SOURCE: “Bucolic and Pastoral in Theocritus,” in Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry, Yale University Press, 1983, pp. 118-37.

[In the following excerpt, Halperin explores Theocritus's use of pastoral poetry and discusses to what extent it is correct to credit him with originality in working within the bucolic tradition.]

Yet even should it be conceded, as indeed it must, that Theocritus is the first writer to employ a fully elaborated system of pastoral conventions to express the outlook or set of attitudes we regard as distinctively pastoral and that this fusion, further consolidated by Virgil, would subsequently dominate an important part of European poetry, Theocritus' claim to originality is still not free of difficulty. The originality of Theocritus takes on a different meaning when it is viewed from the vantage point of the previous artistic tradition instead of with the steady gaze of historical hindsight. A survey of pastoral literature before Theocritus demonstrates that the peculiar character of his own poetic achievement and the factors contributing to his reputation for originality in the ancient world must continue to remain obscure so long as we persist in identifying bucolic poetry with what is understood today by pastoral. To be sure, Theocritus does develop the pastoral setting of many Idylls with a power and immediacy as unprecedented in his forebears as it is unsurpassed by his followers.¹ William Berg, although he admits that “Theocritus would hardly have known what we meant” in calling his first experiments in country mime “‘the earliest of his pastoral poems,’”² nonetheless furnishes a precise account of Theocritus' originality in pastoral terms. According to Berg, the pastoral achievement of Theocritus does not consist in his depiction of a rustic locale, but in the self-consciousness with which he exploits the countryside's metaphorical value. After noting the traditional use of natural metaphors for artistic creativity in archaic and classical poetry, Berg declares:

When a Greek poet contemplates and characterizes his own work in a poem, one or more of these natural metaphors will often appear. The more self-conscious the poet becomes, the more he imagines himself … [engaged] in an imitation of natural processes. Around him flourish the works of nature, his first model: a landscape appears in the mind. Inevitably a type of poetry emerged which sustained the landscape and permitted the poet to dwell within it at greater length. … The conscious recognition of this landscape, however, had to await an era of self-conscious poetry, a literary atmosphere in which the poet, divorced from all civic function, was alone with his Muse, so to speak, and free to look within himself, to reflect on the nature of his art.³

Berg goes on to say, quite rightly, that this interior landscape was consciously discovered in the Hellenistic age and to credit Theocritus more than anyone else with its discovery.⁴

Despite these valid observations, a variety of factors combine to prohibit equating Theocritus' invention of bucolic poetry with the heightened description of pastoral scenes or the self-conscious discovery of a spiritual landscape, distinctive and characteristic features of his art as these things may be. First of all, such innovations may not be deemed to constitute a sufficiently radical departure from previous literary tradition; as Dover points out, “The fact that no one in antiquity regarded any poet earlier than Theokritos as having written bucolic poetry is a warning to us not to underrate the originality of Theokritos or to overrate the bucolic element in the poets” who preceded him.⁵ Much more important, however, the association of bucolic poetry with either an elaborately developed pastoralism or a self-conscious exploitation of it creates a mass of contradictions between Theocritus' supposed programme and his observable practice which are impossible to reconcile so long as such an association continues to be made.

The “Seventh Idyll” of Theocritus is generally acknowledged by recent interpreters to be a conscious showpiece of his art and a manifesto of his poetic ideals as they are embodied in bucolic poetry. Between the opening of the poem, with its promise of an inspirational visit to a rustic harvest festival, and the closing lines, in which the promise is seen to have been abundantly fulfilled, occurs the speaker's encounter with Lycidas, the quintessential goatherd; the center of the work is occupied with their exchange of songs, concluding with the symbolic consecration of the city poet by the goatherd. The action, which is modeled on Hesiod's encounter with the Muses at the beginning of the Theogony and on the meeting of Odysseus and Eumaeus with the goatherd Melanthius in the seventeenth book of the Odyssey, is charged with a special significance both for the poet's own relation to the literary tradition in general and for the particular place he defines for himself within it.⁶ The poem's narrator, whom the goatherd calls Simichidas, proposes the poetic contest thus: …

But come—for ours is a common road and a common morning—let's bucolize!

Lycidas replies: …

[35-36]

But come, let's begin our bucolic song right away, Simichidas. For my part, I—see, friend, if you like this ditty which I just worked out in the mountains.

When Lycidas has finished, the narrator of the poem responds: …

[49-51]

Lycidas, my friend, the Nymphs taught me, too, many such things while I was tending cattle [boukoleonta] on the mountains.

[91-92]

There can be little doubt that what has taken place is an exchange of bucolic poems as Theocritus understands the word.

If our current understanding of the verb boukoliasdesthai is correct, the speaker's exhortation to Lycidas in line 36 should mean something of the order “let's make like cowherds,” or, more specifically, “let's speak cow-herd-talk.” As the second passage quoted above clearly indicates, however, Lycidas understands the word to refer to the making of “bucolic” song; and as neither of the two compositions entered in the contest bears the slightest relation to cowherds or to their talk, it is abundantly obvious that boukoliasdesthai signifies, at least in this context, the process of creating a bucolic poem—it is the terminus technicus for the poetic activity, just as boukolika is the name of the product. Lycidas goes on to assert that he composed his piece in the mountains (… ν … …ει) and the narrator replies that the Nymphs taught him, too, many noble things while he was plying the cowherd's trade on the mountains, with a glance at the Theogony (22-23): …

… [the Muses] who once taught Hesiod fair song as he was shepherding lambs below holy Helicon.

Thus, the language used by the two interlocutors and the larger literary significance surrounding their encounter emphatically characterize their compositions as typical, exemplary, and preeminent specimens of bucolic poetry. The unwary reader of Theocritus, accustomed to the conventional association of bucolic poetry with a pastoral subject, expects a rustic scene of rich and sensuous description shot through with vivid, realistic detail—the sort of landscape at which our poet excels and which is actually exemplified at the conclusion of “Idyll 7” itself.⁷ But the two bucolic songs composed by Theocritus contain hardly a trace of these features which are met with in such abundance elsewhere in the Idylls.

