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The New Politics of Olympos
The New Politics
of Olympos
Kingship in Kallimachos’ Hymns
M IC HA E L B RUM BAU G H
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2019
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brumbaugh, Michael Everett, 1982– author.
Title: The new politics of Olympos : kingship in Kallimachos’ hymns / by Michael Brumbaugh.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references
Identifiers: LCCN 2019012355 | ISBN 9780190059262 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780190059286 (ebook other) | ISBN 9780190059279 (ebook other)
Subjects: LCSH: Callimachus. Hymns. | Gods, Greek, in literature. |
Kings and rulers in literature. | Politics in literature. |
Greece—Politics and government—To 146 B.C.
Classification: LCC PA5319. K27 Z54 2019 | DDC 880 .9/002—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019012355
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
The New Politics of Olympos: Kingship in Kallimachos’ Hymns. Michael Brumbaugh,

Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/ 9780190059262.001.0001
For my parents
and
In loving memory of Lola Brumbaugh (1938–2018)

Figures
1.1 Silver tetradrachm minted at Alexandria, issued by Ptolemy I on or after

294/3. Ob.: Bust of Ptolemy I. Re.: Eagle clutching a thunderbolt with
legend “ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ.” 30
1.2 Gold mnaieion (=octadrachm) minted at Alexandria, issued by
Ptolemy II c.272-–260. Re.: Jugate busts of Ptolemy I and Berenike I with
legend “ΘΕΩΝ;” Ob.: Jugate busts of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II with legend
“ΑΔΕΛΦΩΝ.” 31
2.1 A composite hierarchy incorporating Kallimachos’
three sets of patron/client lists. 68
The New Politics of Olympos: Kingship in Kallimachos’ Hymns. Michael Brumbaugh, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/ 9780190059262.001.0001
Acknowledgments
It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to register my gratitude to the

many people and institutions who have had a hand in midwifing this book to
completion. This book began as a dissertation at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA). The initial focus of that project was genre and praise
rhetoric in the Greek hymn, but ultimately it became a study of Kallimachos’
engagement with the earlier hymnic tradition. My first introduction to
Hellenistic poetry came from a seminar on the Argonautika, which Greg
Thalmann helmed as he was preparing Apollonius of Rhodes and the Spaces
of Hellenism (Oxford 2011). Some years after that seminar Greg generously
agreed to serve as an outside reader on my dissertation committee. Early in
graduate school I took seminars on papyrology and Kallimachos’ Hymns
from Michael Haslam whose knowledge of Greek and rigorous attention
to detail deepened my appreciation for the complexities of textual trans-
mission and the poet’s manipulation of language. At the same time, Sarah
Morris’ seminar on the literary and material accounts of the Trojan War
taught me to appreciate the dynamic interplay between textual and material
evidence in reconstructing the narratives that pervaded the ancient world.
Michael and Sarah then jointly supervised my M.A. thesis on Apollonios and
Hesiod, which allowed me to explore the arte allusiva and its interpretive
consequences. No less formative were seminars from Amy Richlin on the
theory of Roman history and from David Blank on Empedokles and later
on Heraklitos’ Homeric Problems. These experiences not only added to my
methodological toolkit, but they impressed on me the importance of looking
for evidence beyond the cannon and outside established disciplinary lanes.
Alex Purves generously shared drafts of her work and responded to my many
queries long before I even applied to UCLA. As an advisor on my disser-
tation, she opened my eyes to further nuances of poetic language and con-
tinually inspired me to explore new approaches to old problems. It would
be difficult to overstate the extraordinary impact Kathryn Morgan has had
on me, my thinking about Greek literature, and my career more broadly.
As Doktormutter she swiftly shepherded me through the dissertation pro-
cess while still devoting a seemingly infinite amount of attention to reading
DOI: 10.1093/oso/ 9780190059262.001.0001
xiv Acknowledgments
my work and probing my arguments. Her expertise in the politics of praise

guided my early attempts at marrying together the literary and historical
strands of my project. There are of course numerous others from the UCLA
community of faculty and students who deserve thanks, especially fellow
graduate students Peter Weller, Rob Groves, Suzanne Lye, Charlie Stein,
Emily Rush, Craig Russell, and Brian Walters. Brian’s critical eye and good
humor have never flagged throughout the years of our friendship.
I am grateful to Tulane University, the School of Liberal Arts, and the
Department of Classical Studies for supporting my work as this monograph
took shape. A junior research leave, Lavin Bernick Grant, Lurcy Grant, and
Faculty Networking Grant provided me time and access to resources neces-
sary to complete this project. I have learned much from Ryan Boehm, who
has been an invaluable reader, sounding board, and friend through every
step over the past six years. Dennis Kehoe read multiple drafts of nearly every
chapter at a critical time as the project neared completion. The Loeb Classical
Library Foundation, the Fondation Hardt, and the Getty Research Institute
also supported the researching and writing of this book. My time at Reed
College and Princeton University was also instrumental to the development
of this project, and I want to thank Nigel Nicholson, Yelena Baraz, Joshua
Katz, Bob Kaster, Denis Feeney, Marc Domingo Gygax, Casper de Jonge,
and Richard Hunter. At Colgate University, Drew Keller taught me Greek
and Naomi Rood generously spent a semester reading the Theogony with
me as an independent study during her first year on the faculty. Drew and
Naomi co-directed my thesis on Hesiod, a chapter of which Bill Stull helped
me revise for presentation at my first meeting of the American Philological
Association. Their mentorship and friendship has endured long after I grad-
uated. Among the colleagues at other institutions who have contributed to
my work along the way, I would be remiss not to mention Jacco Dieleman,
Willy Clarysse, Joachim Quack, Rachel Mairs, Rolf Strootman, Catherine
Lorber, Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, and James Clauss. Ivana Petrovic read an
early draft of the entire manuscript and provided thorough notes that were
especially helpful as I worked through future drafts. The anonymous readers
who reviewed my manuscript for the press offered useful criticisms that
helped me clarify my arguments. I thank Stefan Vranka for his patient guid-
ance along with Richa Jobin, Leslie Safford, Isabelle Prince, and the entire
team at OUP New York. Hannah Kent came through in the final days of the
project to help with indexing and proofing.
Acknowledgments xv
My deepest gratitude is reserved for my friends and family who have sus-
tained me through the writing of this book and the formative years that led
up to it. Although they hardly could have guessed that their labors would
bear such fruit, it is to my parents that I dedicate this book. Above all, my
wife, Lane, deserves more credit than even she knows for her devotion and
encouragement through the most difficult parts of this project. Despite the
demands of her own career, she shouldered burdens I could not carry. My
debt to her is beyond measure.
Editions and Abbreviations
Except where otherwise noted I cite Kallimachos’ Aitia from the edition of
Harder, Kallimachos’ other works from the edition of Pfeiffer, Homer and
the Homeric Hymns from the OCT of Monro and Allen, Hesiod from the
editions of M.L. West, and Pindar from the Teubner edition of Snell-Maehler.
A-B C. Austin and G. Bastianini. Posidippi Pellaei Quae Supersunt

Omnia. Milan 2002.
Agora XVI A. G. Woodhead. The Athenian Agora, XVI. Inscriptions: The
Decrees. Princeton 1997.
AP Palatine Anthology.
BM W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard. Catalogue of the
Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British
Museum: Second Supplement. London 1968.
Braswell B. K. Braswell. Didymos of Alexandria: Commentary on Pindar.
Basel 2017.
CA J. U. Powell. Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford 1925.
CPE C. Lorber. Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire: Part I, Ptolemy
I through Ptolemy IV. New York 2018.
D-K H. Diels and W. Kranz. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed.,
3 vols. Berlin 1951–52.
FGE D. L. Page. Further Greek Epigrams, rev. R. D. Dawe and
J. Diggle. Cambridge 1981.
FGrH F. Jacoby. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin, then
Leiden 1923–.
Harder A. Harder. Callimachus: Aetia, 2 vols. Oxford 2012.
Hollis A. S. Hollis. Callimachus: Hecale, 2nd ed. Oxford 2009.
G-P A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology 1: Hellenistic
Epigrams, 2 vols. Cambridge 1965.
I.Cret. M. Guarducci. Inscriptiones Creticae. Rome 1935–50.
I.Delos Inscriptions de Délos, 7 vols. Paris 1926–72.
I.Didyma A. Rehm. Didyma, II. Die Inschriften, hrsg. von R.Harder.
Berlin 1958.
I.Ephesos H. Wankel, R. Merkelbach et al. Die Inschriften von Ephesos, I–
VII (IGSK 11–17). Bonn 1979–84.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/ 9780190059262.001.0001
xviii Editions and Abbreviations
I.Sestos J. Krauss. Die Inschriften von Sestos und der thrakischen

Chersones (IGSK 19). Bonn 1980.
IG Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin 1873–.
J-vL F. Jouan and H. van Looy. Euripide. Tome VIII: Fragments,
4 vols. Paris 1998–2003.
K-A R. Kassel and C. Austin. Poetae Comici Graeci. Berlin 1983–91.
Lascaris J. Lascaris. Callimachi Cyrenaei Hymni. Florence 1494–96.
LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. Stuart Jones. A Greek-English-
Lexicon. Oxford 1951 (9th edition with a revised supplement by
P. G. W. Glare and A. A. Thompson. Oxford 1996).
M-W R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Fragmenta Hesiodea.
Oxford 1967.
OGIS W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectee. Leipzig
1903–05.
Pf. R. Pfeiffer. Callimachus, 2 vols. Oxford 1949–53.
PMG D. L. Page. Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford 1962.
P.Mich.Zen. C. C. Edgar. Zenon Papyri in the University of Michigan
Collection. Ann Arbor 1931.
P.Oxy. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London 1898–.
P.Rev.Laws B. P. Grenfell. Revenue Laws of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Oxford 1896.
P.Sorb. H. Cadell. Papyrus de la Sorbonne. Paris 1966.
Radt S. Radt. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 3: Aeschylus.
Göttingen 1985.
Rose V. Rose. Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta.
Leipzig 1886.
S-M B. Snell and H. Maehler. Pindarus. Leipzig 1984–89.
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Leiden 1923–.
SH H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons. Supplementum Hellenisticum.
Berlin 1983.
SVF I. von Arnim. Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 3 vols. Leipzig
1903–05.
Svoronos J. N. Svoronos. Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaiôn,
4 vols. Athens 1904–08.
Syll.3 W. Dittenberger. Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum, 3rd ed.
Leipzig 1915–24.
Voigt E.-M. Voigt. Sappho et Alcaeus. Fragmenta. Amsterdam 1971.
Wehrli F. Wehrli. Die Schule des Aristoteles, Texte und Kommentar, vol.
4: Demetrios von Phaleron. Basel 1968.
Introduction
Kallimachos and the Politics of Praise
This book is a study of the ways in which Kallimachos used hymns praising
the Olympian gods to shape a political discourse on kingship emerging in
the Hellenistic world. In it, I investigate how the poet crafts compelling new
portrayals of the gods that refigure the politics of the divine family. In the new
political order he depicts, Kallimachos virtually eliminates the harmful strife
traditionally associated with these figures, reframing the gods as good kings and
queens within the idiom of contemporary politics. Not only does Kallimachos
depict these gods as pro-dynastic exemplars of good governance, but he also
engages his audience in discourses on the nature of power, just rule, reciprocity,
transgression, and punishment, as well as the roles of kings, queens, and poets.
In dialogue with a range of literary texts from the archaic, classical, and indeed
contemporary periods, Kallimachos renegotiates the political dynamics of the
Olympian gods who serve as paradigms for his ideology. I argue that this “new
politics of Olympos” constitutes Kallimachos’ effort to shape the political dis-
course emerging within and between the courts of Hellenistic superpowers. His
hymns for the gods define what is praiseworthy and set the agenda for a conver-
sation about power at the dawning of a new political phenomenon—Hellenistic
kingship.
Despite having written numerous explicit praises of Ptolemaic kings
and queens,1 Kallimachos makes only one such unambiguous reference in
his Hymns—to Ptolemy II in the Hymn to Delos. Nonetheless, Kallimachos
does include references in his hymns to figures outside the texts whose spe-
cific identities are obscure to us but may have been clear to contemporary
audiences. Most scholars have imagined, for example, that “our lord” (1.86)2
1 Kallimachos’ praises of the powerful include Epinikia for the Panhellenic victories of queen
Berenike II and the courtier Sosibios, epithalamia for the marriages of Ptolemy II to Arsinoë II and
Ptolemy III to Berenike II, an Ektheosis for Arsinoë II (fr. 228 Pf.), and the famed Lock of Berenike (fr.
110 Harder).
2 1.85–86: ἔοικε δὲ τεκμήρασθαι /ἡμετέρῳ μεδέοντι. The three candidates scholars usually con-
sider are Ptolemy I Soter: Carrière 1969 and Hussey 1973; Magas of Kyrene: Meillier 1979:61–78 and
DOI: 10.1093/oso/ 9780190059262.001.0001
2 Introduction
and “my king” (2.26, 27)3 are discrete references to specific individuals whose
identities need to be uncovered. A similar instinct has led readers to iden-
tify this or that god in connection with a prominent individual: for example,
associating Apollo in the fourth hymn closely with Ptolemy II Philadelphos4
or Athena and Demeter in the fifth and sixth hymns with Berenike II.5 Such
interpretations have been bolstered by Kallimachos’ explicit praises of these
same figures in other works and the historical practice of kings and queens
exploiting the images of Olympic gods for their own self-representation.6
In this book, I argue that, often, the openness of these and other nonspe-
cific or ambiguous references allows them to be fluid and thus more pow-
erful signifiers. Furthermore, the relationship between such references and
referents is complex because it is not one of sameness. For Kallimachos and
his contemporaries, the issue, to which Richard Hunter has called attention,
was the degree to which such figures are similar.7 In his Hymns, Kallimachos
explores the notion of “likeness,” testing its boundaries and usefulness as a
heuristic and persuasive tool. This emerges as a central theme in this study as
I examine a variety of dyadic relationships of similarity, imitation, and sub-
stitution: Zeus and Ptolemy (Chapter 1), father and son (Chapters 1 and 5),
brother and sister (Chapters 4 and 6), father and daughter (Chapter 6), pa-
tron and client (Chapters 2, and 4),8 and a hymn’s honorand and the hymn
itself as a representation of that honorand (Chapters 3 and 4).9 Indeed,
Laronde 1987:366; and Ptolemy II Philadelphos: Richter 1871, Rostagni 1916:58–59, Cahen 1930,
Tandy 1979, Clauss 1986, Cameron 1995:10, Stephens 2003:77ff. McLennan 1977 and Hopkinson
1984b abstain.
3 Pfeiffer 1949.II:xxxviii–xxxix accepts the identification in the scholia vetera of ἐμῷ βασιλῆι as
Ptolemy Euergetes, but most scholars generally prefer Ptolemy Philadelphos (e.g., Williams 1978:36).
Cameron 1995:408–9 suggests Magas of Kyrene.
4 E.g., Giuseppetti 2013:14 describes Philadelphos in the Hymn to Delos as an “alter Apollo,” fol-
lowing a parallel discussion of Theokritos’ Hymn to Ptolemy Philadelphos in Hunter 2003:143. cf.
Miller 2010 on Augustus and Apollo.
5 E.g., Clayman 2014:80–89.
6 E.g., Smith 1988, Stanwick 2002, Eckstein 2009, and especially Müller 2009.
7 Hunter and Fuhrer 2002:168–69 raise the issue and Hunter 2003:94–103 examines it in greater
detail. Likewise, remarking on Theokritos, Griffiths 1979:57 reminds us, “If the Ptolemies are to make
it onto Olympus in these poems, they must as listeners do so on the strength of their own imaginative
energy. Theocritus does not assert that Arsinoe is Helen, nor Philadelphus Heracles. But in hearing
these poems, the patrons should find it remarkably easy to think of themselves in those terms.” See
too Prioux 2012.
8 I borrow these terms from social science research (e.g., Abercrombie and Hill 1976, Eisenstadt
and Roniger 1984) to describe the paradigmatic relationship Kallimachos establishes between Zeus
and the king, Apollo and the poets, Ares and the warrior, etc. Although these terms are normally con-
strued within the context of Roman social customs, I use them to refer to a sociological and political
framework of a dyadic codependency based on inequality.
9 See Bergren 1982 and Depew 2000.
Kallimachos and the Politics of Praise 3
Kallimachos presents the concept of “likeness” to his audience in a variety

of guises, including paradeigma (Chapter 1), equivalence (Chapter 2 and
4), metaphor (Chapter 3), and analogy (Chapters 4 and 6). The similarity of
these pairs is balanced against contrastive dyads, including the client and the
transgressor (Chapters 4 and 6) and the good and the bad ruler (Chapters 5
and 6). An important effect of these dyads is to create a dichotomy between
“us” and “them,” which draws the audience into alignment with the narrator
and contributes to his overall agenda of presenting an authoritative and per-
suasive account of good kingship.
Several scholars have offered political readings of Kallimachos’ hymns in-
dividually or in combination, but there has been little detailed discussion of
how their juxtaposition within the poetry book changes their meaning by
altering their frame of reference. Although there are countless instances
where I might have extended my analysis to incorporate related issues in
other works of Kallimachos and his contemporaries, I endeavored to main-
tain a tight focus on the Hymns and its six poems. Nevertheless, in ways both
large and small, my analysis follows a course charted by a range of important
studies on Kallimachos,10 Theokritos,11 Apollonios,12 and now Posidippos,13
which have brought the study of Hellenistic poetry and politics into the
mainstream.14 Moreover, studies of Kallimachos’ various engagements with
the Greek literary and religious traditions have provided a variety of ways of
thinking about key issues, including his manipulation of earlier versions of
myths, experimentation with narrative technique, and interest in epichoric
history and cult throughout the oikoumene.15 In addition to drawing on a
wide range of studies on earlier praise poetry, my approach builds on the
10 Cameron 1995, Stephens 1998, and Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012.

