ABSTRACT
This chapter elucidates certain features of Callimachus' Fifth Hymn in ways, which will be suggestive for the criticism of all the Hymns. Callimachus' hymn confirms the continuing power of the goddess and tells an apotropaic tale of ultimate separation and misery. Some aspects of the account of Callimachus' Hymn to Athena will doubtless seem more serious than is now fashionable; Callimachus ludens is, perhaps rightly, the now predominant image of this brilliant poet. As is well understood, Callimachus sets the warning tale of Erysichthon within a Hesiodic moral frame. Clearly, Callimachus does not offer any simple reproduction of the ritual pattern, which has normally been interpreted as a form of scapegoating, but the common elements are suggestive. That Delian and Pythian Apollo precisely did develop under the contact of cultures seems a very reasonable inference from Callimachus' fourth hymn.