Indeed, had not Theocritus specifically labeled the two poems “bucollic” and singled them out as showpieces of the “genre,” no modern critic would be inclinded to regard them as exemplary bucolics (meaning “ancient pastorals”). The song of Lycidas is an amatory send-off poem for a traveler, a propemptikon with erotic overtones, addressed to one Ageanax. The poem's wit lies in the artful manner with which its emphasis is shifted from parting salutations to seductive overtures; the fervent wishes expressed by Lycidas are “as much for Ageanax's complaisance as for his safety.”⁸ At this point, the song veers off to anticipate a series of imagined events, including a rustic celebration graced by pastoral musicians, and culminates in an impossible wish for the companionship of the legendary goatherd and singer Comatas. Despite the heightened pastoral tones introduced here, the erotic theme continues to predominate—as a glance at the two songs performed at the anticipated picnic indicates. The pastoral subject of the first (the heartbreak of Daphnis and the countryside's mourning for him) should not be allowed to obscure the fictive song's true purpose—namely, to harmonize with the feelings of nostalgia and bittersweet longing which Lycidas pictures himself as indulging on the occasion of Ageanax's eventual departure: Lycidas can thereby demonstrate (by implication) the genuineness of his passion for Ageanax in the present moment. The story of the Muses' rescue of Comatas, the subject of the second song, and Lycidas' expression of desire for his companionship are subtly designed to inflate those praiseworthy qualities of Comatas which are also shared by the speaker, Lycidas (himself a goatherd and a poet), and to provide examples of appropriate action for Ageanax to follow: save me as the Muses saved Comatas; long to share my company as I long to share his.⁹

It is noteworthy that Lycidas, though a goatherd, dissociates himself somewhat from his rustic company in these scenes: he envisions himself reclining comfortably by a fire, garlanded and drinking wine, while two shepherds pipe and Tityrus sings. The pastoral element is imported into his world, it seems, almost as if he were a city dweller; indeed, the only time he chooses to remind us of his rustic identity is at the end of his composition, when he is seeking to be compared implicitly with Comatas and is presenting his own longing as a model for Ageanax's projected desire: …

So might I have herded your fair goats on the mountains, hearkening to your voice, while you, under the oaks or under the pines reclined, sweetly warbling, divine Comatas.

[87-89]

Otherwise, all the pastoral color in the poem is provided exclusively by the rustic trio of performers called in to help Lycidas celebrate his imagined erotic victory. Their songs create a pretty backdrop to what is otherwise an urbane and witty love poem addressed to a boy with a stikingly antipastoral name.¹⁰ It may be objected, of course, that Lycidas' tendency to quail before erotic difficulties and to escape instead into the realm of the imagination represents a classically pastoral alternative and is consistent, moreover, with Priapus' characterization of goatherds, in “Idyll 1.” 85-91, as inept and backward in matters of love; besides, the very mention of Daphnis and Comatas seems to glance at the most pastoral of Theocritus' Idylls. But all this, true though it may be, cannot erase the impression made by Lycidas' flirtation with a non-pastoral persona for his poetic voice and by his treatment of a non-pastoral theme: infatuation with a foreign youth.

Simichidas' reply, which even Berg considers “more urbane than pastoral,”¹¹ opens with an expression of sympathy for the erotic plight of his friend Aratus (the addressee of “Idyll 6”), who is also in love with a boy. Hints of sarcasm and mockery are initially concealed. The speaker proceeds to invoke the aid of Pan, using elements of the hymn form to dwell on the more disreputable aspects of the god's cult, and the help of the Erotes as well; he then abruptly drops this pretense of identification with Aratus' feelings, pointing out that the boy is in any case past his prime and not worth sighing over, and begs not to be pressed into any more nightlong vigils on his doorstep. The cynical and humorous tone of Simichidas' poem contrasts with the sentimentality of Lycidas' appeal to Ageanax, producing a typically Theocritean effect: one need only recall Priapus' mocking speech to Daphnis in “Idyll 1,” Milon's robust and sarcastic advice to the lovesick Bucaeus in “Idyll 10,” the exchanges between the largely ironic Battus and the sentimental Corydon in “Idyll 4,” or the conversation between Aeschinas and Thyonichus in “Idyll 14” in order to appreciate the pattern. Thus, although Simichidas ostensibly takes no notice of Lycidas' song and offers an independent composition, his poem has the effect of a personal rejoinder.¹²

If the song of Simichidas can be said to have a setting, the sensitivity to social disgrace which it exploits and the mention of nocturnal serenades seem to place it in the city rather than in the country. It combines hymnic, epistolary, and komastic poetic forms¹³ with that of the paraclausithyron (a serenade of sorts), and while Theocritus can adapt each of these four types to a rustic context on occasion (Idylls “22,” “11,” and “3”), Simichidas' modified kōmos or paraclausithyron introduces a note of sophisticated urbanity no less than does Lycidas' modified propemptikon. Neither poem elaborates natural scenes, recasts mythological narratives into a new and arresting form, or incorporates folkloric poetic structures—unlike the one work which scholars have customarily taken to be typical of Theocritean bucolic poetry: the Daphnis-song of Thyrsis in “Idyll 1.” Not that pastoral elements are utterly absent from Simichidas' song: he begins by saying that he loves Myrto as much as the goats love the spingtime (96-97). The invocation of Pan, the description of Arcadian cult practices, and the threatened curse of miserable pasturage may also be thought to contribute a certain pastoral coloring. Pan's identity as patron deity of pederasts (cf. Call., fr. 689 Pfeiffer) is perhaps more relevant in the context, however, and in any case the learned exposition of local customs was a favorite theme of urban, Alexandrian poetry (Arcadia may be included for its primitive obscurity rather than for its rustic charm).¹⁴ In short, the poem of Simichidas is urban in setting, didactic in intent, and ironically humorous in tone: it is not pastoral.