11 Especially Griffiths 1979, Hunter 1996, and Hunter 2003.
12 In addition to Clauss 1993, Hunter 1993, and Thalmann 2011, Mori 2008a is crucial in this re-
gard because her analysis of Apollonios’ Argonautika within the context of the Ptolemaic court is
foundational not merely for that poem, but more broadly for providing a compelling argument and
methodology for reading Hellenistic narratives in contexts beyond the Library. Her discussion of the
history of scholarship on the “Politics of Alexandrian Poetry” (pp. 19–51) is thorough and similarly
illuminating.
13 E.g., Bing 2002–3, Kosmetatou 2004, Fantuzzi 2005, Thompson 2005, McKechnie 2013, and
Petrovic 2014.
14 Pioneering work expanding the contexts in which Hellenistic poetry can now be studied
includes Koenen 1983 and 1993, Weber 1993, and Stephens 2003.
15 In addition to those already mentioned, Bing 1988, Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, Morrison 2007,
Petrovic 2007, Harder 2012, and Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012 stand out from an increasingly
rich bibliography along with a wealth of important edited volumes: Harder, Regtuit, and Wakker
1993, Harder, Regtuit, and Wakker 2002, Lehnus 2002, Martina and Cozzoli 2006, Acosta-Hughes,
Lehnus, and Stephens 2011, and Martina, Cozzoli, and Giuseppetti 2012.
4 Introduction
work of Jenny Strauss Clay, who brought a new focus to the study of the
Homeric Hymns in her book The Politics of Olympus (1989). Clay identi-
fied a preoccupation that all of the major hymns had with working out the
dynamics of the divine family that underpinned Zeus’ role as king of gods
and men. The expression of those politics, Clay demonstrates, belonged to
an emerging archaic discourse on Panhellenism. Unlike those hymns, vari-
ously composed by unknown persons in unknown places at unknown dates,
Kallimachos’ praises of the gods make for a more cohesive collection. In
the spirit of Clay’s study, my project attempts to situate this book of hymns
within a rich discourse emerging in dialogue with new political realities of
the Hellenistic age.16
Kallimachos and His World
While today Kallimachos is primarily associated with the newness and inno-
vation of Ptolemaic Alexandria and its legendary Library and Mouseion, the
poet’s own self-fashioning regularly emphasized his origins from the cele-
brated Greek polis of Kyrene on the Libyan coast. In his epigrams he boasts of
a lineage that can be traced all the way back to Kyrene’s founder-king Battos.
Evidence that his grandfather and namesake was a distinguished Kyrenean
general and his sister, Megatima, married into an elite family of Kypriot gen-
erals and governors bolsters the aristocratic pedigree he claims.17 Founded in
631 bce by Dorians from Thera and possibly Rhodes,18 Kyrene was a prom-
inent polis whose legendary foundation and subsequent history inspired
Panhellenic interest, as can be seen in the accounts of Pindar, Herodotos,
the fourth-century Kyrenean “Stele of the Founders,” Aristotle, Kallimachos,
the Lindian Chronicle, Strabo, Diodoros, and Pausanias.19 These and other
16 Depew 2004 and Petrovic 2016 are similarly interested in interpreting the macro-text of the
Hymns within its historical contexts.

17 Cameron 1995:7–9 details the evidence for Kallimachos’ family, including Ep. 30 G-P = 35 Pf.
on his Battiad lineage and 29 G-P = 21 Pf. on his grandfather. Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012:3–4
add details about an extremely wealthy great-grandfather whom sources portray as close to Plato.
Meillier 1979:335–37 includes a hypothetical family tree.
18 While most accounts, including Kallimachos’ own, describe a colonial lineage running from
Kyrene to Thera to Sparta, the Lindians claim to have been among the initial colonists (Lindian
Chronicle XVII.109–17). Uhlenbrock 2015:148–49 argues that the early pottery evidence from
Kyrene proves extensive contact with Rhodes and may corroborate the Lindian claim. On the Lindian
Temple Chronicle of 99 bce, see Higbie 2003.
19 Pindar: Pythian 4, 5, 9; Herodotos: 4.145– 59; the most recent edition of the “Stele of the
Founders” (SEG IX.3) is Dobias-Lalou 1994; Aristotle: Politics 1319b1–19; Kallimachos: Hymn
to Apollo 65–96; on the Lindian Chronicle, see Higbie 2003; Strabo 17.3.21; Diodoros 8.29; and
sources record that over the next two centuries, the rule of the Battiad kings
was tested repeatedly by conflict with native Libyans and Egyptians, in-
fighting in the royal family, and ultimately popular uprisings that led to civil
war. From the severe autocracy under Arkesilaos III described by Herodotos
(4.162–64) to the radical democracy cited by Aristotle (Politics 1319b1–19),
Kyrenean elites saw their fortunes rise and fall as political volatility led to re-
peated constitutional reform.20
Born during the final decade of the fourth century, Kallimachos’ early life
coincided with a period of intense turmoil in Kyrene when the polis suffered
several invasions and at least two revolts as democratic and oligarchic
factions vied for control.21 In a compromise that eventually brought an end
to the stasis, Ptolemy I instituted a timocratic constitution that restored the
oligarchy, but dramatically expanded it (e.g., the principal ruling body was
enlarged from 1,000 to 10,000). Although he reserved supreme authority for
himself and his stepson, Magas, the governor in Kyrene from 301, Ptolemy
essentially left the polis to govern itself internally through a mix of civic
bodies and magistrates (e.g., gerousia, boule, ephoria). A copy of this new po-
litical charter, known as the diagramma of Ptolemy (SEG 9.1), was erected
prominently in the sanctuary of Apollo at the center of Kyrenean civic life.22
While there is no chronicle of Kallimachos’ early years, it is reasonable to
assume that this political strife and the subsequent Ptolemaic intervention
would have had a tremendous impact on his family’s fortunes and, as such,
would have been formative for the future poet.
Although Kallimachos’ aristocratic family traced its bloodline to a leg-
endary dynasty of Battiad kings, the poet’s own birth coincided closely with
that of a radically different mode of kingship. This new political phenom-
enon would come to have an enormous impact on the trajectory of his life
and work. Little is known about Kallimachos’ activities before he appeared
in his early twenties at the royal court in Alexandria around 285. He may
have remained in Kyrene where the Kyrenaic school of philosophy was at its
Pausanias 10.15.6–7. For further ancient sources on the Greek presence in Libya, see Austin 2008 and
Giangiulio 2001. On the literary narratives, see too Calame 2003, Malkin 1994:143–52, 169–81, and
Malkin 1987.
20 Robinson 2011:129–36.
21 Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012:3–4 suggest that most studies place his birth c.305 but allow
that it might have been as early as 320.

22 Scott 2013:14– 44 charts political upheaval in Kyrene alongside developments in the agora.
Robinson 2011:132n.204 cautions that the diagramma is still largely antidemocratic due to its impo-
sition of property qualifications on would-be participants in the political system.
6 Introduction
apogee, used family connections to gain a position in Alexandria as a “youth

of the court” (T 4c Pf.), or even traveled abroad for his education.23 Once
Kallimachos did finally come into the orbit of the Ptolemaic royal court, he
did not hesitate to engage directly with the most important figures there.24
Kallimachos found himself in a position to use praise of superpowerful
men, women, and gods to shape messages about the nature of their power
and its just application. Since praise deemed to be false was seen as shameful
flattery, Kallimachos needed to persuade the Ptolemies and his broader
audience that his complimentary accounts were true. To achieve this, he
constructed his own authoritative persona by exploiting his mastery of en-
comiastic rhetoric and detailed knowledge of the Greek literary tradition.
Indeed, this expertise appears to have propelled Kallimachos to a posi-
tion of prominence, enabling him to exert influence over the preservation,
ordering, and consumption of knowledge and culture in Alexandria and be-
yond. Disentangling the historical individual from his narrators’ personae
and his posthumous reputation remains a challenge for scholars attempting
to trace Kallimachos’ biography from his origins in Kyrene to the influence
he exerted over the institutions taking shape in Alexandria.25 While he ul-
timately came to be seen as emblematic of the Alexandrian Library and
Mouseion, conflicting clues obscure his role there. Indeed, the histories of
these Ptolemaic institutions remain highly lacunose and everyone from the
Romans to the present day has supplemented historical fact with concepts
of how libraries function in their own time.26 The newness of the Ptolemaic
capital—not to mention the entire “Hellenistic” enterprise—dominates the
interpretation of Kallimachos’ work, often to the exclusion of his own her-
itage as a citizen of a venerable Greek polis and a descendent of its founder
and storied royal dynasty.27
23 The earliest event linking Kallimachos to the Ptolemaic court is the ceremony celebrating joint
rule of Ptolemy I Soter and Ptolemy II Philadelphos in 285 or its one-year anniversary in 284; see fur-
ther discussion in Chapter 2. For discussion of the intervening years and the competing traditions of
Kallimachos as a schoolmaster in Eleusis (probably a slanderous claim) or a junior courtier (plausible
but uncertain), see Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012:3 and Cameron 1995:4–8.
24 See Weber 2011 for elaboration of Kallimachos’ activities at court.
25 Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012:1–22 offer the most penetrating survey of the evidence for
his biography to date, though Cameron 1995 remains essential. See Vamvouri Ruffy 2004:217–84 and
Morrison 2007:103–220 on the personae of Kallimachos’ narrators.
26 See Hendrickson 2014, Johnstone 2014, Handis 2013, and Bagnall 2002 for cautionary critiques.
Johnstone 2014 is perhaps too extreme in some of his conclusions, but it is worth taking note of his
claim that “the history of the Library of Alexandria takes its place as one strand in this decentralized
revolution happening from Athens to Babylon and in many places in between” (p. 349).
27 Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012 draw on Kyrenean contexts for interpretation of Kallimachos’
work, but their perspective remains largely Alexandria-centric.

Beyond what can be inferred from his richly allusive poetry, Kallimachos’
intimate knowledge of the Greek literary tradition is evidenced also in his
scholarship—especially the now lost Pinakes.28 The Suda gives the full title
for this 120-volume work as Tables of Men Distinguished in Every Branch of
Learning and their Works. In it, Kallimachos recorded authors, titles, and
incipits, along with details about the historical events related to those works.
This endeavor put Kallimachos at the forefront of a scholarly enterprise that
would continue for centuries, as he performed critical exegesis by arranging
and classifying the texts being collected in Alexandria in unprecedented
quantities.29
In addition to mythographic and lexical idiosyncrasies, Kallimachos
appears to have taken more than a casual interest in the historical contexts
of the poetry he read, as can be seen from his treatment of Pindar. Pouring in
from multiple sources and often in duplicate, the initial collection of Pindaric
poetry must have been enormous. Although Aristophanes of Byzantion is
credited with making the first critical edition of the Theban poet’s works, in
order to produce his Pinakes Kallimachos had to organize the voluminous
and diverse oeuvre into a corpus. This would have involved eliminating du-
plicate and pseudonymous texts and arranging the scores of authentic poems
into discrete, ordered bookrolls. Himself the author of a separate work On
Contests (Περὶ Ἀγώνων, fr. 403 Pf.), Kallimachos grouped together several
of Pindar’s poems into bookrolls corresponding to four major Panhellenic
contests and is likely the originator of that organizational scheme. Indeed,
the headnote to a hymn for Hieron of Syracuse, which we know today as
Pythian 2, criticizes Kallimachos because he assigned the poem to the
Nemean bookroll.30 If as an editor and a reader, Kallimachos saw such his-
torical considerations as relevant to the organization and interpretation of
Pindar’s poetry, then we should expect no less from his own compositions.
28 Hatzimichali 2013, Krevans 2011:122–24, and Blum 1991. See Hadjimichael 2014:88–93 for a
discussion of Kallimachos’ classification practice as evidenced in P.Oxy. 2368. Harder 2013 discusses
ways in which the Library may have had an impact on Kallimachos and other Hellenistic poets.
29 Porro 2009:186–88. Aristophanes of Byzantion wrote a treatise On Kallimachos’ Pinakes, on
which see Slater 1986.

30 Drachmann II 31.10–14. It is attractive to credit Kallimachos with the invention of this clas-
sification, but ultimately speculative; see Lowe 2006:171–72. On Kallimachos’ contribution to the
editing of the Pindaric corpus, see Negri 2004:13–15 and Irigoin 1952:33. Günther 1999, Fuhrer
1992, Newman 1985, and Fuhrer 1988 detail Kallimachos’ interest in the Theban poet. On Pindar and
Hellenistic eidography, see Lowe 2006 and Harvey 1955.
8 Introduction
Literary Discourses on Kingship
Plutarch’s collection of anecdotes known as Sayings of Kings and Commanders

has it that Demetrios of Phaleron, one-time ruler of Athens and later coun-
selor to Ptolemy I Soter, advised the king to acquire books on kingship
and leadership and study them carefully. The reason was that even a king’s
intimates would not directly confront him with the advice that is written in
such books.31 Similarly, Plutarch informs us that Alexander the Great put
stock in the leadership lessons that could be gleaned from literature. The am-
bitious king reportedly slept with an annotated copy of Homer’s Iliad, which
he called his “resource for military excellence.”32 Though these claims may
well be apocryphal, they speak to a long tradition of intellectuals portraying
themselves as engaged in discourse with powerful rulers. More to the point,
they are particularly apt for the Ptolemaic court, where the acquisition and
study of books was central to the imperial ideology that emerged in the third
century.33
Should Ptolemy have been interested in studying books on kingship, he
would have had a variety to choose from, since treatises On Kingship (Περὶ
Βασιλείας) became prevalent in the Hellenistic period.34 The popularity
of such works was intimately bound up with the rise of a new political re-
ality born out of Philip’s and then Alexander’s ambition for Makedonian he-
gemony. Following Alexander’s Successors’ move to adopt the title of “king”
(basileus) in 306/5, intellectuals, both celebrated and obscure, engaged with
the contemporary political landscape by writing kingship treatises. Some of
these were dedicated to individual rulers, as Diogenes Laertios records in the
case of Euphantos of Olynthos, “who wrote about contemporary history; he
composed several tragedies for which he won esteem at the festivals; he was a
teacher of even King Antigonos [II Gonatas], for whom he also wrote an ex-
tremely popular treatise On Kingship.”35 There is a strong tendency to classify
31 Plutarch Moralia 189d6– 9: Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεὺς Πτολεμαίῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ παρῄνει τὰ περὶ
βασιλείας καὶ ἡγεμονίας βιβλία κτᾶσθαι καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν· “ἃ γὰρ οἱ φίλοι τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν οὐ
θαρροῦσι παραινεῖν, ταῦτα ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις γέγραπται.” Recent scholarship makes a persuasive case
for Plutarch’s authorship of the Apophthegmata; see Stadter 2008.
32 Plutarch Alexander 8.2: τῆς πολεμικῆς ἀρετῆς ἐφόδιον. See Martin 2012 for more on the tradi-
tion of Alexander as philomeros.

