Library › Greek: Grammar & Reference › Diegeseis on Callimachus' Hymns to Zeus and Apollo
These are the anonymous Diegeseis, or prose summaries, on Callimachus' Hymn to Zeus and Hymn to Apollo. They are preserved on a papyrus of about AD 100 from Tebtunis, now in Milan (P.Mil.Vogl. I 18). Each summary quotes the first line of the poem and then explains its subject. For the Hymn to Zeus it sets out the rival Arcadian and Cretan claims to the god's birth. For the Hymn to Apollo it describes the god's epiphany and the call to song and dance.
The hymns themselves survive complete in medieval manuscripts, so these summaries show how an ancient reader understood them rather than filling gaps in the text. They let us compare ancient and modern readings of Callimachus. They also show that the Diegeseis on the papyrus covered the hymns as well as the fragmentary works.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: P.Mil.Vogl. I 18, cols. XI–XII). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).