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  • 16 - Theocritus and Virgil

  • from PART IV - THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS
  • Edited by E. J. Kenney, W. V. Clausen
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Classical Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 March 1982, pp 301-319

  • Summary

    Theocritus of Syracuse, who invented the pastoral, was a Hellenistic poet, a contemporary of Callimachus and Apollonius. A proud claim, made with all the delicate force of which pastoral rhetoric is capable: the claim, that is, of being the first Latin poet to imitate Theocritean pastoral; and made at the beginning of an eclogue which owes little or nothing overtly to Theocritus. Virgil's imitation of Theocritus is restricted mainly, and not surprisingly, to the pastoral Idylls, with the notable exception of Idyll, Simaetha's incantation, a most unpastoral song which Virgil managed to translate into a pastoral setting. The publication of the Book of Eclogues is an epoch in Latin poetry. Virgil's Eclogue may be taken as a personal expression of a public attitude. Time is a relation of experience, and much had happened in the few urgent years during which Virgil was meditating his book.