Introduction - Callimachus Aetia

CALLIMACHUS Of CYRENE

Callimachus of Cyrene was the most influential poet of the Hellenistic age. He lived at the moment of transition from the classical world of old Greek city states to the new foundation of Ptolemaic Alexandria in North Africa—a megacity that attracted people of diverse ethnicities from locations throughout the Mediterranean. Facilitated by this new environment, Callimachus appropriated the literary past and positioned himself between poetry as performance in traditional venues and the new possibilities afforded by the text. His poems contain explicit statements on poetic aesthetics, often constructed as responses to his ‘critics’.  Whether these statements were serious and systematic, or playful, and whether his enemies were real, or fictional foils to dramatize his own aesthetics, he was unique in his expression of what constituted excellence in contemporary poetics. His insistence on his own poetics as ‘new’ in combination with his compositions in multiple genres led to frequent imitation among later poets of both Greece and Rome.

In addition to the Aitia, his poetry included hymns, epigrams, iambic poetry (Iambi and the Ibis), a hexameter poem of about 1,000 lines on an early exploit of Theseus and the bull of Marathon (Hecale); victory odes; and encomia of kings and queens. He also wrote in prose. The most important of his prose texts was the Pinakes, a comprehensive listing of earlier Greek literature by genre that included biographies of each author, citing their works with initial words or first lines.[i] Unfortunately only six hymns and around sixty of his epigrams have survived intact. The rest of his poems have been reduced to numerous citations in later Greek lexica and handbooks or, beginning in the late nineteenth century, have been discovered on papyrus.[ii]  

There are few verifiable facts about Callimachus’ life, and much of what the ancient testimonia record is inference based on his writings. He seems to have been born around 305 BCE and, judging from his poetic subjects, he seems to have died sometime after 240. He identifies himself as a Cyrenean. Cyrene in Libya was an old Greek city, a Dorian colony, founded in the seventh century bce. But he lived and wrote much of his poetry in Alexandria, a city that had been founded within a generation of his birth.  His was not the city described by Strabo, who was writing at the end of the first century ce, but a city in the process of being built: high levels of immigration, dynamic physical changes, and rapid growth would have persisted during his lifetime.  This earlier city had some sort of walls (the first mention of which is in Callimachus’ first Iambus), palace environs, and the Museion and the Library. The Lighthouse was built between 297-85. Within this rapidly expanding civic environment, the Greek community was a diverse mix. To judge from evidence drawn from the rest of Egypt, Greek-speaking groups in Alexandria, in descending order of concentration, would have included Macedonians, Cyreneans, Thracians, Islanders, and Athenians, all groups reflected in the stories in the Aitia. The newness of the city dictated that everyone was an immigrant; therefore, who came, where they came from, and the fact of migration itself constituted an essential dimension of poetic composition as well as reception.

Callimachus did not write in a literary vacuum: Ptolemaic Alexandria was a fertile, thriving poetic environment, in part because royal patronage strove to make it so, in part because the new city provided opportunities in so many different venues, not the least of which was the newly established Library. Although Callimachus himself was never head of the Library, his composition of the Pinakes and the breadth of his poetic and prose intertexts testifies to his active engagement with this new (textual) mode of thinking. His prose works on paradoxography, on rivers, nymphs, birds, and winds, on foundations of islands and cities, and their name changes are all reflected in his Aitia.[iii]

Callimachus’ most important poetic contemporaries included Theocritus of Syracuse, the inventor of the bucolic genre. Associated with Sicily and Cos, he was among the earliest Hellenistic poets, and his residence in Alexandria most likely belongs between the 280s and the 260s.  There are many overlaps between Theocritus’ Idylls and Callimachus’ hymns, though far fewer in the Aitia. Apollonius of Rhodes, whose surviving poem is the epic Argonautica, is thought to have been a native Alexandrian and a slightly younger contemporary of Callimachus. He followed Zenodotus as head of the Alexandrian Library. There are numerous intertextual parallels between Apollonius’ epic and the Aitia.[iv] Epigrammatists from a variety of locations also achieved prominence during this period. Their epigrams, often imitating earlier stone inscriptions, were beginning to be collected into poetry books. The most important of these writers were Asclepiades of Samos and Posidippus of Pella. A roll of more than a hundred epigrams of the latter, datable to the late third century bce, was published in 2001.[v] The epigrams in this new collection share many features in common with Callimachus’ Aitia, including an interest in the athletic victories of Ptolemaic queens.[vi] The exact chronology of Callimachus vis-à-vis his contemporaries will continue to be disputed, not least because they evidently wrote in response to each other’s texts. But we know so little about strategies of poetic exchange—whether informal or public—that assertions about allusive priority must be made with extreme caution. The obviously shared subject matter of these poets indicates a rich and very interactive poetic environment, while also suggesting the growing importance of the text as a viable poetic and ideological medium.                

