SOURCE: "Kallimachos," in Hellenistic Poetry and Art, Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1964, pp. 98-121.

[In the following excerpt from his Hellenistic Poetry and Art, Webster considers Callimachus's reputation during his career and his aesthetic criteria, simultaneously providing an extensive examination of the poet's works, including the hymns, the iambi, Hecale, and the epigrams. Webster's discussion entails a summary of the "hostilities" concerning aesthetics that Callimachus found himself engaged in with other poets. In his final assessment, Webster attributes Callimachus with "elegance, humour, learning, and variety."]

Kallimachos certainly lived through the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphos and died in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes. He came from Cyrene to Alexandria; he was first a schoolmaster in the suburb of Eleusis, then was in charge of the catalogue at the Library. The fixed points for his production are given by Pfeiffer [Callimachus]: Epigram 20 is very early, about 300, and was written at Cyrene; it probably takes Epigram 54, also for a Cyrenaean, with it. Hymn 1, according to Wilamowitz, contains a reference to Philadelphos early in his reign, i.e. about 280 B.C.; this therefore will have been written soon after Kallimachos came to Alexandria. The Galateia (fr. 378-9) is probably not long after 278 B.C. The Marriage of Arsinoe (fr. 392) is about 276/5 B.C., and the Deification of Arsinoe (fr. 228) in 270 B.C. The Hymn to Delos (IV) is dated by Wilamowitz 269/5, after the death of Arsinoe and before the outbreak of the war with Antigonos Gonatas. If, as he argues, Kallimachos had visited Delos when he wrote this hymn, fr. 114 (probably from bk. III of the Aitia), fr. 203 (Iambos XIII), and Ep. 62 derive from the same visit: fr. 178 (Aitia) in which Kallimachos denies knowledge of seafaring should be earlier.

Theokritos' dated poems belong to the years 273/70, and according to our argument presuppose a first edition (in whatever form) of Apollonios' Agronautika, as do also the Aitia and the Hekale of Kallimachos. The likely echoes of Theokritos in Kallimachos are two in the Hekale, one in the third book of the Aitia; the introduction to the eleventh idyll is clearly echoed in Epigram 46, which is itself dated well before 240, because, as Pfeiffer notes, the doctor consoled in that epigram has a son who is referred to as an authoritative person in a papyrus of 240. It is at least tempting to put fairly near 270 B.C. some other poems recalling the manner rather than the wording of Theokritos, particularly Hymns V and VI which have the same spirit as Theokritos' Adoniazousai (XV). Four further epigrams may also belong here; Ep. 30 (note also the name Kleonikos) and 43 recall the unhappy lover of Theokritos XIV; Ep. 22 is bucolic, not only in matter but also in the bucolic anaphora, which is found again in the first book of the Aitia (fr. 27); Ep. 52 may be a compliment to the young Theokritos.

After 265 B.C. we have no firm dates again until the beginning of the reign of Euergetes in 246 B.C. It can at least be suggested that most of the last two books of the Aitia, the Hekale, and the third hymn belong here; and Iambos IV with its pair of birds has perhaps a reminiscence of the Hekale. For the last period Hymn II is dated by its reference to Euergetes (26). The Coma Berenices belongs to 246/5 B.C. with fr. 388 rather earlier and fr. 387 rather later. The prologue of the Aitia, written when Kallimachos had lived 'many decades', must belong to this time, and the reference to Parmenion's Serapieion in the first Iambos may place this here too. Possibly also the Sosibios poem (fr. 384) is very late; it is as frigid as the Coma Berenices.

The late dating of the first Iambos, if it can be maintained, is extremely interesting as it may be Kallimachos' last word on literary disputes. He pictures Hipponax returning from the dead to summon the philologoi to the new Serapieion to hear the story of the Seven Sages: Thales was offered the cup which had been bequeathed to the wisest, and passed it on to Bion; so it went the rounds until it came back to Thales, and he dedicated it to Apollo at Branchidai. The Alexandrian scholar-poets are not only told the story of the Seven Sages by a revenant; they are also told it among the statues of wise men in the Serapieion, if Professor Rees'[Classical Review, vol. 75, 1961] attractive interpretation is right. Euhemeros in the poem is a statue, presumably one of a group like the remarkable collection of Homer, Pindar, Demetrios of Phaleron, Orpheus, Hesiod, Protagoras, Thales, Herakleitos, and Plato from the Exedra of the Serapieion at Memphis; similar groups are known in mosaics, which presumably derive from Hellenistic paintings. The presence of two Early Hellenistic figures, Euhemeros and Demetrios of Phaleron, in these groups of classical and mythical figures shows how strongly the Alexandrians felt themselves the heirs of the whole tradition of Greek poetry and wisdom. Thales at Memphis is explaining a globe with his stick; Thales in the first Iambos is also an astronomer and is scratching geometrical diagrams on the ground with his stick. The metre and the language and the manner of this poem come from Hipponax, but Kallimachos has given the expression an Alexandrian obscurity: Thales is drawing a figure invented by his junior, Pythagoras; Pythagoras is therefore called by the name of the Trojan war hero, Euohorbos, whose incarnation Pythagoras claimed to be. ihis learned allusion is matched by an equally learned vocabulary. But this learnedness is varied with direct flashes: 'my good man, don't wrinkle your nose. I have not much time myself.' But the general purpose must be a demand to cease hostilities, and the revenant Hipponax, who in his lifetime drove the sculptor Boupalos to suicide by his abuse, as he reminds us at the beginning, is the most powerful possible advocate. The solidarity of learned poets is also the message of the fourth Iambos, the story of the two trees, which may also belong to this time, if it is later than the Hekale.

