter against my song

Length: not counted

Above, his entry form, filled from what we know. Below, ours.

II · Does it survive? Where to read it

Survives in fragments

Four books of elegy, perhaps 4,000-6,000 lines; substantial papyrus fragments and ancient prose summaries (the Milan Diegeseis) survive.

Was it in Alexandria?

Known · Attested

Written in Alexandria.

In the cupboard: written at Alexandria by a scholar or court writer a source places there.

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III · In the show

The show has not yet spoken of this work.

IV · Sources and the living entry

Ancient references (2)
  • P.Mil.Vogl. I 18 (Diegeseis)
  • P.Oxy. XVII 2079
Modern scholarship (2)
  • A. Harder, Callimachus: Aetia, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
  • A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)

Entry checked 31 Oct 2026 · no corrections · Suggest a correction ›

ΑΙΤΙΑ

Beside it in the cupboard