The last great phase of Greek literature before the Roman conquests took place in Alexandria. Ptolemy II sought to legitimize his rule by turning Alexander's city on the coast into a great intellectual power, a rival to Athens in the north. He brought over Demetrios of Phaleron, a compatriot of Aristotle, to establish a library and museion (sanctuary of the Muses, from which we get our modern word museum). The great library of Alexandria ended up with some 700,000 scrolls, the largest library of its day and many later days (see chapter 3). The literature of this period was dominated by three great poets: Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonios of Rhodes.
Theocritus of Syracuse was most famous for his series of poems called the Idylls, which dealt with the simple lives of peasants. These were, of course, utter idealizations of country life, presenting scenes of frolicking shepherdesses in rosy scenery rather than malnourished farmers struggling with locust invasions and tax collectors. One might liken them to Marie Antoinette's Bergerie at Versailles, where the last queen of France used to play shepherdess with perfumed sheep, color-coordinated to match her shepherdess costumes. These poems were written, ultimately, for the entertainment of Ptolemy himself, in exchange for his patronage (i. e., financial support). As the poet himself expresses it: "The spokesman of the Muses celebrates Ptolemy in return for his benefactions" (Idylls 17.115-116).
Callimachus of Cyrene in northern Africa was the poetic trendsetter of his day. He scorned the repetitive nature of the Homeric epics and believed that poems should be refined art in themselves, rather than a means of telling a long and possibly tedious story. He was famous for his epigrams (see above). When he did delve into the dactylic hexameter form, it was more to parody epic than to follow it. In his "great epic" Hekale, he narrates an event in the life of Theseus, focusing not on heroic deeds, but on Theseus's relationship with an old woman who served him dinner. Callimachus's greatest, and longest (some 7,000 lines), work was the Aitia—Causes of Things. This semiscientific poetry style was later taken up by the Roman poet Lucretius in his work De Rerum Natura—On the Nature of Things.
Quite dissimilar to both Theocritus and Callimachus was Apollonios of Rhodes, who was actually from Alexandria in spite of his epithet, and who became the head librarian there. His major work returns us to the beginnings of Greek literature: His epic Argonautika, or Voyage of the Argo, tells the tale of Jason and his band of heroes, who sought the Golden Fleece and returned victorious with the "witch" Medea. In this work, Apollonios was clearly imitating the works of Homer, defying the dictates of his supposed teacher Callimachus. It is reported that the story received such bad press when first published that Apollonios moved to Rhodes for a time to escape the censure of Alexandria and to edit the poem. When republished, it was heralded with great acclaim, and the Rhodians honored Apollonios with full citizenship, thus his title "of Rhodes."
The story of Jason and Medea is actually quite old. There are references to the Argo in the Odyssey, and the story of Medea was intimately bound up with the cult of Hera at Perachora (near Corinth), one of the oldest large-scale sanctuaries in Greece. Euripides presented a rather unusual version of the tale in his play Medea, in which the "witch from Colchis" murdered her and Jason's sons in revenge for Jason's infidelity. According to all other versions of the myth, Medea was persecuted by the people of Corinth, who formed a mob and murdered her children themselves.
Apollonios's Argonautika is a fascinating mixture of Homeric style and Hellenistic scientific reasoning. When the characters are traveling in the Mediterranean—Homer's territory—Apollonios is vague about geography, leaving the terrain much as Homer described it. When branching out into other regions, however, such as Germany and Russia, the poet describes rivers and mountains such that later scholars have attempted to trace his path. Prayers and divination in the poem reflect those practices described in Homer, but Medea's use of magic, especially magical potions, shows influence from the recently conquered Near East, where the "science of magic" had long been studied. Even Jason is distinct from the Homeric heroes. Rather than being the best and brightest all rolled up into one immanent figure, Jason is a "managerial" hero. He delegates authority, lets others use their talents to his best advantage, and generally wins the day himself through charm. He is perhaps the earliest prefiguring of the modern notion of the hero.
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