Callimachus, Theocritus and Hellenistic poets

This page gathers the poets of the third century BC whom the metrical handbooks treat together. In this age poets wrote for the book. They tried out verse-forms taken from archaic monody, the solo song of Sappho and Alcaeus. They did not mean to imitate song. They meant to enlarge the stock of stichic and distichic metres that literature could use: metres repeated line by line, or in couplets.^[1] So the learned poets did not rebuild the old lyric strophes. They reused lyric metres line by line or in couplets.^[2] The sources give dates and places only in passing. The Lyric tab describes song in the period.

Callimachus. His hexameter is in many respects the most refined of the period.^[3] The choliambic and other iambic forms of his Iambi revive the metres of the early iambographers,^[4] Hipponax above all.^[5] The choliambic, or “limping iambic”, is an iambic trimeter whose last element but one is long.

He was a scholar as well as a poet. He wrote the Pinakes, a guide to Greek literature in 120 books.^[6] It listed every known work by author, title and genre. He also took part in a debate on how Pindar’s Pythian 2 should be classed. Nothing shows that he produced an edition of Pindar.^[7]

He treats dialect as a tool. Iambos was normally Ionic, but he writes Doric iambos in Iambi 6, 9 and 11. He revives Pindar’s lyric language in hexameters and elegiacs.^[8] Hephaestion quotes him for a whole poem, the Branchus, in choriambic pentameters. He also quotes him for an ithyphallic appended to an iambic trimeter, for the “Euripidean fourteen-syllable”, and for the two asynartete lines of Epigram 39.^[9]

Theocritus. Most of his poetry is in Doric hexameters.^[8] The “bucolic caesura” is a word-end after a dactylic fourth foot. In his bucolic poems it reaches 74% of lines.^[3]

In poems 28–31 he writes in East Aeolic dialect and Lesbian metres.^[10] The metres are gl²ᶜ and gl²ᵈ, and he openly declares his model. From 29.39 he even adopts the old double-short form of the aeolic base, which had mostly gone out of use after the fifth century.^[11] Sappho and Simonides are often echoed in his poetry.^[12]

Not all of his poems are pastoral. The bucolic poems proper are Idylls 1, 3–7, 10 and 11.^[13]

Apollonius of Rhodes. He is a third-century poet in whom, as in Theocritus, Sappho and Simonides are present.^[12] He is also a source of Homeric borrowings for Nonnus.^[14]

The little that is known of his life comes from three sources. They are a papyrus list of the librarians at Alexandria (P. Oxy. 1241), two short lives in the manuscripts, and the Suda. From these Race infers, with some probability, that he came from Alexandria and spent time on Rhodes. He studied under Callimachus and was head of the royal library, perhaps about 270–245 BC.^[15] The Perseus text of the Argonautica is G. W. Mooney’s edition. The handbooks say nothing further about his verse, and this page does not either.

The Argonautica has four books, of 1,362, 1,285, 1,407 and 1,781 hexameters.^[16] It is later than Theocritus’ Idylls 13 and 22. Apollonius links the two stories told there, of Hylas and of Amycus, through the figure of Heracles.^[17]

Aratus. Aratus of Soli wrote the Phaenomena, a poem on the stars and weather signs. It was one of the most popular works of antiquity, and it soon became a school text. The ancient lives of Aratus do not agree. What is reasonably well established is that he spent time in Athens with the early Stoics, and that in the early 270s he went to the court of King Antigonus Gonatas.^[18]

Lycophron. The Pleiad was a group of seven tragedians of the third century; the sources list its members differently. Among them were Philicus, Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron of Chalcis, who worked on comedy at the Library.^[19] Lycophron is the only Hellenistic tragedian with a long list of titles in our sources.^[20] The Alexandra that goes under his name is described on its works tab.

Herodas (Herondas). He wrote choliambics in the revived Hipponactean manner. In his lines the “ischiorrhogic” ending — — — — occurs about once in 24 lines.^[21] No open-licence text is available to this site.

Others the sources name. Sotades was a poet of the early third century BC. He gave his name to the sotadean. It was a metre of popular and often bawdy entertainment, which also served for moralising verse (Hephaestion, Ench. 1.4 quotes his Adonis).^[22] Boiscus of Cyzicus boasted of inventing the catalectic iambic octameter.^[1]

Philicus of Corcyra, “one of the Pleiad”, wrote a whole poem in choriambic hexameters. He boasted of having invented the metre. Hephaestion says the boast was false, since Simmias of Rhodes had used it before him.^[23] Phoenix of Colophon provides the one doubtful pure iambic ending in Hellenistic choliambics.^[21] Ionic continued in religious and popular use, and developed new variants. Examples are the paean of Isyllus (late fourth century BC) and the Dictaean Hymn to the Kouros (fourth or third century).^[24]

Courts and occasions. Much of this poetry was written at the Ptolemaic court, where Callimachus catalogued the Library’s holdings.^[25] Court occasions supplied subjects. Examples are Theocritus’ Encomium of Ptolemy (Idyll 17), Callimachus’ elegiac epinicians for Queen Berenice II and the courtier Sosibius, and his lament for Arsinoe (fr. 228).^[26] The learned poet usually stayed at one court for life. Pindar, by contrast, had served patrons all over Greece.^[27] The Library’s scholars are on the Transmission tab.

