Jamboree

Kallimachos, poem on plaster; Capitoline Museums A.C. inv. 32363; image: Brent Nongbri, 2025

"I kissed the doorpost. If this is wrong-doing, I do wrong."—Kallimachos (Alexandria, 3rd century BCE)

Kallimachos's teasing metaphor,

Doubtless funny to his ghost,

Still resonates in modern lore.

He did (them??) bad; he now is toast,

As we in turn shall someday be

Who fuck around a plastic sea!

The unity 'twixt wave and mold,

In Kallimachos' simile the "doorjamb"

He one day kissed, but now protests

It was no wrong (a Ptolemaic state??),

Was perhaps to poetry a gate—

Or Muse's toothbrush-—crafted, told.

Reading the verses here written,

Should veiled spitefulness apall,

No wonder that a world unsmitten

Misunderstands them. If at all!

When half in love with easeful life,

Enough's a doorjamb for a wife.

Epigram: ἐφίλησα

τὴν φλιήν· εἰ τοῦτʼ ἔστʼ ἀδίκημʼ, ἀδικέω.

Trans. Susan A. Stephens and Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Callimachus: The Epigrams (De Gruyter, 2025), 271. See, too, https://brentnongbri.c0om/2025/11/10/callimachus-on-the-walls.

In Modern Greek:

φίλησα μονάχα το κατώφλι.

Αν αυτό είναι αδίκημα, αδίκησα.

In Θ. Κ. Στεφανόπουλος

et al., Ανθολογία Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γραμματείας.

Egypt's king and pharoah in Kallimachos' day was the Macedonian Ptolemy II Philadelphos (283–246 BCE), whose "reign is considered a golden age. . . . He expanded the Library of Alexandria and supported the work of scholars, poets, and scientists, including Euclid and Callimachus" (https://historact.com/the-ptolemaic-dynasty-the-last-rulers-of-ancient-egypt).

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