The starting-point for any survey of the Greek literature produced in Hellenistic Egypt under the Ptolemies must be the Museum and the distinct (but perhaps closely associated) Library, both probably instituted by Ptolemy I Soter and developed by his successors (Fraser 1972: 312-35, Erskine 1995). The precise relationship between the two is not clear, but both seem to have been part of the main palace complex in Alexandria (Strabo 17.793-4; Fraser 1972: 322-5). Prominent in the life of the Library (and perhaps also of the Museum or ‘‘shrine of the Muses’’) was literature, especially poetry, encompassing both research on existing earlier texts, and the production of new work (though work in the Museum and Library ranged much further, from mathematics and science to philosophy, ethnography, and history). Many of the most important poets of the period, including Kallimachos and Apollonios of Rhodes, worked within Library (the latter was employed as Librarian according to a second-century AD papyrus (P. Oxy. 1241), while the former produced the renowned Pinakes or ‘‘Tablets,’’ a bibliography of the Greek literature of the Library in 120 volumes: it is no wonder one of his most famous sayings was mega biblion, mega kakon, ‘‘a big book is a big evil’’ (fr. 465 Pf.)). Such poets, especially those working under the patronage of Ptolemies Soter, Philadelphos, and Euergetes, produced not only some of the best and most important Greek literature of antiquity, fit to bear comparison with the poems of Homer or Pindar, but also contributed to the Alexandrian scholarly endeavor which did much to shape our view of ancient Greek literature as a whole, in the form of the collection, cataloguing, editing, and criticism of the texts of earlier Greek authors, most famously (but not only) the Iliad and the Odyssey.
One of the most serious obstacles to study of the literature produced in Egypt under the Ptolemies is the fact that much of the most important poetry of the period has not survived complete. It is only papyrus fragments and quotations by later writers (often grammarians and lexicographers) which allow us a glimpse of poems as influential as Kallimachos’ Hekale or his Aitia, and we know still less about (for example) the tragedies of the Hellenistic Period. Nevertheless, though we must bear in mind the skewed picture that the pattern of survival and loss has bequeathed us, it is still possible to get a good sense of many important developments in Ptolemaic Greek literature, particularly from the flowering of third-century bc poetry in Alexandria under the first three Ptolemies. The fragments which we now possess of (for example) Kallimachos’ Aitia, Iambi, and Hekale are, in fact, considerable, and we should also remember that the poems which have survived complete include an epic (Apollonios’ Argonautika), a wide range of bucolic and non-bucolic poems by Theokritos, six hexameter Hymns by Kallimachos, and several dozen epigrams (including many by Kallimachos and Theokritos). It is on this poetry that I shall concentrate.
World History