The age that made editions. The Library at Alexandria aimed to collect all extant written knowledge.^[1] Zenodotus, the first Librarian, suggested corrections to Pindar and Anacreon, but left no edition of the lyric poets. Callimachus’ Pinakes listed every author’s works, each with its incipit (opening words), a summary and a date, together with a short biography. Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 255–180 BC) added a supplement.^[2]

Aristophanes is the first Alexandrian scholar regularly associated with editing the lyric poets. After him, division into cola became the normal way of laying out the page. His successor Apollonius the Eidographer classified the poems by musical mode. Aristarchus (died c. 144 BC) wrote commentaries and editions that became standard.^[3] These works of explanation are the distant ancestors of the scholia, the marginal notes in medieval manuscripts.^[4]

The canon of nine lyric poets is first attested in an epigram of the third or second century BC (AP 9.184).^[5] Evidence for books in the third century is scanty. The fourth-century Timotheus papyrus is written as prose, and many lyric books may have gone on looking much the same.^[6]

What survives of the poets on this page. The open-licence texts used here are the Perseus Digital Library’s. Theocritus’ Idylls and Epigrams are in R. J. Cholmeley’s edition (London, 1901–1919). Callimachus’ six Hymns are in A. W. Mair’s Loeb, and his Epigrams in Wilamowitz’s edition. Apollonius’ Argonautica is in G. W. Mooney’s edition. Callimachus’ Iambi, Herodas’ mimiambs and the fragments of Sotades, Boiscus and Philicus are not in that collection. They are discussed on this page only as the metrical sources describe them.

Callimachus’ Hymns survive because one unknown compiler, at some time between the sixth and fourteenth centuries AD, put the Homeric, Orphic, Callimachean and Proclan hymns into a single book. Otherwise there would be only quotations and scraps of papyrus.^[7] For the Argonautica the standard text is Vian’s, and the scholia are edited by Wendel.^[8] For the Alexandra, the scholia and the ancient paraphrases are edited by Leone, and Tzetzes’ commentary by Scheer.^[9]

Fragments through the metricians. Much Hellenistic verse is known only because an ancient metrician quoted it. Hephaestion preserves the opening of Callimachus’ Branchus in choriambic pentameters, and a line of Philicus’ choriambic hexameters. He preserves the Epigram 39 couplet in its two asynartete forms, and a Callimachean example of the “Euripidean fourteen-syllable”. He also gives Callimachus’ iambic trimeter with appended ithyphallic.^[10]

The Iambi use the choliambic (Iambi 1–4 and 13) and the trochaic trimeter catalectic. They also use two novel epodic combinations: choliambic + 2ia in Iamb. 5, and 3ia + ithyphallic in Iamb. 6–7.^[11] Boiscus’ octameter is cited from the Supplementum Hellenisticum (SH 233).^[12]

Papyri. For lyric, the Hellenistic period is the age of the earliest surviving witnesses. One is a Sappho ostracon of the third or second century BC, written without colometry; an ostracon is a potsherd used for writing. Another is P.Dryton 50, a long Hellenistic lyric monologue in polymetric, astrophic form. It is the last text in which dochmiacs appear. A loan of 174 BC on its reverse supports a Hellenistic date (West calls it the Grenfell Erotic Fragment, CA 177).^[13]

Papyrology keeps unsettling accepted views, and more may turn up in the large unpublished collections.^[14]

Later readers. The better poets of the Imperial period cultivated the refinement of the Alexandrian hexameter. Nonnus raised it to new heights in the fifth and sixth centuries. He admits certain licences only in phrases borrowed from Homer or Apollonius Rhodius.^[15] Babrius took up the choliambic of Callimachus and Herodas in the first century AD for his fables.^[16]

Books for readers. Learned poetry was devised mainly for circulation in books, and for recitation in restricted circles such as court symposia.^[17] How the books were put together can be disputed. Poems for Berenice frame the last two books of the Aetia. Parsons suggested that they also circulated separately. Barbantani accepts this view, against Pfeiffer and Hollis.^[18]

After Alexandria. Under Tiberius the scholar Theon commented on poetic texts, especially Hellenistic ones such as Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus.^[19] Copyists schooled in Attic tended to replace the forms of other dialects with the Attic forms they knew. In many parts of Theocritus’ Idylls the original Doric forms have been eliminated.^[20] Callimachus was still read in late antiquity outside the school syllabus. A papyrus of his later than the fifth century survives (P.Oxy. 2258).^[21]

