Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2010
This article treats the figure of the fox that appears as one of the members of the embassy sent by the animals to Zeus in Callimachus' second Iamb. By exploring previous appearances of the fox in the poetic repertoire, I identify a series of Archaic and early Classical works that Callimachus uses by way of ‘intertexts’, and argue that the Hellenistic author draws on the animal's place within the interconnected iambic and fable traditions that inform his poem. Already visible in these earlier texts, and anticipating Callimachus, is a concern with literary as well as ethical polemics.