A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which do not survive, in a wide variety of genres.

He espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature.

Born into a prominent family in the Greek city of Cyrene in modern-day Libya, he was educated in Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt.

After working as a schoolteacher in the city, he came under the patronage of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus and was employed at the Library of Alexandria where he compiled the Pinakes, a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature.

Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the late Republic and the early Empire.

[3] During the 280s, Callimachus is thought to have studied under the philosopher Praxiphanes and the grammarian Hermocrates at Alexandria, an important centre of Greek culture.

[10] Epigrams, brief, forceful poems originally written on stone and on votive offerings, were already established as a form of literature by the 3rd century BC.

[13] Often written from a first-person perspective, the Epigrams offer a great variety of styles and draw on different branches of the epigrammatic tradition.

[14] According to the Callimachus scholar Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, "[t]heir intelligent play on language, meter, and word placement" have placed the poems among the most prominent works of the Hellenistic period.

The dominant view holds that they were literary creations to be read exclusively as poetry, though some scholars have linked individual elements to contemporary ritual practice.

[28] The only aetiology commonly assumed to have been placed in the book are the stories Busiris, king of Egypt, and Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, who were known for their excessive cruelty.

[35] By this, he referred to his collection of 13 Iambs, drawing on an established tradition of iambic poetry whose defining feature was their aggressive, satirical tone.

Callimachus couches his aesthetic criticism in vivid imagery taken from the natural and social world: rival scholars are compared to wasps swarming from the ground and to flies resting on a goatherd.

He often mixes different metaphors to create effects of "wit and incongruity", such as when a laurel tree is described as "glaring like a wild bull".

Since the poem is estimated to run to have had around 1000 lines, it constitutes an epyllion, a shorter form of epic poetry dealing with topics not traditionally present in larger-scale works.

[37] It recounts a story about the Greek hero Theseus, who, after liberating the city of Marathon from a destructive bull, was hosted by a poor but kindly old woman named Hecale.

[45] According to the classicist Lionel Casson, the Pinakes were the first comprehensive bibliographic resource for Greek literature[46] and a "vital reference tool" for using the Alexandrian Library.

[9] At the beginning of the Aetia, he summarised his poetic programme in an allegory spoken by the god Apollo: "my good poet, feed my victim as fat as possible, but keep your Muse slender.

[9] Although Callimachus attempted to differentiate himself from other poets, his aesthetic philosophy is sometimes subsumed under the term of Alexandrianism, describing the entirety of Greek literature written in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC.

[54] Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the late Republic and the early Empire.

[1] Due to the complexity of his poetic production, Roman authors did not attempt to reproduce Callimachus's poems but creatively reused them in their own work.

Having followed Callimachus's example by rejecting traditional epic poetics in his 6th Eclogue, Vergil labels his Aeneid as a "better work" (Latin: maius opus).

Vergil's formulation leaves open whether he sought to write an epic with the refinement called for by Callimachus or whether he had turned his back on Callimacheanism as his career progressed.

At the same time, he challenges Callimachean learnedness by depicting lowbrow details of contemporary nightlife such as strippers and dwarfs kept for entertainment purposes.

[59] Richard L. Hunter, an expert on Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, states that the selective reception of Callimachus through Roman poets has led to a simplified picture of his poetry.

Hunter writes that modern critics have drawn up a false dichotomy between the "content-laden and socially engaged poetry of the archaic and classical periods"[61] and a sophisticated, but meaningless style proposed by Callimachus.

[62] Echoing Hunter's assessment in their 2012 book on the reception of Callimachus, the Hellenists Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan Stephens comment that the scarcity of primary evidence and the reliance on Roman accounts has created a label of Callimacheanism that does not accurately represent his literary work.