The hostilities themselves are mentioned during this late period at the end of Hymn II, in the prologue to the Aitia, and in Iambos XIII, which is certainly later than the Delian hymn (270/65) and may have been composed as a pendant to Iambos I. The Diegesis to Iambos XIII says that Kallimachos answered those who blamed him for the variety of his poems by saying that he copied Ion of Chios and that nobody blames the craftsman for making many different sorts of object. What is left of Iambos XIII gives first the criticism Kallimachos writes Ionic without going to Ephesos, mixes old and new vocabulary, mixes dialects—then the answer that no one made a rule 'one poet, one genre', then probably the passage about the craftsmen (36) and Ion of Chios (41 f.). The Muses loved him, but now the poets abuse each other so violently that the Muses fly past for fear of being abused. 'Do not wonder then if I sing limping iambics, although I have never been to Ephesos.' The charge against Kallimachos is variety of metre, dialect, and vocabulary; his countercharge is mutual abuse and lack of inspiration.

The abuse poured out by rival poets in Iambos XIII is personified by Phthonos and Momos of Hymn II(105): 'Envy said in Apollo's ear, "I do not like the singer who does not sing as the sea." Apollo kicked Envy out and said: "The Assyrian river's stream is great but carries most of the filth of the land and much rubbish on its waters. Demeter's bees do not bring water from everywhere but the little water, finest flower, which wells clean and undefiled from a holy spring." Farewell, Lord. May Criticism dwell where Envy is.' Viewed with the charge, the defence is an admission of writing many kinds of poetry, a claim that each poem is comparable to the finest, purest spring water, and a countercharge that the large poem contains a lot of filth and rubbish (this elaborates the lack of inspiration alleged in Iambos XIII). It sounds as if Kallimachos has been in danger of losing some position and that, although Phthonos has been defeated, criticism (Momos) remains. Wilamowitz suggests that the reference may be to Apollonios' withdrawal to Rhodes; chronologically this seems unlikely, and as the scholiast (on 1. 26) says that Kallimachos gives divine honours to Euergetes as a scholar, the patronage of Euergetes would seem to be what Kallimachos achieved against his rivals and detractors; with the new king as his patron he could adopt towards others the lofty attitude of the first Iambos, and call his own song 'stronger than the evil eye' as he does in Epigram 21 (perhaps the concluding epigram of a collection of epigrams). In the context of the historical situation, Berenike of Cyrene's defeat of Demetrios, and her marriage with Euergetes, the whole hymn makes sense: Kyrene as the bride of Apollo defeating the lion (90 f.) is a divine parallel to the story of Berenike, Demetrios, and Euergetes, just as Apollo's rejection of Phthonos is a divine parallel to Euergetes' giving patronage to Kallimachos in spite of his detractors. We should not simply identify Apollo and Euergetes: we should rather say that the human event has a divine parallel (which in the case of Apollo and Kyrene lies in past history). A rather similar kind of near-identification is to be seen on the later Archelaos relief: Homer's fame is eternal and ubiquitous, but Time and the World are given the faces of Ptolemy Philopator and Arsinoe, because they made the Homereion in Alexandria and so ensured Homer's immortality in the Greek-speaking world. Apollo may work through Euergetes but he is also for Kallimachos the god of poetry; the Hymn to Apollo is therefore a very personal poem. Like Hymns V and VI it is a dramatic presentation, and here too the god is going to appear. The other two hymns describe a ritual procession with statue or emblem, but here the laurel, the walls, the doors, the palm-tree, and the swan all feel that the god himself is coming (like Hekate in Theokritos II) and the young men must sing. It is their song that Kallimachos gives in his hexameters, an elegant cult hymn, telling of Apollo's powers and prowess and so leading to the founding of Cyrene, which Apollo pointed out to Kallimachos' ancestor Battos and promised to 'our kings', presumably Philadelphos and Euergetes (65 ff.). Such a hymn from the time of Homer's Delian hymn could always finish with a Sphragis containing a reference to the poet, and this tradition formally justifies the allusion to Kallimachos' own position at the end.

Apollo is quoted again in the late prologue of the Aitia (I, 21): 'when I first put the tablet on my knees, Apollo said to me: "The victim must be fat but the Muse fine (leptalee); don't take the high-road but the untrodden path, even if it is narrower".' Originality is emphasized more obviously here than in the Hymn [to Apollo], but there too the clean spring is only known to Demeter's priestesses, just as here Kallimachos claims to sing among those who love the shrill sound of the cicada and not the braying of asses. After Apollo's advice the poem comes to its conclusion with a curse upon old age and an assertion that the Muses will not desert their own when he grows grey: this is the confident spirit of the first Iambos. The beginning part of the poem with the ancient commentary goes into greater detail: 'The Telchines grumble at my song (ignorant of the Muse, they are not beloved by her), because I never completed a single continuous song in many thousands of verses to reverend kings or former heroes, but spin my song small, like a child, though the decades of my years are not few. I say this to the Telchines: "Prickly tribe, knowledgeable at wasting away your own hearts, I am truly oligostichic. Bounteous Demeter defeats the tall oak; the fine (lepton) sayings taught that Mimnermos is the sweeter of the two poets, the large woman failed. Let the Massagetai shoot far at their man. Koan nightingales like ours are sweeter. Away, horrid children of the evil-eye. Judge wisdom again by art not by the Persian measure. Don't ask me to father a loud sounding song. Thunder does not belong to me but to Zeus." 'Here the contrast is very clear between the short fine poems (leptos), which vary in dialect and metre, and the single continuous lone poem, which the jealous critics say that Kallimachos has not written. (The scholiast on Hymn II, 106, says that the Hekale was written in answer to such criticism; if this is true, the criticism must have been made much earlier and the answer was evidently not accepted.)

