Template:Did you know nominations/Aetia (Callimachus)

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

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Aetia (Callimachus)

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Damaged papyrus scrap with writing
Papyrus fragment of the Aetia
  • ... that an episode from Callimachus' Aetia (fragment pictured) became the model for a poem by Alexander Pope after being translated by Catullus? Source: The episode was long known in only a few Greek quotations and more fully through a Latin translation in Catullus 66, which provided the model for Pope’s ‘‘Rape of the Lock.’’ Gutzwiller (2007) 67.
    • ALT1:... that Callimachus' Aetia (fragment pictured) explains how a lock of hair became an astronomical constellation? Source: Here, in the voice of the Lock herself a tale as bizarre as it is appealing. It begins with Conon, an ast mathematician who lived in Alexandria at the time of the third he, she says, who first saw her, a lock of hair from the Queens brightly in the sky. Then, in a flashback, the Lock explains how Shortly after Berenice's marriage to the King, her husband went to war. His Queen, in a frenzy of anxiety and despair at his absence, vowed to the gods that she would sacrifice a lock of her hair if her husband returned safely. [...] The lock was dedicated at the Temple of Arsinoe-Zephyritis, and promptly disappeared. Even as she tells the tale, the Lock is beside herself with grief. She bemoans her absence from Berenices beloved head and melodramatically recounts the trauma of being swept from the temple by Zephyr into the sea and then up to the sky among the other constellations. [...] It was her compatriot and contemporary, Callimachus of Cyrene, who wrote the original "Lock" that Catullus translated into Latin and coopted for his own literary agenda. Clayman (2011) 229-30

Created by Modussiccandi (talk). Self-nominated at 23:13, 21 December 2020 (UTC).

  • Length and date verified; Earwig's tool shows no sign of copyright violation. The sources are mostly inaccessible to me aside from the quoted excerpts, but another source I have on hand supports ALT1. I prefer ALT1, as it's shorter and more compelling than the main hook, but both meet the criteria.
The one hitch is the image. It's a two-dimensional object from millennia ago and thus public domain, but the one thing it lacks is alt text. Fortunately, all it needs to say is "Tattered papyrus scarp with writing" or something like that. A. Parrot (talk) 22:02, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
@A. Parrot: Thank you for the review. I have added an alt caption to the infobox image. Do let me know if anything else is required. Modussiccandi (talk) 22:21, 1 January 2021 (UTC)