Callimachus belongs among those ancient Greek authors who, although their impact was conspicuous on later, especially Roman, culture, are known today only to experts: most of their works are lost and only fragments survive which are scattered, often hardly intelligible, and difficult for a lay readership to access.
Callimachus lived and worked in 3rd century BCE Alexandria. The earliest of his extant writings, the first hymn, is datable to c. 284 BCE. Some words in his Pinakes about a certain Lysimachus who wrote about Attalus II of Pergamon, crowned in 241 BCE, must have been written after Attalus became king.
Callimachus was closely acquainted with the royal dynasty of the Ptolemies, the Macedonian successor kings who had established a Macedonian-Greek empire in Egypt after Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt from the Persians and died soon after....
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Citation: Asper, Markus. "Callimachus of Cyrene". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 October 2006; last revised 07 May 2025. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=701, accessed 14 December 2025.]
