Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography

Preface

Preface TIns WORK deals with the beginnings of bibliography. Kallimachos of Kyrene, a Hellenistic scholar and a famous poet, created about 260 B.C. a fundamental list of Greek authors with biographical and bibliographical data, the first national author bibliography, based on the holdings of the Alexandrian library. But what he, his predecessors, and successors achieved in the field of bibliography, that staging area for the history of literature, is almost unknown outside the circle of experts. In addition, there are some important related issues which are still in need of clarification. The investigations which I have undertaken for this purpose pertain to questions in the history of ancient scholarship and librarianship. But I endeavored to write in such a manner that not only students of aassical Antiquity will be able to follow me. Therefore, I inserted explanations of issues pertaining to Antiquity wherever I deemed them to be appropriate. Greek quotations are rendered in translation. Greek titles of books, typical Greek expressions, and shorter sayings of Greek scholars are always transliterated. Some passages in the footnotes are also given in the original Greek. Bibliographic works of the Romans and those of Christians in Antiquity have been omitted because I am treating these, together with those of the Middle Ages and the early modem period, in another work.• -R.B. •Rudolf Blum. Die Literaturverzeichnung im Altertum und Mittelalter. Versuch einer Geschichte der Biobibliographie von den Anfangen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: BuchhAndler-Vereinigung, 1983). ix Kallimachos The Alexandrian Library and the Origins ofBibliography ...