INTRODUCTION

In Callimachus we read narratives which regularly draw attention to their status as stories and to those telling these stories. This flagging of narrative status and narrator ranges from the subtle ironies and self-criticism of the Iambi to the intrusive scholar-poet of the Aetia, and the careful modifications and expansions of Archaic hymnal voices in the Hymns.

I mean the plural in this chapter's title to stress the great variety and subtle differentiation of voice in Callimachus, within a single poem, within a collection such as the Hymns, and between different works. One obstacle to the perception of this variety is the homogeneity as ‘scholarly’, obscure, difficult which critics often assume in Callimachean poetry (and Hellenistic poetry more generally). Erudition or scholarship is an important aspect of Hellenistic narratorial voices, but a central reason for a simple characterisation of such voices as ‘scholarly’ is inattention to the relationship between author and narrator, and the nature of narratorial ‘projections’ of the author. This is particularly the case with Callimachus.

Callimachus is the most obvious example of the Alexandrian scholar-poet, the compiler of the Pinakes, and writer of works such as the Ἐθνικαὶ ὀνομασίαι (Local Names). He must, it is thought, have been bookish, thorough, a ‘scholar’. But simply to regard the scholarship of a narrator or a text as an expression or display of erudition of the author is to ignore the subtle uses to which Callimachus (and indeed Hellenistic poets in general) can put scholarship: to satirise pedantry (e.g. in Iamb. 6), to undercut the narrator's authority (e.g. in H. 1.60ff.), to jar with the characterisation of the narrator otherwise developed (e.g. in H. 6.63).