33 Erskine 1995 provides a helpful introduction to this dynamic.
34 Recent work on Hellenistic kingship treatises includes Haake 2013b, Murray 2007, and Virgilio
2003. Murray 1971 and Goodenough 1928 remain valuable for their insights.
35 Diogenes Laertios 2.110: Εὐβουλίδου δὲ καὶ Εὔφαντος γέγονε <γνώριμος> ὁ Ὀλύνθιος,
ἱστορίας γεγραφὼς τὰς κατὰ τοὺς χρόνους τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ. ἐποίησε δὲ καὶ τραγῳδίας πλείους, ἐν αἷς
εὐδοκίμει κατὰ τοὺς ἀγῶνας γέγονε δὲ καὶ Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως διδάσκαλος, πρὸς ὃν καὶ λόγον
γέγραφε Περὶ βασιλείας σφόδρα εὐδοκιμοῦντα.
such works and authors under the rubric of philosophy, but, like Euphantos,
the intellectuals who produced works On Kingship were polymaths whose
pursuits ranged far beyond such disciplinary or generic boundaries.36
Contemporary with these were a great many works investigating what
Aristotle posited as the corrupt counterpart of kingship. Works On Tyranny
(Περὶ Τυραννίδος) are attested starting from the fourth century for authors
including the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope and the Peripatetics Theophrastos
and Phainias, both of Eresos.
While the proliferation of kingship treatises closely tracked the emergence
of Hellenistic kingship as a political reality, these works built on a rich literary
tradition, and precursors can be found in the works of orators, historians,
philosophers, and poets. Of particular interest is Xenophon’s Hiero, a dia-
logue written in the fourth century that dramatizes a fictional conversation
between the fifth-century poet Simonides and the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse.
Written in the genre of Sokratikoi logoi most familiar from the works of his
contemporary Plato, this discussion provides the framework for analyzing
an abstract issue that might otherwise have been addressed in a more direct
manner via a theoretical treatise.37 Here, poet and ruler set out to identify
how pleasure and pain operate differently in the life of a tyrant and that of a
private citizen. In the course of their discussion, Simonides offers suggestions
about how the tyrant might minimize pain and maximize pleasure. Through
appeals to the ruler’s self-interest and “passion for honor and praise” (τιμῆς
τε καὶ ἐπαίνου ἔρως, 7.3), the poet gently urges Hieron to abandon his former
cruel practices in favor of kinder and more generous ones. Behind this nar-
rative, it is easy to see the outlines of the archetypal Good King and the Bad
King whose characteristics Simonides urges Hieron to emulate and eschew,
respectively.
Xenophon’s choice of Simonides as the poet who steers Hieron toward
good governance and ideal kingship is grounded in a historical dynamic
that obtained between praise poets and sovereigns at least as early as the ar-
chaic period. Indeed, Simonides himself, along with Pindar and Bakchylides,
composed hymns in praise of aristocrats who won victories in Panhellenic
36 Given the paucity of evidence beyond their authors and titles, we should not rush to assume that
works labeled On Kingship constituted a genre per se. Even the titles themselves may well have been
retroactively applied by scholars like Diogenes Laertios.
37 The work is usually called Hiero or Hieron, following the practice of naming the Platonic
dialogues after Sokrates’ interlocutor, but it might well have been called Peri Tyrannidos (“On
Tyranny”); see Gray 2011 and Sevieri 2004. Morgan 2003, Anderson 2005, and Lewis 2006 are essen-
tial for understanding the figure of the τύραννος in antiquity.
10 Introduction
athletic competitions.38 These poems praised their honorand by embedding

his success within a densely woven mythic narrative that linked the con-
temporary with the legendary, the individual with the ancestral, and the fa-
milial with the civic. Aristocrats from around the Greek world invested in
memorials that would help to transform an ephemeral moment of victory
into a monument that would preserve their excellence for generations to
come. Poetry was seen as an excellent medium for that purpose.39 Powerful
men like Hieron jockeyed for position in this Panhellenic competition for
honor and praise. As in the conversation Xenophon imagines taking place
between poet and ruler, surviving royal hymns by Pindar and Bakchylides
reveal that poets used these praise poems as opportunities to shape political
discourse about kingship and good governance.40
Xenophon and Demetrios of Phaleron were far from alone in recognizing
that a rich discourse on power and kingship could be accessed through
the careful study of literature. Around the middle of the first century bce
Philodemos of Gadara wrote a work on kingship for his patron, the Roman
Consul and father-in-law to Julius Caesar, L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus,
entitled “On the Good King According to Homer.”41 Extant fragments of the
work reveal that it employs a literary critical study of kings in Homeric epic
in order to make recommendations about contemporary political leader-
ship.42 Indeed, in drawing on examples from poetry to formulate ideas about
governance for a powerful ruler, Philodemos’ treatise offers real-life evidence
of the heuristic strategy that Plutarch ascribes to Hellenistic kings. It is nei-
ther possible nor particularly important to confirm the extent to which such
kings themselves viewed books in this edifying light; however, it is instruc-
tive to think about literature as a site of this type of political discourse. In this
book I examine Kallimachos’ Hymns from this perspective, as a means of
shaping political discourse on the just exercise of power for its audiences, in-
cluding, above all, the Ptolemaic kings and queens themselves.
38 Today these poems are called epinikia “victory odes,” but their ancient authors referred to them
as hymnoi. Brumbaugh 2019 argues that the hymnos was a genre of praise poetry that regularly com-
memorated exceptional mortals and immortals from the archaic through Hellenistic periods.
39 Kurke 1991a and Steiner 2001.
40 Morgan 2015 studies Pindar’s engagement with monarchical ideology among the Deinominids.
Her introduction (1–22) examines the challenges faced in understanding the relationship between
poet and ruler and, mutatis mutandis, applies equally well in our present inquiry into Kallimachos.
41 Philodemos belongs to the milieu of Hellenistic poetry and is an almost exact contemporary of
fellow Gadarene Meleagros, the poet and anthologist famous for his collection of epigrams known as
the Garland, on which see Gutzwiller 1998 and Gutzwiller forthcoming.
42 Fish 2016, Fish 2011, Fish 2002, Gigante 1995:63ff., Asmis 1991, Murray 1984, Dorandi 1982,
and Murray 1965. Fish forthcoming offers a much-anticipated new edition of PHerc 1507.
Contexts for Kallimachos’ Hymns
Central to my approach to Kallimachos’ Hymns is the observation that we

must draw distinctions between the audience’s experience of any given
hymn, whether heard or read, as an individual work and as a part of a care-
fully organized poetry book. Scholars have offered readings of these hymns
in isolation and in combination, but have rarely discussed in detail how
the incorporation of a hymn into the poetry book changes its meaning by
altering its frame of reference.43 Thus, Artemis’ efforts to establish her own
identity and rival her twin brother and the poet’s admonition against for-
getting about Leto’s other child take on new meaning precisely because the
Hymn to Artemis is situated between two Apollo hymns that virtually ignore
the goddess. The new material context of the poetry book flattens the chro-
nology of the individual hymns and transforms their relationship to one an-
other from intertextual to intratextual.
We do not know with certainty when and under what circumstances
Kallimachos produced the six poems included in the Hymns, but some con-
tain pointed references to dateable events and provide grounds for spec-
ulation.44 Most scholars agree that the Hymn to Zeus, for instance, was
composed for an event celebrating the transition of royal power from the
first to the second Ptolemy in 285 or shortly thereafter.45 The Hymn to Delos
features praise of Ptolemy II Philadelphos’ victory over Gallic mercenaries
in the mid-270s, and so might be associated with a birthday celebration for
the king and/or a dynastic festival like the Ptolemaia sometime shortly there-
after.46 The marriage of newly crowned Ptolemy III Euergetes and Berenike II
(c.250–246) that reunited Kyrenaika and Egypt has been advanced as a plau-
sible context for the Hymn to Apollo, given the prominence of Apollo’s union
with the eponymous nymph Kyrene in that hymn.47 Arguments suggesting
43 Much of what Krevans 1984 and Gutzwiller 1998 discuss might be adapted to the Hymns, and
Ukleja 2005 treats a number of central issues. Fantuzzi 2011:450–53 raises important interpretive
questions related to the arrangement of the poetry book that follow from his earlier observations
about how seating arrangements in the Hymn to Apollo (2.29) and the Hymn to Artemis (3.169–70)
mirror the arrangement of the hymns in the bookroll.
44 Stephens 2015a:16–22.
45 See further discussion in Chapter 1.
46 The firm terminus post quem is the Celtic mercenary revolt of c.275, but Apollo’s description
to Ptolemy as θεός suggests a date after 271/0. Scholars tend to think that the poem was composed
before the Battle of Kos c.262/1 but neither the details of this event nor the rationale for using it as a
terminus ante quem is secure, Bing 1988:91–93, Weber 1993:213n.3. See discussion in Chapter 5.
47 Brumbaugh 2016:91–92 suggests a terminus post quem of 260 and provides further argumen-
tation for the hymn’s resonance with political events in the 240s. Less compelling is the line of ar-
gumentation connecting passages seen as programmatic and polemical in the Hymn to Apollo with
12 Introduction
dates or specific contexts for the Artemis, Athena, and Demeter hymns are
inconclusive. Most if not all of Kallimachos’ hymns appear to have been
composed at different points throughout the third century for listening and
reading audiences.48 They very likely circulated separately in textual form
among a well-educated readership.49 Although the audience may have been
limited to a small percentage of the Greek-speaking population, it likely in-
cluded royal philoi at the major Hellenistic courts as well as smaller circles of
intellectuals in cultural centers like Kyrene, Athens, Kos, Halikarnassos, and
elsewhere.50
At some point, likely during the Hellenistic period, six hymns by
Kallimachos were compiled into a single bookroll.51 Although we cannot
know for certain, the evidence points overwhelmingly to Kallimachos as the
editor of his own collection.52 Unlike Theokritos’ Idylls, Kallimachos’ Hymns
consistently appear in the exact same order: Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Delos,
Bath of Pallas, and Demeter.53 In his commentary on the Hymn to Demeter,
Neil Hopkinson argues that the arrangement of the bookroll is probably
the poet’s own and he sketches out several binary relationships based on
the order of the hymns: “The arrangement is symmetrical: two short, two
long, two short poems . . . ; the first pair ‘masculine,’ the second ‘mixed’
(twins), the third ‘feminine’; the flanking pairs broadly ‘mimetic,’ the middle
pair more traditionally ‘epic.’ ”54 Taking Hopkinson’s observation further,
the Aitia prologue, which is thought to have been composed toward the end of Kallimachos’ life; see
discussion in Cameron 1995:407.
48 Hopkinson 1984a:13–17 suggests that the Athena and Demeter hymns may have been com-
posed as a pair. My own view on the matter of live performance versus textual reception is essentially
the same as the position described in Petrovic 2016, that audiences experienced the hymns as both
readers and listeners in a variety of contexts.
49 I analyze the evidence for mobility among texts and intellectuals who made and read them
during the Hellenistic period in an upcoming project. Individual aitia from Aitia 3 and 4 may have
circulated as individual poems before Kallimachos collected them for publication together, Fantuzzi
and Hunter 2004:46.
50 For courtiers and elites as Kallimachos’ audience, see Strootman 2017, Acosta- Hughes and
Stephens 2012:1–22, Clayman 2014:51–63, Weber 2011, and Cameron 1995:3–70. On royal philoi,
see Habicht 1958=Habicht 2006, Billows 1990:246–50, Savalli-Lestrade 1998, and Strootman 2011.
51 At 1,083 verses, they easily fit onto and filled up one standard papyrus roll. Gutzwiller 1998:186
suggests that compilations such as this one were influenced by the publication of epigram books. In
late antiquity, an unknown editor incorporated this bookroll into a codex that also contained the
Homeric Hymns, the Orphic Hymns, and seven hymns by the fifth-century ce Neoplatonist Proklos.
This book was the archetype for the subsequent manuscript tradition, on which see Pfeiffer 1949:II.
lv–lvi and Stephens 2015a:38–46.
52 Morrison 2007:105– 6 provides further discussion and bibliography. Hunter and Fuhrer
2002:176–81 also speculate on the hypothesis that Kallimachos edited the Hymns but are not pre-
pared to commit to a view one way or the other.
53 Ptolemaic papyri confirm that this order predates the manuscript tradition, Pfeiffer 1949:II.liii.
54 Hopkinson 1984a:13 details correspondences between the fifth and sixth hymns, which he
argues were composed as a pair. Heyworth 2004:153–57 supports and amplifies this suggestion.
Karina Ukleja performs a thorough analysis of the structure of Kallimachos’

“sextet.”55 Given the editorial work Kallimachos was performing on the
corpora of other poets, it is difficult to imagine him passing up the oppor-
tunity to arrange his own. Indeed, most scholars now subscribe to the hy-
pothesis that he expanded and re-edited his magnum opus, the Aitia, in a
second edition.56 While it remains possible that someone else anthologized
Kallimachos’ hymns, the default assumption should be that Kallimachos also
compiled and edited the Hymns—probably at the end of his career, early in
the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes.
Compared with Kallimachos’ less well- preserved poetry, little atten-
tion has been paid to the Hymns as a poetry book.57 Newly discovered Aitia
fragments and their arrangement within a multivolume poetry book have
long dominated the attention of Kallimachean scholars.58 The Iambi have
also been studied as a poetry book,59 motivated in part by their influence on
Horace’s Epodes,60 and in part by the debate over whether the four poems in
the Milan Diegesis between Iambus 13 and the Hekale belong to the Iambi.
Transmitted via the medieval manuscript tradition, the Hymns are almost
perfectly intact and have no such textual issues.61 Yet, until now there have
been no monograph-length treatments of this poetry book in English.62
Indeed, few monographs have been published in the last century on any of
the hymns in any language.63 Even so, Krevans’s remarks relating to the Aitia
poetry book are just as relevant to the Hymns: “Callimachus’ achievement
lies in his recognition that the role of the editor could be as creative as that of
the poet.”64
55 Ukleja 2005: esp 89–107, expanding on the framing of the poetry book as a sextet in Haslam 1993.
56 Petrovic and Petrovic 2003:194ff. argue that Kallimachos’ Ep. 51 should be read as a commen-
tary on the creation of this second edition. A through treatment of the hypothesis is now available
in Harder 2012:I.2–8. Zetzel 1983 points out that Kallimachos’ compilation process necessarily in-
volved revision, a point we do well to remember in our reading of the Hymns; see Chapter 6.
57 Ukleja 2005:21–25 offers an excellent overview of scholarship on Kallimachos’ poetry books.
58 Harder 2012 provides the most comprehensive study of the Aitia and scholarship on this issue.
59 E.g., Clayman 1980, Kerkhecker 2000, Acosta-Hughes 2002, and Lelli 2005.
60 See Morrison 2016 with references to earlier scholarship.
61 See p.12 n.51.
62 Krevans 1984 examines the poet as editor and the development of the poetry book beginning
with Kallimachos but does not treat the Hymns.

63 Bing 1988, Vamvouri Ruffy 2004, Ukleja 2005, Petrovic 2007, and Giuseppetti 2013 constitute
important exceptions, though it should be noted that three of the five are on the Hymn to Delos. There
are commentaries available for each hymn, though few have been written in the past three decades.
Stephens 2015a provides a single-volume edition of all six hymns with text and extensive commen-
tary, an invaluable resource that will spark further interest in the Hymns.
64 Krevans 1984:211–12.
14 Introduction
On the basis of the growing consensus surrounding the early date and
possible Kallimachean authority of the Hymns as a collection, scholars have
demonstrated an increasing willingness to read these six poems as a poetry
book.65 While such work has made important contributions, further studies
are necessary to address the various interpretive issues that arise from such
a reading. Among the many relevant questions, one stands out as particu-
larly important: if Kallimachos compiled his own anthology, did he revise
the hymns, whether superficially or substantially, for inclusion in the poetry
book? This question cannot be answered without further evidence,66 but it is
important to remember because it has a bearing on how we think about the
relationships we see between the different hymns and the degree to which we
can ascribe authorial intention to them. As in my treatment of intertextual
relationships linking Kallimachos’ Hymns to earlier works, I examine such
intratextual links from the perspective of a reader of the poetry book who
may (or may not) notice them.67 From this perspective, juxtaposition within
a book “by Kallimachos” may be sufficient to imply a connected and inten-
tional discourse. While short of a complete remedy, this study aims to build
on earlier analyses of the poetry book and suggest a variety of ways forward
for research on Kallimachos’ Hymns.
Refiguring the Politics of Olympos
This book is divided into two parts. The first part offers an in-depth anal-
ysis of Kallimachos’ Hymn to Zeus in three chapters, which examine the
hymn’s contemporary political setting, engagement with a tradition of po-
litical thought stretching back to Homer, and Kallimachos’ portrayal of the
poet as an image-maker for the king. These chapters are arranged in order
of increasing complexity, starting from a comparison of this hymn’s nar-
rative with other political discourses and culminating in a discussion of
65 E.g., Haslam 1993, Depew 2004, Fantuzzi 2011, and most recently Petrovic 2016. Others, such as
and Hunter and Fuhrer 2002, examine the Hymns together, but do not take the poetry book as a unit
for the purposes of their analyses.
66 Aside from inferences drawn from parallel situations, the only substantial piece of evidence
relating to this question is P.Oxy. 2226. This papyrus contains an abbreviated ending to the Hymn to
Demeter, skipping directly from verse 117 to 138 (the last line in the standard text) and then possibly
continuing beyond that. This suggests that two versions of this hymn were in circulation and that the
ending of the hymn may have been tailor-made to suit its position at the conclusion of the poetry
book; see Chapter 6.
67 Asper 2001.
Kallimachos’ manipulation of hymnic tropes and use of metaphor to convey

