(B)ionic man: Callimachus' iambic programme

Abstract

A concern with the methods and style of praise and blame recurs, unsurprisingly, throughout Callimachus'Iambi. Theiambosis the aggressive modepar excellence, and Callimachus is the most generically-conscious of poets; whether he is writing hymns, aetiological elegy or funerary epigram he is always overtly engaged with the history and development of the literary form in which he operates. The nature of iambic poetry is, however, the explicit subject of two poems in particular,Iambus1 andIambus13, which thus have a special claim to be considered ‘programmatic’. The thirteenthIambusreturns to the choliambic metre of the first four poems, the metre most associated with Hipponax, who appears himself in the firstIambusas the authorising ‘voice’ for these poems, and is apparently spoken in the voice of the poet who to some extent takes up again the themes ofIambus1 (and indeed ofAitiafr.1); thus the temptation to see a ‘closed’ poetry book, framed by these two poems, is very strong.