THE AITIA

Callimachus’ Aitia was the most influential of his poems in antiquity, particularly so for Augustan poetry.[vii]  It was an elegiac poem consisting of narratives, ranging in length from no more than a few lines (e.g., Busiris) to well over a hundred (e.g., the Victory of Berenice, Acontius and Cydippe, the Lock of Berenice).  Each of these provided an explanatory account (aition) of an unusual ritual event or object, e.g., why the Lindians use invective in their sacrificial rites to Heracles or why the statue of Leucadian Diana has a mortar on her head in place of a crown.  It is four books in length and estimated to have been about 4,000 to 6,000 lines.  The Aitia has not survived intact but as fragments of papyrus and parchment. Various ancient synopses and commentaries are of great help in establishing the order and number of the individual aitia, though these too are fragmentary. Because so much of the interpretation of the Aitia is dependent upon potential textual restorations, the bulk of the scholarship has been concerned with reading and reconstructing the many fragments. This website has been designed to make the poem much more accessible to a general Classical audience without distorting its fragmentary and conjectural nature. While it is difficult to generalize about so fragmentary a work, some of its features are apparent. 

(1) However random the subject matter of the individual aitia might appear, they were tightly organized by framing structures--the conversation with the Muses, (possibly) the recounting of tales heard at a symposium, the Berenice poems.  Material from the opening recurs in several subsequent aitia. Further, several themes can be detected over the various aitia: the treatment of guests, particularly in the tales connected to Heracles, piety (or impiety) towards the gods often ironically resolved, the series of love stories in book III, and stories in book IV that involve treachery and violence. Since Books III-IV are framed by poems to Berenice II, Ptolemy III's bride, it may not be fanciful to see a deliberate concentration of erotic themes in these latter books, culminating with the erotically charged dedication of the lock of hair for her husband's safe return from battle. Another organizing strategy that Callimachus used to great effect was parallel tales (e.g., the aition of Phrygius and Pieria in book III is a love story that seems to resemble the earlier tale of Acontius and Cydippe or the two separate stories about statues of Hera in book IV).

Callimachus has also framed his Aitia with himself as the narrating I.  He begins book I as an old man, apparently recounting his youthful encounter with the Muses in a dream; if book II opens with fr. 178, then a seemingly younger Callimachus is again present, this time in Alexandria, at a symposium; at the opening of book III, he speaks the poetic praise of Berenice. If the epigram is rightly placed at the end of book IV, he signs off by claiming that he is moving to new genres (see below). Along with the poet as framing narrator, a rudimentary temporal trajectory is in place, beginning with tales of Heracles and of the Argonauts at the opening of book I and ending with contemporary events in Alexandria: the dedication of Berenice’s lock in the recently built temple of Aphrodite-Arsinoe in book IV.[viii]

(2) Although all of the poems are written in elegiac meter, Callimachus includes material that imitates other genres:  the aition on the Tomb of Simonides behaves like a funerary epigram, the Lock of Berenice II expands on the form of the dedicatory epigram, while at least one story, Acontius and Cydippe, is apparently erotic.  The Nemean victory of Berenice II is epinician in character, the unplaced fr. 114 Pf. on a statue of Delian Apollo employs dialogue, and many fragments exhibit hymnic or epic characteristics.[ix]  It is worth considering to what degree Callimachus' poem succeeded in opening up elegy to permit a greater range of topics than had been previously attempted. Even though the 1992 publication of a fragmentary elegy on the Battle of Platea P. Oxy. 3965), written by Simonides, indicates that these trends were already present in earlier poetry, the Aitia rivals epic in its length (it was probably about the same size as Apollonius’ Argonautica). 