The poem is more valuable still for its examples of ideals and critics. Kallimachos admires Mimnermos and Philitas. He dislikes Antimachos' Lyde, as we know from an epigram (fr. 398): 'Lyde, a thick and unclear book'. In this poem (12) the large woman, unfavourably contrasted with Mimnermos' 'fine sayings', must be the Lyde (and the reader is meant to supply Mimnermos' Nanno as a small woman). The objection to the Lyde is presumably that what started as a poem lamenting the loss of the poet's beloved became a jumble of mythology, the Argonauts, Bellerophon, Oedipus, the Sun's cup, etc. But for Hermesianax these were 'holy books' (Ath. 13, 598a), for Asklepiades (Anth. Pal. IX, 63) 'the joint writing of the Muses and Antimachos' made Lyde more noble than any lonian aristocrat and Poseidippos (Anth. Pal. XII, 168) names her in the same breath as Mimnermos' Nanno. Asklepiades and Poseidippos are named by the scholiast on Aitia fr. I as two of the Telchines, the jealous critics. If it is surprising to find two elegiac poets, Asklepiades and Poseidippos, attacking Kallimachos, the answer must lie partly in the dispute over the Lyde. The other author known to us in the scholiast's list is Praxiphanes of Mitylene. Praxiphanes was himself attacked by Kallimachos in a prose work, Against Praxiphanes. Praxiphanes was a pupil of Theophrastos, and Professor Brink [Classical Quarterly, vol. 40, 1946] convincingly argues that as a Peripatetic he would believe in the long poem with organic unity covering its digressions, and the scholiast sums up his list of critics by saying that they blamed Kallimachos because his style was emaciated and he had no length. With length goes the full-bloodedness of the grand manner, which allows digressions within the general scheme; 'emaciated' and 'thick' deprecate the qualities which 'fine' and 'full-blooded' appreciate. The fragment of Kallimachos' Against Praxiphanes (460) throws another name into the battle: 'Kallimachos mentions Aratos as his elder not only in the epigrams but also in Against Praxiphanes, praising him as learned and a first-rate poet'. The epigram (27) cannot be dated: 'Hesiod's the song and the manner. Not the furthest of singers I fear the man of Soli copied but the most honey-sweet of poems. Hail fine sayings, sign of Aratos' sleeplessness.' For Praxiphanes Aratos presumably came into the same category as Empedokles does for Aristotle (Poet. 1447b, 17, 'there is nothing shared by Homer and Empedokles except metre; therefore Homer may be called a poet and Empedokles a physiologist rather than a poet'). Kallimachos answers: he was copying Hesiod and not Homer. Hesiod was Kallimachos' own model; at the beginning and end of the Aitia (fr. 2; 112) he tells of Hesiod receiving his song as he pastured his sheep on Helikon and in the earlier passage he claims that in a youthful dream he himself received the Aitia from the Muses on Helikon. One other epigram should be quoted here. The beginning of the Aratos epigram suggests a book-title; Epigram 6 is also a parody of a book-title for Kreophylos' Sack of Oichalia; the best that can be said of the poem is that it is called Homeric. And with this can be associated Epigram 28: 'I hate the cyclic poem and the high-road and the prostitute; I don't drink from the fountain; I loathe everything public. Lysanias, you are beautiful, yes, beautiful. But before Echo has got this out, someone says, "Another has him".' In this parody of a love poem the comparison of the cyclic poem to high-road and public fountain recalls the prologue of the Aitia and Hymn II. It looks as if 'cyclic' already means (as in Horace, A.P. 136) not only conventional but poem of the Epic Cycle; it would thus cover both Kreophylos and Antimachos.

The epigrams are not dated. The prologue of the Aitia is a late affirmation of Kallimachos' doctrine. Of the critics listed by the scholiast Poseidippos was writing as late as 264/3, but Asklepiades is associated as much with Ptolemy I as with Ptolemy II and Theokritos equates him with Philitas (VII, 40). The Phainomena of Aratos must have been published soon after his arrival at Antigonos' court in 276 B.C., if Apollonios Rhodios already knew it when he wrote the first version of the Argonautika. Praxiphanes need not, of course, have criticized it immediately; the two firm dates for Praxiphanes are the Delian inscription dated epigraphically (270/60 B.C.) and the fact that he was Theophrastos' pupil before 288/7 B.C.; Professor Brink puts his birth about 340 B.C. It seems therefore unlikely that the work which Kallimachos answers in Against Praxiphanes was written much later than 270. Another piece of early evidence for the clash of two poetic ideals is in Theokritos, not only in his rewriting of Apollonios in Idylls XIII and XXII but in his criticism of the 'birds of the Muses' who 'toil vainly, crowing against the Chian singer' (VII, 47). The echoes of Theokritos in Kallimachos have already been noticed, and it is at least possible that the love epigram (52) is a pretty compliment to an ally. On the evidence of Idyll VII Theokritos had declared himself by 270, and Timon's knowledge of the struggles in the bird-cage is certainly not later.

The prologue to the Aitia is therefore a late stage in an action which had been going on for thirty years. The name Telchines suggests not only malice but Rhodes. Among the known critics of the scholiast's list only Praxiphanes could be called a Rhodian, and he may have migrated to Rhodes before the death of Theophrastos. If Praxiphanes was in Rhodes from about 290 onwards and as an Aristotelian was in favour of long poetry, was it to him or to his entourage that Apollonios went when he retired from Alexandria and did Kallimachos include Apollonios in the Telchines? One of the links between the two may have been a veneration for Antimachos, whom Apollonios edited and used as a source … and whom Praxiphanes as a Peripatetic would venerate out of loyalty to Plato. Praxiphanes, like Asklepiades, was probably dead before the prologue to the Aitia was written but Apollonios was still Librarian when Kallimachos feared that he would not get the patronage of Euergetes. Apollonios' name is not in the scholiast, but this may only mean that there was no record of his having attacked Kallimachos in writing, and does not exclude the possibility that Kallimachos meant the name Telchines to include the Rhodian writer of long epic. The Ibis (fr. 381-2) is our evidence that Kallimachos did attack Apollonios, but this may belong rather to the earlier date before Apollonios retired to Rhodes.