more subtle messages about his encomiastic project. Distinguished as both
the first and the shortest of Kallimachos’ hymns, this hymn’s position at the
head of the poetry book, its explicit focus on kingship, and its identifiable
historical context provide fertile ground for examining several key issues
that will recur throughout the poetry book.
The first chapter, “Zeus as a Paradigm for Dynastic Continuity,” looks
at ways in which the Hymn to Zeus jointly praises Zeus and the Ptolemaic
kings. I take as my starting point the scholarly consensus that associates this
hymn with the first succession in the Ptolemaic dynasty, elaborated by James
Clauss.68 Against that historical context, I demonstrate that the standard ac-
count of Zeus’ rise to power was ill suited to the Ptolemaic succession. Zeus
was an important symbol for Ptolemy I Soter’s kingship, and of Makedonian
kingship more broadly, but the god became king via a brutal cycle of op-
pression and usurpation that pitted father against son, as Hesiod’s Theogony
recounts. Kallimachos decouples the god’s kingship from its violent origins
in order to create a pro-dynastic discourse capable of quelling anxiety
occasioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphos’ own fraught succession. The true
measure of the poet’s success is that, by selectively calling attention to points
of contention within the tradition and passing over others, he persuades his
audience to accept his new Zeus unhesitatingly.
I expand on this analysis in the second chapter, “Kallimachos’ Hymn ‘On
Kingship,’ ” to assess how the poet characterizes Zeus’ kingship and the struc-
ture of his political regime in the hymn. Depicting Zeus as a powerful figure
who uses force to take what he wants, Kallimachos initially presents polit-
ical power as derived from physical power. The poet’s rejection of the lottery
myth as a plausible rationale for Zeus’ ascension rhetorically reinforces this
notion, while at the same time activating a Homeric intertext in which Zeus
and Poseidon engage in a debate over whether the Iliadic politics of Olympos
is an absolute monarchy or an oligarchy. Siding with Zeus in favor of mon-
archy, the narrator elaborates a political hierarchy that ultimately implicates
the king in an oversight role over those beneath him. Refiguring the king as a
68 Building on new discoveries relating to the annual Ptolemaic Basileia festival in Koenen 1977,
Clauss 1986 argues that the Hymn to Zeus was composed in conjunction with an instance of the
Basileia in 285 bce, which also celebrated Philadelphos’ birthday and elevation to co-rule (or the
one-year anniversary of that event). No other hymn enjoys as broad a consensus regarding its date
and circumstances of composition: e.g., Koenen 1993:78–79, Cameron 1995:10, Stephens 2003:77–
79, Bulloch 2010:168, and Barbantani 2011:182–83, Petrovic 2016:166–67; D’Alessio 1996:n.18 is
more hesitant.
16 Introduction
guardian and judge, Kallimachos expands his earlier account of kingly power
to embrace a wider variety of kingly virtues. Through allusions to the proe-
mial hymns that open Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony, Kallimachos
further refines his presentation of the king’s prerogatives as he negotiates a
role for the poet in constituting and projecting the king’s authority.
Chapter 3, “The Poetics of Praise in the Hymn to Zeus,” further examines
how Kallimachos depicts the poet and the praise he crafts as essential to
kingship. I argue that the hymn’s lengthy narrative detailing Rhea’s post-
partum search for a stream is a metaphor for the poet’s own aporia, the sense
of not knowing how to proceed, which he highlights in the hymn’s opening
frame. In his narrative Kallimachos uses intertextual markers to contrast his
honorand’s bleak birthplace, Arkadia, with the landscape of the Theogony
proem, where Zeus’ praises are abundant, and his reign is guaranteed.
Drawing on the metaphor of water as poetry, Kallimachos casts Rhea’s search
for a stream in which to bathe Zeus as analogous with the narrator-poet’s
own search for the praises with which he will shower his honorand. In this
way, Kallimachos makes three subtle assertions: true praise is difficult to
come by; it is extremely important to kingship; and he is expert in crafting it.
The second part of this study focuses on how hymns in the poetry book
can be read in dialogue with one another. Drawing on earlier scholarship that
envisions the Hymns as a whole,69 I examine ways in which the juxtaposi-
tion of Kallimachos’ hymns within a single bookroll gives rise to intratextual
readings in which themes from one work appear in dialogue with similar
themes in another. In each of the three chapters in this part, I examine how
Kallimachos’ hymns return to and build on issues of kingship set out in the
first hymn. In addition to refining the prerogatives of kingship and the role of
the poet over the course of the poetry book, Kallimachos effectively replaces
Zeus with Apollo as the new paradigmatic king and broadens his discourse
to include queens as powerful rulers in their own right.
In the first part of Chapter 4, “Apollo as a New Paradigm for Kingship,”
I discuss how Kallimachos resumes the patron/client discourse from the
Hymn to Zeus in the Hymn to Apollo by depicting a hierarchy linking Apollo,
the narrator-poet, and the chorus he leads. Here, however, Kallimachos
69 Hopkinson 1984a, Bornmann 1988, Haslam 1993, Knight 1993, Depew 2004, Köhnken 2004,
Ukleja 2005, Morrison 2007, Fantuzzi 2011, Acosta-Hughes and Cusset 2012, and Petrovic 2016 im-
agine Kallimachos as the likely editor of the Hymns; Hunter and Fuhrer 2002 and Stephens 2011 are
hesitant to commit; Stephens 2015a:12–14 summarizes key points about the book as a collection,
building on Hopkinson 1984a:13–17 and Ukleja 2005. There are still those who reject this growing
consensus (e.g., Asper 2011:166n.19).
revises the relationship between Apollo and his traditional client. Instead of
simply detailing the similarities between the poet and Apollo, as he did when
describing such relationships in the first hymn, Kallimachos casts the poet
as a gatekeeper, controlling access to the god’s transformative gifts. In his
place, Kallimachos inserts the founder-king as client of Apollo, attributing
to the pair a variety of traits related to care for the polis. In the context of lik-
ening “my own king” to Apollo, the narrator-poet issues a gnomic admoni-
tion against striving against the gods. Echoing the Iliad, Kallimachos uses the
intertext to engage in a discussion about humans with pretentions of god-
likeness, in which he implicitly validates Ptolemaic claims to divinity. In the
second part of the chapter, I examine the figure of the ἀλιτρός, “transgressor,”
in the Hymn to Apollo and the Hymn to Artemis as an anti-client who arro-
gantly oversteps his bounds. Kallimachos substitutes the harmful strife asso-
ciated with such transgressors for the conflict traditionally associated with
members of the divine family, as in the Homeric Hymns where there are con-
stant reminders of the forces that might bring down Zeus’ regime.70 Intra-
family strife is instead portrayed ironically, as with Artemis and Apollo’s
charming sibling rivalry in the third hymn. In this way, Kallimachos depicts
the divine family and its clients as unified in their opposition to external ene-
mies who are unambiguously wicked.
“Saviors, Tyrants, and the Poetics of Empire,” the fifth chapter, examines
ways in which the Hymn to Delos revisits the role of the king as a guard, estab-
lished in the first hymn. Here, Kallimachos adds nuance to his earlier charac-
terization by distinguishing between the savior, Apollo, who protects and the
tyrant, Hera, who oppresses those less powerful. As in the preceding hymns,
Kallimachos de-emphasizes aspects of his narrative that could be seen as
anti-dynastic, presenting instead a more whimsical account. Explicitly
paralleling the birth, kingship, and universal empire of Apollo and Ptolemy II
Philadelphos, Kallimachos effectively replaces Zeus with a new paradigm of
ideal kingship. This hymn’s embrace of a pan-Mediterranean stage mirrors,
in a way, Philadelphos’ efforts to expand his kingdom into a vast, overseas
empire during the first years of his reign. During this period, the honorific
title Sōtēr, meaning “Savior,” once again gained currency within diplomatic
discourse as a way for independent poleis to laud kings who had saved them
from invading Gauls. Not only does Kallimachos incorporate this contempo-
rary dynamic into his hymn, as scholars have detailed,71 but he also maps the
70 Clay 1989 cites this tension as the central feature of the “hymnic moment” in the Homeric Hymns.
71 E.g., Barbantani 2001 and Giuseppetti 2013.
18 Introduction
diplomatic traffic in praise onto the reciprocal charis dynamic that tradition-
ally obtains between a hymnist and his honorand.
In the final chapter, “On the Good Queen,” I examine the ways in which
Kallimachos creates a new ideology of queenship in the four hymns dedi-
cated to goddesses. He explicitly likens Artemis, Athena, and Demeter to
the ideal king embodied by Zeus and Apollo in his earlier hymns. Moreover,
Kallimachos crafts their identities as queens in dialogue with a discourse
about the role of royal women emerging at the Ptolemaic court in conjunc-
tion with Arsinoë II’s return to Egypt in the mid-270s.72 The poet rehabilitates
the image of the queen, distancing his goddesses from the stereotype of the
jealous wife who stirs up court intrigue and threatens to undermine dynas-
ties. Following a discussion of the early development of Ptolemaic queen-
ship, I examine the Hymn to Artemis, Bath of Pallas, and Hymn to Demeter
demonstrating how their honorands resolve stasis within the household,
successfully negotiate relationships of charis and philia, and promote peace.
Likewise, I discuss how each goddess appears as an arbiter of justice within
a narrative of transgression and punishment. I conclude the chapter by re-
turning to the depiction of Hera in the Hymn to Delos as a caricature of the
bad queen whose farcically cruel behavior reinforces the image of the good
queen by contrast.
I close the book with a brief overview of Kallimachos’ political ide-
ology in the Hymns, the rhetorical strategies he employs, and the inter-and
intratextual dynamics that draw readers of the poetry book into a larger
discussion on power, authority, and just rule. Taking the contemporary
Athenian hymn to Demetrios Poliorketes as an example, I discuss how
praise can be used strategically as part of a negotiation with more powerful
individuals, and indeed kings. Finally, I offer some speculations on the per-
suasive effect of praise on a potential Ptolemaic reader for whom the poetry
book might serve as an education in and inducement to good kingship.
72 While I do not treat the same issues, my analysis here begins from Depew 2004, who emphasizes
the goddesses’ athleticism with contemporary queenship ideology. Petrovic 2007 is crucial for the
way I understand Kallimachos’ manipulation of his goddesses’ traits. More recently, Petrovic 2016
discusses these goddesses in connection with the theme of motherhood.
1
Zeus as a Paradigm
for Dynastic Continuity
Kallimachos’ first hymn celebrates Zeus as the eternal and paradigmatic king,
and yet in many respects its narrative relates to Ptolemy, whom the poet likens
to the god and praises alongside him. The constellation of themes arrayed in
the Hymn to Zeus relating to the god’s birth, ascension to power, and king-
ship coupled with the poet’s own association with the Ptolemaic court has
led scholars to interpret the poem closely with Ptolemy II Philadelphos’ rise
to power. Following the publication of an inscription in 1977 detailing an an-
nual dynastic festival in Alexandria and throughout Egypt, a consensus has
emerged among scholars that this hymn was composed to commemorate a
special instance of that festival on 12 Dystros 285 (=15/16 December). On
this date the Ptolemies jointly celebrated several events important to royal
ideology: a Makedonian festival for Zeus Basileus (the Basileia); Ptolemy
II Philadelphos’ birthday (genethlia); the young Ptolemy’s elevation to co-
regency with his father, Ptolemy I Soter; and quite possibly the Ptolemaic
anniversary of Alexander’s own coronation at Memphis.1 This Alexandrian
festival promoting Ptolemaic kingship within the context of honors for Zeus
Basileus featured both athletic and musical competition,2 and one could im-
agine Kallimachos’ hymn as a birthday gift (genethliakon) performed for
the ascendant ruler at the festival.3 As tempting as this speculation may be,
1 Expanding on the work of Richter 1871:1–4 and Koenen 1977, Clauss 1986 describes a plau-
sible context for the hymn that connects it with the festival in 285/4 or the one year anniversary of
that event in 284/3. This conjecture is followed by Koenen 1993:78–79, Cameron 1995:10, Stephens
2003:77–79, Bulloch 2010:168, and Barbantani 2011:182–83; D’Alessio 1996:n.18 is more hesi-
tant. Much of what is known about this annual event comes from an inscription detailing the joint
Basileia–genethlia celebrated for Philadelphos in 267, SEG 27.1114; see also Koenen 1977 and Bingen
and Bagnall 2007:86–89. The Ptolemies commemorated Alexander’s coronation on the same day,
though it is unknown whether this coincidence is a later Ptolemaic invention, Koenen 1993:59n.79.
2 Fraser 1972:I.231–32, Koenen 1977:29–32, 47–63, Nerwinski 1981:79–87, and Perpillou-Thomas
1993:152–53.
3 Though he needed not be taken literally, the hymn’s narrator suggests that the hymn is an accom-
paniment for ceremonial libations rather than an entry in the musical agōn. Theokritos’ Herakliskos
(Idyll 24) and Kallimachos’ Hymn to Delos have also been proposed as genethliaka for Philadelphos
DOI: 10.1093/oso/ 9780190059262.001.0001
22 On Zeus’ Kingship
putting the poet on the program of the genethlia/Basileia is not necessary in

order to recognize that Kallimachos’ hymn inscribes itself within the same
discursive space as that celebration of Ptolemaic kingship.
This chapter demonstrates how Kallimachos implicates his hymn in
a complex discourse not just limited to the festival but embracing a larger
Zeitgeist. Kallimachos subtly transforms his honorand in the Hymn to Zeus,
decoupling that god’s kingship from its violent origins in order to fashion
a pax deorum that helps to constitute rather than merely reflect the pax
Ptolemaica asserted as a counter-narrative to quell anxieties surrounding
the first dynastic transition.4 The crowning achievement of his encomiastic
maneuver, however, is that Kallimachos refashions Zeus from a patricidal
usurper to a pro-dynastic king without drawing attention to his manipula-
tion. My analysis begins from the poet’s use of figured speech to offer praise
for Zeus that is implicitly and explicitly reflected back onto Ptolemy. For poet
and audience this dynamic is common to Greek encomiastic discourse, which
regularly makes use of analogy and shares its praise between implicit and ex-
plicit honorands. Although Zeus had long been emblematic of Makedonian
and Ptolemaic kingship, Kallimachos faced special challenges in elaborating
that relationship in narrative form since key aspects of the myth (e.g., pat-
ricide, infanticide, instability) are not only unflattering, but also inherently
anti-dynastic. Moreover, such details would have called to mind the fraught
nature of the contested Ptolemaic succession—a tension the kingship festival
was meant to alleviate.5 Kallimachos’ sensitivity to this dynamic is revealed
through the care he takes to manipulate the mythic tradition via choices that
are both marked and unmarked. By calling attention to comparatively super-
ficial “corrections” of the mythographic record, Kallimachos distracts from
his more consequential deviations from tradition. The result is an authori-
tative and compelling portrayal of Zeus that appears familiar to audiences
despite having been dramatically reshaped by the poet to accommodate a
political agenda.
presented at dynastic festivals, Koenen 1977:79–86 and Mineur 1984:10–18, respectively. See also
Clauss 1986:160n.15.
4 Roman 2014 discusses “autonomy” as an intriguing heuristic for interpreting the poetic and po-
litical as distinct yet intersecting spheres in a Roman context. See Miller 2010 and Cornwell 2017 for
the better-documented program of the Pax Augusta.
5 Müller 2009:29.
Zeus as a Paradigm for Dynastic Continuity 23
Seeing Double
While it is now almost universally accepted that Kallimachos’ first hymn

jointly praises Zeus and Ptolemy,6 this general agreement glosses over a
great deal that remains controversial and essential to interpreting how the
hymn functions as encomiastic discourse. A key issue involves how the au-
dience should interpret the similarity between Zeus and Ptolemy, given that
“Callimachus all but runs the heavenly and earthly ‘Zeuses’ together.”7 While
not presenting them as identical, Kallimachos frequently emphasizes their
shared qualities. At times he even implicitly conflates the two, as when the
poet makes requests of Zeus that Ptolemy is in a position to grant.8
Several readers of this and other hymns have proposed allegorical
approaches that look for another layer of meaning behind the surface nar-
rative. The one-for-one substitution of prominent political and literary per-
sonalities for features of the myth has largely drawn skepticism from critics.9
Yet allegory and other types of figured speech are recognized as indispen-
sable to both the encoding and decoding of meaning in ancient as well as
modern contexts.10 Such speech is especially prevalent in poetic and enco-
miastic discourses. Within the broader horizons of the Hellenistic world,
the necessity of translating contextualized discourses across diverse local
traditions invited further experimentation with allegory during the pe-
riod in which Kallimachos lived.11 Kleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus and the larger
Stoic school are most closely associated with allegory as an explicit mode of
6 There has been some debate as to the identity of “our lord” (ἡμετέρῳ μεδέοντι, 1.86) in this
hymn, though most scholars today see this as a reference to Ptolemy Philadelphos. I argue that the
reference is intentionally ambiguous, referring to any and every Ptolemaic king; see pp.49–50. To de-
scribe this strategy of intentional ambiguity I borrow the expression “seeing double” from Stephens
2003, who employs it as an image for an intercultural reading of Alexandrian poetry.
7 Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004:353. Hunter and Fuhrer 2002:168–69 describe the relationship as one
of “analogy,” “paradigm,” and likeness. Hunter 2003:94–103 develops this question further in terms
of “likeness” in the proem to Theokritos’ Hymn for Philadelphos (Idyll 17). See further discussion at
n.104, this chapter, and Chapter 3 pp.95–6.
8 E.g., the narrator’s apostrophes at 69, 94–96; see discussion in Chapter 2 pp.87–9.
9 In his commentary on Kallimachos’ Hymn to Apollo, Williams 1978:97 (cf. 2, 79, and 88) called
such approaches “grotesque,” remarking that “those who foist such allegorical fantasies on
Callimachus do him a grave injustice.” While this critique may be extreme, it is representative be-
cause it relies on two highly debatable premises: first, that there is a single, correct reading of a given
work; second, that for an interpretation to be correct it must be authorized (usually by the author).
10 Frye 1957:90 offers an ironic rebuttal to the line of criticism advanced by Williams and others;
see further discussion in Quilligan 1979:224. On allegory in classical rhetoric and exegesis, see
Whitman 1987, Dawson 1992, Ford 2002:67–89, Boys-Stones 2003, Ramelli 2003, Struck 2004,
Russell and Konstan 2005, Copeland and Struck 2010, Domaradzki 2015, and Domaradzki 2017.
11 Stephens 2003 does not discuss allegory, but its practice is implied in her approach to “seeing
double.”
exegesis, but their systematizing efforts should not be walled off completely
from less formalized allegorizing discourses.12
While Kallimachos’ Hymn to Zeus cannot be said to engage in allegory
in the same way as Kleanthes’ poem,13 it is replete with figured speech (in-
cluding elements that might well be called allegory) that creates complex,
intersecting layers of meaning beyond the surface narrative.14 Establishing a
taxonomy of Kallimachos’ use of figured speech and how exactly each figure
works is beyond the scope of this book; more importantly, such an analysis
would belie the inherent and often intentional diversity of interpretation
this speech engenders.15 Nonetheless, some of these figures stand out, and
recognizing them and the rhetorical and poetic traditions attached to them
provides a fuller picture of how Kallimachos and his audience might have
interpreted his hymn.
Paradigms of Praise for Zeus and Ptolemy
Is Kallimachos’ Hymn to Zeus a praise of Zeus or of Ptolemy (or both)? The

poem opens with a rhetorical question that hints at the multiplicity of the
hymn’s praise (1–2):
Ζηνὸς ἔοι τί κεν ἄλλο παρὰ σπονδῇσιν ἀείδειν