(3) The writing of aitia seems to have absorbed the imaginations of the Hellenistic poets.  They exploit aetiology far more than their literary predecessors as a way of defining the relationship of the past to the present and of making the foreign more accessible.  The use of such explanatory tales or mini-origin myths functions to domesticate the unknown, by explaining and/or renaming it in terms of the familiar.  In aetiology the past operates both to provide a valorized context for this redefinition, and also as the space into which to retroject such elements in order to control or imagine a place as really one's own. Thus aitia function to create cultural memory and Callimachus's aitia in particular reposition the archaic and classical Greek past to conform to the new realities of Ptolemaic Alexandria. 

Date

The dating of books I and II is not secure. Books III and IV must fall early in the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes, because the first poem of book III commemorates the victory of Berenice II in the four-horse chariot race at the Nemean games (either in 245, 243, or 241 BCE). Berenice II was the daughter of Magas of Cyrene, and married Euergetes in 246 after a long betrothal.  The Lock of Berenice, which closes Book IV, must have taken place soon after their marriage, probably on the occasion of Ptolemy's return from the third Syrian war, certainly no earlier than 245 BCE. Because Rudolf Pfeiffer and other scholars believed that Apollonius must have known and used Books I-II in his Argonautica, these books are usually taken to be as much as 25 years earlier, and thus assigned to a date around 270 BCE.[x]  This has led to the thesis (essentially Pfeiffer's), now commonly accepted, that Callimachus reissued or reedited the Aitia late in his life and added the prologue, now known as Against the Telchines, to the four-book edition. While this is the principle upon which much scholarship has proceeded, it is important to realize that before the second century CE, all literary works would have been circulated in a roll format—usually papyrus, though sometimes leather or parchment. Each of the books of the Aitia would have filled one papyrus roll. So reediting may have meant nothing more than issuing two more book rolls.

Main Sources for the Text

Although the Aitia was very well represented in papyrus fragments (currently the number is 37), some of which are quite substantial (80+ lines), the text in its entirety has not survived. Since papyrus rolls of poetic texts were normally about 1000 lines in length, the original Aitia must have circulated in four or, less likely, two papyrus rolls.  It was only when codices came into vogue round the third century CE that all of Callimachus' poems could have been collected into one edition.  These fragmentary sources are described in detail by Annette Harder in her 2012 edition, vol. 1, 63-68. As new papyrus finds from this poem are published, they are inventoried on the following websites: the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB), Trismegistus (http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/) and Mertens-Pack³ (http://promethee.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal/). The most important of the papyrus or parchment finds are in roughly chronological order:

(1) The Lille papyrus (= Mertens-Pack³ 207.3) was copied within a generation of Callimachus' death.  It contains the opening of book III with interlinear comments.

(2) PSI 9.1092 (= Mertens-Pack³ 214) is a first century BCE roll that contained the Aitia, book IV; it is the major source of the Lock of Berenice.

(3) P Oxy 17.2079 + 18.2167 + PSI 11.1217 (= Mertens-Pack³ 195) are all fragments from the same second century CE papyrus roll containing the opening of book I, frr. 1, 7, 17, 18, 115, 117. 

(4) P. Oxy. 2168 + P. Berol. 11629A+B + 13417A+B (= Mertens-Pack³ 195) are fragments from a third century CE papyrus codex containing portions of Aitia, books I, III, lyrics, and the Hecale. 

(5) P Oxy 7.1011 (= Mertens-Pack³ 211.1) is a fourth century CE papyrus codex with parts of books III-IV and most of the Iambi.

(6) P. Oxy. 20.2258 (= Mertens-Pack³ 205.1) is a sixth or seventh century papyrus codex that must have held a collected edition of Callimachus.  It contains portions from Hymns 1-4, 6, the Aitia, books III-IV and various lyrics.

 

Scholia

The following is a list of the most important commentaries and epitomes.  In addition to these independent texts, it should be noted that majority of the fragments of the Aitia have annotations of some kind attached.

(1) The Florentine scholia or Scholia Florentina (PSI 1219 = Mertens-Pack³ 196) is the name given to a second-third century CE papyrus roll containing scholia for book I. It included information on the sources that Callimachus' used for his individual narratives.

(2) The London Scholia (P. Lit. Lond. 181 = Mertens-Pack³ 197) contains a commentary on the opening of the poem and covers frr. 1-25 Pf.