Kallimachos claims for himself short poetry, in many metres (Pfeiffer's index lists sixteen), original, learned, only appreciated by connoisseurs. One quality more he gives in his own epitaph (Ep. 35): 'You walk past the tomb of Battiades who was skilled in song and skilled in laughter attuned to the wine'. Gabathuler suggests that this may be the concluding epigram of a collection (like 21). He claims not only serious poetry but also the light touch evident in the asides in the first Iambos. Although some of his poetry is obviously pretty occasional verse (e.g. Iambos XII, fr. 227, 399-401), his light touch makes him sometimes difficult for us to interpret, particularly in the Epigrams. The poem to Theokritos (52) is a pretty compliment rather than an exaggerated declaration of love. And none of the symposion poems (Ep. 1, 8, 25, 28, 29, 31-2, 41-2, 44-6, 52, 59) need be taken very seriously whether they have an obvious literary reference or not: Ep. 43 with its Aristotelian terminology might be the apology of any young hero of Menander and ends with a near-quotation of the Dyskolos (303). But is the poem to Lysanias (28) primarily a condemnation of Lysanias or a condemnation of long poetry? Is the ninth Iambos primarily aetiology or primarily a condemnation of Philetades? And does the charming poem about Orestes (59) imply that Kallimachos lost all his friends by writing an unsuccessful drama? The Suda credits him with dramas, and another epigram (8) prays Dionysos for the short word 'I conquer'. The epigram on Theaitetos (7), who is probably the epigrammatist of that name, is a mock epitaph, but the ideal of pure poetry which theatre audiences reject is Kallimachos' own ideal. It is not an easy ideal, and in Iambos III, another difficult poem in which it is not clear to us whether the real object of attack is a prostitute or the society which lets the poet starve, he writes: 'It would have been profitable to toss my hair to the Phrygian flute in honour of Kybele or in a long frock to wail Adonis as a slave of the goddess. But I madly fumed to the Muses: I must eat the bread I baked.' Theokritos' Adonis festival does not contain a male performer, but Galloi are well known from the Anthology, and later in the third century Dioskorides contrasts the success of Aristagoras dancing Gallos with the disaster of his own poem on the Temenidai.

Herakleitos had lived true to the high ideal, and his 'nightingales' will live (Ep. 2). It is not technically an epitaph because it was meant for the circle of Herakleitos' friends, not for his tombstone; but it has the same simplicity and seriousness as the poems which may be accepted as epitaphs, e.g. Ep. 9, 12, 14-20, 26, 40, 58, 60, 61. Take for instance Ep. 15: " 'Timonoe". But who are you? By the gods I should not have known you, if the name of Timotheos your father had not been on the stele and Methymna, your city. Your husband Euthymenes surely grieves deeply in his widowhood.' Here the genuine feeling suggests a real epitaph; but the poem (13) in which the dead man says that Ploutos is a myth and life is cheap in the underworld is epigram rather than epitaph (cf. 3, 4, 7, 11, 21-3, 30, 35, 43, 61, some of which have been already discussed), and the eleventh Iambos is aetiology cast into the form of an epitaph. The same problem arises with the dedications: the interpretation of the pinax with a standing hero as the gift of a man who was angry with a cavalryman (24) is surely a joke (cf. also 47). The dedication for a temple in Thermopylae (39) was presumably commissioned by the Naucratite who dedicated his tithe there. But did the Rhodian comic actor Agoranax, who dedicated the double-sided mask of Pamphilos, commission Kallimachos to say that the mask was 'not totally ravaged by love, but half like a roast fig and the lamps of Isis' (49)? The other mask epigram (48)—the tragic Dionysos in the schoolroom, which gapes twice as wide as the Samian Gaping Dionysos—is also surely occasioned by seeing Dionysos in a schoolroom and is not a dedication written for the mask.

In the Epigrams Kallimachos wears his learning lightly. The scanty prose fragments (403-64) give some idea of the extent of this learning: he wrote among other things on Contests, Winds, Barbarian customs, National names (which seems to have been a lexikon of names given in different parts of the Greek world), Wonders of the world (chiefly rivers), Names of months, Foundation of cities and changes of name, Nymphs, Birds, and the hundred and twenty volumes of Pinakes, which was a catalogue of all writers giving their lives and their works. This learning shows more obviously in the Hymns and the Hekale than in the Epigrams and most obviously in the Aitia and the Iamboi.

The Hymns are hymns only in two senses: their subjects are gods and a cult place, and like the Homeric hymns all except one are in hexameters. The Homeric hymns were meant for performance at a festival, these hymns are literature to read, and though they have a dramatic setting this setting must not be examined too closely. In the second Hymn as we have seen the poet imagines the holy place quivering in anticipation of Apollo's appearance, then he writes the choral hymn to the god ending as such hymns may with the poet's own view of his art. The introduction suggests Delphi and the hymn ends with the slaying of Pytho, but the emphasis is on Cyrene and even in the introduction the palm-tree is Delian. Perhaps we should think of a temple of Apollo in Cyrene and the audience would know the statue with golden chiton, himation, lyre, bow quiver, and sandals. Kallimachos is only interested in the gold and gives no hint of the posture of the statue. In the other statue-poems also we have no evidence that he made his readers see the statue: Iambos VI gives the dimensions and cost of the Olympian Zeus; the Leukadian Artemis (fr. 31b), the Hera at Samos (fr. 101) and the Delian Apollo (fr. 114) interest him because of their unexpected attributes.

