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'Eucritus and I and pretty Amyntas turned aside To the farm of Phrasidamus, where we sank down With pleasure on deep-piled couches of sweet rushes, And vine leaves freshly stripped from the bush.' The Greek poet Theocritus of Syracuse (first half of the third century BC) was the inventor of 'bucolic' poetry. These vignettes of country life, centred on competitions in song and love, are the foundational poems of the western pastoral tradition. They were the principal model for Virgil in the Eclogues and their influence can be seen in the work of Petrarch and Milton. Although it is the pastoral poems for which he is chiefly famous, Theocritus also wrote hymns to the gods, brilliant mime depictions of everyday life, short narrative epics, epigrams, and encomia of the powerful. The great variety of his poems illustrates the rich and flourishing poetic culture of what was a golden age for Greek poetry.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
These bucolic poems (bucolic = sung by a herdsman) constitute an important link in the history of literature, as Robert Wells notes in his excellent introduction. They influenced directly the pastoral tradition created in the Renaissance by poets like Ronsard.
Besides proper herdsman stories about song contests or love laments, Theocritus treats well-known subjects in his poems:
`The Bacchae': `no tears must fall for the transgressors, grown men or young boys.'
`The Cyclops': `Galatea, you are whiter than ricotta, gentler than a lamb, livelier than a calf, firmer than an unripe grape ... and when sleep lets me go, then you slip away as if you were a sheep and I the great grey wolf.'
`The Passion of Daphnis': `Let the stag hunt the hounds, let the nightingale attend to the screech-owl's cries.'
`The Graces': `Let the armoury be shrouded in cobwebs, the war-cry become a forgotten song.'
`Helen': `A race-bound filly, a cypress tree that rears its dark adornment over field and garden.'
`The Dioscuri' (Castor & Pollux): `rescuers of horses panicked in battle's bloody turmoil'.
`The Childhood of Heracles': `two monstrous snakes ... The steel-blue scales stood up as they rippled their coils.'
Theocritus's poems shine through their freshness and innocence, their alternation of elegiac and ecstatic tones, their evocation of street and pastoral noises, their images and comparisons and their candid (bi)sexuality.
Not to be missed by all lovers of classical texts.
Besides proper herdsman stories about song contests or love laments, Theocritus treats well-known subjects in his poems:
`The Bacchae': `no tears must fall for the transgressors, grown men or young boys.'
`The Cyclops': `Galatea, you are whiter than ricotta, gentler than a lamb, livelier than a calf, firmer than an unripe grape ... and when sleep lets me go, then you slip away as if you were a sheep and I the great grey wolf.'
`The Passion of Daphnis': `Let the stag hunt the hounds, let the nightingale attend to the screech-owl's cries.'
`The Graces': `Let the armoury be shrouded in cobwebs, the war-cry become a forgotten song.'
`Helen': `A race-bound filly, a cypress tree that rears its dark adornment over field and garden.'
`The Dioscuri' (Castor & Pollux): `rescuers of horses panicked in battle's bloody turmoil'.
`The Childhood of Heracles': `two monstrous snakes ... The steel-blue scales stood up as they rippled their coils.'
Theocritus's poems shine through their freshness and innocence, their alternation of elegiac and ecstatic tones, their evocation of street and pastoral noises, their images and comparisons and their candid (bi)sexuality.
Not to be missed by all lovers of classical texts.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
16 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Greek Poems for Greekless Readers
6 Aug 1997
Format:Mass Market Paperback
With Homer, you can still appreciate the Iliad and the Odyssey in English -- indeed, the recent translations of Robert Fagles capture the movement and energy of Homeric verse quite well. With Theocritus, however, a translation is a wretched substitute for the Greek, since the exquisitely refined beauty and charm of his poems simply cannot be reproduced in English. What makes Theocritus such an enjoyable experience in Greek is the Doric dialectic in which he writes, his manipulation of the hexameter verse (the same 6 beat verse used by Homer), the echoes of Homer and other authors, and similar curiosities.