(3) The Milan Diegeseis (PRIMI 1.18 = Mertens-Pack³ 211) from the first or second century CE are plot summaries of the Aitia and Iambi, beginning with an explanation of why Artemis

 was invoked in childbirth in Book III.  Although broken in many places it provides valuable information about the order and contents of Aitia III-IV.  Each summary begins with a 'lemma', that is, the first line of the aition in question.[xi] See now M.-R. Falivene, “The Diegesis Papyrus:

Archaeological Context, Format, and Contents,” in Brill Companion to Callimachus, 81-92.

(4) P. Oxy 20.2263 (= Mertens-Pack³ 205) is a second-third century BCE roll that contains Diegeseis to book I.

(5) Berlin Commentary (P. Berol. 11521 = Mertens-Pack³ 200) is a third century CE papyrus codex with commentary on book I.

 

Organization of the Aitia

Prologue: The first book begins with Callimachus defending himself against his critics, whom he labels Telchines. Here he articulates the privileged status of the poet as one who is favored by Apollo and the Muses, setting out guidelines for the composition of poetry in a series of oppositions--the untrodden path vs. the public thoroughfare, delicacy vs. bombast, thin Muses vs. fat sheep, the cicada vs. the braying ass.  Issues of length (long poetry vs. short) and register (high vs. low) also seem to be implicit.  This opening fragment is of great critical importance for the development of Roman poetics.  Roman writers frequently refer to this text[xii] with the result that the prologue is often reconstructed on the basis of their remarks or adaptations, which often focus on choice of a poetic genre.  It is important to distinguish between what can be legitimately derived from the fragments themselves and what is inferentially based on Roman imitators.

The exact relationship of Against the Telchines to what follows has never been satisfactorily resolved.  The poet says “his decades are not few” with the result that scholars have assumed the Aitia itself, or at the very least this opening section, must have been written in Callimachus' old age.  But is the poet's old age a genuine biographical detail or merely a poetic persona constructed to contrast with the youthful Callimachus of the following section?  Further, it is open to question whether this section was really an independent prologue that was appended to the whole when the third and fourth books were added (so Pfeiffer, Parsons) or whether it was simply the first part of the following section (Cameron).[xiii]

The Dream

Against the Telchines is followed by a dream (sometimes referred to as the Somnium) in which Callimachus as a young man dreams of an encounter with the Muses on Helicon.  This is a deliberate reminiscence of Hesiod's poetic initiation in the Theogony.  The Scholia Florentina provide the outline for this section: in his dream Callimachus engages in conversation with the Muses who answer his questions about various phenomena and events.  The accounts of the Muses, frequently interlaced with Callimachus' own observations, make up the aitia of the first two books.

In Books I-II three Muses are mentioned by name: Clio (Florentine scholia on fr. 4 Pf., fr. 43 Pf.), Calliope (fr. 7.22 Pf.) and Erato (fr. 238 SH); and Muses as a group occur in fr. 253b SH. Since the first aition begins with Clio and she is again named in a later aition (fr. 43.56 Pf.), it is plausible that there were at least 18 aitia in the first two books, spoken by each of the Muses in sequence.  A tenth Muse was identified as Arsinoe in the London scholia. This has stimulated discussion that Arsinoe, Ptolemy II's second wife, may have been included in this part of the poem or even that the first two books may have been dedicated to her as books III-IV appear to have been dedicated to Ptolemy III's queen Berenice II.[xiv]

The following discrete narratives can be located in Book I:

(1) Callimachus begins by asking the Muses for an explanation of a Parian custom of sacrificing to the Graces without garlands or flutes. The answer recounts Minos in the act of sacrificing to the Graces learning about the death of his son Androgeos. This causes him to abandon the the celebratory garlands and music. According to the Florentine scholia this aition included a discussion of the various traditions concerning the birth of the Graces. A fragment from this section (fr. 7. 14-15 Pf.) asks the Graces to “wipe your shining hands upon my elegies so that they will remain for many years.”[xv]  It was followed by two aitia describing rituals that included the  apotropaic use of blasphemy or obscenity:

(2) a rather long aition about the return of the Argonauts and the rites to Apollo Aegletes celebrated on the island of Anaphe. A similar aition ends Apollonius' Argonautica, 4.1717-30. In fact, Apollonius' poem ends where Callimachus begins. [xvi]

(3) a sacrifice to Heracles at Lindos. Heracles apparently killed and ate a bull being used for plowing.  The following aition is a doublet.

(4) The fourth aition included a discussion of Heracles' killing of Theiodamas, who refused him a bull to feed his hungry son. Theiodamas was the father of Hylas. This material also occurs in the Argonautica 1.1213ff.

