Callimachus and the discussion on tragic poetry

Abstract

Although Suda attributes to Callimachus the composition of tragedies, modern scholars are usually skeptical about this information since his alleged plays did not reach us and no fragment was preserved. Suda’s testimony is doubtful because of the incompatibility between the gravity of tragedy and the concept of slender poetry in Against the Telchines. Callimachus mentions tragedy in two instances in his Iambi, as well as he writes five epigrams in which he discusses dramatic performance at Dionysiac festivals and the use of plays in schools. This paper seeks to examine these texts, in order to demonstrate that there would be no Callimachus’s refusal of tragedy but rejection of a style of composition considered high and bombastic.