Theocritus

The Greek author Theocritus (ca. 310-ca. 245 B.C.) is credited with being the first and greatest pastoral poet. He expressed great delight in nature and rural life.

The best source for the biography of Theocritus is his own poems. He was a native of Syracuse who was familiar with Croton and Thurii in southern Italy, the island of Cos, Miletus, and Alexandria. He was born by at least 310 B.C., and probably earlier. His parents were Praxagoras and Philinna (who was originally from Cos).

Theocritus was a pupil of Philetas of Cos, as it is conjectured that Ptolemy Philadelphus also was. Theocritus was a friend of Callimachus, of the physician Nicias of Miletus, and of King Hiero of Syracuse. Theocritus's life has been described as falling into four divisions: the Coan, the Sicilian, the Alexandrian with a second Coan residence, and after 270 B.C.

All of Theocritus's work is not pastoral; it is as an idyllist that he is known because with great skill he established the genre and its characteristics: the use of the dactylic hexa-meter, the Dorian dialect, familiar forms (dialogues of herdsmen, their recitations and rivalries), and the themes of unhappy love, death, or absence of friends.

Not all of Theocritus's works have survived. The Coan period saw the production of the bucolic poems (Idylls VII, III-VI, VIII, X, XI, I). The Sicilian period saw only Idyll XVI. Possibly Idylls XXV and XXIII belong to this period. Disappointed in apparent lack of success in Sicily, Theocritus went to Egypt in 274, where he wrote Idylls XV and XVII, probably the Berenice (lost), Hymns XXII and XXIV, and Epyllion XIII. His works included Daughter of Proteus, Hopes, Hymns, Heroines, Funeral Laments, Elegies, lambics, and Epigrams. Of these, 26 epigrams and 30 idylls are preserved.

Theocritus is a master of his art. His style is polished, natural, and graceful. The poems were called idylls (the Greek eidyllia) because they present fresh little pictures of rustic life, reflecting the simple life and conversation of the herdsman of Sicily, southern Italy, and Cos.

Further Reading

Recommended books include Andrew Lang, ed. and trans., Theocritus, Bion and Moschus (1880); R. J. Cholmeley, ed., The Idylls of Theocritus (1901); R. T. Kerlin, Theocritus in English Literature (1910); John M. Edmonds, ed. and trans., The Greek Bucolic Poets (1912); James H. Hallard, trans., The Idylls, Epigrams and Other Poems of Theocritus with the Fragments of Bion and Moschus (1924); Gilbert Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals: A Poetry Book (1967); and Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (1969). □

Theocritus (c.308–c.240 bc), a native of Sicily who lived in Cos and Alexandria, was the most important of the Greek bucolic poets and the one who established for the pastoral the formal characteristics, setting, and tone, which it was to retain for centuries. Theocritus wrote in the Doric dialect, and the difficulties this produced for his readers led to his comparative neglect during the Renaissance. Editions of his text did not appear in substantial numbers until the end of the 18th cent., and modern writers of pastoral from Petrarch to Pope tended rather to take Virgil for a model. There was an anonymous translation of six of his idylls in 1588 and in 1684 Thomas Creche's English translation of all his works. Dryden (whose preface praised Theocritus' ‘tenderness and naturalness’) contributed some stilted and artificial renderings to Tonson's Miscellany. By the 19th cent. the vogue of the pastoral as a genre was at an end. Victorian imitators, such as Tennyson in ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ (1833) delighted in the sensuality of Theocritus' world of pastoral delights.

Theocritus , fl. c.270 BC, Hellenistic Greek poet, b. Syracuse. The history of the pastoral begins with him, and in him the form seems to have reached its height. His poetic style is finished and at times artificial, but the bucolic characters in his idyls seem alive. Theocritus has been widely imitated (e.g., by such poets as Vergil and Spenser).

Theocritus (c.310–250 bc) Greek poet, regarded as the father of pastoral poetry. His work, which influenced generations of later writers from Virgil to Matthew Arnold, is noted for its vivid expression and perceptive portrayal of rural life.

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