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Title: Theocritus: Idylls by Anthony Verity, Richard Hunter, Theocritus ISBN: 0-19-815290-6 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $55.00

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Summary: The bucolic poems of the ancient poet Theocritus
Comment: Theocritus was a bucolic poet and native of Syracuse who has often been credited, by both ancient and modern critics, as being the inventor of the genre of pastoral poetry. However, there are also those who argue that while there are poets attributed to Theocritus the bucolic poems in question are from another ancient edition of dubious authorship. Today, Theocritus is primarily of interest to those looking for the historic antecedents of homoerotic poetry; the poet wrote the 14th, 15th, and 17th Idylls in honor of his patron, Ptolemy Soter. There is also a poem to a beautiful youth that is considered from that perspective. My interest in his "Idylls" stemmed from Theocritus being one of only two other classical writers to talk about the murder of Pentheus depicted in Euripides's tragedy "The Bacchae," the other being Ovid in the "Metamorphoses." This particular poem is neither pastoral nor part of the bucolic tradition, so it may well have been written by the actual Theocritus.

For those interested in pastoral poems about shepherds and their ilk, the most famous Bucolics are: I, where Thyrsis sings to a goatherd the story of Daphis, the herdsman who died rather than yield to the power of Aphrodite; VII, "The Harvest Feast," which features a gathering of poets on the island of Cos; and a set of Idylls, VI and XI, which has Polyphemus, the cyclops from the "Odyssey," in love with the sea-nymph Galatea. There is also a marriage song for Helen that will be of passing interest to teachers and students of mythology. The rest of the poems are of lesser interest both from the perspective of mythology and, I would think, of those who study ancient poetry, although several are interesting in that they were apparently commissioned by rather ordinary folk for loved ones. Such poems are of a dramatic or mimetic nature, offering poetic pictures of the ordinary life of the common folk of Sicily in the 3rd century B.C. Consequently, although a minor classical poet all things considered, there are several elements worthy of note in his work.