The songs of Lycidas and Simichidas, taken together, illustrate and exemplify bucolic poetry as Theocritus understood it. They demand comparison with many other aspects of his work and with much of Alexandrian poetry in general. Their artistic excellence has been increasingly appreciated in the last twenty-five years. Nevertheless, they raise serious problems for the interpretation of Theocritus which have yet to be properly confronted. In particular, an analysis of the two songs in their context seems utterly to prohibit the equation of bucolic poetry in the sense intended by Theocritus with pastoral poetry as it is currently understood by literary critics. When the rest of Theocritus' oeuvre is examined with this problem in mind, a surprising number of additional factors appear which weaken even further the conventional identification of Greek bucolic with pastoral poetry.

It has already been pointed out that the contrasting attitudes contained in the songs of Lycidas and Simichidas in “Idyll 7” recall a similar conflict of values expressed in the conversation between Milon and Bucaeus in “Idyll 10.” In “Idyll 10” as in “Idyll 7” the encounter culminates in an exchange of songs which are separate and distinct but opposed to one another and mutually referential. The significance and pervasiveness of this normative dialectic in Theocritus' work have been discussed by Josef-Hans Kühn, who argues that Theocritus, by representing two important and characteristic features of his poetry under the guise of two concrete figures, set out to reveal the manifold resources of his own artistry.¹⁵ That it is impossible to decide without a context whether Kühn's remarks refer to “Idyll 7” or to “Idyll 10” demonstrates the extent of the similarities between the two poems. And yet, whereas “Idyll 7” is generally held to be one of the most representative and influential of Theocritus' pastoral efforts, “Idyll 10” is related only marginally to the pastoral mode. Its protagonists are reapers, agricultural day laborers, and one of them identifies himself with a poetic tradition of field-workers' songs which he traces to the legendary hero Lityerses.¹⁶ Now Gilbert Highet maintains, as we have seen, that “ploughmen and field workers are not introduced” into pastoral, “because their life is too laborious and sordid.” Rosenmeyer has emphasized that “otium is a keyword in the discussion of the pastoral” and has devoted a lengthy discussion to the importance of leisure and tranquillity in pastoral literature.¹⁷ The identification of pastoral with bucolic imports a theoretical distinction between Idylls “7” and “10” into the Theocritean corpus where it is alien to the spirit of the two poems and violates the more pertinent similarities of structure and theme connecting them.

Pastoral criticism has, on occasion, made allowances for agricultural subjects, however, and it may be prudent not to insist on the inadmissible qualities of “Idyll 10.” There are other unities and correspondences within the Theocritean corpus with a more urgent claim on our attention. The “Eleventh Idyll” of Theocritus demands comparison with its companion piece, “Idyll 13.” Both are poetic epistles addressed to Nicias, whose name occurs in the same position of the same line of each poem—at the beginning of the second verse (a logical place for the dedication, which, if it occurred earlier, would risk becoming part of the title). Both Idylls deal with mythological subjects drawn from heroic legend—with the Cyclops and with Hylas, respectively—and both exploit the comic possibilities latent in these subjects.¹⁸ “Idyll 11” has eighty-one lines, “Idyll 13” seventy-five. But whereas the former is almost classically pastoral, the latter is not pastoral at all: it describes an incident during the voyage of the Argonauts—the drowning (or nympholepsy) of Hylas, the beloved of Heracles, and the mighty hero's desperate, unsuccessful search for the boy.

In the case of Idylls “11” and “13,” then, it is clear that the distinction between pastoral and non-pastoral is foreign to the common thrust of the poems and obscures their similarities of form, theme, and technique. The further possibility that both “Idylls 11” and “13” may have belonged to the bucolic corpus of Theocritus creates additional difficulties for those who wish to equate bucolic with pastoral. Although “Idyll 11” is nowhere explicitly characterized as a bucolic poem, it shares many features (such as its rustic locale, use of Doricisms, preoccupation with the importance of song, and ironic treatment of unsophisticated speech) with the indisputably bucolic Idylls. It has the same subject as “Idyll 6”—the courtship of Galatea by Polyphemus; both Idylls “6” and “11,” moreover, begin as poetic epistles addressed, respectively, to Aratus and Nicias. Virgil's extensive imitations of “Idyll 11” in his own Bucolics also provide a clue to its “generic” identity. Similarly, “Idyll 13,” despite its lack of pastoral qualifications, is expressly included among Theocritus' bucolic compositions by a scholiast commenting on Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.1236. … Virgil, for what it is worth, inserts the Hylas story into the song of Silenus in Eclogue 6.43-44. The vexed question concerning the dialect of “Idyll 13” will be discussed in its place (part III, chapter 8); for the moment, it is sufficient to point out that since by late antiquity the bucolic “genre” had become associated with the Doric dialect, the repeated assertions in the textual tradition—from the Antinoe papyrus on through the manuscripts—that “Idyll 13” is composed in Doric, in spite of some evidence to the contrary, may reflect a long-standing and ancient notion about its bucolic identity. Such a classification of “Idyll 13,” if accepted, would prohibit the synonymous usage of bucolic and pastoral.

