Theocritus
Encyclopedia
Theocritus the creator of ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 bucolic poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, flourished in the 3rd century BC.

Life

Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems (Idyll
Idyll
An idyll or idyl is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the Idylls....

s
) commonly attributed to him have little claim to authenticity. It is clear that at a very early date two collections were made, one of which included of doubtful poems and formed a corpus of bucolic poetry, while the other was confined to those works which were considered to be by Theocritus himself.

Theocritus was from Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

, as he refers to Polyphemus
Polyphemus
Polyphemus is the gigantic one-eyed son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology, one of the Cyclopes. His name means "much spoken of" or "famous". Polyphemus plays a pivotal role in Homer's Odyssey.-In Homer's Odyssey:...

, the cyclops in the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

, as his 'countryman.' He also probably lived in Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

 for a while, where he wrote about everyday life, notably Pharmakeutria. It is also speculated that Theocritus was born in Syracuse, lived on the island of Kos
Kos
Kos or Cos is a Greek island in the south Sporades group of the Dodecanese, next to the Gulf of Gökova/Cos. It measures by , and is from the coast of Bodrum, Turkey and the ancient region of Caria. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Kos peripheral unit, which is...

, and lived in Egypt during the time of Ptolemy II.

The record of these recension
Recension
Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts, this may be a revision by another author...

s is preserved by two epigrams, one of which proceeds from Artemidorus of Tarsus, a grammarian, who lived in the time of Sulla and is said to have been the first editor of these poems. He says, "Bucolic muses, once were ye scattered, but now one byre, one herd is yours." The second epigram is anonymous, and runs as follows: "The Chian is another. I, Theocritus, who wrote these songs, am of Syracuse, a man of the people, the son of Praxagoras and famed Philina. I never sought after a strange muse." The last line may mean that he wrote nothing but bucolic poems, or that he only wrote in Doric
Doric Greek
Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...

. The assertion that he was from Syracuse appears to be upheld by allusions in the Idylls (xi. 7, xxviii. 16—18).

The information concerning his parentage bears the stamp of genuineness, and disposes of a rival theory based upon a misinterpretation of Idyll vii—which made him the son of one Simichus. A larger collection, possibly more extensive than that of Artemidorus, and including poems of doubtful authenticity, was known to the author of the Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

, who says: "Theocritus wrote the so-called bucolic poems in the Dorian dialect. Some persons also attribute to him the following: Daughters of Proetus, Hopes, Hymns, Heroines, Dirges, Lyrics, Elegies, Iambics, Epigrams."

The first of these may have been known to Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, who refers to the Proeides in the Eclogues. The spurious poem xxi. may have been one of the Hopes, and poem xxvi. may have been one of the Heroines; elegiacs are found in viii. 33—60, and the spurious epitaph on Bion may have been one of the Dirges. The other classes are all represented in the larger collection which has come down to us.

Bucolics and Mimes

The distinction between these is that the scenes of the former are laid in the country and those of the latter in a town. The most famous of the Bucolics are i. vii., xi. and vi. In i. Thyrsis sings to a goatherd how Daphnis
Daphnis
In Greek mythology, Daphnis was a son of Hermes and a Sicilian nymph. A shepherd and flautist, he was the inventor of pastoral poetry. A naiad fell in love with him, but he was not faithful to her. In revenge, she either blinded him or turned him to stone...

, the mythical herdsman, having defied the power of Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

, dies rather than yield to a passion with which the goddess had inspired him. In xi. Polyphemus
Polyphemus
Polyphemus is the gigantic one-eyed son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology, one of the Cyclopes. His name means "much spoken of" or "famous". Polyphemus plays a pivotal role in Homer's Odyssey.-In Homer's Odyssey:...

 is depicted as in love with the sea-nymph Galatea and finding solace in song: in vi. he is cured of his passion and naively relates how he repulses the overtures now made to him by Galatea. The monster of the Odyssey has been "written up to date" after the Alexandrian manner and has become a gentle simpleton.

Idyll vii, the Harvest Feast, is the most important of the bucolic poems. The scene is laid in the isle of Kos. The poet speaks in the first person and is styled Simichidas by his friends. Other poets are introduced under feigned names. Thus ancient critics identified Sicelidas of Samos (1. 40) with Asclepiades the Samian, and Lycidas, "the goatherd of Cydonia," may well be the poet Astacides, whom Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...

 calls "the Cretan, the goatherd." Theocritus speaks of himself as having already gained fame, and says that his lays have been brought by report even unto the throne of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

. He praises Philitas, the veteran poet of Cos, and criticizes "the fledgelings of the Muse, who cackle against the Chian bard and find their labour lost." Other persons mentioned are Nicias, a physician of Miletus, whose name occurs in other poems, and Aratus, whom the Scholiast identifies with the author of the Phenomena.

