Callimachus

Richard Rawles

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781474254854
• eBook ISBN: 9781474254878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Callimachus was one of the most important Greek poets, and can also be one of the most rewarding to read. He was a pivotal figure in the history of ancient literature and an influential presence in later ancient poetry, including Catullus and Vergil. Yet his work is not read and enjoyed as much as it could be. This new volume in the popular Ancients in Action series seeks to bring Callimachus to a wide audience, addressing the problems with currently available scholarship, which assumes a professional level of expertise, including full knowledge of Greek. Rawles presents a much-needed introduction to Callimachus' poetry and is intended for the non-specialist reader and student, assuming no knowledge of Greek. The book is organised in thematic chapters, rich in quotation (in translation), with selective annotations and guidance for further study and reading.

1

Callimachus on Philology and Poetics

We have seen in the introduction that Callimachus’ world was, among other things, a world of scholarship, and that Callimachus himself was a scholar of literature and part of the world of philology. How, if at all, is this engagement with the world of the library at Alexandria visible in his work as a poet? And how does he engage with the literary and aesthetic debates and disputes that have often been asserted as a conspicuous feature of the world of Hellenistic scholarship and poetry?

Epigrams on writing

We start with a relatively straightforward example. When Callimachus was compiling the Pinakes (his extensive catalogue and guide to the literature in the library), he will have had to make judgements about editorial problems such as ‘who is really the author of this poem?’ (or ‘is this poem really by so-and-so?’). This kind of problem is turned into poetry in the following epigram, where the speaker is a book (Epigram 6 Pfeiffer = 55 Gow and Page):

I am the work of the Samian who once received in his house

the godlike bard; I commemorate Eurytus and his sufferings,

and fair-haired Ioleia, and I am called a Homeric

book – for Creophylus, dear Zeus, a big deal!

We are to imagine this written on a copy of the Sack of Oichalia by Creophylus; the work is identified as part of the world of reading and writing (‘a Homeric book’).¹ An early reader would probably encounter it in a book of epigrams by Callimachus (or read out from such a book), so must work out during the course of the little poem what is going on, and in the Greek as in my translation the key name ‘Creophylus’ is left until the last line. Creophylus was an epic poet of Samos (in some traditions Chios) and one of the Homeridae, a guild of bards associated with the early transmission of epic poetry, including Homer. He was believed to have been an associate of Homer himself, his friend or even son-in-law; Callimachus says that he entertained Homer in his house. The Sack of Oichalia told of Heracles’ sack of the city of which Eurytus was king, and the abduction of Eurytus’ daughter Ioleia. So for a learned reader the details given in the first two and a half lines are enough to identify the work. Only at the end does the point become clear: some attributed the Sack of Oichalia to Homer himself. In other circumstances one might expect a poet to be annoyed that his work is attributed to another – but Creophylus is so much a lesser figure than Homer that in this case it is an honour! Our poet is a discriminating figure and knows better than to accept the false attribution. Here, presented with a light touch, is the sort of information which might be involved in an entry in the Pinakes: some biographical tradition about the author, the subject matter of his work, and the correction of a misattribution. But in the epigram it is transformed into a miniature puzzle and a sly joke about the hierarchy between the ordinary and the great: what a coup for Creophylus, that people took his work for Homer’s – even if this might have erased altogether his own name, which Callimachus can restore to him!

In another epigram, we see Callimachus as thoughtful critic, praising a contemporary poet, Aratus of Soloi (Epigram 27 Pfeiffer = 56 Gow and Page):

The song is Hesiod’s, and so is its manner, but not Hesiod

all the way; rather, I venture, the man from Soloi

has taken an impression from the most honey-sweet of his verses. Hail,

delicate discourses, symbol of Aratus’ sleeplessness!

Aratus, the author of a learned didactic poem about astronomy and meteorology, modelled on Hesiod, is praised, and praised in a way which demonstrates Callimachus’ understanding of his poetic technique with the insight of a practitioner and critic. He has imitated Hesiod, but selectively; the subtlety of his work illustrates the work involved (sleeplessness represents late nights stargazing – and also polishing his poem). This is a poetics of polish, and of intelligently selective imitation of the poetry of the past.

Callimachus could censure as well as praise. This fragment (398 Pfeiffer) comes from an otherwise lost epigram:

the Lyde, a fat piece of writing, and unclear

Here Callimachus criticizes Antimachus’ Lyde, a work we know only from fragments, consisting of a catalogue of unhappy mythological love affairs to console the poet for the loss of his girlfriend, Lyde.² Antimachus worked in the late fifth/early fourth century BC, and was popular among the first generation of Hellenistic poets (he was praised by Asclepiades and Posidippus in epigrams: AP 9.63 = Asclepiades 32 Gow and Page; AP 12.168 = Posidippus 9 Gow and Page = Posidippus 140 in Austin and Bastianini 2002).³ Callimachus, however, rejects his work as ‘fat’ (this is a literal translation of the adjective παχύς (pachus); like English ‘thick’ it can also mean ‘stupid’, and it sometimes seems to imply ‘florid, excessive’ or ‘rough’) and ‘unclear’. This fits into a contrast between size, fatness, bloatedness, and subtlety and intelligence expressed on a smaller scale, which is a recurring theme in Callimachus’ poetics. Also characteristically, the Lyde is described as writing rather than song (γράμμα, gramma).

