Callimachus entered the world around 310 BC within a prominent family in Cyrene, a Greek city on the coast of modern-day Libya. Historical reconstruction places his birth near the start of the third century before Christ.
By 270 BC, Callimachus secured employment at the Library of Alexandria under King Ptolemy II Philadelphus to compile the Pinakes. This bibliography spanned 120 volumes or five times the length of Homer's Iliad and served as the first comprehensive bibliographic resource for Greek literature.
The four-book poem known as Aetia contained approximately 4,000 lines organized into distinct halves on stylistic grounds. Books Three and Four broke from the initial pattern by setting individual stories in varied dramatic situations without forming a contiguous narrative.
Callimachus composed six hymns addressed to gods of the Greek Pantheon including Zeus, Apollo, Demeter, Athena, Artemis, and Delos. Scholars divide these works into two groups based on their performance style with three functioning as mimetic pieces and three remaining non-mimetic.
Vergil, Horace, Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid viewed Callimachus as one of their principal models during the late Republic and early Empire. Vergil repeatedly alluded to Callimachus when contemplating the nature of his own epic poem the Aeneid while Ovid described him as lacking genius yet strong in art.