(5) This is a very fragmentary tale that treated the death of Linus and the festival that originated in honor of him. Although we might expect that this is a story about the more famous Linus who was a musician, in fact this Linus was the infant son of Psamathe and Apollo. She gave birth in secret and hid her son among the lambs. Linus was later torn apart by dogs. Coroebus figures as the hero who avenged Linus' and his mother's death. 

(6) This is an account of a statue of Artemis at Leucas and why she had a mortar on her head in place of a crown.  How much is missing from the end of the book is not known.

Most scholars have held that Book II continues the scheme of interrogation of the Muses and response that organized Book I, but it is the most fragmentary book and only two sequences can be securely located:

(1) A very long discussion between Callimachus and the Muses on the foundation of various Sicilian cities (fr. 43 Pf.), in which Clio is mentioned in this fragment as 'speaking again'. The stories include one on Camarina; another on the death of Minos, killed by the daughters of Cocalus; Zankle, named for the sickle used by Kronos to castrate Uranos; and Boeotian Haliartus. This section was used by Vergil’s listing of Sicilian cities in Aeneid 3.692-714.[xvii]

and (2) an account of the bronze bull of Phalaris that begins with a mention of Busiris, the legendary king of Egypt who sacrificed foreigners and was subsequently killed by Heracles. The coupling of Busiris and Phalaris by Ovid in Ars Amatoria 647-56 suggests that Callimachus was Ovid's model. 

There have been a number of recent conjectures about the order of Book II:

(1) Consensus now tends to follow J. Zetzel’s argument that the unplaced fr. 178 Pf. could begin Book II.[xviii]  This fragment contains a description of a symposium held at the house of an Athenian named Pollis, who was a resident in Egypt (presumably Alexandria), but who nevertheless celebrated Attic festivals.  The occasion was the festival of the Aiora.  Since the one securely placed fragment (fr. 43 Pf.) portrays Callimachus as repeating to the Muses what he heard at a symposium (lines 12-7), Zetzel has extrapolated the following organizing principle of book II:  Callimachus himself now recollecting a series of stories that he heard at Pollis' symposium as part of his conversation with the Muses.[xix]

(2) A. Harder has suggested that fr. 253 SH = 137m Harder, which contains language reminiscent of the opening of Book I and mentions something ceasing (either a dream or the voices of the Muses) should be located at the close of book II.[xx]  

(3) Peter Knox suggested that fr. 112 Pf., which has been taken to be an epilogue to the whole of the Aitia, is more likely to have ended Books I-II, which probably appeared several years if not decades before the last two books.[xxi]  Cameron combines Harder and Knox's suggestions to locate fr. 253 SH and fr. 112 Pf. as the close of Book II.[xxii]

Books III-IV

P. J. Parsons reconstructed the opening of Book III based on the publication of the Lille papyrus in 1976,[xxiii] suggesting that Books III-IV were framed by poems dedicated to Berenice II, the wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes.  In the main the order of aitia in books III and IV is known from the Diegeseis, though there are a number missing at the beginning of the Diegeseis. Consensus now regards book III to open with the Victoria Berenices and book IV to end with the Lock of Berenice.  Probably both of these poems were separately written and included in the Aitia at a later stage of publication.  Beyond the framing, the organizing principle of these books is not known, though Callimachus appears to have abandoned his earlier framing device of cross-questioning the Muses.

Book III contains the following:

(1) Book III began with a poem celebrating Berenice's victory at the Nemean games, now named the Victoria Berenices.  It included a story of Heracles, the founder of the games, and his slaying of the Nemean lion.  In telling the story, however, Callimachus appears to have shifted the focus from the heroic to the details of Heracles' encounter with a peasant named Molorchus with whom he took shelter, and much of the poem is his conversation with Molorchus.  This bears a strong resemblance to the Hecale, in which Callimachus foregrounds not Theseus' encounter with the bull of Marathon, but Theseus' reception into the hut of the old lady Hecale and her life story.[xxiv]  Subsequently, E. Livrea connected what had been thought of as a separate aition, the “Mousetrap" (fr. 177 Pf.) to this poem, arguing that Molorchus's slaying of the mice who were eating him out of house and home was a tale within the larger aition and functioned as a humorous parallel to Heracles’ slaying of the Nemean lion. [xxv]  

Other known aitia are:

(2) A very mutilated fragment on the Attic Thesmophoria that seems to involve the anger of Demeter; 

(3) A tale placed in the mouth of Simonides who speaks about the removal of his tomb in Acragas. It recalls the destruction of the house of the Scopadae, who once dishonored the poet.  Theocritus Id. 16. 35-40 also alludes to Simonides and the Scopadae in the context of honoring poets.

