20 Facts About Callimachus

Callimachus espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature.

Callimachus is believed to have lived into the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes.

Callimachus shared many characteristics with his Alexandrian contemporaries Aratus, Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus, but professed to adhere to a unique style of poetry: favouring small, recondite and even obscure topics, he dedicated himself to small-scale poetry and refused to write longwinded epic poetry, the most prominent literary art of his day.

Callimachus was born into a prominent family in Cyrene, a Greek city on the coast of modern-day Libya.

Callimachus's grandfather, named Callimachus, had served the city as a general.

Callimachus appears to have experienced a period of relative poverty while working as a schoolteacher in the suburbs of the city.

Callimachus then entered into the patronage of the Ptolemies, the Greek ruling dynasty of Egypt, and was employed at the Library of Alexandria.

Ferguson writes that Callimachus stopped writing and died at some point after 240 BC.

Callimachus wrote at least 60 individual epigrams on a wide range of topics.

Callimachus wrote six such hymns, which can be divided into two groups: his Hymn to Apollo, to Demeter and to Athena are considered mimetic because they present themselves as live re-enactments of a religious ritual in which both the speaker and the audience are imagined to take part.

At the close of his Aetia, Callimachus wrote that he would proceed to a more pedestrian field of poetry.

Callimachus uses the polemical tone of the genre to defend himself against critics of his poetic style and his tendency to write in a variety of genres.

Callimachus made only one attempt at writing a narrative poem, a mythological epic entitled Hecale.

Since most of Callimachus's poetry is critical of epic as a genre, there has been some speculation about why he chose to write an epic poem after all.

The author of the scholia, an ancient commentary on the work of Callimachus, stated that Callimachus abandoned his reluctance after being ridiculed for not writing lengthy poems.

When working at the Library of Alexandria, Callimachus was responsible for the library's cataloguing.

Callimachus favoured small-scale topics over large and prominent ones, and refinement over long works of poetry.

Vergil, in his Aeneid, an epic about the wanderings of Aeneas, repeatedly alludes to Callimachus when contemplating the nature of his own poetry.

Ovid described Callimachus as "lacking in genius but strong in art".

Callimachus writes that his lasting importance is demonstrated by the strong reactions his poetry elicited from contemporaries and posterity.