Abstract

summary:

In his Hymn to Apollo, Kallimachos conspicuously omits mention of Apollo’s famed oracle at Didyma. However, he draws his audience’s attention to the Euphrates, which has no special significance to the god. The itinerary he charts for his Apollo hymn maps onto the inter-kingdom politics of the eastern Mediterranean, and a geopolitical reading of the poem reveals the poet’s engagement with contemporary relations between the Ptolemaic and Seleukid empires, offering further clues about the poem’s date. This politically antagonistic dimension resonates with the literary polemics long recognized as a central feature of the hymn.

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