The fifth and sixth Hymns have no personal reference but are more like the Adoniazousai of Theokritos. The identification must not be pressed too far, but essentially the speaker of Hymn V (the only hymn in elegiacs) purports to be a priestess of Athena at Argos instructing and talking to the girls who are to bathe the statue of Athena. Of course she speaks of the statue as if it were the goddess; that is natural for the priestess. She tells the girls to come out because the horses of the goddess' chariot are already neighing. She tells them not to bring cosmetics because Athena did not use cosmetics at the Judgment of Paris. 'Come out, Athena.' She tells diem the story of Eumedes. 'Come out, Athena.' She warns all of the dangers of river water today because Athena is to bathe in it. 'Come out, Athena.' She tells them the story of Teiresias who saw the goddess bathing. 'At last Athena is coming.' This is essentially a simple poem: the stories come from Kallimachos' learning but they are the right stories for the Argive priestess to tell her girls. The speaker of Hymn VI purports to be the instructor of the women who sing to the Basket of Demeter as it goes in procession from the Alexandrian Eleusis. Because this is a festival designed to bring plenty she refuses to tell them of the wanderings of Demeter but tells them instead of the punishment of Erysichthon which is again treated in a highly individual and ironic way. The scheme here is the same as in Hymn V

The first Hymn is a hymn to Zeus to be sung at the libation; in so far as it has a setting, the setting is a symposion. It is a learned poem: the Arcadian story of the birth of Zeus is to be preferred to the Cretan story. Zeus did not divide the world with his brothers; he won his kingdom by force; he is the god of kings, and therefore of Ptolemy Philadelphos. The Hymn to Artemis (III) is in form like a Homeric hymn. 'We sing of Artemis … Farewell, Queen, and kindly accept our Song.' But except for the brief solemn passage about the city of unjust men (122 f.), when Artemis takes over the functions of the Hesiodic Zeus (Op. 225 ff.), the learned list of islands, nymphs, and cities, and the farewell with its four mythological examples of the disaster which ensues from dishonouring Artemis, the poem, as Professor Herter [Kallimachos und Homer, 1929] has shown in detail, may be described as a pleasant trifling with Homeric themes. The technique is known from Apollonios Rhodios: not only translation into Hellenistic terms (as in the Hekale and the divine scenes at the beginning of Apollonios' third book) but direct contrast with the original, as when Apollonios turns Kirke into a nervous aunt. The tone is set in the second line, where Artemis is introduced as hunting hares. Then she appears as a child on the knees of Zeus and makes her demands: behind this scene is Thetis' appeal to Zeus. When she goes to get her weapons from the Kyklopes the contrast with Thetis' visit to Hephaistos is clear: child and monsters instead of goddess and god; and the metalwork which is being made when she arrives is Poseidon's horse-trough instead of tripods for the banquets of the gods. Once (53) a piece of Alexandrian science intrudes; the Kyklops' eye is compared to a shield with four (instead of the Homeric seven) ox-hides, because Herophilos had recently discovered the four skins of the eye. After the serious passage about the unjust city, Herakles on Olympos (144 ff.) is pure comedy: a traditional glutton, he urges Artemis only to shoot the largest animals including oxen. The succeeding sections on islands, nymphs, and cities are full of learning. Not only learned but whimsically obscure is the passage about the dancers (170 ff.): 'when the nymphs surround you in dance … may not my oxen be ploughing another man's field … for the Sun never passes by that fair dance but stops his chariot to watch and the days lengthen.' This involved way of emphasizing the beauty of the dance recalls two lines in the Aitia (ff. 75, 10 f.), where instead of saying 'in the morning the oxen were going to be sacrificed', he says 'in the morning the oxen were going to rend their hearts, seeing the sharp knife in the water'. This is the 'narrow path' of originality in expression.

The fourth Hymn, to Delos, is the longest and perhaps the least interesting: in shape it is like a Homeric hymn and it is packed with learning. It has its political reference to Ptolemy Philadelphos and the Gauls (160 ff.). It has its Homeric reminiscences. Delos 'a fitter coursing ground for gulls than horses' (12) clearly recalls Homeric Ithaka (Od. 4, 605 ff.). In the Homeric hymn to Apollo the story is told shortly (III, 30): all the places visited by Leto refuse her except Delos, who stipulates that Apollo shall build his temple there. All the goddesses are there except Hera and Eileithyia, whom Hera has kept on Olympos. The goddesses send Iris to offer Eileithyia a gold necklace; Eileithyia comes and Apollo is born. What the Homeric hymn does in ninety lines takes two hundred in Kallimachos. Hera puts Ares on Haimos and Iris on Mimas to watch and threaten all the places visited by Leto. (Not long before in the Deification of Arsinoe (fr. 228) Kallimachos had sent Charis to the top of Athos to look over the sea and discover the meaning of the smoke rolling over the sea from Arsinoe's pyre.) Leto visits the places one by one. Twice the unborn Apollo speaks to threaten Thebes (88), to warn her off Kos (162) (because Ptolemy Philadelphos is to be born there), and, extremely late, to suggest Delos as a suitable place. Before this Peneios (121) had been prepared to receive her in spite of the threats of Hera and Ares, but she refused this sacrifice and turned to the islands who fled in terror before Iris. 'They all at her bidding fled in a body down the stream, whichever island Leto approached' (159). There seems to be a contradiction between this conception of islands that run away and the other conception of Delos as the wandering island among fixed islands (190 ff.). Presumably Kallimachos would answer that the island nymph is not bound to her island, as when the islands dance round Delos, but the juxtaposition of the two conceptions is unfortunate and perhaps argues a lack of visual imagination in the poet. Delos defies Hera's anger. Iris flies to tell Hera. Then (228) she sits beneath Hera's throne, like one of Artemis' hunting dogs, ears pricked, always ready for orders; she sleeps beside the throne with her head lolling on her shoulders. This is one of the few passages where Kallimachos seems to be thinking of a work of art. Hera, after a taunt at Zeus' women who give birth on deserted rocks, pardons Asterie (Delos) in spite of her criminal conduct, because in the past she preferred the sea to Zeus. This is in Kallimachos' best manner.

