Andrew Lang

“ THEOCRITUS, of Syracuse, the foremost Greek pastoral poet, lived a life of which nothing is known except from allusions in his own works. The epigram appended to his poems makes him say, "I am a Syracusan, a man of the people, a son of Praxagoras and Philinna." He must have been born early in the 3d century, among a Dorian people, whose Dorian speech survives in his rural idyls. ”

“ The twenty-ninth is amorous; and there remain an imperfect and a spurious piece, and a set of twenty-three epigrams. On a general view, Theocritus's surviving poems turn out to be (1) rural idyls, the patterns of Virgil's eclogues, and of all later pastoral poetry; (2) minute epics, or cabinet pictures from mythology; (3) sketches of contemporary life in verse; (4) courtly compositions; and (5) expressions of personal kindliness and attachment. The first category and the third are those on which the fame of Theocritus depends. ”

“ The fourteenth and fifteenth are sketches of military and urban life, the mercenary soldier in love, and the gathering at the Adonis feast in Alexandria. Theo critus had wandered to the court of Ptolemy, and joined the literary society of his court. The sixteenth is a patriotic piece: the poet urges Hiero to assail the Carthaginians in Sicily. ”