A similar comparison might be made between Idylls “1” and “2.” In this case there is no question of dialectal deviation. Both poems are composed in similar versions of Doric, and both—unique in this respect among all the Idylls—make use of a recurrent refrain or intercalary verse which breaks up the narrative into “stanzas” of varying length and represents a highly anomalous (“lyric”) element in continuous hexameter poetry. Furthermore, the plethora of Homeric forms and the metrical irregularities in both poems place them within the same stylistic subgroup according to established Theocritean stylometry.¹⁹ Both poems investigate the pathology of love and share numerous elements of feeling, expression, and technique.²⁰ The “First Idyll” is 152 lines long; the Second is fourteen verses longer. But whereas the “First Idyll,” set in the countryside, relates a conversation between two herdsmen and introduces into world literature the pastoral hero par excellence—Daphnis the dying neatherd, the prime subject of rustic song and genius of the Sicilian landscape—the “Second Idyll” takes place entirely within the humble (not to say squalid) dwelling of a lower-middle-class teenager on the outskirts of a large city. Once again, the distinction between pastoral and non-pastoral serves only to create artificial divisions between poems which otherwise would naturally complement each other.

Pastoral or not, Idylls “1” and “2” share a strong claim to be considered bucolic. The song of Thyrsis in “Idyll 1” is emphatically designated bucolic by each of its numerous refrains; its singer is said to be an adept at bucolic poetry. … The exchange of compliments at the poem's opening is widely imitated by later bucolic aspirants and its first line is cited by Terentianus Maurus (2123-30) as an example of the so-called bucolic diaeresis. Hermogenes also refers to the poem as an instance of bucolic (… 2.306, p. 323.19-22 Rabe). The “Second Idyll” belongs on stylometric grounds, and perhaps on the evidence of the manuscript tradition as well, to that group of Theocritus' poems which includes Idylls “1” and “7”—the most self-consciously bucolic works in the Theocritean corpus. The anti-pastoral locale of “Idyll 2” should not raise a serious objection to including the poem among the bucolic Idylls and it certainly did not prevent Virgil from using “Idyll 2” as the model for the second half of his Eighth Eclogue. To be sure, Virgil's reworking of the “Second Idyll” places the speaker in a rustic setting and culminates in the countryside's victory over the lure of the city; the beloved's name is also changed, significantly, from Delphis to Daphnis.²¹ This is quite in keeping with Virgil's own aesthetic objectives throughout the Eclogues. However, if Virgil did not consider “Idyll 2” bucolic, why did he go to the trouble of incorporating such an irrelevant and (from the pastoral point of view) almost unassimilable work into his own liber bucolicon? And why did he balance his imitation of it so carefully against an imitation of “Idyll 1” in the first half of the Eighth Eclogue? The very difficulty of adapting Theocritus' poem to suit his purposes might point to some external or formal constraint shaping Virgil's choice.

Once again, the Antinoe papyrus and all the manuscripts that preserve a titulus for the “Second Idyll” label it a “Doric” composition. But the manuscript tradition contains clearer indications of its “generic” identity. Several manuscripts preserve a wretched little poem bidding farewell to Theocritus which concludes the bucolic portion of their holdings. The anonymous epigrammatist, like Artemidorus of Tarsus (whose famous couplet served him as a model), “casts himself not merely as a fellow poet but as the herdsman of the tradition, expressing the critic's role in a metaphor drawn from the matter.”²² The Byzantine scholar's use of this figure, along with his specific verbal reminiscences of Artemidorus, tell a good deal about the sources of his inspiration. …

Simichidas Theocritus, shepherd of wise sheep and goatherd of prolific, bleating goats, which the pastures of Helicon nourished splendidly: I did not slink about your fold—rather, I collected the Bucolic Muses, your offspring, from the mountains where they had scattered, and led them into one fold. I happened on no more than these (and even these with difficulty!).

In the Vatican manuscripts UEA these lines are followed by the notation “conclusion of Theocritus' Bucolics”; in U and E, the poem and notation occur at the end of “Idyll 18” and separate it from the Syrinx, one of the ancient bucolic glyphs or Technopaegnia; in A, they divide the Theocritean material from non-Theocritean portions of the manuscript. In the Laurentian manuscript G the poem and notation follow “Idyll 14” and separate it from the Alae (“Wings”) of Simias. The Laurentian manuscript P, however, retains the poem after the end of “Idyll 14” but omits the concluding notation, for in P, “Idyll 14” is not followed by any of the Technopaegnia, whether attributed to Theocritus (as the Syrinx usually is) or to other poets, but by “Idyll 2,” the Lament for Bion, and “Idyll 16,” in that order. Clearly the notation … was inappropriate in P, where the scribe was about to continue copying “Idyll 2” and perhaps as many as two more genuinely bucolic works by Theocritus after “Idyll 14.”²³ The little valedictory poem, however, had become attached by convention to the end of that “Idyll” and remained there. One might object that the language of the Byzantine scholiast's poem to Theocritus, with its pastoral imagery, Doric intonation, and explicit claim of terminating the bucolic corpus, excludes “Idyll 2” from the bucolic compositions of Theocritus more decisively than the mitigating evidence of the omitted notation argues for its inclusion. It should be recalled, however, that the scholiast's verses occur in the manuscripts at the end of Idylls “14” and “18,” which are in any case the least pastoral of Theocritus' works (the former relates a highly colloquial exchange between two mercenaries, the latter is an epithalamium for Helen and Menelaus). Therefore, the poem cannot be construed to mark the end of what is conventionally understood as the bucolic corpus; furthermore, it is clear that the poem's usual function, that of separating the Idylls from other material, is suspended in P (the manuscript under discussion). Given, then, that the position of dedicatory poem cannot in any event be presumed to divide the pastoral Idylls of Theocritus from his nonpastoral (and hence “non-bucolic”) corpus, it is the omission of the concluding notation in P before “Idyll 2” which may be deemed significant and which perhaps identifies “Idyll 2” as a bucolic poem.

