Of course, patronage cannot create genius, though it can provide conditions favourable to its development; and but few men of genius appeared during this long period of the establishment and endowment of literature. But the general level of culture was raised, and the amount of literary work done was immense. A great deal of learned labour was expended upon the interpretation of Homer. “It may indeed be said,” remarks Prof. Mahaffy, “that all philology among the Greeks, all textual and grammatical criticism, arose from the desire to purify and to understand the text of Homer, and then of other old poets.” At the same time, however, while nothing was more meritorious than the role of the commentator on Homer, nothing was less so than any attempt to imitate him, or to revive, in any shape or form, epic poetry. It was settled as an axiom beyond controversy that the age of great sustained poems was past, that the age of literary gem-work, of perfect finish in minute details, “of art for art’s sake,” had come to stay. So poets were to restrict themselves to “short swallow-flights of song,” fables, hymns to various deities and sacred places, elegies, epigrams, the one thing needful being that every line should be a model of polished brilliance, and that each poem should be a mine of learned allusion. Of this literary faith and practice the great champion and exponent was Callimachus.1 He was, in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 BC), President of the Museum, and, in Prof. Murray’s words, “was perhaps the most influential personality in literature between Plato and Cicero.” Philologist, archaeologist, historian, dramatist, poet, critic—there was scarcely a department of literature in which he did not, in the view of his contemporaries, excel; and his industry was enormous. As an example of the scale on which he worked, it is sufficient to mention just one of his many productions—an Encyclopaedia of Literature, biographical, bibliographical and critical, in one hundred and twenty books. The prestige of his official position, coupled with his exact interpretation of the demands and capacities of his age, made him the autocrat of letters. He carved with incisive criticism, and lashed with merciless ridicule, the Thebaid, an epic written by Antimachus of Colophon in imitation of Homer, a work which the Emperor Hadrian, long afterwards, pronounced superior to Homer’s—from which fact we learn more perhaps of Hadrian than of the Thebaid. We can faintly imagine, then, with what scornful indignation Callimachus heard that a pupil of his own, a young inmate of the Museum, who owed all his literary culture to its head, had revolted from the cardinal principles of the one literary faith, had actually written an epic!
Apollonius, son of Illeus (or Silleus), born, about 270 BC, at Naucratis (or, according to other accounts, at Alexandria), was kindled by his studies in Homer to attempt a theme never yet worthily sung—the story of the Quest of the Golden Fleece by heroes who were the fathers of those whose exploits Homer sang. He can hardly have been ignorant of his master’s views on the subject of modern epics; but he may well have felt some confidence that he could do that which would prove them wrong, and may have given Callimachus credit for magnanimity enough to confess himself mistaken when confronted with the actual achievement of that which he had pronounced impossible.
He completed his task, and gave a public reading of his epic, probably in the lecture-hall of the Museum. Its reception was a bitter disappointment for him. The audience took its cue from the all-powerful President; and before the storm of impatient interruptions, angry disapproval and contemptuous laughter the poor lad—he was not twenty—broke down, “flushing crimson with mortification,” as the old Greek biographer
