Callimachus

Callimachus of Cyrene (c. 310 BC – c. 240 BC) was a Greek poet, critic and bibliographer, of Libyan birth. He is considered the most influential figure of the Alexandrian school.

Quotes

Nothing unattested do I sing.

• A big book is a big misfortune.
  • Fragment 465; translation by A. W. Bulloch, in P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989) vol. 1, part 4, p. 30
  • Variant translation: A great book is like great evil.

• Nothing unattested do I sing.
  • Fragment 612; translation by A. W. Bulloch, in P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989) vol. 1, part 4, p. 30

• Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν
  • To explain Homer with Homer
  • Maxim attributed to Callimachus; see Ancient Scholarship and Grammar: Archetypes, Concepts and Contexts (2011) edited by Stephanos Matthaios, Franco Montanari, Αντώνιος Ρεγκάκος, p. 108

• [...] ὅσσα τ' ὀδόντωνἔνδοθι νείαιράν τ' εἰς ἀχάριστον ἔδυ,
  καὶ τῶν οὐδὲν ἔμεινεν ἐς αὔριον· ὅσσα δ' ἀκουαῖς
  εἰσεθέμην, ἔτι μοι μοῦνα πάρεστι τάδε.
  • "and of all that passed my teeth
    and plunged into my ungrateful belly,
    of these too nothing remained into the morning; but only this
    do I still possess, what I put into my ears."
    • Aetia, Book II. Fr. 43. Lines 14-17.
      • variant translation: All that I have given to my stomach has disappeared, and I have retained all the fodder that I gave to my spirit. [1]

Epigrams

• Εἰπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον ἐς δέ με δάκρυ
      ἤγαγεν ἐμνήσθην δ᾿ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
   ἠέλιον λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. ...
  • They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
    They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
    I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
    Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
    And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
    A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
    Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
    For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
  • Epigram 2, translation by William Johnson Cory in Ionica (1858) p. 7

• Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore;
  The Muses are ten, the Graces are four;
  Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face;
  She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace.
  • Epigram 5; translation by Jonathan Swift, cited from Anthologia Polyglotta (1849), edited by Henry Wellesley, p. 47

• Here sleeps Saon, of Acanthus, son of Dicon, a holy sleep: say not that the good die.
  • Epigram 10; translation from The Works of Hesiod, Callimachus and Theognis (1856), edited by J. Banks , p. 194

• O Charidas, what of the under world? Great darkness. And what of the resurrection? A lie. And Pluto? A fable; we perish utterly.
  • Epigram 14; translation from Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (1906), edited by J. W. Mackail, p. 171

• Set a thief to catch a thief.
  • Epigram 43; translation by Robert Allason Furness, from Poems of Callimachus (1931), p. 103

• The Graces, three erewhile, are three no more;
  A fourth is come with perfume sprinkled o'er.
  'Tis Berenice blest and fair; were she
  Away the Graces would no Graces be.
  • Callimachus, Epigram V. Goldwin Smith's rendering.
• Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore;
  The Muses are ten, and the Graces are four;
  Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face,
  She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace.
  • Callimachus, Epigram V. Swift's rendering. See Meleager of Gadara, in Anthologia Græca, IX. 16, Volume II, p. 62 (Ed. 1672).

Criticism

• His blend of sensitivity and detachment, elegance, wit, and learning, had a profound influence on later Roman poets, especially Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius (the last thought of himself as the Roman Callimachus), and through them on the whole European literary tradition.
  • D. E. W. Wormell, in The Penguin Companion to Literature (1969) vol. 4, p. 47

• The most outstanding intellect of this generation, the greatest poet that the Hellenistic age produced, and historically one of the most important figures in the development of Graeco-Roman (and hence European) literature.
  • A. W. Bulloch, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989), edited by P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, vol. 1, part 4, p. 9

External links

• Dickinson College Commentaries: Aetia
• Selected Poems by Callimachus (English translations)
• Callimachus and Lycophron (1921) edited A. W. Mair at Google Books
  • Callimachus and Lycophron (1921) edited A. W. Mair at Internet archive
  • English translation of Hymns (HTML)
  • English translation of Epigrams (HTML)
• Callimachus at the Perseus Project: Mair (1921) and Wilamowitz (1897)
• Arrangement for strings of Stanford's setting of the Cory version of Heraclitus