Callimachus

c. 310–240 BCE

Callimachus of Cyrene worked in the Library of Alexandria under the first Ptolemies, where he drew up its catalogue, the Pinakes. The most learned and influential poet of the Hellenistic age, he preferred the short, polished poem to the long epic. Six hymns and some sixty epigrams survive whole; the Aetia, the Iambi and the Hecale only in fragments.