ABSTRACT
What is distinctive about Callimachus’ poetic reconfigurations of the Greek-speaking world is just how many ‘new’ spaces are included: all those localities that never quite made it into literature before; or had previously made it into literature, but without anybody really noticing. Evidently, in Alexandria at any rate, the Greek gods had a precarious hold on civic space – more so than in older cities like Libyan Cyrene, Callimachus’ place of birth, which boasted major sanctuaries and festivals for the Olympians. It is in this respect that Euhemerus anticipated a set of concerns that featured very prominently in the poetry of Callimachus and his contemporaries, and that were very much concerns of the times in which they lived. Like most of Callimachus’ poetry, the Hymn to Zeus has a glittering surface of mythological revisionism and political encomium as well as a profound investment in literary history.
