SOURCE: "Art and Play in Callimachus," in The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, translated by T. G. Rosenmeyer, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1953, pp. 264-80.

In the following excerpt from his book The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, originally published in German in 1948, Snell declares Callimachus the 'father of Hellenistic poetry" and compares him at length to Germany's Goethe. According to Snell, Callimachus's defining characteristic was his "post-philosophical" enhancement of technique and playfulness above moral instruction, the province of earlier eras in Greek literature.

Father Bromius!
 Thou art genius,
 Century's genius,
 Art what inward glow
 To Pindar was,
 What to the world
 Is Phoebus Apollo …

Jupiter Pluvius!
 Not by the elm tree
 Didst thou visit him,
 With his brace of doves
 In his affectionate arm,
 Crowned with the friendly rose,
 Playful him, flower-revelling
 Anacreon,
 Storm-breathing deity!

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