For the most part, the Museum concentrated on perfecting and emending the
classics. However, such an institution could not help but produce a score of
writers, some of more talent than others. The Argonautica of
Apollonius, mentioned above, was widely detracted as a stale and ponderous epic
even by his contemporaries.[1] They did,
however, contribute a new form and style that arose out of their studies of
meter and metaphor.
From the time when Ptolemy I commissioned the Septuagint and hired the
historian Manetho to write a definitive history of Egypt,[2] many Jewish Alexandrians chronicled both local
and ethnic history, developed a school of philosophical and religious thought
based on the daimon Sophia, developed Apocolyptic writing as a
popular theme, adapted Old Testament stories to the Greek stage, and wrote the
books of Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Apocrypha, and parts of
Proverbs and some of the Psalms during the last two centuries
B.C.E.[3]
The most famous poetic art form of Alexandria was the elegy, a "mournful
meditation on a particular theme-- usually love or death-- inspired by a single
event or scene."[4] Callimachus was famous
for his, and, although only seven of his Hymns have survived and one
elegy translated by Catullus into Latin, their influence on Latin and Medieval
literature is evident. He probably drew on Theocritus of Syracuse (b. 317
B.C.E) for inspiration, from that poet's Idylls which developed bucolic
(rustic) poetry and employed old-fashioned Doric dialect to suggest
romanticized country speech.[5] The
artificial, "courtly" style of describing love, the country life, and patrons
was developed by Callimachus and exploited by his successors.
Zenodotus of Ephesus, first librarian, was the first of many Alexandrians to
critically analyze the conflicting texts of Homer. He was later criticized[6] for his deletion of lines on "rational"
grounds: for example, striking out a line describing Athena searching for a
hero because a god is omnipotent and would know where he was [Scholium A on Il.
4.88]). However, he laid the groundwork for literary criticism and for
scholarly specialization on certain authors. Soon afterwards, Ptolemy IV
Philopator founded an entire Homeric wing of the Library dedicated to the study
of that poet's works.[7] (Examples: Alexandrian Homeric scholar's research cited by Strabo, Strabo's defense of Homeric geography against his predecessor Eratosthenes). The process of
compiling, copying, emending, and commenting upon classics at Alexandria drove
scholars into the creation of the first lexicons, the study of grammar, and
literary analysis.