1. The following editions of Callimachus are cited by author’s name only: Pfeiffer, R., Callimachus (Oxford 1949Google Scholar); Fabian, K., Callimaco, Aitia II. Testo critico, traduzione e commento (Alessandria 1992Google Scholar); Massimilla, G., Callimaco, Aitia, libri primo e secundo (Pisa 1996Google Scholar). There is an earlier version of Fabian’s discussion in ‘II banchetto di Pollis’ in Fabian, K., Pellizer, E. and Tedeschi, G. (eds.), OINHPA TEγXH: Studi triestini dipoesia conviviale (Alessandria 1991), 131–66.Google Scholar

2. ‘The poet’ is the simplest way to express the narrating first-person; I hope that the usual caveats can be taken as read.

3. I print, with very few papyrological signs, the text of Pfeiffer-Massimilla; textual uncertainties do not, I think, affect the arguments of this essay.

4. On this reading cf. below p.20 and n.21.

5. Cf. Massimilla 407, Pfeiffer on fr.6.1 have considered whether part of the point here is that we may be tempted to read together: ‘no lying god’ is not a bad description of Homer. Note also the echoing sound pattern of the Callimachean verse, .

6. For the fourth round as marking the descent into immodest drinking cf. Eubulus fr. 93 K-A (= 94 Hunter) with the notes of Kassel-Austin and Hunter.

7. On the meaning of ἀπoλυματήρ cf. Russo on Od. 17.220; it is not clear how Callimachus would have interpreted the word.

8. Cf. Hesiod fr. 239 M-W. For the paradox cf. Propertius 3.5.21 mentem uincire Lyaeo (‘to shackle the mind with Lyaeus’, with Fedeli’s note).

9. Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 507.

10. Cf., e.g., Bielohlawek, K., ‘Gastmahls- und Symposionslehren bei griechischen Dichtern’, WS 58 (1940), 11–30;Google ScholarSlater, W.J., ‘Sympotic Ethics in the Odyssey’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotica (Oxford 1990), 213–20.Google Scholar

11. Thus, for example, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus and Chamaileon all wrote treatises ‘On Drunkenness’, and cf. Plato Laws 1.637a-642b; cf. further below pp.20f.

12. Cf. Corbato, C., Scritti di letteratura greca (Trieste 1991), 314Google Scholar. Alexis fr.9.8–12 K-A contrasts ‘Greek drinking’ characterised by moderately sized cups and pleasant conversation with ‘the other sort’ which is ‘a bath, not a symposium’.

13. Slater, W.J., ‘Symposium at Sea’, HSCP 80 (1976), 161–70Google Scholar, remains the seminal discussion.

14. For Callimachus’ use of the ritual background cf. Scodel, R., ‘Wine, Water and the Anthesteria in Callimachus fr. 178 Pf.’, ZPE 39 (1980), 37–40.Google Scholar

15. Cf. the opposed positions of Hamilton, R., Choes and Anthesteria: Athenian Iconography and Ritual (Ann Arbor 1992), esp. 119–21Google Scholar—Hamilton (48f.) rejects the standard connection of the αἰώρα with the Anthesteria—and Robertson, N., ‘Athens’ Festival of the New Wine’, HSCP 95(1993), 197–250.Google Scholar

16. Whether or not the wine drunk during the Choes-contest was mixed with water has been the subject of much recent discussion; the most reasonable solution might be that each drinker was given a jug of neat wine and when he poured it into his cup could mix it or not as he chose (cf. Robertson [n.15 above], 223f., and contrast Bowie, A.M., Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy [Cambridge 1993], 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar)—to drink it neat presumably increased one’s chances of finishing first. Callimachus’ point is not affected by the precise detail here.

17. Thus Hamilton’s criticism (n.15 above, 120f.) of Scodel is to some extent misplaced.

18. Cf. Ath. 11.476f-7e, and the sceptical discussion of Dale, A.M., ‘KIΣΣγBION’, CR 2 (1952), 129–32Google Scholar. My treatment of Callimachus’ use differs somewhat from that of Rengakos, A., ZPE 94 (1992), 29.Google Scholar

19. Cf. Od. 9.205 ἀκηράσιov; most modern scholars accept the scholiast’s gloss ἄκρατov as the sense of this word.

20. This is marked in Homer by the verb ἔκπιεv (‘drank down’, Od. 9.353, 361); cf. Eur. Cycl. 417 (‘he sucked it in, drinking it in one gulp’). Massimilla observes (408) that Homer uses χαvδóv only at Od. 21.293f., Antinous to Odysseus on the dangers of drinking.

21. In favour of ζωρoσoτεîv cf. Massimilla 408 (with bibliography) and Magnelli, E., RFIC 122(1994), 480.Google Scholar

22. Cf. Knox, P., ‘Wine, Water, and Callimachean Polemics’, HSCP 89 (1985), 107–19Google Scholar. It is not always made clear in scholarly discussions of this topic that later polemic elides the differences between, on the one hand, drinking ‘water’ and moderate drinking of ‘well diluted wine’ and, on the other, drinking ‘unmixed’ wine and wine that is only lightly diluted.