In the twelfth century John Tzetzes had read some Callimachus and Hipponax that we no longer have. Michael Choniates owned the Hecale and quoted it in his letters. They are the last Byzantines who could read more classical poetry than we can. Those rare books did not survive the sack of Constantinople in 1204.^[22]

The Callimachean hexameter

From the early third century BC poets aim at a smoother line. They avoid unusual rhythms and runs of short words, and they limit licences such as hiatus. How strictly each poet binds himself varies a good deal. In many respects Callimachus goes furthest.^[1] The opening of his Hymn to Zeus is a specimen:

All three lines have the feminine caesura, a word-end after the first short of the third foot.^[2] Lines 2 and 3 have word-end after an uncontracted fourth foot. This is the bucolic caesura, which West marks in his text of lines 2–3. In line 1 the fourth foot is contracted (σπον-), and no word-end follows it. The features of the Callimachean hexameter are these:^[3]

The “bucolic caesura” is word-end at the end of the fourth foot after uncontracted biceps.^[4] West dismisses the alternative name “bucolic diaeresis” as a needless modern refinement.^[5] In some lines the fourth-foot dactyl is followed by a word of four syllables scanning — — — ×. Such a line is known as σπονδειάζων (spondeiazōn), “spondaic”, and some Alexandrian poets affected the type (on Call. H. 1.5):^[1]

The main avoidances hold strictly in certain poems. These are the Hymns (except the fifth, 941 lines in all) and the roughly 120 complete lines of the Hecale. There Callimachus always keeps Hermann’s Bridge. He never lets a word end after a contracted fourth biceps (Naeke’s Law). Nor does he let one end after a contracted second biceps (Hilberg’s Law, which overlaps only in part with West’s rule for the second foot). The fifth Hymn, the Aetia, the elegies and the epigrams follow a different practice.^[6]

Theocritus

Every line has the feminine caesura and the bucolic caesura. There is correption of καί before ἁ in line 1, and of -ται before ἁδύ in line 2. Correption is the shortening of a long vowel or diphthong before a following vowel. ἁδύ, παγαῖσι and τήνα have the Doric ᾱ.

In poems 28–31 Theocritus uses the Lesbian metres gl²ᶜ and gl²ᵈ for poems in Lesbian dialect. These are glyconics with double choriambic and double dactylic expansion. The model is deliberately chosen. From 29.39 he revives the double-short aeolic base, little used after the fifth century.^[7]

Elegiacs, choliambs and new stichic lines

Elegiac refinements. In Hellenistic elegiacs versification is in general rather stricter than in the hexameter poets. Hiatus is restricted. There is less correption in words that would scan without it. A word naturally ending — ⏑ stands before the feminine caesura. After the late third century, a long vowel or diphthong is preferred at the pentameter caesura. There is a gradual tendency to avoid an accented final syllable in the pentameter.^[8]

Choliambs. The choliambic is the “limping” trimeter. It is an iambic trimeter whose short penultimate is replaced by a long: × — ⏑ — × — ⏑ — ⏑ — — ×. The fourth syllable from the end is usually short.^[9] It was revived in the late fourth century BC. It was tied to Hipponax in particular, and used in poems meant to continue the manner of the old Ionian iambus (Call. Iamb. 1–4 and 13, Herodas). Hipponax was the model of the Hellenistic choliambists.^[10]

The pure iambic ending is gone, bar one doubtful case in Phoenix. The ischiorrhogic ending — — — — occurs about once in 24 lines in Herodas. It never occurs in Callimachus, who also avoids anapaests and is sparing with resolution.^[11]

Book lyric. Callimachus’ Iambi add the trochaic trimeter catalectic and two novel epodic combinations: choliambic + 2ia (Iamb. 5) and 3ia + ithyphallic (Iamb. 6–7). Hephaestion quotes Callimachus for the ithyphallic appended to an iambic trimeter.^[12] Epodic structures replace elegiacs in some epigrams. Many aeolic and iambic verses are used stichically, line after line, and some of them are new. One is the catalectic iambic octameter of Boiscus, SH 233:^[7]

The two printed lines make one verse of eight iambic metra, the last catalectic. West marks the α of ἀπό long, and Κυ- is long before ζ. West reads Boiscus’ pride in his invention as typical of how these poets saw their craft.^[7]

Of these metres two continued in use into the Roman period: the phalaecian (gl ia∧) and the priapean (gl | ph).^[13] The choriambic pentameter of the Branchus and Philicus’ choriambic hexameter are whole-poem experiments.^[14] The sotadean is a catalectic tetrameter of ionics in broken-up form. It can take a great many different shapes, and it enjoyed a vogue for centuries.^[15] Dactylo-epitrite became the metre of polite lyric for the educated, before fading after about 190 BC.^[16]

