ABSTRACT
It was not only the short forms of narrative poetry which enjoyed a revival in the Hellenistic age. Major heroic poetry in the Homeric tradition, derided by Callimachus for its epic uncouthness, also underwent a revival, drawing on efforts to that end by Antimachus (see above, p. 226). The classic Hellenistic epic poet was Apollonius Rhodius, who was Superintendent of the library at Alexandria after the Homeric philologist Zenodotus and before the geographer Eratosthenes — i.e. shortly before the mid-third Century Bc. Traditionally held to have been a pupil of Callimachus, Apollonius is said to have subsequently fallen out with him. Callimachus' fundamental rejection, expressed in no uncertain terms, of the kind of major epic poetry that Apollonius sought to write, is in any event well-documented.