(4) An elegy on the fountains of Argos, which were said to have been discovered by the Danaids, who provided irrigation for the once arid land. Like the opening of the Victoria Berenices it links Argos and Egypt.

(5) The story of Acontius and Cydippe.[xxvi]  One of the best preserved fragments, the ostensible purpose of this aition is to explain the peculiar marriage ritual of having the bride sleep her prenuptial night with a freeborn youth both of whose parents were still alive. However, the bulk of the narrative is a love story.  It recounts how Acontius from Ceos fell in love with Cydippe from Naxos when he caught sight of her during a Delian festival.  He tricked her by throwing an apple in her path inscribed with the words "I swear by Artemis to marry Acontius".  When she read out the inscription, she was then bound by her unwitting oath.  When her father, Ceyx, subsequently attempted to arrange a suitable marriage for her, she became sick before the wedding day.  After this happened for the third time, Ceyx consulted the oracle of Apollo and was advised to marry his daughter to Acontius instead. Callimachus also provides the source for his story, the Cean historian, Xenomedes. He concludes the whole with a précis of Xenomedes' work, particularly, the fact that he recounted the death of the Telchines and Demonax who foolishly disregarded the gods.  Callimachus uses a phrase here: (fr. 75.66) γέρων ἐνεθήκατο δέλτ[οις that returns us to the Prologue, in which Callimachus as an old man reminisces about first placing the tablets on his knees (fr. 1.21).   

Acontius and Cydippe is often cited in discussions of the history of the so-called love elegy, particularly on the question of the originality of Latin poetry and/or its dependence on Greek models.  It is also obvious that the basic story—boy meets girl at festival, falls in love at first sight, which became a staple of later Greek novels like Heliodorus' Aethiopica or Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian Tale—was already part of the Greek literary repertory in the third century BCE. It is important to also to consider that the Aitia begins with the enmity of Athens and Crete, and Acontius and Cydippe are respectively the descendents of Codrus (of Athens) and Minos (of Crete). Is their love the 'resolution' of the political quarrel?  If so, it might be intended to foreshadow the Lock of Berenice, in which the political tensions between Cyrene and Egypt were resolved by the marriage of Berenice II (of Cyrene) and Ptolemy III.

(6) The next aition continues with an account of nuptial rites of the Eleans. After Heracles destroyed Elis, he forced the widows of the Elean soldiers to sleep with his own men to repopulate the region.  Afterwards he founded the Olympian games.

(7) This provides an explanation of why Isindians were excluded from Ionian sacrifices, namely, because once upon a time an Isindian had killed a guest.  The killing of guests is a theme also in Sicilian Cities and in the tale of Busiris and Phalaris.

(8) An account of why women invoke Artemis in childbirth. 

(9) A love story about Phrygius and Pieria.  From two warring cities, like Acontius and Cydippe, they meet and fall in love at a festival. Their union put an end to the fighting. 

(10) This is a story about dishonoring a statue of the Olympic victor, Euthycles the Locrian, and the consequences of the action.  This bears some resemblance to dishonoring the tomb of Simonides.  It also belongs to a series of aitia that relate stories about athletic events.

Book IV

The majority of these stories are now very fragmentary, though their general outline and order is guaranteed by the Diegeseis. They often involve treachury and betrayal, scapegoating, and ironic denouements.

(1) An account of the Delphic festival celebrating Apollo's slaying of the serpent.  At the festival the youthful participants wore garlands of bay, hence the sacrifice was called the Daphnephoria. It may have been parallel to the opening of book III, with its aition of the Nemean games, but almost nothing survives.

(2) An account of the death of Ino's son Melicertes.  When Ino, driven mad by Hera, jumped into the sea with her son, Melicertes, his body was washed up on the shores of Tenedos, where an altar was placed in his honor. The story of Ino and Melecertes is part of the prehistory of the Argonauts.

(3) A story about the pledge to Apollo by the Liparians to sacrifice their most courageous warrior after the battle.  This was Theudotus, who bears the speaking name of “given to the god”. 

