The Shelves · Epic and hexameter poetry
Hymns
Ὕμνοι
I · The entry, in his form
In the table of Epic and hexameter poetry: “hymn (five in hexameter, one in elegiacs)”
Conjecturedvery likely classc. 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.
Hymns
Ὕμνοι
Opening words
Ζηνὸς ἔοι τί κεν ἄλλο παρὰ σπονδῇσιν ἀείδειν
What else should be sung at the libations of Zeus...
Length: 1,083 lines
Above, his entry form, filled from what we know. Below, ours.
II · Does it survive? Where to read it
Survives whole
Was it in Alexandria?
Known · AttestedWritten in Alexandria.
In the cupboard: written at Alexandria by a scholar or court writer a source places there.
Read it today
- Hymn to Zeus, Greek (Scaife Viewer) · the original · link checked 31 Oct 2026
- Mair, Callimachus, Lycophron, Aratus (public-domain Loeb scan, PDF) · a translation · link checked 31 Oct 2026
- Mair translation, Theoi Classical Texts · a translation · link checked 31 Oct 2026
III · In the show
The show has not yet spoken of this work.
IV · Sources and the living entry
Ancient references (2)
- Callimachus, Hymn 2.105-113 (Envy and the sea)
- Callimachus, Hymn 4.162-195 (Apollo's prophecy from the womb)
Modern scholarship (3)
- S. A. Stephens, Callimachus: The Hymns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
- A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
- S. A. Stephens, Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
Entry checked 31 Oct 2026 · no corrections · Suggest a correction ›
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