Several of the other bucolic poems consist of a singing-match, conducted according to the rules of amoebean poetry, in which the second singer takes the subject chosen by the first and contributes a variation in the same air. It may be noted that the peasants of Theocritus differ greatly in refinement. Those in v. are low fellows who indulge in coarse abuse. This Idyll and iv. are laid in the neighbourhood of Croton, and we may infer that Theocritus was personally acquainted with Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia
Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...

.

Suspicion has been cast upon poems viii and ix on various grounds. An extreme view holds that in ix. we have two genuine Theocritean fragments, Il. 7-13 and 15-20, describing the joys of summer and winter respectively, which have been provided with a clumsy preface, II. 1-6, while an early editor of a bucolic collection has appended an epilogue in which he takes leave of the Bucolic Muses. On the other hand, it is clear that both poems were in Virgil's Theocritus, and that they passed the scrutiny of the editor who formed the short collection of Theocritean Bucolics.

The mimes are three in number: ii, xiv, and xv. In ii Simaetha, deserted by Delphis, tells the story of her love to the moon; in xiv Aeschines narrates his quarrel with his sweetheart, and is advised to go to Egypt and enlist in the army of Ptolemy Philadelphus; in xv Gorgo and Praxinoë go to the festival of Adonis
Adonis
Adonis , in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire, is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central figure in various mystery religions. The Greek , Adōnis is a variation of the Semitic word Adonai, "lord", which is also one of the names used to refer to God in the Old...

. It may be noticed that in the best manuscript ii. comes immediately before xiv, an arrangement which is obviously right, since it places the three mimes together. The second place in the manuscripts is occupied by Idyll vii., the "Harvest Feast." These three mimes are wonderfully natural and lifelike. There is nothing in ancient literature so vivid and real as the chatter of Gorgo and Praxinoë, and the voces populi in xv.

It will be convenient to add to the Bucolics and Mimes three poems which cannot be brought into any other class:
  • xii, a poem to a beautiful youth
  • xviii, the marriage-song of Helen;
  • xxvi, the murder of Pentheus.

The genuineness of the last has been attacked by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
Enno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was a German Classical Philologist. Wilamowitz, as he is known in scholarly circles, was a renowned authority on Ancient Greece and its literature.- Youth :...

 on account of the crudity of the language, which sometimes degenerates into doggerel. It is, however, likely that Theocritus intentionally used realistic language for the sake of dramatic effect, and the manuscript's evidence is in favour of the poem. Eustathius
Eustathius
Eustathius or Eustathios may refer to:* Eustathius of Antioch, Patriarch of Antioch * Eustathius of Sebaste * Eustathius of Cappadocia Neoplatonist, orator, and diplomat...

 quotes from it as the work of Theocritus.

Epics

Three of these are Hymns: xvi, xvii, and xxii. In xvi, the poet praises Hiero II of Syracuse
Hiero II of Syracuse
Hieron II , king of Syracuse from 270 to 215 BC, was the illegitimate son of a Syracusan noble, Hierocles, who claimed descent from Gelon. He was a former general of Pyrrhus of Epirus and an important figure of the First Punic War....

, in xvii Ptolemy Philadelphus, and in xxii the Dioscuri. The other poems are xiii, the story of Hylas and the Nymphs, and xxiv the youthful Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

. It cannot be said that Theocritus exhibits signal merit in his Epics. In xiii. he shows some skill in word-painting, in xvi. there is some delicate fancy in the description of his poems as Graces, and a passage at the end, where he foretells the joys of peace after the enemy have been driven out of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

, has the true bucolic ring. The most that can be said of xxii and xxiv is that they are very dramatic. Otherwise they differ little from work done by other poets, such as Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...

 and Apollonius Rhodius.

From another point of view, however, these two poems xvi and xvii are supremely interesting, since they are the only ones which can be dated. In xvii. Theocritus celebrates the incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...

uous marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus with his sister Arsinoë
Arsinoe II of Egypt
For other uses see, ArsinoeArsinoë II was a Ptolemaic Greek Princess of Ancient Egypt and through marriage was of Queen Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedonia as wife of King Lysimachus and later co-ruler of Egypt with her brother-husband Ptolemy II Philadelphus For other uses see, ArsinoeArsinoë II...

