Callimachus Quotes (9 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Callimachus Quotes

“The most outstanding intellect of this generation, the greatest poet that the Hellenistic age produced, and historically one of the most important figures in the development of Graeco-Roman (and hence European) literature.”

Callimachus

A. W. Bulloch, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989), edited by P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, vol. 1, part 4, p. 9
Criticism

“They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.”

Callimachus

Epigram 2, translation by William Johnson Cory in Ionica (1858) p. 7
Epigrams

“Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore;
The Muses are ten, the Graces are four;
Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face;
She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace.”

Callimachus

Epigram 5; translation by Jonathan Swift, cited from Anthologia Polyglotta (1849), edited by Henry Wellesley, p. 47
Epigrams

“Nothing unattested do I sing.”

Callimachus

Fragment 612; translation by A. W. Bulloch, in P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989) vol. 1, part 4, p. 30

“Set a thief to catch a thief.”

Callimachus

Epigram 43; translation by Robert Allason Furness, from Poems of Callimachus (1931), p. 103
Epigrams

“His blend of sensitivity and detachment, elegance, wit, and learning, had a profound influence on later Roman poets, especially Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius (the last thought of himself as the Roman Callimachus), and through them on the whole European literary tradition.”

Callimachus

D. E. W. Wormell, in The Penguin Companion to Literature (1969) vol. 4, p. 47
Criticism

“O Charidas, what of the under world? Great darkness. And what of the resurrection? A lie. And Pluto? A fable; we perish utterly.”

Callimachus

Epigram 14; translation from Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (1906), edited by J. W. Mackail, p. 171
Epigrams

“A big book is a big misfortune.”

Callimachus

Fragment 465; translation by A. W. Bulloch, in P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989) vol. 1, part 4, p. 30
Variant translation: A great book is like great evil.