The one poem in which Kallimachos employs his technique on a larger scale is the Hekale. Its length has been estimated at a thousand lines, and the scholiast to Hymn II, 106 says that it was an answer to those who charged him with being incapable of writing a large poem. Even if the estimate is right, it is considerably shorter than any of Apollonios' four books. The ancient Summary tells us that Theseus, having escaped the plot of Medeia, was carefully guarded by his father, having unexpectedly returned from Troizen. Wanting to go and attack the bull of Marathon, he had to escape secretly in the evening. Suddenly a storm broke and he took refuge in the hut of Hekale. In the morning he went out and overcame the bull and returned to Hekale. He found her dead and lamented her. He rewarded her by bringing together the people into a deme which he called after her and established a precinct of Zeus Hekaleios. Plutarch, Thes. 14, adds the point that Hekale vowed a sacrifice to Zeus if Theseus returned. The Priapea 12, 3 says that Theseus actually found her on the pyre. Ovid tells us that she was never married (rem. Am. 747). Statius (Theb. xii, 581) speaks in a single sentence of Marathon Crete, and Hekale's tears. Many fragments survive, and it is justifiable to follow every hint in placing them.

The poem starts with Hekale living on the Eastern slopes of Pentelikos, honoured because she is hospitable, comely in her broad shepherd's hat, with a shepherd's crook in her hand and a stick of heath to prop her aged steps. The picture recalls the realistic old figures of Hellenistic art, but perhaps Kallimachos felt that he was getting too sentimental (having used all his powers of alliteration and assonance in this description) and pulled himself up with the word ποιηφάγον (fr. 365), normally used of 'grass-eating' animals but here of the old woman, whose diet was vegetables. How he managed the transition to Theseus is unknown; perhaps Hekale foresaw the storm because of the snuffs on the wick of her lamp (fr. 269), and perhaps the poet addressed Adrasteia here (fr. 299, 687) because Hekale's life was near its end.

Theseus, like Hekale, is described: he wears a new Thessalian hat and a long chiton (fr. 304, 293). Presumably the various fragments referring to the Argolid come here and his journey was narrated, perhaps with considerable aetiological digression. Medeia recognizes him and tries to poison him, but Aigeus has also recognized him and prevents him drinking: someone curses Medeia. Here the story evidently follows the same lines as in Plutarch's Theseus (ch. 12). The account of Theseus' recognition tokens, sword and boots, is given by the poet, partly in narrative, partly as a speech by Aigeus to Aithra, which continues to within thirty lines or so of the point where Theseus sets out to find the Marathonian bull. This must therefore be a flashback to the time when Aigeus was with Aithra in Troizen, and perhaps fr. 359, Aigeus 'picks up his armour and says', marks the return to the story: Aigeus forbids Theseus to leave Athens. As far as we can appreciate this part it is elegant narrative with Homeric echoes and a fair proportion of rare words.

The papyrus resumes with a description of clear weather while it was still midday; in the evening when daughters ask their mothers for the evening meal (a Hellenistic elaboration of the simple term, evening; so later the poet gives an elaborate description of dawn) then the storm gathered over all the mountains of Attica and the North wind fell upon the clouds. Surely the effect which Kallimachos wants here is that the storm, coming over Parnes, thyme-clad Aigaleos, rough Hymettos, chases Theseus up the road, and therefore Theseus has already started 'while it was still midday'; this is not really inconsistent with the Summary's 'about evening' because it is evening before Theseus has got far.

Theseus finds shelter in Hekale's hut: 'Be the craftsman of my life and conqueror of my hunger' (fr. 267). Pfeiffer has shown that the model here is Odysseus' visit to Eumaios in the second half of the Odyssey, but this is Hellenistic genre-painting with all the colours of assonance and alliteration and with rare words. Hekale answers 'There is water and earth and a baking stove' (fr. 268). He takes off his cloak, she sits him down, she makes up the fire, she heats water for washing, she gives him olives, vegetables, and bread.

A papyrus fragment (fr. 253) gives on one side the end of Theseus' speech and on the other side part of Hekale's answer. Theseus told her who he was and that he was going to Marathon but perhaps not much more, before he asked who she was. She probably accused him of waking sleeping tears (fr. 682, perhaps also fr. 313 belongs here). She had been well off and of good family (fr. 254). She was turned out of her property and complained to the kings, and she was brought from Kolonos here, where she lives among poor farmers (this seems a possible way of putting the fragments together and may fill the gap in fr. 253). She goes back to her prosperity: 'I was watching the oxen circling my threshing-floor, when a chariot brought him from Aphidnai, like the kings who are sons of Zeus or god himself. I remember he had a fair cloak, held by golden pins, work spider-fine.' The abrupt introduction without a name shows that the man from Aphidnai must be a known character, and Pfeiffer's suggestion of Aigeus seems almost certain. Then she goes on to describe the fine down on his face, like helichryse (fr. 274), and his fair hair, which waved about his head, whereas Theseus' hair is cropped close (fr. 361, 376, 281). Nevertheless the likeness is amazing (fr 367). Here too the background is Homeric, the youthening of Odysseus in the sixth book of the Odyssey and Helen's recognition of Telemachos in the fourth. Perhaps she leads on to the rest of the story by wishing she had never met Aigeus (fr. 619).

