Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography

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Univ of Wisconsin Press, 15. dets 1991 - 282 pages

The famous library of Alexandria, founded around 295 BCE by Ptolemaios I, housed the greatest collection of texts in the ancient world and was a fertile site of Hellenistic scholarship. Rudolf Blum’s landmark study, originally published in German in 1977, argues that Kallimachos of Kyrene was not only the second director of the Alexandrian library but also the inventor of two essential scholarly tools still in use to this day: the library catalog and the “biobibliographical” reference work. Kallimachos expanded the library’s inventory lists into volumes called the Pinakes, which extensively described and categorized each work and became in effect a Greek national bibliography and the source and paradigm for most later bibliographic lists of Greek literature. Though the Pinakes have not survived, Blum attempts a detailed reconstruction of Kallimachos’s inventories and catalogs based on a careful analysis of surviving sources, which are presented here in full translation.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Forerunners Aristotle His Predecessors and Pupils
14
22 The Works of Aristotle on Philology and Literary History
20
23 Aristotles List of Performances of Plays in Athens Didaskaliai
24
24 The Doxographic Works of Aristotle and His Pupils
43
25 The Works of the Peripatetics on Philology Literary History and Biography until the Middle of the Third Century B C
47
26 The Library of Aristotle
52
Preconditions The Museion and Its Library
95
Later Lists of Greek Writers and Their Works
182
52 The Inscription of a Library Catalog in Rhodos
185
53 Biographies of Authors with Lists of Their Works
188
54 The List of Aristotles Writings by Andronikos of Rhodos
194
55 The Treatise of Dionysios of Halikamassos on the Orator Deinarchos
196
56 The Work of Diogenes Laertios on the Lives and Opinions of Famous Philosophers
199
57 The List of Those Renowned in Branches of Learning by Hesychios of Miletos
202
The Development and Character of Kallimachoss Lists of Greek Authors and Their Works
226

32 The Library of the Museion According to the Ancient Authors
99
33 The Library According to the Report of Ioannes Tzetzes
104
Kallimachos and His Lists of Greek Authors and Their Works
124
42 His List of Attic Playwrights
137
43 His List of the Works of Demokritos
143
44 His Lists of Greek Authors and Their Works
150
The Achievements of Kallimachos in the Field of Bibliography
244
Bibliography
248
Name and Subject Index
263
Title Index
277
Copyright

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About the author (1991)

Rudolf Blum (1909–98) was library director of the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt, Germany. Hans H. Wellisch (1920–2004) was professor emeritus of the College of Library and Information Services at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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