Theocritus

Theocritus was a Greek poet from Sicily in Magna Graecia, born around 300 BC and dead sometime after 260 BC. He is remembered as the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry, a form that set shepherds, goatherds, song contests, rustic speech, and country feeling at the center of art. Much about his life is uncertain. What is known, or strongly suggested, comes mainly from his writings and from later ancient notices about the poems attributed to him.

He was from Sicily, and ancient evidence connects him especially with Syracuse. One epigram presents him as “one of the great populace of Syracuse,” the son of Praxagoras and Philinna, while allusions in the Idylls support the Syracusan connection. Theocritus also refers to Polyphemus, the Cyclops of the Odyssey, as his “countryman,” another sign of his Sicilian identity. It is also thought that he lived for a time on Kos and in Egypt under Ptolemy II, and that he probably spent time in Alexandria, where he wrote about everyday urban life, including Pharmakeutria.

The works most closely tied to his name are the Idylls, though ancient editors already knew that not every poem circulating under his name was secure. Early collections separated doubtful bucolic poems from a stricter body of works believed to be his. Artemidorus of Tarsus, a grammarian of the time of Sulla, was said to have been the first editor of these poems. The Suda later reported that Theocritus wrote bucolic poems in the Doric dialect, while also listing other works attributed to him, including Daughters of Proetus, Hopes, Hymns, Heroines, Dirges, Lyrics, Elegies, Iambics, and Epigrams.

His best-known bucolic poems include Idylls 1, 6, 7, and 11. In Idyll 1, Thyrsis sings of Daphnis, the mythical herdsman who dies rather than yield to a passion sent by Aphrodite. In Idyll 11, Polyphemus is no longer only the monster from Homer but a lovesick, gentle figure who finds comfort in song. Idyll 6 returns to Polyphemus after he has been cured of that passion. Idyll 7, the “Harvest Feast,” is set on Kos and includes poets under feigned names; in it Theocritus speaks of his own growing fame, praises Philitas of Kos, and criticizes lesser poets who strain against the Chian bard.

Theocritus also wrote mimes, poems set not in the country but in towns. Three are named in the source tradition: Idylls 2, 14, and 15. In Idyll 2, Simaetha, deserted by Delphis, tells her love story to the moon. In Idyll 14, Aeschines recounts a quarrel with his sweetheart and is advised to go to Egypt and join the army of Ptolemy Philadelphus. In Idyll 15, Gorgo and Praxinoë go to the festival of Adonis. These poems show how closely Theocritus could listen to ordinary speech, whether in the country or the city.

What shaped Theocritus was a meeting of places and voices: Sicily and Syracuse, Magna Graecia, perhaps Kos, Alexandria, and Egypt under Ptolemy II; myth from Homeric tradition; Doric song; rural contests; and the talk of common people. His poems still speak because they make stylized art out of plain human situations: desire, rivalry, grief, vanity, gossip, and song. In his hands, a shepherd, a deserted lover, or two women at a festival can carry the full weight of feeling without losing the texture of daily life.