λώϊον ἢ θεὸν αὐτόν, ἀεὶ μέγαν, αἰὲν ἄνακτα, . . .
Accompanying libations for Zeus, what else would be better

to celebrate than the god himself, ever great, ever lord, . . .16
12 Most 2010 situates the Stoic allegorical project within its cultural and philosophical horizons
and Obbink 2003:181–83 emphasizes the diversity of approaches toward allegory throughout the
Hellenistic period.
13 On Kleanthes’ hymn, see Thom 2005 and Zuntz 2005:27–42.
14 Romano 2011 discusses Kallimachos’ engagement with contemporary literary criticism.
Petrovic 2010a offers an allegorical reading of Iambus 7 that is helpful in understanding Kallimachos’
use of such figured speech in this hymn.
15 Pace Asper 1997. In antiquity handbooks on figured speech were popular; one such work,
Demetrios’ On Style, remarks that allegory is “impressive” (μεγαλεῖον, 99), since “the thing implied
is altogether more awe-inspiring [than plain speech] and one person infers one thing while another
infers something else (πᾶν γὰρ τὸ ὑπονοούμενον φοβερώτερον, καὶ ἄλλος εἰκάζει ἄλλο τι, 100).
While the identity of this Demetrios is debated, his work likely dates to the Hellenistic period; see De
Jonge 2009 and Porter 2016:246–82. On the polyinterpretability of poetry, see discussions in Plato
Protagoras 338e–348a, Pfeijffer 1999b:25f., and Thomas 2012.
16 All translations are my own.
From the first word Kallimachos makes it clear that his audience should be
thinking of Zeus, but the syntactic ambiguity of Ζηνὸς forces the audience
to hold it in reserve until the sentence structure becomes clear in the second
line. This ambiguous syntax merited a scholion, which notes that the genitive
form of Zeus’ name could be construed with παρὰ σπονδῇσιν (i.e., “accom-
panying libations for Zeus”) or in an expression of comparison with τί λώϊον
(i.e., “what better than Zeus”). The ambiguity is compounded for audiences
familiar with the archaic Homeric Hymns, in which verse-initial names are
always construed in close connection with the main verb of “singing” or
“remembering.”17 In this hymn, Ζηνὸς is not syntactically connected with
the poet’s topic of song; instead the narrator claims to be puzzling over
how to praise θεὸν αὐτόν “the god himself.” Framing the dilemma in this
way preserves the ambiguity surrounding the poem’s ultimate honorand
and reflects the challenge Kallimachos faces in crafting praises of Zeus that
will suit the Basileia, given how ill suited the Zeus myth is to the dynastic
transition.18
While all readers today know this poem as the Hymn to Zeus, many an-
cient audiences would have experienced the poem without a title to shape
their expectations of the poem’s genre or purpose. Our conventions for titling
ancient Greek hymns are misleading, because they are very rarely contem-
poraneous with their hymns. More importantly, they narrowly predispose
readers to expect that the poem will be about the individual named in the
title.19 While many hymns do in fact deliver on these retroactively imposed
expectations, a great many are more complicated. In poems that begin with
proemial hymns, such as the Theogony’s “Hymn to the Muses,” the Works
and Days’ “Hymn to Zeus,” and the “Hymn to the Lyre” that opens Pindar’s
Pythian 1, it is fairly clear that the proem’s praise is subordinated to the larger
poem.20 More complex arrangements, however, are quite common. The
poem known today as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is addressed jointly to
17 Létoublon 2012. The post-Kallimachean Hymn to Ares is the only hymn in the collection as we
have it today that violates this norm.

18 If this hymn was performed in front of Ptolemy, many of the second-person addresses associated
by Norden 1913 with the Du-Stil of cult hymns may be construed as glancing references to Ptolemy as
well. See Chapter 3 for a further discussion of the poet’s task and the rhetorical questions with which
Kallimachos opens his hymn.
19 On ancient Greek title conventions Schmalzriedt 1970 is foundational, but Caroli 2007, Johnson
2009:259–60, and Schironi 2010 demonstrate that titling remains irregular down through the
Hellenistic period.
20 The extensive focus on the Charites in Pindar’s Olympian 14.1–24 is exceptional. Compare the
hymns to Eleithyia (N.7.1–8), Zeus (O.4.1–16), Tyche (O.12.1–13), and Thebes (I.7.1–21), Race
1990:85–117.
Demeter and her daughter Persephone (1–2 and 490–94);21 Pindar’s Pythian
6 and Isthmian 2 for Xenokrates of Akragas turn out to be devoted almost
entirely to praises of his son Thrasyboulos;22 Aristotle’s Hymn to Arete actu-
ally praises his friend Hermias, tyrant of Atarneus;23 and Kallimachos’ own
Hymn to Delos uses the aition of Apollo’s birthplace as a narrative focalizer
for lavishing praise on the god (and Ptolemy Philadelphos).24 While it will be
uncontroversial that a hymn can be about several things at once, the relation-
ship between different honorands and the extent to which the depiction of
one characterizes the other is often ambiguous, adding complexity to the task
of the poet and audience alike as they attempt to construe the relationship
between overlapping subjects.25
Kallimachos explicitly links the praiseworthy qualities of Zeus with those
of Ptolemy in such a way that he invites audiences to see the two kings as
analogous (1.79–86):
‘ἐκ δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες,’ ἐπεὶ Διὸς οὐδὲν ἀνάκτων

θειότερον· τῷ καί σφε τεὴν ἐκρίναο λάξιν.  80
δῶκας δὲ πτολίεθρα φυλασσέμεν, ἵζεο δ’ αὐτός
ἄκρῃσ’ ἐν πολίεσσιν, ἐπόψιος οἵ τε δίκῃσι
λαὸν ὑπὸ σκολιῇσ’ οἵ τ’ ἔμπαλιν ἰθύνουσιν·
ἐν δὲ ῥυηφενίην ἔβαλές σφισιν, ἐν δ’ ἅλις ὄλβον·
πᾶσι μέν, οὐ μάλα δ’ ἶσον. ἔοικε δὲ τεκμήρασθαι  85
ἡμετέρῳ μεδέοντι· περιπρὸ γὰρ εὐρὺ βέβηκεν.
“But Kings are from Zeus,” since nothing is more divine

than rulers; that is why you chose them as your lot.
And you gave them cities to guard, and you yourself sat
On the heights of the cities, on the look-out for those who rule the
21 Hopkinson 1984a, Foley 1994, and Clay 1989:202–65.

22 Pindar’s praise poems are complex and regularly combine celebration of a victor, his family, his
polis, and the gods. On these dynamics, see Kurke 1991a and Kurke 1991b.
23 Proponents and opponents of an impiety charge brought against Aristotle in relation to this
poem draw their arguments from the ambiguity surrounding its genre and honorand. While such
charges against prominent figures were often specious and politically motivated, they carried enough
weight that Aristotle appears to have preferred exile to testing the jury’s literary opinions. See discus-
sion in Ford 2011a and LeVen 2014:268–82.
24 See further discussion of this hymn in Chapter 5.
25 Encomiastic discourses in prose are similarly complex. Loraux 1986:27 remarks that “in the
democratic city, the funeral oration was an institution—an institution of speech in which the sym-
bolic constantly encroached on the functional, since in each oration the codified praise of the dead
spilled over into generalized praise of Athens.”
people with crooked justice, and those who do the opposite;

You heap affluence and good-fortune aplenty on them
all, but not in equal measure. This can be inferred from
the proof of our own lord; for he is especially outstanding.
Indeed, Kallimachos’ quotation from Hesiod’s Theogony (“ἐκ δὲ Διὸς

βασιλῆες,” Th. 96) asserts that all kings derive their kingship from Zeus. He
goes on to refine that claim, suggesting that kings vary in their degree of sim-
ilarity to Zeus and that he rewards them according to how justly (and thus
how like him) they rule. By this metric, Ptolemy far outstrips the rest and, by
implication, appears to be the most Zeus-like of kings.26 In the explicit praise
of Ptolemy that follows (1.87–90), Kallimachos highlights the king’s ability to
actualize his plans swiftly: “By evening he will accomplish what he thought
of at dawn” (ἑσπέριος κεῖνός γε τελεῖ τά κεν ἦρι νοήσῃ, 1.87). The account of
Ptolemy’s ability to turn thoughts into deeds with the verb τελέω echoes the
description of Zeus’ teleological thinking earlier in the hymn: “Though you
were young, you thought all things through to their ends” (ἀλλ’ ἔτι παιδνὸς
ἐὼν ἐφράσσαο πάντα τέλεια, 1.57).27
Kallimachos sets Ptolemy up as a paradeigma, “example,” in order to prove
the validity of his characterization of Zeus. Here, his praise adopts the lan-
guage and strategy of persuasive rhetoric asking his audience to evaluate
his claim about Zeus’ practice of rewarding good kings on the basis of like-
lihood (ἔοικε, 1.85), inference from evidence (τεκμήρασθαι, 1.85), and the
paradeigma of Ptolemy himself.28 While the eikos argument invites the au-
dience to conjure up paradeigmata in their minds, Kallimachos is quick to
focus the audience’s attention on the particular example of Ptolemy.29 The
paradeigma, common in ancient Greek thought across several genres, is
much discussed in rhetorical treatises from the fourth century bce on-
ward. An ancient rhetorical handbook defines it as “the exposition of actions
with a view to their similarity to present circumstances for the sake of
26 For further discussion of this passage, see Chapter 2.

27 The context makes clear that the second-person-singular addressee is Zeus, but in live perfor-
mance it might have equally felt as if the speaker were addressing Ptolemy.
28 Kallimachos seems to be stacking up rhetorical terminology so as to make his proof more au-
thoritative. Such proofs are discussed at length in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Anaximenes’ Rhetoric to
Alexander. For further discussion of Kallimachos’ argumentation and use of paradigms to construct
a hierarchy of power, see Chapter 2 pp.63–8.
29 As Anaximenes of Lampsakos describes in the Rhetoric to Alexander 7.4: Εἰκὸς μὲν οὖν ἐστιν, οὗ
λεγομένου παραδείγματα ἐν ταῖς διανοίαις ἔχουσιν οἱ ἀκούοντες. See Montefusco 2007:108–9 and
Chiron 2007.
encouragement and discouragement or simple clarification.”30 More often,

however, the paradeigma functions as a type of inductive argument, which
exploits an audience’s prior sense of similarity “to make what is potentially
unfamiliar—the desired conclusion—immediately and unquestionably fa-
miliar. Only those examples are suitable which will be easily and quickly
grasped by the audience as relevant.”31
The Makedonian Tradition of Zeus as a Political Symbol
When Kallimachos composed his hymn by interweaving praises of Zeus and

the Ptolemies, he was entering into a political discourse with its own long
history. Zeus was a dominant symbol of Makedonian power, and Ptolemy
I had long articulated his kingship within that idiom. In addition to the god’s
symbolism within the realm of kingship ideology, genealogical claims of de-
scent from Zeus were essential to Makedonians’ Hellenic identity and were
continuously reiterated in order to contradict detractors like Demosthenes,
who denied that Makedonians were even remotely Hellenes (e.g., 9.31).32
Radically modifying the terms of such legendary genealogies, Alexander
made the extravagant claim that Zeus was not only the progenitor of his an-
cestral house, the Argead dynasty,33 but also his own father.34 This vastly
superseded Philip II’s claims to Zeus’ favor and set an entirely new precedent
for the degree to which the gods might be leveraged as symbols of power and
authority. Images of the young king clutching Zeus’ thunderbolt (Alexander
Keraunophoros) popularized Alexander’s claim in various media across the
30 Ps.Herodian (Περὶ σχημάτων) De figuris 65: Παράδειγμα δὲ πράξεων ἔκθεσις πρὸς ὁμοιότητα
τῶν ἐνεστηκυιῶν προτροπῆς χάριν καὶ ἀποτροπῆς ἢ δηλώσεως ἁπλῆς. On the rhetorical treatise and
its date, see Hajdú 1998 and Dickey 2014.
31 Lane 1998:96. This description of paradeigma in Aristotle and Cicero applies equally to poetic
rhetoric.
32 Engels 2010, Hatzopoulos 2011, Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012:168–70.
33 According to Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women (fr. 7 M- W), Zeus was the father of Makedon
and Magnes, eponymous founders of Makedonia and Magnesia; on the foundation traditions of
Makedonia, see Engels 2010:90. The Argead dynasty claimed descent from Makedon’s son Argeas
as well as Temenos, a son of Herakles and thus grandson of Zeus; on Zeus and the Argead dynasty in
Makedonia, see Düll 1977:98–106 and Le Bohec-Bouhet 2002:42.
34 Intentionally vague and couched in oracular authority, this claim was perpetuated as a rumor
alongside his standard biography in which King Philip II was his father. On Alexander’s visit to Siwah
and its ideological function, see Caneva 2011.
empire, including Kallisthenes’ Histories, the Poros decadrachms, the Neisos

gem, and Apelles’ painting at the Artemesion in Ephesos.35
Ptolemy and the other Successors later adopted and expanded on this rep-
resentational strategy, predicating their authority on their relationship to
Alexander and then ultimately to Zeus himself.36 Such claims came into con-
tention with one another—sometimes even becoming superlative and mu-
tually exclusive.37 In the case of Ptolemy I, we can see how honors such as
the Sōtēr epiklesis entailed a multilateral political negotiation. The Rhodians
voted it as a civic honor for Ptolemy in 305 in recognition of his liberating
the polis from Demetrios I Poliorketes after a yearlong siege. The Lindian
Chronicle (Syll.3 725 = FGrH 532), a monumental inscription set up in 99
bce in the sanctuary of Athena Lindia, incorporates Ptolemy I into a nar-
rative detailing the history of Athena’s relationship with the polis of Lindos.
That sacred history details a sequence of epiphanies in which Athena appears
to the Lindians and promises to secure Zeus’ aid to rescue the polis from exis-
tential threats. The third such epiphany, however, results in the intervention
of Ptolemy, who acts as a substitute for Zeus.38 Beyond perpetuating a narra-
tive that cast Ptolemy in the role of Zeus, this Rhodian honor implicitly made
Ptolemaic claims to the god superior to those of Demetrios.39 This episode
highlights the multilateral negotiation between rulers, those who grant them
honors, and the broader public who can accept or reject the validity and sin-
cerity of such claims.
Iconographic programs developed these claims, as can be seen from the
way Ptolemaic coinage asserted a progressively closer and closer relation-
ship between god and king.40 Even so, visual imagery testifying to a king’s
35 Howe 2013 discusses the Successors’ interest in promoting the narrative of Alexander’s divinity.
On these images associating Alexander with Zeus, see discussion and bibliography in Stewart 1993,
Dahmen 2007:58, and Ogden 2017:110.
36 Neither Alexander nor his Successors leveraged Zeus to the exclusion of other gods, but he was
the most prominent avatar of kingly power for at least a generation after Alexander’s death, e.g.,
Erikson 2013, Howe 2013. For the persistence of dynastic associations with Zeus down into the
second century, see Lapatin and Veymiers 2018 on the sardonyx cameo depicting the jugate portraits
of Zeus and a Ptolemaic king.
37 Meeus 2013. Brumbaugh 2016 describes Kallimachos’ Hymn to Apollo as contesting Seleukid
claims to that god’s favor.

