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Pinakes
The Pinakes (Ancient Greek: Πίνακες "tables", plural of πίναξ) is
a lost bibliographic work composed by Callimachus (310/305–240
BCE) that is popularly considered to be the first library catalog in
the West; its contents were based upon the holdings of the Library
of Alexandria during Callimachus' tenure there during the third
century BCE.[1]

History
The Library of Alexandria had been founded by Ptolemy I Soter
about 306 BCE. The first recorded librarian was Zenodotus of
Ephesus. During Zenodotus' tenure, Callimachus, who was never
Imaginary depiction of the Library of
the head librarian, compiled many catalogues/lists, each called
Alexandria
Pinakes. His most famous one listed authors and their works; thus
he became the first known bibliographer and the scholar who
organized the library by authors and subjects about 245 BCE.[2][3]
His work was 120 volumes long.[4]

Apollonius of Rhodes was the successor to Zenodotus. Eratosthenes of Cyrene succeeded Apollonius
in 235 BCE and compiled his tetagmenos epi teis megaleis bibliothekeis, the 'scheme of the great
bookshelves'. In 195 BCE Aristophanes of Byzantium, Eratosthenes' successor, was the librarian and
updated the Pinakes,[5] although it is also possible that his work was not a supplement of
Callimachus' Pinakes themselves, but an independent polemic against, or commentary upon, their
contents.[6]

Description
The collection at the Library of Alexandria contained nearly 500,000 papyrus scrolls, which were
grouped together by subject matter and stored in bins.[7] Each bin carried a label with painted tablets
hung above the stored papyri. Pinakes was named after these tablets and are a set of index lists. The
bins gave bibliographical information for every roll.[8] A typical entry started with a title and also
provided the author's name, birthplace, father's name, any teachers trained under, and educational
background. It contained a brief biography of the author and a list of the author's publications. The
entry had the first line of the work, a summary of its contents, the name of the author, and
information about the origin of the roll, as well as any doubts about the genuineness of the
ascription.[9]

Callimachus' system divided works into six genres and five sections of prose: rhetoric, law, epic,
tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science, and miscellanies. Each
category was alphabetized by author.

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Callimachus composed two other works that were referred as pinakes and were probably somewhat
similar in format to the Pinakes (of which they "may or may not be subsections"[10]), but were
concerned with individual topics. These are listed by the Suda as: A Chronological Pinax and
Description of Didaskaloi from the Beginning and Pinax of the Vocabulary and Treatises of
Democritus.[11]

Later bibliographic pinakes

The term pinax was used for bibliographic catalogs beyond Callimachus. For example, Ptolemy-el-
Garib's catalog of Aristotle's writings comes to us with the title Pinax (catalog) of Aristotle's
writings.[12]

Legacy
The Pinakes proved indispensable to librarians for centuries, and they became a model for organizing
knowledge throughout the Mediterranean. Their later influence can be traced to medieval times, even
to the Arabic counterpart of the tenth century: Ibn al-Nadim's Al-Fihrist ("Index").[9] Local variations
for cataloging and library classification continued throughout the late 1800s, when Anthony Panizzi
and Melvil Dewey paved the way for more shared and standardized approaches.

Notes
1. N. Krevans 2002: 173
2. Neil Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology (CUP, 1988) 83.
3. "Greek Inventions" (https://web.archive.org/web/20170213163548/http://www.greekplanet.com.au/
forum/lofiversion/index.php/t486.html). Archived from the original (http://www.greekplanet.com.au/f
orum/lofiversion/index.php/t486.html) on 2017-02-13. Retrieved 2008-09-19.
4. Hopkinson
5. Pfeiffer, R. History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age
(OUP, 1968) 133.
6. Slater, W.J. "Grammarians on Handwashing", Phoenix 43 (1989) 100–11, at 102.
7. P.J. Parson, "Libraries", in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (OUP, 1996) describes the
evidence for the size of the library's holdings thus: "The first Ptolemies (see Ptolemy (1) )
collected ambitiously and systematically; the Alexandrian Library (see ALEXANDRIA (1) ) became
legend, and *Callimachus (3)'s Pinakes made its content accessible. There were rivals at *Pella,
*Antioch (1) (where *Euphorion (2) was librarian), and especially *Pergamum. Holdings were
substantial: if the figures can be trusted, Pergamum held at least 200,000 rolls (Plut. Ant. 58. 9),
the main library at Alexandria nearly 500,000 (*Tzetzes, Prolegomena de comoedia 11a. 2. 10–11
Koster)—the equivalent, perhaps, of 100,000 modern books."
8. Phillips, Heather A., "The Great Library of Alexandria?". Library Philosophy and Practice, August
2010 (http://unllib.unl.edu/LPP/phillips.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201204181916
47/http://unllib.unl.edu/LPP/phillips.htm) 2012-04-18 at the Wayback Machine
9. "The Pinakes" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110616100618/http://www.greece.org/hec01/www/a
rts-culture/alexandria/library/library11.htm). Archived from the original (http://www.greece.org/hec0
1/www/arts-culture/alexandria/library/library11.htm) on 2011-06-16. Retrieved 2010-05-29.
10. Nita Krevans, "Callimachus and the Pedestrian Muse," in M.A. harder et al., eds., Callimachus II
(Hellenistica Groningana 7), 2002, p. 173 (https://books.google.com/books?id=CL4A5I3K-KsC&dq
=callimachus%20democritus%20catalog&pg=PA173) n. 1.
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11. "SOL Search" (http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/kappa/227). www.stoa.org. Retrieved 2018-03-17.

12. Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg 1957), p. 221.

Bibliography

Texts and translations

The evidence concerning the Pinakes is collected by Rudolf Pfeiffer (ed.), Callimachus, vol. I:
Fragmenta, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1949, frr. 429-456 (with reference to the most important
literature).
Witty, F. J. "The Pinakes of Callimachus", Library Quarterly 28:1/4 (1958), 132–36, a translation of
the work.
Witty, F. J. "The Other Pinakes and Reference Works of Callimachus", Library Quarterly 43:3
(1973), 237–44.

Studies
Bagnall, R. S. "Alexandria: Library of Dreams" (http://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/28263/2/D17
2-Alexandria%20Library%20of%20Dreams.pdf), Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 46 (2002) 348–62.
Blum, R. Kallimachos. The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography, trans. H.H.
Wellisch (U. Wisconsin, 1991). ISBN 978-0-299-13170-8.
Krevans, N. "Callimachus and the Pedestrian Muse" (https://books.google.com/books?id=CL4A5I
3K-KsC&dq=callimachus%20democritus%20catalog&pg=PA173), in: A. Harder et al. (eds.)
Callimachus II, Hellenistic Groningana 6 (Groningen, 2002) 173–84.
West, M. L. "The Sayings of Democritus", Classical Review (1969) 142.

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