We cannot here be far from two overlapping papyri, which place nine book fragments. Hekale speaks of two children whom she brought up in every kind of luxury. Then a gap probably of at least twenty-five lines, in which presumably the sentiment 'God did not give mortals laughter without tears' (fr. 298) belongs. Then, 'Did I refuse to hear death calling me a long time ago that I might soon rend my garments over you too.' There are two possible interpretations: 'I failed to die when one (or both) of the children died, and therefore now I shall have also to see you, Theseus, die', or she transposes herself into the past 'I failed to die when the first of the children died in order that shortly after I might see you, X (the other child), die'. With the second interpretation the death of the first child (and therefore probably the front of Ox. Pap. 2377) must come in the gap. With the first interpretation Hekale fears that Theseus, who is so like the young Aigeus of long ago, will be killed by the Marathonian bull of which he had just told her. Hekale goes on to speak of Kerkyon, who fled from Arcadia and dwelt near, a bad neighbour to us. 'May I dig out his eyes and eat him raw!', and presumably soon afterwards 'May I die when I hear of him dead' (fr. 591). Hekale does not know that Kerkyon has already been killed by Theseus, and this is a wish which comes true, because she dies the day after Theseus has told her. On the first interpretation Hekale's narrative may be broken here, and Theseus may tell her of Kerkyon. Then she goes on to describe the death of the other child: 'this was my blackest day' (fr. 348). The front of Ox. Pap. 2377 has something about Peteus, son of Orneus, about fetching horses from Eurotas, possibly about Cape Malea, and about sailing with a hostile omen, and something about kings. It is a reasonable conjecture that the second child was sent on an expedition by Peteos and died in a disaster at sea. But who were the children? Ovid's evidence that Hekale was never married must be trusted. She may have been raped by Aigeus or another; but her account of bringing up the children sounds more like a nurse than a mother. A possible clue is given by fr. 527: 'whom a concubine bore to him'. The children may have been illegitimate sons of Aigeus whom he left with Hekale to bring up. At the end of this scene Hekale presumably reproached herself for garrulity (fr. 310, 483).

Hekale went to bed (fr. 256). Theseus perhaps lay outside with his head on a stone (fr. 375). Hekale saw him get up (fr. 257) and presumably then prayed to Zeus for his safe return (Plutarch). Theseus went to Marathon and captured the bull, which had tried to escape up a valley. As he brought the bull back, the villagers were terrified, but he told them to send a messenger to Aigeus; then they sang a paian and pelted him with leaves, and the women wound their girdles round him (fr. 260). Is it perhaps here that someone sings a hymn to Aithra among the assembled women? (fr. 371).

After a gap of twenty-two lines the crow is speaking and the crow goes on speaking till nearly dawn. It follows therefore that Theseus spent the night wherever the victory was celebrated (Marathon?) and only next day found Hekale on her pyre. (It is true that on fr. 351, which is tied to this passage by P. Oxy. 2398, the Suda says 'Hekale said', but as there is no break in front of this passage and the lines continue with another story about the crow, this must be a corruption for 'Kallimachos said in the Hekale'). The preserved sequence then is the crow's account of Pallas, Erichthonios, and the daughters of Kekrops. This is followed by another gap of twenty-two lines in which belong certainly fr. 261, 'I met Athena as she was coming to the Acropolis' (and told her that the daughters of Kekrops had disobeyed her), and probably frs. 320, 332, 374, Athena's anger. The crow goes on 'Athena's anger is always heavy. I was there when I was quite young eight generations ago.' This ends the Erichthonios story. Then after a gap of about twelve lines, now reduced by the two lines of P. Oxy. 2398, the crow continues with the prophecy of the Thriai that the crow will be turned black for informing Apollo about Koronis. Then the crow and her listener go to sleep before dawn. The listener may be the owl, which seems to speak in the first person in fr. 529 (cf. also 326, 608).

But how does the crow come into the Hekale? Gentili [Gnomon, vol. 33, 1961] suggests that as the crow's story quotes two instances of punishment for bringing bad news, the occasion must be the bad news of Hekale's death. The last word before the Koronis story is … 'messenger of evil', and this is the end of the difficult passage which seems to be an interlude between the two stories. In the gap after the Erichthonios story the text picks up with fr. 346, 'may I but have a defence against cruel famine for my belly', then an unintelligible line, then a line which it is tempting to read as άλλ' 'Exάλη λίπε λιτòν ε̈δoς, then an unintelligible line, then 'and groats that dripped from the posset upon the earth … no one be brave enough (?) to go … messenger of evil'. It looks as if, after the story of the crow's exclusion from the Acropolis for bringing the news about Erichthonios, the crow returned to the theme of Hekale's death before going on with the Koronis story. The sequence must be something like this: the crow needs food and now Hekale is dead, and the food is dripping on the ground; no one will be brave enough to tell Theseus. This means that the death of Hekale had already been told to the crow in the gap before the Erichthonios story, and it is at least possible that the owl had brought the news. The announcement must have been brief because this first twenty-two-line gap has also to include the end of the rejoicing over Theseus and the beginning of the crow's story.

Kallimachos' scholarly knowledge of early Attic legend and cult has burst out exuberantly for some ninety lines here. This is the poet of the Aitia, but he laughs at himself by putting his knowledge into the mouth of the crow, now aged about 250 years. The fourth Iambos is another instance of this technique: there Simos was warned to keep out of Kallimachos' circle by the story of the laurel and the olive, who stopped their quarrel to round on a bramble. The laurel praises itself but the olive puts its learned eulogy into the mouth of two birds chattering among its leaves. (The reference to the Hekale in 1. 77 does not quite certainly put it later; it may merely show that Kallimachos was already thinking of Hekale. If it is later, the message of the fourth lambos prepares for the first Iambos.)

After this excursion into scholarship, Kallimachos puts the birds to sleep with another reminiscence of Odysseus and Eumaios. The dawn is frosty; the thieves have ceased to prowl; lamps are lit; the water-carrier sings; the waggon-axles squeak; the smiths start their deafening noise. Here sound is much more important than light; Apollonios on the other hand was more interested in light. But this is again a typical Hellenistic genre description. The birds presumably did not tell the news to Theseus as he had to ask whom the neighbours were burying (fr. 262); fragments remain of the neighbours' lament (fr. 263) and of Theseus' lament (fr. 264). Then must have followed the establishment of the Deme and of the temenos of Zeus Hekaleios. Perhaps Aiaeus himself was there, having come out to meet Theseus as a result of the message sent after the capture of the bull.

