Life and Letters | 28 June 2008

Callimachus (fl. 4th century BC), admired by Catullus, Ovid and Propertius, was the author of some 800 books, including a 120-volume catalogue of the Greek writers whose works were to be found in the famous library of Alexandria. Of his own work, only six hymns, 64 epigrams, the fragment of an epic, and a description of the method he employed to compile his catalogue, survive today. Harvey’s Oxford Companion to Classical Literature also tells us that ‘his is the proverbial saying, “mega biblion, mega kakon” ’, which means, if my rusty Greek has not seized up completely, ‘big book, big bad’, a sentiment to which reviewers, confronted by an 800-page biography, may often give wholehearted assent.

The fate of his works reminds us that oblivion is the lot of most books, and that authors who hope for literary immortality are usually disappointed. Publishers often used to employ the back pages of books to advertise their other publications, and few authors can read without a sinking heart the praise accorded to novels which are now quite forgotten and writers of whom they have never heard.