23. On these aspects of Euripides’ Cyclops cf. Rossi, L.E., ‘II Ciclope di Euripide come “mancato”’, Maia 23 (1971), 10–38.Google Scholar

24. There is a useful summary by Parsons, P.J., ZPE 25 (1977), 46f.Google Scholar

25. J.Jur.Pap. 5 (1951), 234Google Scholar n.18; for subsequent discussion cf. Zetzel, J.E.G., ‘On the Opening of Callimachus, Aetia II’, ZPE 42 (1981), 31–33Google Scholar; Fabian (n.l above), 137–40, 315–18 (who remains more cautious); Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995), 133–40Google Scholar; Massimilla (n.l above), 145, 320,400.

26. These considerations make one wonder yet again about the circumstances of Callimachus’ dream: just when did he fall asleep? After a symposium? For another suggestion cf. ZPE 76 (1989), 2.Google Scholar

27. I deliberately leave the ‘Reply to the Telchines’ out of account, because of the doubts about where it belongs. If Alan Cameron is correct in seeing it as indeed the introduction to Aitia 1–2, then the ‘Hesiodic’ relationship between the poet and the Muses in that fragment (lines 36f., cf. Hes. Theog. 8If.) would fit with the argument which follows.

28. This, of course, remains true of the poetry, regardless of whether Alan Cameron’s picture of Callimachus as a frequent traveller be accepted.

29. The possible relevance of Hes. Theog. 26 was suggested by Fabian (n.l above), 149.

30. On the Odyssean heritage of the Aitia and on Callimachus’ self-presentation as a listener cf. Meyer, D., ‘“Nichts Unbezeugtes singe ich”: Die fiktive Darstellung der Wissenstradierung bei Kallimachos’, in Kullmann, W. and Althoff, J. (eds.), Vermittlung und Tradierung von Wissen in der griechischen Kultur (Tübingen 1993), 317–36.Google Scholar

31. ἀχάριστoς varies ἄvαλτoς at Od. 17.228, 18.364. The adjective does not merely make a topical point about the ingratitude of the stomach (cf. Massimilla 323), but marks the symposium where the pleasures of the stomach dominate as lacking in that charis which is the dominant virtue of the well-ordered symposium, as Odysseus himself knew (Od. 9.5); cf. Slater, W.J., ‘Peace, the Symposium and the Poet’, ICS 6 (1981), 205–14.Google Scholar

32. Cf. Barigazzi, A., Prometheus 1 (1975), 9–11Google Scholar. Callimachus may allude in particular to the famous ‘epitaph’ of Sardanapallos, SH 335.

33. It is relevant also that later antiquity knew a substantial literature on garlands (RE 11.1604), some of which was almost certainly available also to Callimachus.

34. Cf. PMG 1002, with Page’s parallels.

35. Cf. Fabian (n.l above), 151, Meyer (n.30 above).

36. Cf. Fabian (n.l above), 322f.; Fraser, P.M., Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972), i.732Google Scholar. Pfeiffer, however, interprets the phrase as a reference to sailors who have actually visited Ikos.

37. For the other resonances of φάρμακov here cf. Massimilla 412.

38. This grand wish (cf. Hutchinson, G., Hellenistic Poetry [Oxford 1988], 27f.Google Scholar) reads almost like a reworking of Sappho’s prayer to Aphrodite at fr. 1.26f., but it may in fact owe more to Odysseus’ words at Od. 9.12f. ἰχαívει is another typical example of Callimachus’ use of a rare word with contextual significance: the learned gloss points both to the scholastic nature of the poet’s interests and, just as importantly, to his ironic self-awareness of the seeming ‘triviality’ of those interests.

39. Cf. Reinsch-Werner, H., Callimachus Hesiodicus (Berlin 1976), 383fGoogle Scholar. For the importance of this Hesiodic passage for the didactic tradition cf. my remarks in Arachnion 2 (1995), lOf.

40. For a rather different use of the topos cf. Diod.Sic. 1.1.2. Diodorus too contrasts his own eye-witness knowledge acquired through laborious travel with the ignorance of some other historians, ‘even some considered in the front rank’ (1.4.1), though he too (like Timaeus) enjoyed a very long period of residence in a city with excellent ‘library facilities’ (Rome); cf. 1.4.3f. Diodorus’ ‘travels’ have been regarded with deep suspicion by modern scholars; cf. E. Schwartz, RE 5.663.

41. Cf. Fraser (n.36 above), i.764–66.

42. It ought not to be necessary to note that I am aware that continuity was as great as change in this period.

43. Cf., e.g., Hamilton (n.15 above), 121, and Cameron (n.25 above), 136f.

44. For drama at the Anthesteria cf. Pickard-Cambridge, A., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens ² (Oxford 1968), 15–17Google Scholar. In the Acharnians Aristophanes ‘equates’ victory at a Choes drinking conest with the victory of his own play in the dramatic competition.

45. On the relation of third-century culture to the Athenian tradition cf. further Fraser (n.36 above), i.553–5, and my own Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry (Cambridge 1996), 1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar