Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

A Poundian figure who summed up the possibilties of a new era's response to an old and rich poetic tradition, Callimachus (ca. 305 B.C.-ca. 240 B.C.) was the first learned scholar-poet in Western literature.

The leading poet of the Alexandrian school, Callimachus served as a model to Vergil, Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid. With remarkable grace and sensitivity to nuance, Stanley Lombardo and Diane Rayor provide the first translation of Callimachus's works into the American poetic idiom. Lombardo and Rayor translate the six hymns and sixty-one epigrams that are the only complete extant poems of a writer credited with having produces some eight hundred books in his lifetime. In addition, they offer a generous selection from among the surviving fragments, inclduing the prologue and selected passages from the Aetia ("The Origins"), Callimachus's greatest achievement in narrative verse. Theiry annotations elucidate the poet's rich mythological allusions; an introduction places Callimachus within his cultural and poetic contexts.