Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose | Page 2

Eastern capital and mart, a place of harems and bazaars, a home of
tyrants, slaves, dreamers, and pleasure-seekers. Thus a Greek of the old
school must have despaired of Greek poetry. There was nothing (he
would have said) to evoke it; no dawn of liberty could flush this silent
Memnon into song. The collectors, critics, librarians of Alexandria
could only produce literary imitations of the epic and the hymn, or
could at best write epigrams or inscriptions for the statue of some alien
and luxurious god. Their critical activity in every field of literature was
immense, their original genius sterile. In them the intellect of the
Hellenes still faintly glowed, like embers on an altar that shed no light

on the way. Yet over these embers the god poured once again the
sacred oil, and from the dull mass leaped, like a many-coloured frame,
the genius of THEOCRITUS.
To take delight in that genius, so human, so kindly, so musical in
expression, requires, it may be said, no long preparation. The art of
Theocritus scarcely needs to be illustrated by any description of the
conditions among which it came to perfection. It is always impossible
to analyse into its component parts the genius of a poet. But it is not
impossible to detect some of the influences that worked on Theocritus.
We can study his early 'environment'; the country scenes he knew, and
the songs of the neatherds which he elevated into art. We can ascertain
the nature of the demand for poetry in the chief cities and in the literary
society of the time. As a result, we can understand the broad twofold
division of the poems of Theocritus into rural and epic idyls, and with
this we must rest contented.
It is useless to attempt a regular biography of Theocritus. Facts and
dates are alike wanting, the ancient accounts (p. ix) are clearly based on
his works, but it is by no means impossible to construct a 'legend' or
romance of his life, by aid of his own verses, and of hints and
fragments which reach us from the past and the present. The genius of
Theocritus was so steeped in the colours of human life, he bore such
true and full witness as to the scenes and men he knew, that life (always
essentially the same) becomes in turn a witness to his veracity. He was
born in the midst of nature that, through all the changes of things, has
never lost its sunny charm. The existence he loved best to contemplate,
that of southern shepherds, fishermen, rural people, remains what it
always has been in Sicily and in the isles of Greece. The habits and the
passions of his countryfolk have not altered, the echoes of their old
love-songs still sound among the pines, or by the sea-banks, where
Theocritus 'watched the visionary flocks.'
Theocritus was probably born in an early decade of the third century, or,
according to Couat, about 315 B.C., and was a native of Syracuse, 'the
greatest of Greek cities, the fairest of all cities.' So Cicero calls it,
describing the four quarters that were encircled by its walls,--each

quarter as large as a town,--the fountain Arethusa, the stately temples
with their doors of ivory and gold. On the fortunate dwellers in
Syracuse, Cicero says, the sun shone every day, and there was never a
morning so tempestuous but the sunlight conquered at last, and broke
through the clouds. That perennial sunlight still floods the poems of
Theocritus with its joyous glow. His birthplace was the proper home of
an idyllic poet, of one who, with all his enjoyment of the city life of
Greece, had yet been 'breathed on by the rural Pan,' and best loved the
sights and sounds and fragrant air of the forests and the coast. Thanks
to the mountainous regions of Sicily, to Etna, with her volcanic cliffs
and snow-fed streams, thanks also to the hills of the interior, the
populous island never lost the charm of nature. Sicily was not like the
overcrowded and over-cultivated Attica; among the Sicilian heights and
by the coast were few enclosed estates and narrow farms. The character
of the people, too, was attuned to poetry. The Dorian settlers had kept
alive the magic of rivers, of pools where the Nereids dance, and
uplands haunted by Pan. This popular poetry influenced the literary
verse of Sicily. The songs of Stesichorus, a minstrel of the early period,
and the little rural 'mimes' or interludes of Sophron are lost, and we
have only fragments of Epicharmus. But it seems certain that these
poets, predecessors of Theocritus, liked to mingle with their own
composition strains of rustic melody, volks-lieder, ballads, love-songs,
ditties, and dirges, such as are still chanted by the peasants of Greece
and Italy.