The cause of the poem is the name and cult of an Attic deme. Kallimachos may have taken the story from his contemporary Philochoros (who was used by Plutarch). He is exposed then to two conflicting forces, the desire to tell a human story which reminds him of the meeting of Odysseus and Eumaios in the Odyssey, and the desire to put in the maximum of Attic legend and cult. The human story is told in more detail than by Homer: the descriptions of clothing and food are more elaborate; the storm is more realistic; midday and dawn awake a variety of pictures or sounds instead of a single formula; Hekale and Theseus are probably softer than Eurykleia and Telemachos. The atmosphere is conveyed by mellifluous verse, full of alliteration and assonance. Against the sweetness is the astringency of learned words and jokes: άμάξονες is not Amazons but men without bread, ποιήφαγον is not cattle but Hekale with her diet of vegetables. The greater difficulty is to find a place for the learning; and here Kallimachos uses two devices—the flashback when Aigeus tells of his instructions to Aithra and the flashback given by the crow's knowledge of Athens eight generations before the date of the story. This is a brilliant conception; how successful it was is hard to say without the whole of the poem.

The Aitia is a great outpouring of scholarship. The interesting question is how far the individual poems came alive. The question is difficult to answer, partly because the passion for aetiology, which was obviously present in the audiences of Apollonios and Kallimachos, is lost to us, partly because the poems are so fragmentary that we can only sometimes see how Kallimachos treated his subjects. The prologue is a late addition. The Dream (fr. 2) gives the framework: just as Hesiod was given the Theogony and the Erga by the Muses on Helikon, so Kallimachos dreamt in his youth that the Muses gave him the Aitia. The method was an interrogation of Kleio and Kalliope by Kallimachos. So the poems are written as questions by Kallimachos answered by the Muses. But, although in the last poem of the Aitia Hesiod's conversation with the Muses is again recalled, Kallimachos seems to have changed the form after the second book; in the third and fourth books he tells the stories himself and sometimes quotes his human sources (fr. 75, 53; 92), but even in the Akontios, where he quotes Xenomedes as his authority, he ends 'whence the story hastened to my Kalliope' (fr. 75, 77), showing that he has not forgotten the fiction of the first two books.

Where we can see a longer passage, the poems have all the elegance, humour, learning, and variety which we expect from Kallimachos. In the Anaphe poem, in which the Muse tells the story of the Argonauts, probably as we have seen, borrowing from Apollonios, the day of the sacrifice begins (fr. 21): 'Then Tito woke from the embraces of Laomedon's son to chafe the neck of the ox'. This is a learned variation on the Homeric dawn formula: 'Eos rose from the bed of noble Tithonos' (Iliad 11, 1, etc.). Tithonos is the son of Laomedon. Eos in Hesiod is the daughter of Hyperion and Theia, children of Ouranos, and so a Titan. Agricultural work starts at dawn, and Kallimachos here remembers Hesiod's advice to work early—'Dawn, who appearing puts many men on the road and the yokes on many oxen' (Op. 581). Variation on a Homeric theme we have noticed already in the Hymn to Artemis as well as in the Hekale. Another very elegant instance is in the Akontios, where Apollo replies to Keyx (75, 22): 'My sister was not then harassing Lygdamis nor was she plaiting rushes in Amyklai nor washing off the dirt of the chase in the river Parthenios, but she was at Delos'. Here the scheme is given by Chryses' prayer to Apollo at his different addresses in the first book of the Iliad (37). But for simple addresses we here have allusions to history, cult and myth. The story of Theiodamas has the nice touch of the hungry young Hyllos tearing the hair on Herakles' chest, like the little Artemis with the Kyklops (fr. 24, Hymn 3, 76). A long recital of Sicilian cities starts with the scholarly sentiment 'the garlands on my head do not keep their scent, the food that I eat does not stay in my body. Only what I put in my ears remains in my possession' (fr. 43). A discussion of the worship of Peleus on Ikos starts at a dinner party given by an Athenian in Alexandria, at which Kallimachos sits next to a congenial Ikian (fr. 178), who satisfies his curiosity.

The poem of which we know most is the Akontios (fr. 67-75) which ends with an abbreviated history of Keos from Xenomedes. Till then Kallimachos narrates the story of the two lovers. They met in Delos, he from Keos, she from Naxos. Then he describes their beauty. 'No one came to the welling spring of shaggy old Seilenos nor put delicate foot to the dance of sleeping Ariadne with a more dawn-like face than she.' We think of the girls fetching water or dancing on Greek vases; again the Homeric comparison of a beautiful woman to a goddess is in the background and, nearer in date the lovely Theokritean 'Nycheia with spring in her eyes' (XIII, 45). Kallimachos makes it a negative comparison with Naxian ladies fetching water or dancing: Seilenos is a natural figure for an island which worshipped Dionysos, and elsewhere Seilenos springs are known; Kallimachos may have known sculptured Seilenoi as fountain figures. The dance must have been to wake Ariadne in her capacity as an earth-goddess. After Akontios has been described and then his passion, which hurt him as much as his beauty had hurt others (fr. 70), the story continues with the ruse of the apple and then the three attempts of Keyx to marry off Kydippe (fr. 75). In Naxos the bride slept with a boy the night before her marriage. Kallimachos stops himself from telling the origin of this rite in the pre-nuptials of Zeus and Hera: 'Dog, dog, stop, wanton soul, you will sing what is not holy. You are lucky that you have not seen the rites of the terrible goddess. You would even have poured out their story. Learnedness is a great danger for an unrestrained tongue: truly this boy has a knife.' Then the lines quoted above about the oxen seeing the sacrificial blade reflected in the water. Then the story runs swiftly to the consultation of the oracle of Apollo and the marriage and the naming of Xenomedes as source. The narrative is a simple story told in elegantly decorative language. The learned man appears for a moment in person but mockingly checks himself and goes on with the tale; only when he has named his source does he go over to pure formation. The fascination of Kallimachos is this struggle between the scholar and the poet, a struggle which with ironical humour he makes no attempt to conceal.