The Poetics of Praise in the Hymn to Zeus

This chapter further examines how Kallimachos depicts the poet and the praise he crafts as essential to kingship. It argues that the hymn’s lengthy narrative detailing Rhea’s postpartum search for a stream in the Hymn to Zeus is a metaphor for the poet’s own aporia, the sense of not knowing how to proceed, which he highlights in the hymn’s opening frame. In his narrative Kallimachos uses intertextual markers to contrast Arkadia with the landscape of the Theogony proem, where Zeus’ praises are abundant, and his reign is guaranteed. Drawing on the metaphor of water as poetry, Kallimachos casts Rhea’s search for a stream in which to bathe Zeus as analogous with the narrator-poet’s own search for the praises with which he will shower his honorand. In this way, Kallimachos makes three subtle assertions: true praise is difficult to come by; it is extremely important to kingship; and he is expert in crafting it.

Conclusion

The conclusion of The New Politics of Olympos sets the arguments developed throughout the book in the context of praise rhetoric and suggests further ways in which Kallimachos’ poetry book may have shaped its readers’ views on what constitutes good rule. In particular, it examines the potential impact of the Hymns on a Ptolemaic reader for whom the book might serve as an education in and inducement to good kingship. This speculation is bolstered by comparison with Hermokles’ hymn for Demetrios Poliorketes as well as the literary trope of the speculum regis (“king’s mirror”). Finally, the conclusion examines Kallimachos’ didactic presentation of Erysichthon, whose transgression and punishment is the subject of the Hymn to Demeter. Such edifying moments throughout the Hymns incentivize good kingship and gently admonish its opposite.

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the scope and shape of the inquiry undertaken in The New Politics of Olympos. Additionally, it attempts to establish a new frame of reference for thinking about interactions between Kallimachos’ Hymns and the burgeoning Ptolemaic regime. The approach outlined here and throughout the book is meant to move outside the confines of formalist notions of genre and stereotypes of the scholar poet by reframing the analysis around the broader interplay between literature and political power in the Hellenistic world. Furthermore, the introduction orients readers toward a new approach to reading the six poems that make up Kallimachos’ Hymns intratextually—as a carefully arranged poetry book.

Apollo as a New Paradigm for Kingship

This chapter details how Kallimachos resumes the patron/client discourse from the Hymn to Zeus in the Hymn to Apollo by depicting a hierarchy linking Apollo, the narrator-poet, and the chorus he leads. Here, however, Kallimachos revises the relationship between Apollo and his traditional client. Instead of simply detailing the similarities between the poet and Apollo, as he did in his first hymn, Kallimachos casts the poet as a gatekeeper, controlling access to the god’s transformative gifts. In his place, Kallimachos sets the founder-king as Apollo’s client. In the context of likening “my own king” to Apollo, the narrator-poet issues a gnomic admonition against striving with the gods. Echoing the Iliad, Kallimachos uses the intertext to engage in a discussion about humans with pretentions of godlikeness, in which he implicitly validates Ptolemy’s claims to divinity. By contrast, Kallimachos situates the ἀ‎λ‎ι‎τ‎ρ‎ό‎ς‎, “transgressor,” in the Hymn to Apollo and the Hymn to Artemis as an anti-client who arrogantly oversteps his bounds. Kallimachos substitutes the harmful strife associated with such transgressors for the conflict traditionally associated with members of the divine family, as in the Homeric Hymns where there are constant reminders of the forces that might bring down Zeus’ regime. Intra-family strife is instead portrayed ironically, as with Artemis and Apollo’s charming sibling rivalry in the third hymn. In this way, Kallimachos depicts the divine family and its clients as unified in their opposition to external enemies who are unambiguously wicked.

