Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography.

• Author: Kamesar, Adam

Callimachus (ca. 303-240 B.C.) was perhaps the most important figure in Greek literature of the third century. He was active at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus and is especially well known for his poetic works, although only a portion of these survives in complete form. However, he was also a scholar of the first rank and produced the Pinakes, or Tables, a bibliography of Greek literature in 120 books which was based on the holdings of the Alexandrian library. While the present work has this enterprise as its principal subject, it is in fact much broader in scope. For in order to set the achievement of Callimachus in proper context, the author treats the subject of Greek bibliography almost from its beginnings. Moreover, since the Pinakes has been transmitted in fragmentary form, later bibliographical lists, which probably are dependent to some degree on the work of Callimachus, are also treated with a view to the light which they throw on the Pinakes. Thus, the English subtitle does not quite do justice to the contents of the work, which are more fully perceptible in the original German title, Kallimachos und die Literaturverzeichnung bei den Griechen (Frankfurt am Main: Buchhandler-Vereinigung, 1977).

Blum's treatment of the forerunners of Callimachus is devoted mainly to Aristotle and his pupils. For they went well beyond the sophists and the early historians in their attention to systematic research on the history of literature. Aristotle also seems to have been the first one in the Greek world to have organized a systematic research library (p. 52). Yet the achievements of Aristotle in this regard were definitively eclipsed by those of the early Ptolemaic kings. These kings founded the Alexandrian library and probably came close to accomplishing their goal of collecting in it all of the (Greek) books in the world. Thus, as Blum sees it, the Alexandrian library was "in modern terms a Greek national library" (pp. 104, 239). And the Pinakes of Callimachus, which according to Blum was the catalogue of this library, was a "Greek national bibliography," or better, since it contained extensive biographical information, a "national author lexicon," comparable to Kosch's Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon (p. 239).

Described in this manner, the achievement of Callimachus is quite amazing. In the first place, one marvels at the scale of the enterprise. For the goal of a completely comprehensive treatment of Greek literature reminds us of certain...