Theocritus wrote in the 3d century BC, during the so-called Hellenistic period which arose after the demise of the classical Greek city-state. This era was, in many respects, the first "modern" world. Theocritus was a Sicilian who wrote around 270 BC. He was highly original -- he invented pastoral or "bucolic" poetry, a genre which had a very long and distinguished run in subsequent Latin and European literature. Appearing in the works of this poet for the first time are the cowherds, goatherds, and shepherds playing the pan pipes under the shade of spreading trees, bantering with each other as they sing their rustic songs. If you wish to appreciate Vergil's Eclogues, Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar, or Milton's Lycidas, to name a few of the more well known examples of the form in later literature, you must at least have a taste of the master who invented this important genre.
In this Penguin paperback edition, Robert Wells offers up straightforward, readable translations of the 22 "Idylls" (meaning "short sketches") which are commonly attributed by scholars to Theocritus. Accompanying the translations is an excellent 52 page Introduction which provides the general reader with important background information about the poet, his art, his era, and his compositional techniques.
WARNING!!! The poems of Theocritus are not intended for poorly educated or unsophisticated readers. Do not attempt to read these poems if you lack imagination, curiosity, and an appreciation for the delicate craftsmanship of a sensitive and learned poet
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Review of Oxford's Theocritus
11 Mar 2010
Format:Paperback
This is an air-tight edition of the bucolic poet. The introduction has everyone the reader wants to know, and the Greek translation is an excellent read. I wish they would have included all of the extant poems, and used footnotes, but even so, this was a pleasure to use.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
There can be no remedy for love, except the Muses
12 May 2008
Format:Mass Market Paperback
These bucolic poems (bucolic = sung by a herdsman) constitute an important link in the history of literature, as Robert Wells notes in his excellent introduction. They influenced directly the pastoral tradition created in the Renaissance by poets like Ronsard.
Besides proper herdsman stories about song contests or love laments, Theocritus treats well-known subjects in his poems:
`The Bacchae': `no tears must fall for the transgressors, grown men or young boys.'
`The Cyclops': `Galatea, you are whiter than ricotta, gentler than a lamb, livelier than a calf, firmer than an unripe grape ... and when sleep lets me go, then you slip away as if you were a sheep and I the great grey wolf.'
`The Passion of Daphnis': `Let the stag hunt the hounds, let the nightingale attend to the screech-owl's cries.'
`The Graces': `Let the armoury be shrouded in cobwebs, the war-cry become a forgotten song.'
`Helen': `A race-bound filly, a cypress tree that rears its dark adornment over field and garden.'
`The Dioscuri' (Castor & Pollux): `rescuers of horses panicked in battle's bloody turmoil'.
`The Childhood of Heracles': `two monstrous snakes ... The steel-blue scales stood up as they rippled their coils.'
Theocritus's poems shine through their freshness and innocence, their alternation of elegiac and ecstatic tones, their evocation of street and pastoral noises, their images and comparisons and their candid (bi)sexuality.
Not to be missed by all lovers of classical texts.
Besides proper herdsman stories about song contests or love laments, Theocritus treats well-known subjects in his poems:
`The Bacchae': `no tears must fall for the transgressors, grown men or young boys.'
`The Cyclops': `Galatea, you are whiter than ricotta, gentler than a lamb, livelier than a calf, firmer than an unripe grape ... and when sleep lets me go, then you slip away as if you were a sheep and I the great grey wolf.'
`The Passion of Daphnis': `Let the stag hunt the hounds, let the nightingale attend to the screech-owl's cries.'
`The Graces': `Let the armoury be shrouded in cobwebs, the war-cry become a forgotten song.'
`Helen': `A race-bound filly, a cypress tree that rears its dark adornment over field and garden.'
`The Dioscuri' (Castor & Pollux): `rescuers of horses panicked in battle's bloody turmoil'.
`The Childhood of Heracles': `two monstrous snakes ... The steel-blue scales stood up as they rippled their coils.'
Theocritus's poems shine through their freshness and innocence, their alternation of elegiac and ecstatic tones, their evocation of street and pastoral noises, their images and comparisons and their candid (bi)sexuality.
Not to be missed by all lovers of classical texts.
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