Kallimachos’ Hymn “On Kingship”

This chapter assesses how Kallimachos characterizes Zeus’ kingship and the structure of his political regime in the Hymn to Zeus. Depicting Zeus as a powerful figure who uses force to take what he wants, Kallimachos initially presents political power as derived from physical power. The poet’s rejection of the lottery myth as a plausible rationale for Zeus’ ascension rhetorically reinforces this notion, while at the same time activating a Homeric intertext in which Zeus and Poseidon engage in a debate over whether the Iliadic politics of Olympos is an absolute monarchy or an oligarchy. Siding with Zeus in favor of monarchy, the hymnist elaborates a political hierarchy that ultimately implicates the king in an oversight role over those beneath him. Refiguring the king as a guardian and judge, Kallimachos expands his earlier account of kingly power to embrace a wider variety of kingly virtues. Through allusions to the proemial hymns that open Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony, Kallimachos further refines his presentation of the king’s prerogatives as he negotiates a role for the poet in constituting and projecting the king’s authority.

Zeus as a Paradigm for Dynastic Continuity

This chapter looks at ways in which the Hymn to Zeus jointly praises Zeus and the Ptolemaic kings. It takes as its starting point the scholarly consensus that associates this hymn with the first succession in the Ptolemaic dynasty. Against that historical context, it demonstrates that the standard myth of Zeus’ rise to power was ill suited to the Ptolemaic succession. Zeus was an important symbol for Ptolemy I Soter’s kingship, and of Makedonian kingship more broadly, but the god became king via a brutal cycle of oppression and usurpation that pitted father against son, as Hesiod’s Theogony famously recounts. Kallimachos decouples the god’s kingship from its violent origins in order to create a pro-dynastic discourse capable of quelling anxiety occasioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphos’ contested succession. The true measure of the poet’s success is that, by selectively calling attention to points of contention within the tradition and passing over others, he persuades his audience to accept his new Zeus unhesitatingly.

On the Good Queen

This chapter examines the ways in which Kallimachos creates a new ideology of queenship in the four hymns dedicated to goddesses. He explicitly likens Artemis, Athena, and Demeter to the ideal king embodied by Zeus and Apollo in his earlier hymns. Moreover, Kallimachos crafts their identities as queens in dialogue with a discourse about the role of royal women emerging at the Ptolemaic court in conjunction with Arsinoë II’s return to Egypt in the mid-270s. The poet rehabilitates the image of the queen, distancing his goddesses from the stereotype of the jealous wife who stirs up court intrigue and threatens to undermine dynasties. Following a discussion of the early development of Ptolemaic queenship, it examines the Hymn to Artemis, Bath of Pallas, and Hymn to Demeter, demonstrating how their honorands resolve stasis within the household, successfully negotiate relationships of charis and philia, and promote peace. Likewise, it discusses how each goddess appears as an arbiter of justice within a narrative of transgression and punishment. It concludes by returning to the depiction of Hera in the Hymn to Delos as a caricature of the bad queen whose farcically cruel behavior reinforces the image of the good queen by contrast.

Saviors, Tyrants, and the Poetics of Empire

This chapter examines ways in which the Hymn to Delos revisits the role of the king as a guard, set out in the first hymn. Here, Kallimachos adds nuance to his earlier characterization by distinguishing between the savior, Apollo, who protects and the tyrant, Hera, who oppresses those who are less powerful. As in the preceding hymns, Kallimachos de-emphasizes aspects of his narrative that could be seen as anti-dynastic, presenting in its place a more whimsical account. Explicitly paralleling the birth, kingship, and universal empire of Apollo and Ptolemy II Philadelphos, Kallimachos effectively replaces Zeus with a new paradigm of ideal kingship. This hymn’s embrace of a pan-Mediterranean stage mirrors, in a way, Philadelphos’ efforts to expand his kingdom into a vast, overseas empire during the first years of his reign. During this period, the honorific title Sōtēr, meaning “Savior,” once again gained currency within diplomatic discourse as a way for independent poleis to laud kings who had saved them from invading Gauls. Not only does Kallimachos incorporate this contemporary dynamic into his hymn, but he also maps the diplomatic traffic in praise onto the reciprocal charis dynamic that traditionally obtains between a hymnist and his honorand.