Callimachus

Born around 310 BC into a prominent family in Cyrene, he trained in Alexandria and worked as a schoolteacher until Ptolemy II Philadelphus brought him into royal patronage. At the Library of Alexandria he compiled the Pinakes, a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature. He wrote prolifically across genres — the four-book Aetia, six hymns, sixty epigrams, satirical iambs, the narrative Hecale — and championed a poetics of the recondite and compact, refusing the longwinded epic that dominated his era. He likely lived into the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes around 240 BC. Catullus, Horace,…