The possible bucolic identity of Idylls “10,” “13,” and “2,” as well as the connection which Theocritus establishes between them and Idylls “7,” “11,” “6,” and “1,” agrees with the evidence afforded by an examination of the songs in the “Seventh Idyll” in warning us not to treat the bucolic poetry of Theocritus as a primitive version of pastoral. The lack of congruence between the ancient usage of bucolic and the modern meaning of pastoral was first pointed out by B. A. van Groningen, who noted that the early fifth-century compendium of Stobaeus preserves a number of poems in Doric hexameters, ascribed to the Greek bucolic poets Moschus and Bion under the title of Bucolics, which make no mention of herdsmen or flocks and hardly any reference to the countryside.²⁴ Although the first fragment of Moschus (in Gow's edition) develops a typically pastoral contrast between the hazards of life at sea and the easeful tranquillity of the countryside, the remaining two fragments preserved by Stobaeus … “from the Bucolics of Moschus the Sicilian” … are devoted entirely to erotic subjects. To be sure, the frustrated chain of lovers in fragment 2 includes Pan, Echo, a Satyr, and an otherwise unknown Lyde, but their names are the only hint of a pastoral setting, if one is actually implied. The third fragment, reproduced below, is a mythological piece with an erotic point about the union of Alpheus and Arethusa. That Alpheus was a river in Arcadia, the home of Pan, does not seem relevant; as already noted, Arcadia is not a pastoral landscape in the Greek tradition, and Moschus had not read Milton. Except for the connection of Arethusa with Syracuse in Sicily, the supposed birthplace of Theocritus and for that reason the putative origin of bucolic poetry, Arethusa can have had no conceivable pastoral associations (although it may have had bucolic ones: see “Idyll 1.” 117; Lament for Bion, 77) until Virgil used it in the Tenth Eclogue to symbolize the unadulterate tradition of bucolic inspiration. …

When Alpheius, from Pisa departing, journeyeth under the sea,
He brings Arethusa the waters that nurture the olive-tree,
Bears bridal-gifts, fair leaves and flowers of the sacred soil.
Deep under the billows he plunges: far under the sea like oil
He races, for never mingle his streams with the water's flow:
Of the river that rusheth through her nothing the sea doth know.
That knavish Boy, that teacher of naughtiness, mischief-contriver,
Love, by his spells made even a river a deep-sea-diver!

[trans. A. S. Way]

The subject of the story is crotic—Love can teach even rivers new tricks—and whatever pastoral flavor may be judged to accompany it is plainly subordinated.

The fragments of Bion selected by Stobaeus … from the bucolics of Bion … are even more conclusive on this score. They include verses on love and poetry (fr. 3): …

Let Eros summon the Muses, the Muses bring Eros.
The Muses ever grant my constant desire a song,
a sweet song, than which there is no pleasanter medicine.

The allusion in the last line to the “Eleventh Idyll” of Theocritus does not alter the fact of the lack of pastoral elements in the poem. Somewhat the same theme occurs in fragment 1, which recounts Apollo's search for an antidote to his sorrow at the death of Hyacinth, and in fragment 9, an elaboration of the interdependence of love and poetic inspiration (Lycidas, the name of the beloved in line 10, is the only suggestion of a pastoral context). Fragment 13 tells the story of a young bird-catcher who tried to bag Eros and is given some sage advice by an old plowman. Fragment 2, which may report a conversation between two rustics, is nevertheless exclusively taken up with a discussion about the respective merits of the seasons. It is noteworthy that in fragment 10, the cowherd commissioned by Aphrodite to instruct Eros how to sing restricts his bucolic themes to aetiological topics and stories about the discovery of various musical instruments.²⁵ …

But no matter how much I bucolized about how Pan
discovered the flute, Athena the pipe,
Hermes the lyre, sweet Apollo the cithara. …

The fragments of Moschus and Bion are similar in spirit to a Doric hexameter poem of unknown authorship which was ascribed to Theocritus in a fifteenth-century manuscript and usually inserted in bucolic collections after … poem 1. … Although no authority identifies it as bucolic, its resemblance to other bucolic fragments is so striking (not to mention its unswerving observance of the so-called bucolic diaeresis) that its presence in the Theocritean corpus becomes difficult to explain only if the identification of bucolic with pastoral is rigorously upheld: …

A cruel bee once stung the thievish Love-god as he was stealing honey from the hives, and pricked all his finger-tips. And he was hurt, and blew upon his hand, and stamped and danced. And to Aphrodite he showed the wound, and made complaint that so small a creature as a bee should deal so cruel a wound. And his mother answered laughing, “Art not thou like the bees, that art so small yet dealest wounds so cruel?” [trans. Gow]

[“Idyll 19”]

A similar argument might be made for “Idyll 21,” which, though it could be viewed as part of the (later and largely derivative) tradition of the piscatory eclogue, seems very much out of place in a pastoral anthology; yet it shares many characteristics with the bucolic poems examined thus far.

A survey of the works ascribed to Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion which can be identified as bucolic on the basis of internal or external evidence has demonstrated that the modern tendency to equate bucolic with pastoral is not only historically inaccurate but also fails to account for the nature of the very poems it is designed to elucidate. The general argument can be substantiated by examining the entry under Theocritus in the Byzantine Suda, the relevant portion of which reads: “He wrote the so-called Bucolic hexameter poems in the Doric dialect. Some also ascribe to him the following works: Proetides, Elpides [Expectations], Hymns, Heroines, Dirges [epikēdeia], Lyrics [melē], Elegies and Iambs, Epigrams.” Although the testimony of the Suda must be used with care, the traditional Theocritean bibliography preserved in this passage may aid in the task of distinguishing the bucolic from the non-bucolic works of Theocritus.²⁶

About the Proetides nothing is known. It may have been an epyllion about the punishment of the daughters of Proetus. The story is alluded to by Silenus in the course of his song in Virgil's Sixth Eclogue (line 48) and it is possible that the poem of Theocritus in question, if it existed, was numbered among his bucolic compositions, not identified as a separate work. But the evidence afforded by Virgil is in this case hardly consequential, and in the absence of further information it is impossible to pursue the matter beyond the point of speculation.

“Idyll 21” concludes with a moral about the foolishness of being deluded by dreams and false hopes. As such, it might qualify as part of the (otherwise lost) Elpides. However, “Idyll 21” has come down to us with its own title (though it is attested in only one branch of the Laurentian manuscript tradition) and does not appear to be an excerpt; nor is it likely that this short poem, similar in formal, thematic, and stylistic respects—not the least of which are meter and dialect—to Idylls “4,” “10,” “14,” and “1.” 39-44, should have been singled out and classified as a separate work. If some longer poem of Theocritus is intended by this entry, it is unknown (and may never have existed).

The opening line of “Idyll 22” identifies it as a hymn to the Dioscuri. To be sure, the poem contains stichomythy, dramatic monologues, and other features traditionally foreign to the hymn form, but Theocritus' fondness for contaminating poetic conventions, in itself a common characteristic of Alexandrian poetry in his day, may well be judged to overrule formal objections to its inclusion in the category of hymns. Nor do the many Doric readings of the manuscripts diminish the good reasons for classifying “Idyll 22” among the putative Hymns of Theocritus rather than among his bucolic poems. Idylls “24” and “26” have also been advanced as candidates for inclusion among the Hymns; only the latter contains hymnic elements—such as the closure beginning … “farewell, Dionysus” [33]. … It is composed in Doric,²⁷ moreover, and makes a very strange, short hymn, but—in the light of Callimachus' example—matters of dialect and convention need not be considered insuperable obstacles to identifying all these poems as hymns. Finally, the encomia to Hieron and Ptolemy, Idylls “16” and “17” (more plausibly the latter, with its grandiloquent opening and epic diction), might be enrolled among the Hymns, if necessary, along with “Idyll 18,” the Doric epithalamium for Helen and Menelaus.

The only Idyll conceivably appropriate for inclusion among the Theocritean Heroines is “Idyll 26” again, which retells the story of the Bacchae in condensed form. It seems too self-contained to be part of a series or longer poem and, if subjective impressions are worth anything, its emphasis does not suit it to be numbered among mythological tales of heroic women. In any case, “Idyll 26” cannot very well be reckoned both a hymn and a heroine poem. Gow has suggested that the Europa and Megara of Moschus (nos. 2 and 4) might be enrolled in this category. The latter is certainly attributed to Theocritus in some manuscripts (in C and Tr, for example), the former more rarely so (only in the 1516 editions of P. Giunta and Z. Callierges), but if the tradition reported by the scholiast is correct in asserting that Moschus was called Theocritus, the ascription of these poems to Theocritus' authorship is perfectly credible.²⁸ The other poems of Theocritus which treat feminine subjects, Idylls “2” and “15,” could hardly be supposed to deal with heroines.

Bion's Lament for Adonis is ascribed to Theocritus by C and by the Iuntine and Calliergian editions; the disputed Lament for Bion, usually claimed by Moschus, is attributed to Theocritus by CDS and Tr. … It is possible that the bibliographical tradition preserved by the Suda included these in the title Dirges. … A number of funerary epigrams have come down to us under the name of Theocritus (7, 9, 11, 15, 16, 20, 23, conceivably 6 and 19, and the dubious 25); it cannot be determined beyond doubt that the Dirges mentioned in the Suda do not refer to them.

Unless we take epikēdeia as the modifier of melē and treat the two words as a single entry, the bibliographical tradition cited in the Suda furnishes one category for which surviving works of Theocritus can unquestionably be found. Idylls “28,” “29,” “30,” and “31” are composed in lyric meters and in a version of the Aeolic dialect. The Antinoë papyrus and a few manuscripts take note of these poems' Aeolic identity. There is no reason to doubt that the four poems represented part of Theocritus' efforts in the melic genre.²⁹

Little needs to be said about the remaining titles. No trace has survived of the Elegies and Iambs,³⁰ if indeed they ever existed. Twenty-six epigrams ascribed by one source or another to Theocritus are extant and some are undoubtedly genuine.

To sum up: the value of the bibliographical tradition transmitted by the Suda is highly questionable. It apparently attributed to Theocritus several works of alien authorship, such as the pastoral Laments or perhaps other works by the later Greek bucolic poets, and it lists two or more titles (Proetides, Iambs, probably Elpides and Heroines as well) which cannot be accounted for by the slightest preserved scrap of Theocritean poetry. Furthermore, it passes over in silence some of the genuine, presumably non-bucolic works of Theocritus which have survived: unless the Berenice (a fragment in Epic hexameters is preserved by Athenaeus, 284a) is to be classed among the Hymns or Heroines, it represents an aspect of Theocritus' poetic endeavor otherwise unattested—and the same might be said, though with considerably more diffidence, about the works of Theocritus alluded to by Eustathius and the Etymologicum magnum.³¹ As Gow remarks, “Such a list firmly presented as describing Theocritus' range would command little confidence; and this is not so presented, for the entry in Suidas asserts only that ‘some ascribe’ such works to Theocritus. We cannot be certain that the enigmatic ascriptions were wrong, but the absence of citations in antiquity, and the negative evidence of the papyri, discourage the belief that they were right.”³²

Nevertheless, the critical reader will be struck by the number of poems in the Theocritean collection left unaccounted for by the bibliographical tradition—so long as a work's admission to the bucolic corpus depends on its pastoral qualities.³³ More than half of the collection, eighteen Idylls in all, lack such qualities almost entirely: Idylls “2,” “12,” “13,” “14,” “15,” “16,” “17,” “18,” “19,” “21,” “23,” “24,” “25,” “26,” “28,” “29,” “30,” and “31.” Of these, Idylls “2,” “12,” “13,” “14,” “15,” “19,” “23” (along with Idylls “16,” “21,” and “24” in all probability) cannot be attributed to whatever works, now lost, might have been associated with Theocritus' name in antiquity according to the evidence of the Suda. Moreover, these Idylls include some of Theocritus' genuine and most distinctive masterpieces (Idylls “2,” “13,” “14,” “15,” “16,” and “24”). This fact has been taken, by Gow and others, to impugn even further the value of the bibliographical tradition preserved in the Suda. But one should recall that the Suda ascribes to Theocritus only “the so-called Bucolic hexameters in Doric dialect” with any confidence. And another scholion points out that Theocritus' reputation rested on his bucolic compositions. …³⁴ It is likely that more of Theocritus' bucolic poetry would have survived than his efforts in other forms. Although the testimony of the Suda, then, is not so authoritative as to compel us to include all the unaccounted Idylls in the bucolic corpus, it does suggest the strong possibility that more of Theocritus' surviving poems figured in it than the current equation of bucolic and pastoral allows us to recognize.

A case has been made already for the possible bucolic identity of Idylls “2” and “13.” The “Twenty-fourth Idyll” shares with the “Thirteenth” an interest in Heracles and is labeled “Doric” by the Antinoë papyrus (which, though inconsistent, preserves more Doric forms in the doubtful text of this poem than does the manuscript tradition). It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that Virgil imitated “Idyll 24” in his own Bucolics. The speaker of Alphesiboeus' song in Eclogue 8 instructs her maidservant:

fer cineres, Amarylli, foras riuoque fluenti
transque caput iace, nec respexeris.

[101-02]

Take out the ashes, Amaryllis, and throw them behind you into a running stream, and don't look back.

This injunction recalls Tiresias' advice to Alcmena in “Idyll 24”: …

In the early morning let one of your handmaids collect the ash from the fire and, when she has brought all of it across the river to the broken rocks, well beyond our boundaries, cast it away, and then come back without turning to look behind her.

[93-96]

Although Virgil's version is more condensed, according to the needs of his narrower compass, it remains faithful to the Theocritean original. A passage from the non-pastoral “Idyll 18” (lines 29-31) might even have provided a model for Virgil in two different Eclogues (5.32-34, 7.65-68).³⁵ Did Virgil, then, consider Idylls “24” and “18” bucolic?

In the light of the many correspondences between the pastoral and non-pastoral Idylls, some recent scholarly efforts to distinguish the bucolic poems of Theocritus within the larger collection of his work according to the presence or absence of pastoral elements must be considered to have been misplaced. Although Charles Segal, for example, commenting on parallels between “Idyll 1” and “the non-bucolic ‘Second Idyll,’” calls attention to “the continuity within the totality of Theocritus' oeuvre,” he finds it necessary to insist on the peculiar “coherence” among the bucolic landscapes. But the qualities which in his view set apart the bucolic landscapes are often arbitrary (cypresses are akrokomoi, “high-leaved,” in “Idyll 22.”41 but not in the “bucolic” poems), vague (“complete fusion of surface and latent meaning”), or derived from post-Theocritean definitions of pastoral (wild forests cannot be part of an authentic bucolic landscape).³⁶ Similarly, Robert Coleman persists in conflating bucolic with pastoral even while acknowledging that “the boundaries of the [pastoral] genre remain indeterminate” in Hellenistic poetry and admitting, “Although there can be little doubt that Theocritus invented the pastoral genre, it is not at all clear that he regarded the pastoral poems as distinct from the rest of his idylls in anything but their rural setting.”³⁷ Coleman does not appear to grasp how devastating is his admission, which he goes on to amplify in considerable detail, for the conventional understanding of ancient bucolic poetry. The ultimate paradox created by pastoralist criticism of bucolic poetry is provided by Gilbert Lawall, who, arguing that the first seven Idylls of the Vatican manuscripts (nos. 1-7 in the normal modern arrangement) form a separate poetry book, is obliged to include the intractably non-pastoral (but possibly bucolic) “Second Idyll” among the “Coan Pastorals” of that collection and to plead for its pastoral identity.³⁸

The many continuities within the Theocritean corpus spanning the pastoral and non-pastoral Idylls represent only one of the current interpretative problems which any new and rigorous historical definition of bucolic poetry must attempt to solve. The lack of an appropriate designation for those poems which are without pastoral characteristics yet share other features with the pastoral Idylls also suggests the kind of vacuum which such a definition, in order to be successful, must fill. There is no reason to insist that all, or even most, of the Idylls—or those unaccounted for by the bibliographical tradition in the Suda—be assimilated to a single formulation of bucolic poetry. It is legitimate to presume, however, that the distinctive mark of a successful definition will be the ease and naturalness with which it is able to encompass the great variety of material contained in many of the Idylls and help make sense of (or, at least, not violate) the many similarities of form and content connecting otherwise dissimilar poems in the Theocritean corpus.

Notes

1. Cf. Parry (1957), 14; Hieatt (1972), 7-11. For a lively appreciation of Theocritus as a pastoralist, see the 1846 essay of C.-A. Sainte-Beuve, “Théocrite,” Derniers Portraits littéraires (Paris, 1858), 3-43, especially 3-29.

2. Berg (1974), 8; see also 25: Theocritus “had never heard of ‘pastoral poetry.’”

3. Ibid., 5.

4. Cf. Legrand (1898), 438-39: “Le poète des Idylles n'a pas appelé l'attention de ses contemporains sur la campagne et sur la vie champêtre; il n'a pas écrit le premier des pièces empreintes d'un bout à l'autre de l'esprit ‘idyllique’; mais il connut mieux que son entourage les réalités rustiques, ou il en connut de plus intéressantes, et il les exposa dans des œuvres d'une forme nouvelle”; Rohde (1932), 81, and 90: “Es ist festzuhalten … dass es keine Bukolik vor Theokrit gibt, dass aber alle Elemente dieser Bukolik zum Greifen bereit lagen, als er auf den Plan trat”; cf. Knaack (1897), col. 1004; Stark (1963), 366-67. Rosenmeyer (1969), 31, is more unqualified in his judgment: “In the case of pastoral, the inquiry [into origins] has been confounded by a natural reluctance to accept the fact that there was no pastoral poetry prior to Theocritus”; even he, however, admits, “All of the elements which [Theocritus] combined to construct a new kind of poetry were available in earlier achievements, but scattered and suspended in other compounds” (41).