. This marriage is held to have taken place in 277 BC, and a recently discovered inscription shows that Arsinoë
Arsinoe
Arsinoe , sometimes spelled Arsinoë, pronounced Arsinoi in modern Greek, may refer to:-Literature:* Arsinoe, a character in Le Misanthrope, a play by French playwright Molière...

 died in 270, in the fifteenth year of her brother's reign. This poem, therefore, together with xv, which Theocritus wrote to please Arsinoë must fall within this period. The encomium upon Hiero II would seem prior to that upon Ptolemy, since in it Theocritus is a hungry poet seeking for a patron, while in the other he is well satisfied with the world. Now Hiero first came to the front in 275 BC when he was made General: Theocritus speaks of his achievements as still to come, and the silence of the poet would show that Hiero’s marriage to Phulistis, his victory over the Mamertines at the Longanus and his election as "King", events which are ascribed to 270 BC, had not yet taken place. If so, xvii and xv can only have been written within 275 and 270.

Lyrics

Two of these are certainly by Theocritus, xxviii and xxix, composed in Aeolic verse
Aeolic verse
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect...

 and in the Aeolic dialect. The first is a very graceful poem presented together with a distaff to Theugenis, wife of Nicias, a doctor of Miletus, on the occasion of a voyage thither undertaken by the poet. The theme of xxix is similar to that of xii. A very corrupt poem, only found in one very late manuscript, was discovered by Ziegler in 1864. As the subject and style very closely resemble that of xxix, it is assigned to Theocritus by recent editors.

Spurious Works

The following poems are now generally considered to be spurious:

xix. Love stealing Honey. The poem is anonymous in the manuscripts and the conception of Love is not Theocritean.

xx. Herdsman, xxi. Fishermen, xxiii. Passionate Lover. These three poems are remarkable for the corrupt state of their text, which makes it likely that they have come from the same source and possibly are by the same author. The Fishermen has been much admired. It is addressed to Diophantus and conveys a moral, that one should work and not dream, illustrated by the story of an old fisherman who dreams that he has caught a fish of gold and narrates his vision to his mate. As Leonidas of Tarentum
Leonidas of Tarentum
Leonidas of Tarentum was an epigrammatist and lyric poet. He lived in the third century B.C. Leonidas lived in Tarentum, in the coast of Calabria, then Magna Graecia. Over a hundred of his epigrams are present in the Greek Anthology...

 wrote epigrams on fishermen, and one of them is a dedication of his tackle to Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...

 by Diophantus, the fisher, it is likely that the author of this poem was an imitator of Leonidas. It can hardly be by Leonidas himself, who was a contemporary of Theocritus, as it bears marks of lateness.

xxv. Heracles the Lion-slayer

24 epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

s are attributed to Theocritus, many of them considered to be of doubtful authenticity.

Editions

  • Theocritus, Bion and Moschus: Rendered into English Prose with an Introductory Essay by Andrew Lang
    Andrew Lang
    Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...

    , (1880), London.
  • The Idylls of Theocritus, (1925) translated by R.C. Trevelyan, Albert & Charles Boni, New York.
  • Theocritus, 2nd Edition. (1952) The standard modern Greek text (with translation) and commentary by A.S.F. Gow, Cambridge.
  • Theocritus: Select Poems, (1971) commentary by K.J. Dover, London.
  • Theocritus: Idylls and Epigrams, (1982) translated by Daryl Hine
    Daryl Hine
    Daryl Hine is a Canadian poet and translator.-Life:Daryl Hine was born in Burnaby in 1936 and grew up in New Westminster B.C. He attended McGill University in Montreal 1954-58...

    , Atheneum, New York.
  • Theocritus - A Selection, (1999) commentary by Richard Hunter
    Richard L. Hunter
    Richard Lawrence Hunter is a classical scholar and has since 2001 been the 38th Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University.-Education and academic career:Richard Hunter was born and grew up in Australia...

    , Cambridge.
  • Theocritus: Idylls, (2003) translated by Anthony Verity
    Anthony Verity
    Anthony Courtenay Froude Verity is an educationalist and classical scholar and was Master of Dulwich College from 1986 to 1995.-Early life:...

     with an introduction and notes by Richard Hunter
    Richard L. Hunter
    Richard Lawrence Hunter is a classical scholar and has since 2001 been the 38th Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University.-Education and academic career:Richard Hunter was born and grew up in Australia...

    , Oxford University Press.

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