The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus by Andrew Lang (#35 in our series by Andrew Lang) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose Author: Andrew Lang Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4775] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 16, 2002] [Most recently updated: March 16, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII
Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition.
THEOCRITUS, BION AND MOSCHUS RENDERED INTO ENGLISH PROSE WITH AN INTRODUCTORY
ESSAY BY ANDREW LANG
LIFE OF THEOCRITUS
(From Suidas)
Theocritus, the Chian. But there is another Theocritus, the son
of Praxagoras and Philinna (see Epigram XXIII), or as some say of Simichus.
(This is plainly derived from the assumed name Simichidas in Idyl VII.)
He was a Syracusan, or, as others say, a Coan settled in Syracuse.
He wrote the so-called Bucolics in the Dorian dialect.
Some attribute to him the following works:- The Proetidae, The Pleasures
of Hope (‘Ελπιδες),
Hymns, The Heroines, Dirges, Ditties, Elegies, Iambics, Epigrams.
But it known that there are three Bucolic poets: this Theocritus, Moschus
of Sicily, and Bion of Smyrna, from a village called Phlossa.
LIFE OF THEOCRITUS
ΘΕΟΚΡΙΤΟΥ ΓΕΝΟΣ
(Usually prefixed to the Idyls)
Theocritus the Bucolic poet was a Syracusan by extraction, and the son
of Simichidas, as he says himself, Simichidas, pray whither through
the noon dost thou dray thy feet? (Idyl VII). Some say that
this was an assumed name, for he seems to have been snub-nosed (σιμος),
and that his father was Praxagoras, and his mother Philinna. He
became the pupil of Philetas and Asclepiades, of whom he speaks (Idyl
VII), and flourished about the time of Ptolemy Lagus. He gained
much fame for his skill in bucolic poetry. According to some his
original name was Moschus, and Theocritus was a name he later assumed.
THEOCRITUS AND HIS AGE
At the beginning of the third century before Christ, in the years just
preceding those in which Theocritus wrote, the genius of Greece seemed
to have lost her productive force. Nor would it have been strange
if that force had really been exhausted. Greek poetry had hitherto
enjoyed a peculiarly free development, each form of art succeeding each
without break or pause, because each - epic, lyric, dithyramb, the drama
- had responded to some new need of the state and of religion.
Now in the years that followed the fall of Athens and the conquests
of Macedonia, Greek religion and the Greek state had ceased to be themselves.
Religion and the state had been the patrons of poetry; on their decline
poetry seemed dead. There were no heroic kings, like those for
whom epic minstrels had chanted. The cities could no longer welcome
an Olympian winner with Pindaric hymns. There was no imperial
Athens to fill the theatres with a crowd of citizens and strangers eager
to listen to new tragic masterpieces. There was no humorous democracy
to laugh at all the world, and at itself, with Aristophanes. The
very religion of Sophocles and Aeschylus was debased. A vulgar
usurper had stripped the golden ornaments from Athene of the Parthenon.
The ancient faith in the protecting gods of Athens, of Sparta, and of
Thebes, had become a lax readiness to bow down in the temple of any
Oriental Rimmon, of Serapis or Adonis. Greece had turned her face,
with Alexander of Macedon, to the East; Alexander had fallen, and Greece
had become little better than the western portion of a divided Oriental
empire. The centre of intellectual life had been removed from
Athens to Alexandria (founded 332 B.C.) The new Greek cities
of Egypt and Asia, and above all Alexandria, seemed no cities at all
to Greeks who retained the pure Hellenic traditions. Alexandria
was thirty times larger than the size assigned by Aristotle to a well-balanced
state. Austere spectators saw in Alexandria an Eastern capital
and mart, a place of harems and bazaars, a home of tyrants, slaves,
dreamers, and pleasure-seekers. Thus a Greek of the old school
must have despaired of Greek poetry. There was nothing (he would
have said) to evoke it; no dawn of liberty could flush this silent Memnon
into song. The collectors, critics, librarians of Alexandria could
only produce literary imitations of the epic and the hymn, or could
at best write epigrams or inscriptions for the statue of some alien
and luxurious god. Their critical activity in every field of literature
was immense, their original genius sterile. In them the intellect
of the Hellenes still faintly glowed, like embers on an altar that shed
no light on the way. Yet over these embers the god poured once
again the sacred oil, and from the dull mass leaped, like a many-coloured
frame, the genius of THEOCRITUS.
To take delight in that genius, so human, so kindly, so musical in expression,
requires, it may be said, no long preparation. The art of Theocritus
scarcely needs to be illustrated by any description of the conditions
among which it came to perfection. It is always impossible to
analyse into its component parts the genius of a poet. But it
is not impossible to detect some of the influences that worked on Theocritus.
We can study his early ‘environment’; the country scenes
he knew, and the songs of the neatherds which he elevated into art.
We can ascertain the nature of the demand for poetry in the chief cities
and in the literary society of the time. As a result, we can understand
the broad twofold division of the poems of Theocritus into rural and
epic idyls, and with this we must rest contented.