38 Petrovic 2015 uses surviving historical narrative accounts to supplement the fragmentary text
of the Lindian Chronicle and explain the circumstances of Ptolemy’s honors. On the inscription and
its context, see Higbie 2003 and Shaya 2005. Habicht 2017:79–80, 196–97 discusses the evidence for
the cult on Rhodes, and Muccioli 2013:81–94, 159–78 sets out the evidence for Ptolemy’s assumption
and use of the epiklesis. For further discussion of Soterism down through the 270s, see Chapter 5. On
the use of the epithet in connection with the gods, see Graf 2017.
39 On Demetrios’ divinity, see Chaniotis 2011 and Habicht 2017.
40 Von Reden 2007:36–38.
(a) (b)
Figure 1.1 Silver tetradrachm minted at Alexandria, issued by Ptolemy I from

294/3. Ob.: Bust of Ptolemy I. Re.: Eagle clutching a thunderbolt with legend
“ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ.”
Svoronos 255 = CPE 168. Photograph courtesy of the American Numismatic Society (Acc. #
1944.100.73309).
affiliation with a god tended to be vague and its symbolism did not depend
on the articulation of a narrative that specified exactly how the two figures
were alike. Thus, a coin featuring Zeus’ eagle clutching his thunderbolt with
the legend “of king Ptolemy” on one side and a bust of Ptolemy on the other,
as in Figure 1.1, could provoke a variety of more or less detailed readings.41
Beyond perceiving a general association between Ptolemy I and Zeus, the
viewer might infer any number of messages: for example, strength, violence,
power, sovereignty, youth, swiftness. The elements need only to be recogniz-
able enough so that viewers can be relied on to fill in the gaps and grasp a
relationship between god and king. R. R. R. Smith draws an important dis-
tinction by pointing out that the early Ptolemies used images to associate
themselves with the gods rather than assimilate themselves to the gods.42
This ambiguity allowed viewers to over-interpret these images without the
kings having to overplay their hand.
Such exploitation of ambiguity can be seen in the gold Θεῶν/Ἀδελφῶν
mnaieia issued by Ptolemy II (e.g., Figure 1.2). Thought to be the sole ex-
ample of a reigning Ptolemy emphatically styling himself as a god between
305 and 205 bce, this coin, Carl Johnson has argued convincingly, offers an
41 For Ptolemaic coinage and its chronology, see Lorber 2018, Lorber 2012a, and Lorber 2012b.
42 Smith 1988:44.
(a) (b)
Figure 1.2. Gold mnaieion (=octadrachm) minted at Alexandria, issued

by Ptolemy II by 272. Re.: Jugate busts of Ptolemy I and Berenike I with
legend “ΘΕΩΝ”; Ob.: Jugate busts of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II with legend
“ΑΔΕΛΦΩΝ.”
Svoronos 603 = CPE 313. Photograph courtesy of the American Numismatic Society (Acc. #
1954.237.470).
intentionally ambiguous reading. A viewer could interpret the two sides in-
dependently so that the obverse shows the deceased, deified rulers Ptolemy
I and Berenike I with the legend “of the Theoi [Sōtēres]” and the reverse
depicts Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II with the simple legend “of the Adelphoi.”
Alternately, the legend could be read continuously across both sides of the
coin, referring to the junior pair as the Theoi Adelphoi, the official cult title
used only by others to describe them.43 In this way, Ptolemy’s mint could
suggestively acknowledge the living ruler’s divinity without explicitly vio-
lating the third-century norm. This offers a useful point of comparison in
evaluating the intentional ambiguities of Kallimachos’ hymn and suggests
that audiences paying close attention may have been used to reading between
the lines of ambiguous discourse.
43 Johnson 1999:52–54 followed by von Reden 2007:50–51. It must be noted that a single variety of
this issue contains the full legend “ΘΕΩΝ ΑΔΕΛΦΩΝ” on one side (CPE 319), while all the others
separate the words as described above (CPE 307–18). A major study of this and related issues is now
available in Olivier and Lorber 2013; see too Lorber 2018:1.1.317–21.
The Encomiastic Challenge of a Zeus Narrative
In contrast to the comparatively indeterminate iconographic associations

linking Ptolemy and Zeus,44 a hymn detailing the similarity between king
and god would contain lengthy and detailed narrative inviting more exten-
sive and precise comparison. Moreover, it would be judged on the basis of its
accurate representation of both Zeus and Ptolemy as well as its convincing
portrayal of the relationship between them. Given this heightened level of
scrutiny it is easy to see how the standard Zeus myth would have been in-
compatible with the Ptolemaic political situation at this period of transition.
The précis on Zeus’ kingship in the Theogony proem gives a clear sense of the
incongruity (Theogony 71–74):
ὁ δ’ οὐρανῷ ἐμβασιλεύει,
αὐτὸς ἔχων βροντὴν ἠδ’ αἰθαλόεντα κεραυνόν,
κάρτει νικήσας πατέρα Κρόνον· εὖ δὲ ἕκαστα
ἀθανάτοις διέταξε νόμους καὶ ἐπέφραδε τιμάς.
He is king in heaven,
with control over thunder and the blazing bolt, because of
his might he was victorious over his father Kronos; and he divided
everything fairly among the immortals, allotting rights and honors.
A performance of Hesiod’s authoritative classic at the Ptolemaic kingship fes-

tival, had this ever been imagined, would have been damaging ideologically.
First, the relationship between Kronos and Zeus, father and son, is one of mu-
tual violence and would have ill-served efforts to associate the Ptolemaic suc-
cession with stability. Not only does the cycle of violent succession serve as the
engine driving the Theogony, but also the pivotal accomplishment that sets
Zeus on the path to kingship is his usurpation of his father, replacing tyranny
with a just regime. Second, the Theogony makes Zeus’ magnanimity toward
his siblings a defining feature of his just and ordered reign. Characterized in
this way, Zeus would have been a poor fit for Ptolemy II, whose ascension
occasioned intense familial strife and resulted in the murder or exile of all his
44 This should not be taken to suggest that iconography does not have its own hermeneutic. On ico-
nography, iconology, and the reading of images, see Schmidt and Oakley 2009, Stansbury-O’Donnell
2011, Smith and Plantzos 2012:2.IV, Isler-Kerényi 2015, and Lorenz 2016; on reading images of
Alexander, see Stewart 1993 and Dahmen 2007.
brothers. Finally, Zeus’ most important weapon, the ultimate symbol of his
power, the thunderbolt (κεραυνός), was an important aspect of Makedonian
Zeus worship, as attested by cults for Zeus Keraunios and Keraunos;45 unfor-
tunately, its symbolic power was the domain of Philadelphos’ older brother
(Κεραυνός), whose seniority and prior claim to the throne were contradicted
by the very occasion Kallimachos’ hymn celebrates.46
Although many have remarked that Kallimachos’ Hymn to Zeus is mod-
eled on Hesiod’s Theogony, the hymn associated with the Ptolemaic dynastic
festival scrupulously avoids all of these well-known, infelicitous aspects of
Zeus’ mythic biography, which are central to the archaic hymn as well as
other popular representations. More significant is the fact that Kallimachos
effects this departure from tradition without drawing attention to, and thus
criticism for, his unorthodoxy. The success of his hymn is not that it merely
commemorated the festival and presumably pleased the Ptolemies, but that
it also creates an authoritative discourse that tacitly reshapes perceptions
of that event and establishes itself as the dominant narrative thereafter. To
give this accomplishment proper weight, we must re-evaluate the historical
circumstances surrounding the first Ptolemaic succession and attempt to
resurrect potential counter-narratives.
The Contested Ptolemaic Succession
Two years before he died, the octogenarian king, Ptolemy I Soter, installed
his young son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, as co-regent and heir apparent,
extending his reign into a dynasty that would rule over Egypt for nearly
three centuries.47 With knowledge of how successful the regime ultimately
would become, it is difficult today to conceive of just how fraught that first
succession must have been. Recent studies of Ptolemaic rule reveal that ob-
fuscation of such moments of volatility was intentional, emphasizing the ex-
tent to which the perception of dynastic continuity was propagated—often
retroactively—under Ptolemies II and III.48 For that reason it is useful to
45 Chrysostomou 1989–91:25–28. For the importance of the keraunos in Seleukid imagery and
cult, see Ogden 2017:107–9.

46 For sources on Ptolemy Keraunos, see PP VI 14539.
47 Porphyry, FGrH 260 F2.2–3. Ptolemy I died in the first half of 282 bce when he was about eighty-
four years old. For calendric conversions and reckonings, see Samuel 1962, Samuel 1972:52 and 146–
52 and Hazzard 1987.
48 Müller 2009, Hauben and Meeus 2014, and especially Caneva 2016. While I do not always agree
with his conclusions, Hazzard 2000 also offers useful perspective. The historical revisionism of
review in detail what is known about that first transfer of power because the
modern treatments of the period tend to be brief and overly confident of the
transition’s successful outcome, much as later dynastic propaganda wanted it
to be remembered.49 Such teleological accounts flatten a discourse that was
freighted with anxiety and doubly contested: first, in that there were mul-
tiple claimants to Ptolemy’s throne and second, after four decades of Soter’s
leadership it would have been difficult to imagine anyone, let alone a young
prince, assuming his place. The joint celebration of the Basileia, Ptolemy II’s
genethlia, and the co-regency in 285 represents an effort by the state to in-
fluence this discourse from the top down. In his Hymn to Zeus Kallimachos
must navigate this situation in order to assert his own value as a poet capable
of shaping perceptions and contributing to royal prerogatives.50
Even under the best of circumstances, the transfer of power from one
ruler to the next could invite upheaval and chaos.51 Those who did not learn
this lesson from the abrupt dissolution of Alexander’s empire might have
been further edified by the failure of both Antipatros (d. 319) and his son
Kassandros (d. 297) to put in place mechanisms ensuring a smooth dynastic
succession. Ptolemy had several offspring old enough to aspire to his throne,
reason enough for concern about whether his kingdom would outlast him.52
In 285 Ptolemy Keraunos, his first-born son, was close to thirty and des-
perately coveted kingship, if his subsequent efforts to usurp the thrones of
other kingdoms are any indication. Magas, Berenike I’s son, whom Ptolemy
had adopted, had been installed as governor in Kyrene (c.300 bce) ahead
Ptolemaic dynastic propaganda might be fruitfully compared with the strategy of ex eventu prophecy
also common in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt; see Koenen 1983.
49 Hölbl 2001:36 (=Hölbl 1994:33) presents a teleological narrative, remarking that “the acces-
sion of Ptolemy II did not go uncontested” and providing a brief paragraph of detail. Worthington
2016:201–4 provides much more detail, but nevertheless characterizes the eventual outcome as
unproblematic. Huss 2001:253–54 provides more detail and hints at the dynamic between the
“Ansprüche konkurrierender Kräfte.” Carney 2013:22–27 gives a fuller account of the tension be-
tween Philadelphos and Keraunos but neglects to mention Magas and the troubles in Kyrene.
50 See Chapter 3 on Kallimachos’ treatment of the role of praise poetry and kingship in the Hymn
to Zeus.
51 Svolik 2012 offers a useful analysis of power-sharing and transition in post–World War II au-
thoritarian regimes, which is instructive even in our ancient context mutatis mutandis. See also
Scheidel forthcoming.
52 Apart from the outcomes of Hellenistic dynastic succession, which tended to favor eldest sons,
we have little evidence for legal or cultural norms relating to how a king’s successor should be chosen.
Neither Ptolemy II Philadelphos nor Ptolemy III Euergetes was an eldest son and while the historical
record of their ascensions is lacunose, each case involved the contentious displacement of an older
claimant to the throne—Ptolemy “Keraunos” and Ptolemy “the Son,” respectively. Collins 2000:65–
67 and Strootman 2014a:103 describe primogeniture as the predominant, thought not only, determi-
nation in Hellenisitic succession. See also Mitchell 2013:105–11.
of Keraunos despite the fact that both sons were close in age; such favor
may have made Magas expect that he was a strong candidate for promo-
tion to kingship as well.53 And then there was Berenike’s son Ptolemy, who
was barely embarking on his twenties when his father entered his eighties.
Though factions likely formed around all three sons, Ptolemy ultimately
selected the youngest of them sometime during the first half of the 280s for
elevation to co-regency in 285. Shut out, Magas withdrew to Kyrene and es-
tablished himself as king in that region, and Keraunos left Egypt to join his
sister, the future Arsinoë II, in Makedonia. Neither appears to have consid-
ered the matter settled. The death of Ptolemy I made Ptolemy II sole ruler
in 283 and stirred simmering animosities that threatened the collapse of his
kingdom. Lysimachos’ failed dynasty provides an important counterexample
of such a threat realized, since succession intrigue led to the execution of his
heir Agathokles in 284 and ultimately to the dissolution of that kingdom
upon the king’s death in 281.
In addition to Keraunos and Magas, Pausanias records two further brothers
who revolted against Ptolemy II, following his ascension to the throne.54 One
of those said to be plotting against the new king was Argaios, who had been
prominent enough to lead the ceremonial transfer of Alexander’s body from
Memphis to his final resting place in the new capital of Alexandria some
years earlier. Another was a now anonymous son of Eurydike who instigated
rebellion on Kypros in an effort to detach it from Ptolemaic control and es-
tablish his own sovereignty, following the death of his father. Ptolemy II had
both executed. That nothing more is known of these failed usurpers may be
attributable to the regime’s interest in eliminating them from memory, but it
stands to reason that they were full brothers of Ptolemy Keraunos, who was
already abroad plotting his own power play at the court of Lysimachos. In ad-
dition to purging these rivals, Philadelphos also exiled members of court like
Demetrios of Phaleron, who had supported the unsuccessful claimants to the
throne, effectively silencing competing discourses.55
One of the most consequential details that the standard narrative of the
Ptolemaic succession minimizes is the loss of Kyrenaika, a prosperous terri-
tory that made up over a third of Soter’s domain. Having ruled this substantial
53 Although it became normative to expect a firstborn son to be heir apparent, this norm had not
yet been established and a successor need not necessarily have been a blood relation, as in Antipatros’
choice of Polyperchon as successor.
54 Pausanias 1.7.1. The parentage of Argaios has aroused some debate; see Worthington 2016:115.
55 Diogenes Laertios 5.78–79 records that Demetrios was exiled to upper Egypt for advocating on
behalf of Keraunos; he died shortly thereafter.

