Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments

This is an exceptional translation of the works of an exceptional poet. Though little known in modern times, Callimachus is one of the high-water marks of ancient Greece: a literary giant in the Hellenistic period, leader of the Alexandrian school, model of poetic craft for Virgil, Catullus, Ovid, and others. But up to now the path to his greatness has been hard for Greekless readers to follow. Nourished in a venerated poetic tradition, scholarly and allusive, he preferred "the trickling dew from a mountain's holy spring" to the muddy current down river. This translation clear-flowing, graceful, witty revives a fading giant. A literary triumph.Stephen Scully, Boston Univ.