Other poets

Callimachus’ Hymns. All six are in dactylic verse. Five are in hexameters, and the fifth, the Bath of Pallas, is in elegiacs.^[17]

Aratus. His metrical practice is remarkably close to Hesiod’s, though his vocabulary is Homeric. Ancient critics already disagreed about whether he imitated Homer or Hesiod.^[18]

Tragedy and the Alexandra. The trimeters of the Alexandra, like the fragments of Hellenistic tragedy, avoid resolution, as the earliest tragedies did.^[19] A fragment of Sositheus’ satyr-play Daphnis has no resolution and keeps Porson’s Law. Lycophron’s own satyr-play, the Menedemus, is freer.^[20]

Read, not sung. By the third century BC the archaic melic, iambic and elegiac poems were no longer performed but studied. Melic poetry is poetry made to be sung. The learned lyric of the scholar-poets was meant above all to be read, or recited to small private gatherings.^[1] The poems of Sappho, Pindar or Simonides were now met as texts, classified and commented on. But there was also a living tradition of popular performance at festivals and competitions across the Greek world.^[2]

How far Hellenistic literary poetry was itself performed is disputed. Cameron, and Acosta-Hughes and Stephens, argue for more continuity of performance. Bing argues for the primacy of reading.^[3]

Songs still performed. Cult songs went on being composed and inscribed. The Erythraean paean to Asclepius is a monostrophic paean in dactylic metre, inscribed in the early fourth century. It was still sung, with changes, in Roman times at Ptolemais in Egypt, Dion and Athens. An addition to the Erythraean stone begins a paean to Seleucus (281 BC) in dactylo-epitrites.^[4] Rutherford has suggested that the Erythraean paean may be of the fifth century and by Sophocles.^[5]

In the fourth and third centuries dactylo-epitrite was the usual metre of lyric for the cultivated middle classes. It was generally astrophic and smooth, and it faded after about 190 BC.^[6] The metres of religious and popular song were relatively simple: aeolic, ionic and iambic. The songs were mostly monostrophic, with one stanza-form repeated.^[7]

Virtuoso song. At the other extreme stood show pieces like the “Fragmentum Grenfellianum” (P.Dryton 50), a woman’s lament for a faithless lover. Its opening mixes dactylic, iambic, dochmiac and anapaestic lines, and the poem is astrophic. Its prosy vocabulary and its form have suggested to many that it is a magodia, a kind of mime.^[8] Its dochmiacs are the last known. Outside drama they recur only here.^[9]

No strophic lyric survives from any of the major Hellenistic poets. Recitation of dactylic verse was the dominant way of performing poetry.^[10] Strophic lyric survives mainly in paeans and hymns inscribed on stone. Some were addressed to kings and generals. A paean for Demetrius Poliorcetes, for instance, is built in strophes of iambic trimeters and ithyphallics.^[11] Isyllus of Epidaurus set out his inscription in sections of different metres: trochaic tetrameters, hexameters and iambic trimeters.^[12]

Lyric metres used stichically. The book-poets did not reproduce the strophes of archaic lyric. They used its metres stichically, line after line, or in epodic pairs.^[13]

Callimachus wrote four “lyric” poems, which Pfeiffer separated from the Iambi on the evidence of the Suda. They use the phalaecean (fr. 226), the archebulean (fr. 228) and the catalectic choriambic pentameter (fr. 229). The fourth uses, in epodic form, the “fourteen-syllable Euripidean”, iambic dimeter plus ithyphallic (fr. 227). The archebulean was probably strophic in Stesichorus and Ibycus, and certainly so in the choral odes of drama. Here it is a line repeated.^[14] Whether these poems belong with the Iambi is an old and disputed question.^[15]

Theocritus writes Idylls 28, 30 and 31 in the “greater asclepiad” of Sappho’s third book. He writes Idyll 29 in the “Sapphic fourteen-syllable” of her second. Enjambment is the running-on of sense from one line into the next. Prauscello has shown that in Idyll 29 it occurs only after odd-numbered lines. So the poem recreates, without music, the distichs of the Lesbian poets.^[16]

There were other experiments. Cercidas invented a stichic “meliamb”.^[17] Philicus wrote a hymn to Demeter in catalectic choriambic hexameters, and another poet wrote one in archilocheans. In the second century AD Melinno revived the Sapphic stanza, and Mesomedes wrote hymns in cretics and anapaests.^[18]

Song turned into hexameters. More often, lyric song-types were “translated” into recitative metres. The paean became Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo. The wedding song became Theocritus’ Idyll 18. The victory ode became Callimachus’ elegiac epinicians.^[19] This had begun in the fourth century with Erinna’s hexameter lament, the Distaff.^[20]