territory for over fifteen years as Soter’s deputy, Magas had a considerably
larger power base than the other claimants, making him far more dangerous
and difficult to eliminate. Whether as a direct result of Ptolemy’s succession
or as a byproduct of the hostilities that it bred, Magas took the title basileus,
brokered a marriage alliance for himself with the rival Seleukids, and ulti-
mately mounted an offensive attack against his half-brother. While oppor-
tunistic Libyan nomads pursuing an unrelated agenda ultimately thwarted
his campaign, Magas did succeed in putting Ptolemy II on the defensive and
drained his resources by coordinating with the Seleukids to compel Egypt
to prepare for military action on multiple fronts.56 Furthermore, Magas
managed to force Philadelphos into a draw, ruling Kyrenaika as a sover-
eign province down into the 260s.57 While the loss of Kyrenaika may well
have occurred after the publication of Kallimachos’ hymn, it nevertheless
constitutes an important reminder of the difficulties the dynasty had in
maintaining the stability it projected.
The Ptolemaic Basileia of 285 not only celebrated Philadelphos’ birthday
and co-regency, but in doing so it also provided a compelling counter-
narrative to the one I have just elaborated. While we lack details about this
event, we can infer from Philadelphos’ later use of dynastic festivals that it
was orchestrated to promote dynastic ideology.58 More likely than not, it was
but one of the initiatives sponsored by the Ptolemies to underscore this self-
representation, “publicly demonstrating the legitimacy and power of the dy-
nasty, its good fortune, and its triumphs over adversity.”59 Berenike I’s chariot
victory at the Olympic Games the following summer should be seen as part
of this same program.60 If, as some have suggested, this victory occurred
in the same year as those of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II, then the sweep of
chariot events must have sent a strong message to a Panhellenic audience
regarding the dynastic succession celebrated the year prior in Alexandria.
Though perhaps in conjunction with Philadelphos’ later efforts, Posidippos’
56 Paus. 1.7.1–3; Polyaen. 2.28. Chamoux 1956 remains the most plausible reconstruction of the
chronology. Around this same time a portion of Philadelphos’ fleet was busy suppressing piracy in
the Red Sea.
57 The border between Egypt and Magas’ kingdom was not, as is often implied, hermetically sealed.
While relations between the neighbors may have been tense, there is no evidence to suggest a com-
plete separation between them. For this perspective, see Marquaille 2008:44n.23.
58 See Caneva 2016 as well as a more detailed discussion in Chapter 6.
59 Bennett 2005:93.
60 Hannah 2005:35–41 describes the difficulty of dating the Olympic Games. On Ptolemaic dy-
nastic self-definition in Posidippos, see Kosmetatou 2004 and Fantuzzi 2005. More broadly, see
Hintzen-Bohlen 1990, Hintzen-Bohlen 1992, Pfeiffer 2008a, Müller 2009, and Fulińska 2011.
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gangway, and a more completely demoralized Chinaman you could
never find. De Long personally made him drink half a tumblerful of
whiskey to bring him round, but he was completely incoherent and
began to cry. When at last he was calmed a little, he related how he
had continued to chase the bear, which the two dogs to give him a
chance, by fierce attacks managed occasionally to stop for a minute
or two but never for long enough for him to get within range. The
dogs, Prince and Wolf, fighting desperately this way as the bear
retreated, were both bleeding. Ah Sam says he followed the bear on
a southerly course fifteen miles, determined to get him if he had to
chase him all the way to China. Then by a particularly vicious
onslaught, the dogs finally succeeded in holding the bear till Ah Sam
could run up close enough for a fine shot. Raising his rifle, our cook
took careful aim on the bear’s head, and pressed the trigger, when
horror of horrors, instead of hurting the bear, the rifle exploded in his
hands! His morale completely shattered, poor Ah Sam sat down in
the snow and wept, while the bear, still accompanied by Wolf and
Prince, amazed no doubt by such weird hunting, but unwilling to give
up, moved on over the pack and that was the last he saw of any of
them. Still weeping, Ah Sam picked up the remains of his rifle and
started home. How he ever found the ship again, he didn’t know; it
had taken him, walking continuously, until midnight. And there,
indicating it with a hysterical wave of his hand, as proof of this wild
story was the treacherous rifle!
We examined it curiously. Ah Sam had not exaggerated—the gun
barrel was torn to pieces; only a half length, cracked open, being left
still attached to the stock. But to anyone used to firearms, the
answer was simple. Ah Sam, in his long chase, must have let the
muzzle slip into a snowdrift; the snow freezing solidly in the bore,
had plugged it off, with the natural result that when he fired, there
being no proper release for the exploding powder, it had promptly
blown off the muzzle.
Dr. Ambler examined Ah Sam carefully for wounds; it seemed a
miracle one of those flying rifle fragments had not cut his head off.
But physically he had escaped unscathed; his demoralization was
wholly mental, owing to the way, in his efforts to provide roast bear
for dinner, an unkind fate had treated him. Still weeping, poor Ah
Sam was led off to his bunk.
CHAPTER XXV
April drew toward its close, leaving us as a parting gift in latitude 76°
19′ N., longitude 164° 45′ E. Over 76° North, and with our drift
increasing in speed weekly! We were on our way now with a
vengeance, moving at last toward the Pole. A few more months like
April, and we might find ourselves by the middle of summer across
the 83rd parallel, to establish with the Jeannette at the very least a
new record for Farthest North! The effect on George Washington De
Long was magical—his shoulders straightened up as if he had shed
a heavy weight, his blue eyes became positively cheery, new
courage oozed from his every gesture—after twenty weary months
of discouragement and defeat, our third year in the Arctic was going
to redeem all and send us home unashamed!
May came. The temperature rose only a little, reaching zero, but
we didn’t mind that much, for in a few days we were nearing the 77th
parallel. The captain’s cheerfulness began to communicate itself to
the crew and a livelier spirit became decidedly manifest in all hands,
with one exception, that is. Collins, of course, was the exception. He,
technically a prisoner awaiting courtmartial, moped worse than ever;
upset even more by the idea that now that he no longer had any
active part, the expedition might really accomplish something.
Physically Collins was not under restraint—no irons, no cell, not
even restriction to his own stateroom, let alone restriction to the
confines of the ship. The captain had no wish to risk Collins’ health
by even such confinement as Danenhower was involuntarily
subjected to. But relieved wholly of all duty and responsibility, Collins
was in effect merely a passenger; his former work was divided
between the captain, Ambler, Chipp and myself, throwing a heavier
load on us, for the meteorological observations were religiously kept
up. Indeed, with the ship at last rapidly changing position northward
and westward, they were now increased. Still a member of the cabin
mess, Collins ate with us, absolutely silent except for an
ostentatiously polite “Good morning, captain,” once a day, after
which his fine oblivion respecting the existence of the rest of us was
an excellent wet blanket on conviviality at meals.
But other things relieved the monotony of meals a bit. Ducks and
geese began to show up overhead, flying some west, some north,
and occasionally landing on the small pools near by, formed by the
continually changing cracks in the moving ice. Dunbar and Alexey
knocked down some with their shotguns. After our continuous diet of
salt beef and insipid canned meat, rest assured we bit into those
heaven-sent ducks avidly, though frequently sudden cries of pain as
some gourmet’s teeth came down hard on pellets of lead, showed
that Ah Sam had been none too careful in extracting birdshot before
serving.
The weather warmed up a bit. The sun, though never high in the
heavens, stayed above the horizon twenty-four hours a day, and
even at midnight we began to see him, paradoxically enough,
looking at us from due north, over the unknown Pole!
But as another paradox, now that winter was going and late spring
and continuous daylight were with us, the doctor for the first time on
our long cruise since the diarrhoea epidemic in 1879, began again to
have a string of patients. Chipp, Tong Sing, Newcomb, Alexey,
Kuehne, Nindemann, and unfortunately, himself—all complained of
general debility, cramps in varying degrees, and slight indications of
palsy. Chipp, Tong Sing, and Newcomb, in the order named, were
worst.
What was the trouble? The doctor, himself a minor sufferer, was
able to work on his own symptoms as well as on those of the others
in diagnosis. Naturally, since we had just come through the winter,
scurvy was promptly suspected, but not a single evidence of the very
obvious manifestations of that disease could the doctor find in
anyone. This was some mental relief, for in the midst of all our other
failures, De Long, Ambler, and I had taken considerable pride in
having with my distilled water kept us free of that Arctic scourge and
for a longer period than ever before in history.
But if it wasn’t scurvy, what was it? Ambler racked his brains and
his medical books, going over all possible diseases that cold,
exposure, darkness, poor ventilation, depression, and our diet might
have exposed us to, but to no result. The symptoms were none too
obvious; he could lay his finger on nothing definite. Had we
developed a new Arctic disease from our unprecedented stay in the
ice? The surgeon could not say—only time would tell. Meanwhile,
Chipp, the worst sufferer, decidedly thin and weak, was first relieved
of part of his duties and then of all of them. The other victims were
told to take things easier till they had recuperated.
But as the days dragged along, they didn’t recuperate, they got
worse. The doctor put Chipp on the sicklist and ordered him to bed;
the same with Charley Tong Sing whose case became even more
serious. Meanwhile Ambler, suffering himself, was feverishly
searching his Materia Medica for an antidote. But with no definite
diagnosis of the disease possible, his search was fruitless. Ambler
was nearly distracted, for no ailment arising from our manner of life
fitted in with the vague symptoms. And then a severe attack of colic
in Newcomb gave him a clue. He checked his medical books,
checked the other patients, and with a grave face went to the captain
to inform him that, implausible as it seemed, without question every
man on the sicklist was suffering from acute lead poisoning!
That made the mystery even deeper. If lead poisoning, where was
the lead coming from? Lead poisoning was normally a painter’s
disease and not for months had any man on the ship touched a paint
pot or a brush. What then was the source? As the most probable
cause, I had to direct suspicion at myself, for Bartlett, Lee, and I in
making up our distiller piping joints, had for tightness wiped them all
with red lead. Immediately, Surgeon Ambler who had daily for a year
and a half been testing the water for salt, tested it for lead. He found
some insignificant traces, but it seemed hard to believe such minute
quantities could cause us trouble. Still we had been imbibing that
water constantly and the cumulative effect might have done it. While
the problem of dismantling all the pipe joints and cleaning them of
red lead was being cogitated, the captain went one step further—he
ordered Ah Sam to discontinue for use in making tea and coffee, the
pots which had soldered joints, and to replace them with iron
vessels.
And so, all full of this lugubrious discovery as to what had laid up
our shipmates, we met for dinner, a much reduced mess, with only
De Long, Dunbar, Danenhower, Collins and myself present. Ah Sam,
substituting for the deathly ill Tong Sing, served the meal—no bear,
no seal, no ducks this time—just salt beef and the ever present
stewed tomatoes, our principal vegetable antidote for scurvy, the
supply of which was holding out splendidly.
More quietly even than usual, dinner proceeded. I carved the salt
beef, Dunbar ladled out the tomatoes. Ah Sam padded around the
cabin with the dishes. Moodily we bent over our plates, and then an
outburst, doubly noticeable in that silence, brought us erect.
“Bah!” burst out the semi-blinded Danenhower, spitting out a
mouthful of food. “I don’t mind breaking my teeth on duck, but who,
for God’s sake, shot these tomatoes?”
“Shot the tomatoes, Dan? What do you mean?” asked the puzzled
skipper.
“Just what I say,” mumbled Dan, trying more delicately with his
napkin now to rid his mouth of the remainder. “They’re full of
birdshot!”
I walked over and examined the tomatoes spattered on the
tablecloth before Danenhower. Sure enough, there in the reddish
mess were several black pellets of solder, looking remarkably like
birdshot! A light dawned on me.
“Ah Sam!” I ordered, “bring me right away, half a dozen unopened
cans of tomatoes and a can opener, savvy?”
“I savvy; light away I bling cans from galley,” answered the cook,
and in a few minutes dinner was suspended and forgotten, while the
mess table was converted into a workbench on which I opened cans
and poured the contents into a large tureen. In every can we found
drops of solder, mostly tiny! Evidently when the canned tomatoes
were stewed before being served, the hot acid juices of the cooking
tomatoes completely dissolved the fine lead pellets. They had never
been noticed till a few drops large enough to escape complete
solution had come through for Dan to bite on!
We called the sick doctor from his bunk. He promptly got his
chemicals and then and there tested the hot stewed tomatoes
already served for dinner. The percentage of lead in them was far
above anything found in our water. No question about it now, the
tomatoes were the cause—our mysterious lead poisoning was at last
solved!
But the captain was still both perplexed and worried. Perplexed,
because from the day we entered the ice, we had had canned
tomatoes four times a week. Why hadn’t we been poisoned before
and why were some of us apparently still unaffected? He was
worried, because if we gave up tomatoes, our last source of anything
like vegetables, what (with our lime-juice now practically gone) over
the long months to come was going to save us from scurvy?
Dr. Ambler quickly resolved both difficulties by pointing out that as
for the perplexity, till May came, we had had tomatoes but four times
a week while since then we had had them daily, thus practically
doubling the lead dosage and nearly as promptly starting the trouble.
As for the reason why some were victims and some not—of the bad
cases, Chipp, weak already from overwork and in poor condition,
was a natural victim; Newcomb, little resistant to anything, another;
as for himself and the bluejackets who were a little less affected,
they were just somewhat more susceptible than some of the rest of
us, but in a short time the lead would have got us all. Tong Sing’s
case, worse than anybody’s, he had to confess he couldn’t explain,
but Ah Sam could and quickly did make it crystal clear,
“Cholly Tong Sing, he likee tomato! He eat plenty, allee same
bleakfast, dinner, supper!”
All we need do to prevent scurvy was go back to the issue of
tomatoes only four times a week, which quantity of lead absorption
we had before apparently withstood. In addition we tried to reduce
the lead still further by having Ah Sam carefully strain out and
remove all pellets of solder before cooking, thus keeping the lead
content down to the minimum, that is, whatever the cold tomatoes
had already dissolved.
So with Ah Sam clearing away the mess of emptied cans, we went
back to finish our dinner, lukewarm salt beef only now; silent again,
wondering, if we had to stay in the Arctic another year, whether it
was preferable to eschew the tomatoes and die of scurvy or to
continue eating them and pass away of chronic lead poisoning.
The day dragged along. We were in the middle of May, it being the
16th. Our rapid drift continued through the afternoon, more westerly
than northerly, but either was perfectly all right with us. The ice was
“livelier,” cracks and water leads showed up more frequently, the
ship was often jolted by submerged masses of ice, and not so far
away as earlier in the spring, high ridges of broken floes were piling
up all around us. Then in the early evening after supper, from Mr.
Dunbar who more out of habit than hope had crawled up to the
crow’s-nest for a look around, came the cry,
“LAND!”
And sure enough, there was land! Off to the westward lay an
unknown island!
The crew of the Jeannette was delirious with excitement. Instead
of ice, there was land to look at, something we had dully begun to
assume had somehow ceased to exist on this globe. And we had
discovered it! In exploration, our voyage was no longer a blank! In
honor of that, Captain De Long immediately ordered served out to all
hands a double ration of rum.
Not since March, 1880, when Wrangel Land last disappeared from
sight, had we seen land. As yet we could not see much of this island,
nor even make out its distance, but somewhere between thirty and
seventy miles off it stood, in black and white against the sky and the
ice, masked a little by fog over part of it. But our imaginations ran riot
over our island! That must have been the land toward which the
ducks and geese were flying, and when we got there, what a feast
awaited us! Some eagle-eyed observers clearly spotted reindeer on
its cliffs; others even more eagle-eyed plainly distinguished the
bucks from the does! Our mouths, dry from chewing on salt beef,
watered in eager anticipation.
De Long, positively glowing, hugged Dunbar for discovering our
island and looking happily off toward it, exclaimed,
“Fourteen months without anything but ice and sky makes this look
like an oasis in the desert! Look at it, it’s our all in all! How bears
must swarm on our island, Dunbar! And if you want to tell me that it
contains a gold mine that’ll make us all as rich as the treasury
without its debts, I’ll believe you! Our island must have everything!”
Even the sick, who came up on deck for a glimpse, were cheered
by the sight, all, that is, save poor Danenhower, who nevertheless
came up with the others, at least to look in that direction, knowing
well enough that he alone of all of us would never see our island;
that through the heavily smoked glass over his one remaining eye he
could hardly see the bulwarks, let alone the distant island we had at
last discovered!
Longer than anyone else, De Long stayed on deck that night,
gazing off toward the island, criticizing it, guessing its distance,
wishing for a favorable gale to drive us towards it, and finally before
going to bed, looking carefully again at it to make sure it had not
melted away.
And when at last I dragged him below to rest, he murmured
knowing well the island could be only at most a little mass of volcanic
rock,
“Melville, beside this stupendous island, the other events of the
day sink into insignificance!”
For the next week, we drifted northwest with fair speed toward our
island, with the water shoaling and the ice getting more active. By
several bearings as we moved along, we discovered that when first
sighted our island was thirty-four miles off. The question of making a
landing began immediately to be debated, but obviously for the first
few days, we were not yet at the closest point, so no decision was
then arrived at. For the next three days, it blew hard, during which
time we caught but few glimpses of our island as we drove northwest
with the ice. When the gale abated on May 24, we got some sights
and found to our pleased surprise that we were in latitude 77° 16′ N.,
longitude 159° 33′ E. 77° North! Another parallel of latitude left in our
frozen wake; we were now moving steadily on toward the Pole!
But that was not all for May 24. Going aloft himself in the morning,
De Long saw another island! Off to the westward it lay, closer to us
even than our first island; and in addition, from all the lanes which
had opened up in the pack, more water than he had seen since
September, 1879. This second island, a little more calmly added to
our discoveries than the first one, was a most welcome sight. The
water however was nothing but a tantalizing vision, for none of the
lanes were connected nor did they lead anywhere, least of all toward
our islands, both about thirty miles away from us and from each
other.
Having two islands now on our hands, we could no longer refer to
the first simply as our island, as we had before lovingly done in
mentioning it, for was not the second equally ours? So it becoming
necessary to distinguish between them in the future, De Long took
thought like Adam of old, and named them—the first after our ship
and our ship’s godmother, Jeannette Island; and the second after our
sponsor’s mother, Henrietta Island. Having thus taken care of our
sponsor’s sister and his mother, De Long looked confidently forward
to new discoveries on which he might bestow the name of our
sponsor himself.
Meanwhile, the question of landing on either or both of our islands
came again to the fore, the weather having cleared once more.
Jeannette Island had dropped astern during our strong drift in the
gale, while on Henrietta Island we were closing steadily. De Long
decided therefore on May 30, six days after we had discovered it, to
send a landing party over the ice to take possession of Henrietta
Island and to explore it.
The journey would evidently be a dangerous one over broken and
moving ice, with worst of all, the ship steadily moving with the ice
away from the land. Most opinions were adverse to success, but
Captain De Long ordered the trip, feeling that a knowledge of that
island as a base to fall back on would be invaluable in case of
disaster to the ship, and exceedingly desirous also of erecting a
stone cairn there in which to leave a record of our wanderings and
whereabouts (this, I think, though De Long never expressed it so, as
a permanent clue to our fate should we be swallowed forever by the
pack threatening us).
Not as any compliment to me, but out of sheer necessity, De Long
selected me to take charge of the expeditionary party and make the
attempt to land. I was the only commissioned officer of the Navy
available; Danenhower, Chipp, and Ambler were incapacitated in
varying degree; the captain himself, anxious as he was to have the
honor of being first to plant our flag on newly discovered soil, dared
not leave the ship to the only one other seagoing officer still on deck,
the whaler Dunbar. So by a process of simple elimination, I was
given the doubtful honor of leading. To help me were assigned Mr.
Dunbar and four picked men from the crew—Quartermaster
Nindemann and Erichsen, one of our biggest seamen, from the deck
force; with Bartlett, fireman, and Sharvell, coalheaver, from my black
gang, the latter to act as cook.
With these men, one sledge, a dinghy to ferry us over any open
water, provisions for seven days (including forty-two ounces of the
inevitable lime-juice and eleven gallons of distilled water but no
tomatoes), navigating instruments, fifteen dogs, and the silken
ensign which Emma De Long had made for the Jeannette as the
particular banner to be used in taking possession, we shoved off
from the vessel’s side on May 31, cheered by all the remaining ship’s
company. Henrietta Island was twelve miles off over the pack,
bearing southwest by west. The ship, to guide me in my return,
hoisted a huge black flag, eleven feet square at the main.
Our sledge carried between boat and supplies, a load of 1900
pounds, nearly a ton. With Dunbar running ahead as a leader to
encourage the dogs and the other five of us heaving on the sledge to
help along, it was as much as we could do to get it underway and
moving slowly over the rough ice away from the ship. The harnessed
dogs behaved as usual—they were not interested in any cooperation
with us. In the first fifteen minutes, several broke out of harness and
returned to the ship, there of course to be recaptured by our
shipmates and dragged back to the sledge.
Of our terrible three day journey over only twelve miles of live ice
toward Henrietta Island, I have little to say save that it was a
nightmare. We made five miles the first day, during which we lost
sight of the Jeannette and her black flag; and four miles the second.
At that point, Mr. Dunbar, who had been doing most of the guiding
while the rest of us pushed on the sledge to help the dogs, became
in spite of his dark glasses totally snow-blind and could no longer
see his way, even to stumble along over the ice in our wake. So we
perched him inside the dinghy, thus increasing our load, and on the
third day set out again in a snow storm, guided now only by compass
toward the invisible island. In the afternoon, the storm suddenly
cleared, and there half a mile from us, majestic in its grandeur, stood
the island! Precipitous black cliffs, lifting a sheer four hundred feet
above the ice, towered over us; a little inland, four times that height,
rose cloud-wreathed mountains, with glaciers startlingly white
against the black peaks filling their every gorge.
As we stood there, awestruck at the spectacle, viewing this
unknown land on which man had never yet set foot, the silence of
those desolate mountains, awful and depressing, gripped us, driving
home the loneliness, the utter separation from the world of men of
this Arctic island!
We were now only half a mile from the shore which marked our
goal, but as we gazed across it, cold dread seized us. What a half
mile! The drifting pack, in which miles away the unresisting
Jeannette was being carried along, was here in contact with
immovable mountains which could and did resist. As a result, around
the bases of those cliffs, were piled up broken floes by the millions,
the casualties in that incessant combat between pack and rock.
While moving past between were vast masses of churning ice,
forever changing shape, tumbling and grinding away at each other
as that stately procession of floebergs hurried along. And it was over
this pandemonium, that if ever we were to plant our flag on that
island, we had to pass!
To get sledge, boat, and all our provisions across was utterly
hopeless. So I made a cache on a large floe of our dinghy, stowing in
it all except one day’s provisions and most of our gear, raising an oar
flying a small black flag vertically on the highest hummock of that
floe as a marker. Next there was Dunbar. Terribly down in the mouth
at having collapsed and become nothing but a hindrance, he begged
to be left on the ice rather than encumber us further. But to leave an
old man blinded and helpless on a drifting floe which we might never
find again, was not to be thought of. In spite of his distressed
pleadings, I put him on the sledge together with our scanty
provisions and instruments, and then with a lashing to the neck of
the lead dog who had no intention whatever of daring that devil’s
churn, we started, myself in the lead.
It was hell, over floes tossing one minute high in air, the next
sinking under our feet. Splashing, rolling, tumbling, we scrambled
from floe to floe, wet, frozen, terrified. Only by big Erichsen’s truly
herculean strength in bodily lifting out the sledge when it stuck fast
did we get over safely. When at last, soaked and exhausted, we
crawled up on the quiescent ice fringing the island, we were barely
able to haul Dunbar, dripping like a seal, off the sledge and onto the
more solid ice.
We paused there briefly while little Sharvell, his teeth still
chattering from fright, clumsily prepared our cold supper. Then
marching over the fixed ice, I as commander first set foot on the
island and in a loud voice claimed it as a possession of the United
States. I invited my shipmates ashore, and in a formal procession led
by Hans Erichsen (who as a special reward was carrying our silken
ensign) they landed also on the island, where Erichsen proudly
jammed the flagstaff into the earth.
With a few precious drops (and precious few) of medicinal
whiskey, I christened the spot Henrietta Island, after which we six
sick seamen drank the remainder of the medicine in honor of the
event, and then revelling in a brief tramp over real earth for the first
time in over twenty-one of the longest months men have ever spent,
we hauled our sleeping bags about our weary bones and lay down,
at last to rest again on terra firma.
At ten a.m. we woke, startled to have slept so long, for we were
not to stay on the island longer than twenty-four hours. On a bold
headland nearby, we built our cairn, burying in it two cases, one zinc
and one copper, containing the records with which Captain De Long
had provided us. This promontory, Mr. Dunbar named “Melville
Head” in my honor, but after considering its bareness of vegetation, I
decided “Bald Head” was more appropriate and so entered it on the
chart which I now proceeded to make.
With Bartlett and Erichsen reading instruments while I sketched,
we ran a compass survey which took all day. From the high
headlands, the Jeannette was plainly visible in the ice to the
northeast, a black speck against the white pack, but we paid little
attention to her, being anxious only to finish. While this was going on,
Sharvell and Nindemann searched the valleys, shooting a few of the
birds nesting in great profusion among the rocks. But aside from the
birds they saw no other game—no bears, no reindeer, no seals—not
a trace of animal life on that island.
In the early evening, our survey finished, we harnessed again our
staked-out dogs, furled our banner, and started back.
Our retreat through the roaring ice about the island we found even
more difficult than our landing. On one small floe, rounded like a
whaleback, we took refuge for a moment in that cascading ice. We
clung on in terror when it began rolling beneath us, evidently about
to capsize. That to our dismay it finally did, but providentially we
were scraped off as it went over onto the main floe. From this more
solid footing we dragged up out of the icy water by their harnesses
the drenched dogs and the even more drenched Dunbar clinging to
the submerged sledge.
Back once more on ice moving only as part of the great Arctic
pack, we breathed a little more freely, shook ourselves like the dogs
to get rid of surplus water before it froze on us, and headed for the
spot toward which I figured our abandoned boat had drifted. There
was nothing we could recognize, there were none of our previous
tracks we could follow; the arrangement of that pack had changed as
completely as a shuffled deck of cards. Amongst high hummocks we
could see but a little distance and I was becoming thoroughly
alarmed at the prospect of never finding our boat again. Then with
the weather clearing a bit, from the top of the highest hummock
around, Erichsen spied in the distance the oar marking our boat. We
hastened toward it, truly thankful, for we had already made away
with the single day’s rations which we had carried with us, and had
no longer a bite left to eat.
For two days in miserable weather we stumbled back toward the
ship, steering a compass course through continuous snow. To add to
our troubles, Nindemann came down with severe cramps (lead, of
course) and Erichsen, who since Dunbar’s collapse had been
guiding the dogs, with snow-blindness. So pitching our tent in the
snow, we camped our second night, while I dragged out the
medicine chest with which I had been provided by Dr. Ambler and
began to read the directions. The remedy for cramps was “Tincture
of capsicum in cognac.” Henrietta Island having seen the last of the
cognac, the best liquid substitute available in the chest appeared to
be a bottle of sweet oil, which I drew out, together with the bottle
marked “Tinc. capsicum.”
My own fingers were cold and numbed, so Erichsen who wanted
some of the sweet oil to rub on his chafed body which he had
stripped for that purpose, volunteered to draw the corks for me. First
pouring some of the sweet oil over his hands to soften them, he
pulled the second cork, but so clumsily with his frozen paws, that he
spilled a liberal portion of the tincture of capsicum over his badly
chapped hands to discover promptly that compared to tincture of
capsicum, liquid fire was a cooling, soothing lotion!
Startled, Erichsen involuntarily rubbed the mixture on his bared
rump and immediately went wild. To the intense interest of his
shipmates, down went Erichsen into the snow, trying to extinguish
the burn, wiggling his huge form like a snake on fire. Little Sharvell,
solicitously taking his arm, piped up,
“’Ere, matey, let me lead you to a ’igher ’ummock! Bli’ me if I don’t
think ye’ll soon melt yer way clean through this floe!”
Nindemann began to laugh so hard at this that he completely
forgot his cramps, while Dunbar, between his own groans, sang out
cheerily,
“Hans, are ye hot enough yet to make the snow hiss? If ye are,
when we get back, the chief can put out the forecastle stove and use
ye for a heater!”
Amid the general merriment, joined in by all hands except poor
Hans, big Erichsen finally managed to cool himself down in the snow
enough so that he could stand an administration of pure sweet oil to
the affected parts. Carefully applied by me, this soothed him enough
to permit his dressing again, and with most of us in a hilarious frame
of mind, we slid into our sleeping bags.
Next day, our sixth since departure, we set out again at 3 a.m., and
mirth having proved a better cure than medicine, with all hands in fair
shape except Dunbar who still had to ride the sledge. Within an hour
we sighted the ship. This cheered us further. And the dogs
recognizing the masts and realizing that at last they were pulling
toward home, for the first time put their hearts and shoulders into the
job. Over bad ice, we made such excellent progress that by 6 a.m.
we were within a mile of the ship, apparently without having been
sighted from there.
At this point, I ran into an open water lead with running ice, and
unable to find a detour, had determined to launch the dinghy and
ferry across when a sledge runner gave way and left us flat in the
snow. We repaired the runner, but it was evident that it would never
carry all the weight again. So I unloaded the boat, ferried the sledge
across, and then sent it ahead with Dunbar only on it while Sharvell
and I stayed behind with the dinghy and all the rest of our sledge
load of equipment.
We were all soon sighted and a party came out from the ship.
There on the ice, Dr. Ambler met me, and undemonstrative though
he was, so overjoyed was he at our safe return that he gave me a
regular bear hug.
Approaching the gangway, we caught sight of Captain De Long,
enthusiastically waving to us from the deck, running up the ladder to
the bridge for a better view. Then to our horror we saw him,
absorbed only by our progress, step directly into the path of the
flying windmill! In an instant, before anyone could cry out in warning,
down came one of the huge arms, whirling before a fresh breeze,
hitting him a terrific blow on the head and sending him reeling
backwards down the ladder!
Fortunately the quartermaster caught him, breaking his fall, but
Ambler and I, forgetting all else, rushed for the gangway, arriving on
deck to find the captain crawling on hands and knees, stunned and
bleeding from a great gash in his head. Ambler hurriedly bent over
him, carefully feeling his skull, and announced thankfully there was
no evident fracture. He helped the semi-conscious captain to his
cabin, where he immediately went to work stitching up a deep four-
inch long wound. By the time this was done and the bandages
applied, De Long at last came out of his daze. But calloused as I was
by war and many hardships it nevertheless brought tears to my eyes
when his first question after his fluttering eyelids opened on the
doctor bending over him, was not about himself but a faint query,
“How about Melville and his men, doctor? Are they all safe?”
CHAPTER XXVI
On June 5, 1881, a Sunday morning, we got back to the Jeannette.