Apollo in his Hymn

The next text we will consider has become a famous example, and may again involve a response to Antimachus. In the Hymn to Apollo, Callimachus starts by setting the scene: we are at a festival, and waiting for an epiphany of the god (1–8). How will he manifest himself? Another question is raised at lines 30–1, where the narrator is anticipating a choral performance in honour of the god:

Nor will the chorus sing of Phoebus for one day only,

for he is rich in song: who would not sing easily of Phoebus?

The assertion that Apollo provides so much material for song that a chorus will sing for more than a day about him makes one wonder about Callimachus’ hymn: given the huge quantity of possible material, how will his poem ever end? The answer comes more than seventy lines later, after praise of Apollo for his various roles, a narrative concerning the establishment of the festival of Apollo Carneius in Cyrene, and an account of the origins of the ritual cry hie, hie, paieon! At this point, fairly suddenly, the poem ends like this (105–13):

Envy spoke secretly in Apollo’s ear:

‘I do not admire the singer who sings not as much as the sea.’

Apollo kicked Envy and spoke as follows:

‘The stream of the Assyrian river is big, but it drags along

many scourings from the land and much rubbish on its water.

To Deo the Melissae do not bring water from everywhere,

but the little stream that comes up pure and undefiled

from a holy spring, the choicest essence.’

Farewell, Lord! As for Blame, let him go where Envy dwells!

Both questions are answered together: despite the possibility of a song long enough to take more than a day, Apollo suddenly appears as the voice to mandate the curtailment of the much shorter poem, and two problems are neatly solved. Envy (Φθόνος, Phthonos) is a regular adversarial force in celebratory and praise poetry already in Pindar, whose songs frequently compete with the grumbling of envious people (φθονεροί, phthoneroi). The poetics of size is explored through water. Envy conveys the idea ‘poetry should be big’ by saying it should be ‘as much as the sea’ (in one influential but controversial reading ‘the sea’ is held to signify Homer, and we are concerned with the right way to respond to Homeric epic).⁴ Apollo, kicking him, clearly rejects this, but reframes the idea as a contrast between two forms of fresh water. The Assyrian river is the Euphrates: though big, it is polluted and dirty. By contrast, the Melissae (‘Bees’: a name for priestesses of Demeter) bring water to Deo (Demeter) from a source which is small, but pure and a perfect example of its kind. A similar metapoetic contrast seems already to be attested, again in Pindar (at the very end of the second Partheneion, fr. 94b.76–7, where the context is fragmentary, but the chorus is told to avoid salt water).⁵

Much of this metapoetic passage, then, has good precedent, and also seems specifically motivated by the needs of this song: it provides the anticipated epiphany and explains and motivates the end of the hymn. For all that, it can also be read as a more general statement of poetics and an intervention in a broader aesthetic dispute: Callimachus takes the opportunity to strike a blow in favour of an aesthetic of smallness and perfection rather than imperfect, polluted bigness. This sense of a more general aesthetic intervention, perhaps rather different from what we find in Pindar or elsewhere in the archaic and classical tradition, may be visible in a feature that has recently been observed in lines 108–10.⁶ Here a line which begins with A (for Ἀσσυρίου, Assyriou, ‘Assyrian’) is followed by two lines beginning LY and DE (λύματα, lumata, ‘scourings’ and Δηοῖ, Dēoi, ‘to Deo’). This might operate as a subtle acrostic pointing to Antimachus’ Lydē (perhaps associating it with the dirty river Euphrates). This is remarkable – but acrostics are not unknown in poetry of this period (the most famous is at Aratus Phaenomena 783–7),⁷ and represent another way in which Hellenistic poetics engages more with the world of books and written texts: acrostics must be seen rather than heard. It suggests a much more esoteric engagement in poetics (but, importantly, a reader who ‘misses’ the acrostic can still make sense of the text). It also suggests that the passage should be read as a more general intervention in the poetic debate of these times, one in which responses to Antimachus are a particular bone of contention: it does not seem that the Lyde is specifically relevant to the context in this hymn, except because it has to do with the distinction Callimachus is interested in between short, refined work and longer, less ‘pure’ writing.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Callimachus on Philology and Poetics
• 2 Callimachean Voices
• 3 Religion and the Gods
• 4 People and Places
• Envoi: The End of the Aetia, and Callimachus in Rome
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright