Callimachus’ Taxonomy of Men (Iamb 2.10-13)

Abstract

AbstractThis study argues that Callimachus’ treatment of his ‘animal-voiced’ contemporaries at the conclusion of the fable inIamb2 reflects zoological and physiognomic practices so as to represent the poetic narrator as a taxonomist of men. Elsewhere the classification of men as if they were flora or fauna appears, like fable itself, in distinctly moral and ethical contexts, as, for example, in Theophrastus’Characters. Callimachus’ formulation of his narrator as a taxonomist who classifies ‘species’ of men based upon their literary ‘voices’ thus plays with modes of invective new toiamboswhile uniting moral criticism with literary polemic.