In the early afternoon, in honor of our safe return. De Long with his
eyes hardly visible through his bandages, conducted a Thanksgiving
Service, attended only by Ambler and myself, for the other two usual
members of the congregation, Chipp and Dunbar, were both on the
sicklist. In further celebration of the event, the captain ordered in the
evening the issue of a double ration of whiskey forward, which
ceremony conducted in the forecastle by Jack Cole drew a
somewhat larger attendance, I believe.
Our sicklist was now considerable—Danenhower, Chipp,
Newcomb, Dunbar, and Alexey, with the skipper himself really
belonging there, but nevertheless permitted by the doctor to be up so
long as he stayed off the ice for a few days till his cut had a fair
chance to start to heal. Chipp, Newcomb, and Alexey were still badly
off from lead poisoning, but Tong Sing, our steward, had recovered
sufficiently to go back on duty and was now mainly engaged in
tending the sick when not actually serving.
From this unsatisfactory state of our personnel, I turned my
attention after a week’s absence once more to the Jeannette and
what was going on round her. Henrietta Island was rapidly dropping
abaft our beam as we drifted westward past its northern side and it
was evident that we would soon drop it out of sight. Jeannette Island
had already vanished from our world.
But the action of the ice about us attracted most attention. Not
since November, 1879, had we seen so much moving ice near the
ship, the effect undoubtedly of nearby Henrietta Island. The day after
my return, we found our floe reduced to an ice island about a mile
one way and half of that the other, with ourselves about a hundred
yards from the western edge, while all about us was a tumbling
procession of floebergs, shrieking and howling as they rolled past.
Leads opened and closed endlessly in the near distance with ridges
of broken floes shooting thirty feet above the pack. The roaring of the
breaking floes sounded like continuous thunder. And in all this
turmoil our ice island with the Jeannette in it moved majestically
along. Meanwhile we from our decks regarded it, thankful that our
floe was not breaking up to crush our ship and leave our heavy boats
and sledges to the mercies of that chaos, a half mile of which with a
sledge lightly loaded only, off Henrietta Island we had barely
managed to survive.
Another day passed, leaving the island in our wake. The moving
ice closed up again with long rows of piled up floes all about us, one
huge ridge of blocks seven to eight feet thick riding the pack not a
hundred and fifty yards away from our bulwarks. And yet one more
day and the captain got a sight, showing we were going due west at
a fair rate, which if continued, unless we turned north, would
ultimately bring us out into the Atlantic, though the chances seemed
better for a resumption of our northwest drift toward the Pole. But
toward either of these, now that we had some discoveries to add to
the world’s charts, we looked forward hopefully. At any rate, since we
had to leave the matter to the pack, for the present our motto was
obviously “Westward ho!”
June 10th came with our drift still steadily westward, clear weather,
and the temperature about 25° F., well below freezing though above
zero, which for us made it very pleasant weather. Alexey came off
the sicklist, and so also did Dunbar; leaving only Chipp as a
bedridden case, and Newcomb, up but acting as if he were
exceedingly miserable, which I guess he was. Danenhower,
permanently on the sicklist, was allowed on deck an hour a day for
exercise that the doctor hoped would gradually restore his health
and save his one good eye, which now showed some signs of
getting over its sympathetic inflammation. During these hourly
periods, Dan was sternly ordered to keep in the shade and wear his
almost opaque shield, but unfortunately our overbold navigator
stepped out into the sun and pulled aside the glass, attempting to get
at least one decent look around. Instead he had an instant relapse of
his inflamed eye which nearly drove both Ambler and the captain
wild.
Fortunately, the captain had had all his bandages save one small
one removed from his injured skull by now, or I think he would have
ripped them off in his attempts to tear his hair over the results of
Dan’s reckless disobedience.
Except for this unfortunate mishap, June 10 passed away
pleasantly enough. With no more thought than that it was just
another day in the pack, most of us turned in at 10 p.m., concerned
only about whether our drift next day would continue west or change
to northwest. But I, having the watch from 9 p.m. to midnight,
remained on deck. At 11 p.m., I was disturbed by a succession of
heavy shocks to the ship which increased in frequency till as
midnight approached there was such a thumping and thundering of
cracking ice about us and so much reverberation as the shocks
drummed against our hollow hull, that the uneasy deck beneath me
quivered as I had not felt it since two years before when we had
been underway with all sail set. So violent was this disturbance that
De Long, asleep below, lost all thought of rest, pulled on his clothes
and scrambled on deck to see what was up.
With the sun even at midnight above the horizon, he had little
difficulty seeing, and of course none at all in hearing. About eighty
yards from us, a lane had opened in the pack some ten feet wide,
while all about us as we watched, cracks were zigzagging across the
surface of our floe to the accompaniment of thunderous detonations
as the thick ice split. And all the while, the heavily listed Jeannette,
still fast in the ice, rocked in her bed as in an earthquake.
For ten trying minutes this went on, and then with a terrific report
like a bomb exploding, the floe split wide apart beneath us, the
Jeannette lurched wildly to port and suddenly slid out of her cradle
into open water! There she rolled drunkenly for a moment, till coming
finally erect she lay free of the ice at last in a swiftly widening bay!
So rapidly did all this happen that the skipper, clinging to the rail of
his reeling bridge, saw the situation change from that of a ship frozen
in to one underway before he could give a single order. But
immediately after, with the ship still rocking heavily,

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The New Politics of Olympos: Kingship

in Kallimachos' Hymns Michael

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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

The New Politics of Olympos: Kingship in Kallimachos’ Hymns. Michael Brumbaugh,

In loving memory of Lola Brumbaugh (1938–​2018)

1.1 Silver tetradrachm minted at Alexandria, issued by Ptolemy I on or after

It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to register my gratitude to the

my work and probing my arguments. Her expertise in the politics of praise

A-​B C. Austin and G. Bastianini. Posidippi Pellaei Quae Supersunt

I.Sestos J. Krauss. Die Inschriften von Sestos und der thrakischen

Kallimachos presents the concept of “likeness” to his audience in a variety

10 Cameron 1995, Stephens 1998, and Acosta-​Hughes and Stephens 2012.

Kallimachos and His World

Hymns within its historical contexts.

that it might have been as early as 320.

apogee, used family connections to gain a position in Alexandria as a “youth

work, but their perspective remains largely Alexandria-​centric.

which see Slater 1986.

Literary Discourses on Kingship

Plutarch’s collection of anecdotes known as Sayings of Kings and Commanders

tion of Alexander as philomeros.

athletic competitions.38 These poems praised their honorand by embedding

Contexts for Kallimachos’ Hymns

Central to my approach to Kallimachos’ Hymns is the observation that we

Karina Ukleja performs a thorough analysis of the structure of Kallimachos’

with Kallimachos but does not treat the Hymns.

Refiguring the Politics of Olympos

Kallimachos’ manipulation of hymnic tropes and use of metaphor to convey

putting the poet on the program of the genethlia/​Basileia is not necessary in

While it is now almost universally accepted that Kallimachos’ first hymn

Paradigms of Praise for Zeus and Ptolemy

Is Kallimachos’ Hymn to Zeus a praise of Zeus or of Ptolemy (or both)? The

Ζηνὸς ἔοι τί κεν ἄλλο παρὰ σπονδῇσιν ἀείδειν

Accompanying libations for Zeus, what else would be better

have it today that violates this norm.

‘ἐκ δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες,’ ἐπεὶ Διὸς οὐδὲν ἀνάκτων

“But Kings are from Zeus,” since nothing is more divine

21 Hopkinson 1984a, Foley 1994, and Clay 1989:202–​65.

people with crooked justice, and those who do the opposite;

Indeed, Kallimachos’ quotation from Hesiod’s Theogony (“ἐκ δὲ Διὸς

26 For further discussion of this passage, see Chapter 2.

encouragement and discouragement or simple clarification.”30 More often,

The Makedonian Tradition of Zeus as a Political Symbol

When Kallimachos composed his hymn by interweaving praises of Zeus and

empire, including Kallisthenes’ Histories, the Poros decadrachms, the Neisos

claims to that god’s favor.

In loving memory of Lola Brumbaugh (1938–2018)

A-B C. Austin and G. Bastianini. Posidippi Pellaei Quae Supersunt

10 Cameron 1995, Stephens 1998, and Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012.

work, but their perspective remains largely Alexandria-centric.

putting the poet on the program of the genethlia/Basileia is not necessary in

21 Hopkinson 1984a, Foley 1994, and Clay 1989:202–65.

cult, see Ogden 2017:107–9.