5. Dover (1971), lxi.

6. Van Sickle (1976), 23-24, with a survey of recent scholarship.

7. The surprising contrast between the opulent pastoral tones at the close of “Idyll 7” and the absence of such qualities in its explicitly bucolic portions was noted, though differently interpreted, by Legrand (1898), 412; Cholmeley (1919), 24, flatly called “Idyll 7” “pseudo-pastoral.”

8. Gow (1952), II, 145. On the propemptikon form and its relevance to Lycidas' poem, see Cairns (1972), 7-16, 27-28, 163-64. Note Wilamowitz's warning against interpreting the poem of Lycidas within the conceptual framework furnished by this rhetorical form (cited by Kühn [1958], 48n.).

9. Kühn (1958), 50-52. For an opposing interpretation, see Lawall (1967), 89-91, 93-95.

10. Kühn (1958), 49-50; Lawall (1967), 88. Lawall's (1967), 88. Lawall's belief that Ageanax's name implies a specifically aristocratic origin and identity was decisively refuted by Giangrande in his review of Lawall (JHS, 88 [1968], 170).

11. Berg (1974), 23; cf. Coleman (1969), 115-16: “Moreover, the songs which Lycidas and Simichidaas sing in their competition, though full of pastoral colour, have more in common with the erotic themes of other genres.”

12. Kühn (1958), 52-61; Ott (1969), especially 142-59, 212-13; F. Cairns, “Theocritus Idyll 10,” Hermes, 98 (1970), 38-44, who discusses Theocritus' fondness for portraying the clash between an amator and an irrisor amoris.

13. Cf. Cairns (1972), 201-04.

14. Kühn (1958), 53-54, 56. Cf. G. Jachmann, “L'Arcadia come paesaggio bucolico,” Maia, 5 (1952), 161-74; E. Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition,” Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York, 1955), 295-320, especially 297-301; L. Alfonsi, “Dalla Sicilia all'Arcadia,” Aevum, 36 (1962), 234-39; further references to the scholarship on this topic are cited by Schmidt (1964), cols. 965-66.

15. Kühn (1958), 61.

16. On this tradition, see Trencsényi-Waldapfel (1966), 22-25; Gow (1952), II, 204, ad 10.41, who notes a few pages earlier that “‘Id. 10’ differs from the other bucolic Idylls in that its setting is agricultural, not pastoral” (193).

17. Rosenmeyer (1969), 67; more generally, 65-97.

18. The humorous incongruities in “Idyll 11” need little commentary; on “Idyll 13,” see Mastronarde (1968); Effe (1978), 60-64. For a more general discussion of Theocritus' impertinent treatment of mythological material, see Legrand (1898), 184-95; Horstmann (1976), 57-113; Effe (1978), 48-77. But see Poggioli (1975), 4, on the inherent antagonism between the heroic epic and pastoral.

19. Di Benedetto (1956), 48-60; cf. Fabiano (1971), 535.

20. On the various points of resemblance between the two poems, see Lawall (1967), 14-33; Segal (1975), 123; Van Sickle (1976), 24-25.

21. Coleman (1977), 253-55.

22. Van Sickle (1976), 27.

23. P. 333 Wendel; viii-x, for the order of the poems in the mss. Generally, references to the manuscripts and to the order of the poems in them are based on Gow (1952), I, xxxvii-xlvii, but in the case of P and a few other mss. the divisions of Gallavotti, which Gow uses, depend on the character of the preserved text and so cut across the order of the poems in the mss. (Gow, xxxiv n.). That the omission of the concluding notation in P was due to simple error or to negligence cannot, of course, be ruled out. Note that the Lament for Bion is ascribed to Theocritus in CDS and Tr, though not in P.

24. van Groningen (1958), 296-300; cf. Knaack (1897), col. 1009: “Moschos und Bion zeigen in ihrem Nachlass keinen wirklich bukolischen Charakter mehr, es sind nur erotischsentimentale Tändeleien und Spielereien.”

25. But see van Groningen (1958), 297, for a warning that these stories may conceal pastoral motifs.

26. See the discussions of Cholmeley (1919), 52-53, and Gow (1952), I, xxiv-xxv, on which the following paragraphs are based.

27. But see Di Benedetto (1956), 48n.

28. … Whether we are meant to understand that Moschus assumed this name as a gesture of deference to the reputation of his master or was assigned it through the confused admiration of his readers remains uncertain. For the manuscript ascriptions see Gow (1952), I, xxxv-xlvii.

29. West (1967).

30. “Idyll 8” contains a passage in elegiac distichs; this led Cholmeley (1919), 52, to class it among the hypothetical elegies of Theocritus. “Idyll 8” identifies itself quite unambiguously as bucolic, however, although its elegiac segment may have led the originator of the bibliographical tradition preserved in the Suda to invent a separate category for it. On the problem of classification, see Schmidt (1972), 38, 282.

31. The value of these allusions is in doubt; see Gow (1952), II, 520.

32. Ibid., I, xxv.

33. According to Muecke (1975), 171, “Of the twenty-two or so authentic Idylls only eight can be counted as bucolic.”

34. Σ Prol. A.a. (p. 1.11-13 Wendel).

35. See Gow (1952), I, lx, n. 4.

36. Segal (1975), 123, 131-32, 115.

37. Coleman (1975), 140.

38. Lawall (1967), 14-33, cf. Grant (1965), 64-65.

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