(4) The subject is Limonis, the daughter of Hippomenes of Athens.  What Callimachus related is not known, though two myths are known from elsewhere:  when her father discovered that she had been seduced, he closed her up in a stall with a horse who killed her.  Alternatively, he killed the man who seduced her by tying him to a horse. 

(5) A hunter, boasting of his skill, dedicated the head of a boar he had killed to himself instead of Artemis.  He fell asleep under his dedication, which then fell down and killed him. 

(6) Not much more than the subject is known about this aition, which recounted the building of the Pelasgian walls at Athens. 

(7) This is another story about an athletic victor: Euthymus, the Olympic boxing champion, who put an end to a custom of the Temessans.  One of Odysseus' crew, who had been left on their shore, was subsequently killed. It seems that his ghost terrorized the region and they appeased him by annually leaving a virgin and a bed on the shore for the ghost. When the girl’s parents collected her the next day she was no longer a virgin.  Euthymus is said to have put an end to the practice.

(8-9) Paired aitia about venerable statues of Hera at Samos.  The older was aniconic, not even carved into human form, while the other had a vine in her hair and a lion skin, said to be spoils from Dionysus and Heracles. 

(10)  A story about Pasicles of Ephesus who was killed when his mother, hearing a fight brought a light and a inadvertently aided those attacking her son.  

(11) Nothing is known of this story beyond its subject, Androgeos, the son of Minos, who protected the stern of ships.  Minos learning about the death of Androgeos was featured in the first aition in book I. 

(12) Apparently a tale about the war between Parians and Thracians in Thasos.  The subject is Oesydres. After the Parians killed him they were required to pay reparations to the Thasians. 

(13) The "syrma" of Antigone, the place where Antigone was said to have dragged the body of Eteocles onto the pyre of Polyneices. Ashes from the pyre were said to have divided into two heaps, indicating that even in death the brothers could not be reconciled.

(14) A story about a Roman named Gaius, who when wounded in a battle and complaining of his limp, was admonished by his mother to behave with greater fortitude. The aition applies a story told both about Spartans and about Alexander to a Roman.  This is the earliest mention of Rome in a Greek text.

(15) A story about the anchor stone of the Argo left at Cyzicus and subsequently dedicated to Athene. A version of the story occurs in the Argonautica 1.953-60.

(16) The Lock of Berenice apparently closed book IV.  The poem recounts how Berenice II dedicated a lock of her hair in the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite at Cape Zephyrium upon the safe return of her husband, Ptolemy III, from the Third Syrian War.  Subsequently the court astronomer, Conon, announced that the lock had disappeared from the temple and had taken its place in the heavens as a new constellation. Although a considerable portion of the Greek text has survived, the poem is partially reconstructed on the basis of Catullus 66, which is translation of the Lock into Latin.  Catullus' translation is not exact, however, and should be used with caution.[xxvii]

Epilogue  P. Oxy. 1011 = fr. 112 Pf. is a papyrus codex that contains the end of the Aitia and the beginning of the Iambi.[xxviii]  The last five lines of the Aitia repeat the opening:  “. . .to whom the Muses told many stories as he tended his sheep by the footprint of the fiery horse.  Farewell and return with greater prosperity.  Hail greatly to you, Zeus, and may you preserve the whole house of our masters.  But I shall go on to the prose (?) pasture of the Muses.”[xxix]  This is generally taken to have been the epilogue to the collected four books of Aitia, and to have functioned as an introduction to his new poetic production, the Iambi.  At the time Callimachus wrote, of course, these lines could only have stood at the end of a roll, and thus could have only signaled a change in poetic interests. Only with the later introduction of the codex could the lines have served as a transition between two different generic collections.  There is a further problem: the whole of the Aitia must have belonged to the end of Callimachus’ very long career (about 240 BCE) while the Iambi are likely to have been written much earlier.  See above for P. Knox’s suggestion that this epilogue originally belonged to the first two books only.  It would have been relocated by copiests or editors at the end of the four books at a later date.

Unplaced Fragments

There are several unplaced fragments, the most important of which include fr. 178 Pf., discussed in connection with book II above.  Two others take as their subjects the statue of Apollo at Delphi (fr. 114 Pf.) and the Hyperboreans (fr. 186 Pf.). The latter seems to have elements in common with Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos, 275-99, which recreates the first offerings brought to Delian Apollo by the Hyperboreans.