The Narratives on Hecale Ancient Scholia are ancient explanatory notes on Callimachus’s fragmentary hexameter poem Hecale. As scholia, they comprise a commentary containing glosses, mythological explanations, and interpretive notes compiled from earlier Hellenistic and Roman scholarship. This specific set appears to focus on providing narrative summaries for parts of the poem, with the extant material consisting of two passages.
The scholia address several exegetical topics:
The scholia are transmitted within the medieval manuscript tradition of Callimachus’s works, notably in manuscripts such as the 11th-century Laurentian manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pluteus 28.32). They survive as prose commentary interspersed with the fragmentary verses of the Hecale, which itself is preserved primarily through such scholia and quotations in later authors.
These scholia are a crucial philological source for reconstructing the lost text of Callimachus’s Hecale and for understanding ancient scholarly reception of Hellenistic poetry. They preserve otherwise unknown fragments and reflect the methods of the Alexandrian grammatical tradition, indirectly shaping later European literary culture through their transmission of Callimachean poetics.
Ἑκάλης Ἀκταίη τις ἔναιεν Ἐρεχθέος ἔν ποτε γουνῷ Θησεὺς φυγὼν τὴν ἐκ Μηδείης ἐπιβουλὴν διὰ πάσης ἦν φυλακῆς τῷ πατρὶ Αἰγεῖ, ἅτʼ αἰφνίδιον ἀνακομισθὲν ἐκ Τροιζῆνος μειράκιον αὐτῷ οὐ προσδοκήσαντι. βουλόμενος δʼ ἐπὶ τὸν λυμαινόμενον τὰ περὶ Μαραθῶνα ταῦρον ἐξελθεῖν ὅπως χειρώσαιτο, καὶ εἰργόμενος, κρύφα τῆς οἰκίας ἐξελθὼν περὶ ἑσπέραν ἀπῆρεν. αἰφνίδιον δὲ ὑετοῦ ῥαγέντος κατʼ ἐσχατιὰν οἰκίδιον θεασάμενος Ἑκάλης τινὸς πρεσβύτιδος ἐνταῦθα ἐξενοδοκήθη. πρὸς δὲ τὴν ἕω ἀναστὰς ἐξῄει ἐπὶ τὴν χώραν, χειρωσάμενος δὲ τὸν ταῦρον ἐπανῄει ὡς τὴν Ἑκά-
λην· αἰφνίδιον δὲ ταύτην εὑρὼν τεθνηκυῖαν ἐπιστενάξας ὡς ἐψευσμένος τῆς προσδοκίας, ὃ ἐφ … εν μετὰ θάνατον εἰς ἀμοιβὴν τῆς ξενίας ταύτῃ παρασχέσθαι, τοῦτο ἐπετέλεσεν δῆμον συνστησάμενος ὃν ἀπʼ αὐτῆς ὠνόμασεν, καὶ τέμενος ἱδρύσατο Ἑκαλείου Διός.
