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CALLIMACHUS

Volume 4 · 172 words · 1797 Edition

a celebrated architect, painter, and sculptor, born at Corinth, having seen by accident a vessel about which the plant called acanthus had raised its leaves, conceived the idea of forming the Corinthian capital. (See Acanthus, and Plate XXXIV. fig. 4.) The ancients assure us, that he worked in marble with wonderful delicacy. He flourished about 540 B.C.

a celebrated Greek poet, native of Cyrene in Libya, flourished under Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Evergetes kings of Egypt, about 280 years before Christ. He prided, according to Quintilian, for the prince of the Greek elegiac poets. His style is elegant, delicate, and nervous. He wrote a great number of small poems, of which we have only some hymns and epigrams remaining. Catullus has closely imitated him, and translated into Latin verse his small poem on the locks of Berenice. Callimachus was also a good grammarian and a learned critic. There is an edition of his remains, by Mess. le Fevre, quarto; and another in two volumes octavo, with notes by Spanheim, Grevis, Bentley, &c.