Callimachus: Hecale

Callimachus: Hecale

the Hecale , written in Ptolemaic Alexandria, is one of the most enjoyable Greek poems, describing how Theseus was entertained by an old woman in Attica the night before he captured the bull of Marathon. Substantial fragments of the text, probably lost around AD 1200, were rediscovered during the 20th century. This edition presents all known fragments and discussed the work of later Greek and Latin poets which may help with further reconstruction of Hecale . The Greek fragments are not translated but there is an extensive commentray. 'scholarly, meticulous and comprehensive edition of the fragments ... Because of H.'s wide-ranging command of ancient literature, style and modern scholarship, his sensitivity to the nuances of Callimachean language, style and metre, and finally his assembly in the introduction, commentary and appendices of the material that scholars and research students particularly need, we now possess between two covers a paradigm of informative soundness which admirably complements, though of course does not replace, Pfieffer.' W. Geoffrey Arnott, LCM 17.2 (Feb.1992)'to be warmly welcomed ... It is not only a valuable presentation of the accumulated results of research on the poem in a convenient form ... it also advances our understanding, and will provide a stimulus for further work ... It is hard to see how this could be bettered as an introduction to Callimachean poetry generally. The core of the work is the ample commentary, inevitably and rightly based on Pfieffer's great work, but enriched by wide and wise reading or recent scholarship and by H.'s familiarity with later poetry, which often yields important results ... an admirable and well-produced work.' Frederick Williams, Queen's University, Belfast, The Classical REview, Vol. XLIV, No. 1, 1994 A. S. Hollis, Fellow and Tutor in Classics, Keble College, Oxford.