It is useless to attempt a regular biography of Theocritus. Facts
and dates are alike wanting, the ancient accounts (p. ix) are clearly
based on his works, but it is by no means impossible to construct a
‘legend’ or romance of his life, by aid of his own verses,
and of hints and fragments which reach us from the past and the present.
The genius of Theocritus was so steeped in the colours of human life,
he bore such true and full witness as to the scenes and men he knew,
that life (always essentially the same) becomes in turn a witness to
his veracity. He was born in the midst of nature that, through
all the changes of things, has never lost its sunny charm. The
existence he loved best to contemplate, that of southern shepherds,
fishermen, rural people, remains what it always has been in Sicily and
in the isles of Greece. The habits and the passions of his countryfolk
have not altered, the echoes of their old love-songs still sound among
the pines, or by the sea-banks, where Theocritus ‘watched the
visionary flocks.’
Theocritus was probably born in an early decade of the third century,
or, according to Couat, about 315 B.C., and was a native of Syracuse,
‘the greatest of Greek cities, the fairest of all cities.’
So Cicero calls it, describing the four quarters that were encircled
by its walls, - each quarter as large as a town, - the fountain Arethusa,
the stately temples with their doors of ivory and gold. On the
fortunate dwellers in Syracuse, Cicero says, the sun shone every day,
and there was never a morning so tempestuous but the sunlight conquered
at last, and broke through the clouds. That perennial sunlight
still floods the poems of Theocritus with its joyous glow. His
birthplace was the proper home of an idyllic poet, of one who, with
all his enjoyment of the city life of Greece, had yet been ‘breathed
on by the rural Pan,’ and best loved the sights and sounds and
fragrant air of the forests and the coast. Thanks to the mountainous
regions of Sicily, to Etna, with her volcanic cliffs and snow-fed streams,
thanks also to the hills of the interior, the populous island never
lost the charm of nature. Sicily was not like the overcrowded
and over-cultivated Attica; among the Sicilian heights and by the coast
were few enclosed estates and narrow farms. The character of the
people, too, was attuned to poetry. The Dorian settlers had kept
alive the magic of rivers, of pools where the Nereids dance, and uplands
haunted by Pan. This popular poetry influenced the literary verse
of Sicily. The songs of Stesichorus, a minstrel of the early period,
and the little rural ‘mimes’ or interludes of Sophron are
lost, and we have only fragments of Epicharmus. But it seems certain
that these poets, predecessors of Theocritus, liked to mingle with their
own composition strains of rustic melody, volks-lieder, ballads,
love-songs, ditties, and dirges, such as are still chanted by the peasants
of Greece and Italy. Thus in Syracuse and the other towns of the
coast, Theocritus would have always before his eyes the spectacle of
refined and luxurious manners, and always in his ears the babble of
the Dorian women, while he had only to pass the gates, and wander through
the fens of Lysimeleia, by the brackish mere, or ride into the hills,
to find himself in the golden world of pastoral. Thinking of his
early years, and of the education that nature gives the poet, we can
imagine him, like Callicles in Mr. Arnold’s poem, singing at the
banquet of a merchant or a general -
‘With his head full of wine, and his hair crown’d,
Touching his harp as the whim came on him,
And praised and spoil’d by master and by guests,
Almost as much as the new dancing girl.’
We can recover the world that met his eyes and inspired his poems, though
the dates of the composition of these poems are unknown. We can
follow him, in fancy, as he breaks from the revellers and wanders out
into the night. Wherever he turned his feet, he could find such
scenes as he has painted in the idyls. If the moon rode high in
heaven, as he passed through the outlying gardens he might catch a glimpse
of some deserted girl shredding the magical herbs into the burning brazier,
and sending upward to the ‘lady Selene’ the song which was
to charm her lover home. The magical image melted in the burning,
the herbs smouldered, the tale of love was told, and slowly the singer
‘drew the quiet night into her blood.’ Her lay ended
with a passage of softened melancholy -
‘Do thou farewell, and turn thy steeds to Ocean, lady, and my
pain I will endure, even as I have declared. Farewell, Selene
beautiful; farewell, ye other stars that follow the wheels of Night.’
A grammarian says that Theocritus borrowed this second idyl, the story
of Simaetha, from a piece by Sophron. But he had no need to borrow
from anything but the nature before his eyes. Ideas change so
little among the Greek country people, and the hold of superstition
is so strong, that betrayed girls even now sing to the Moon their prayer
for pity and help. Theocritus himself could have added little
passion to this incantation, still chanted in the moonlit nights of
Greece: {0a}
‘Bright golden Moon, that now art near to thy setting, go thou
and salute my lover, he that stole my love, and that kissed me, and
said, “Never will I leave thee.” And, lo, he has left
me, like a field reaped and gleaned, like a church where no man comes
to pray, like a city desolate. Therefore I would curse him, and
yet again my heart fails me for tenderness, my heart is vexed within
me, my spirit is moved with anguish. Nay, even so I will lay my
curse on him, and let God do even as He will, with my pain and with
my crying, with my flame, and mine imprecations.’
It is thus that the women of the islands, like the girl of Syracuse
two thousand years ago, hope to lure back love or avenged love betrayed,
and thus they ‘win more ease from song than could be bought with
gold.’
In whatever direction the path of the Syracusan wanderer lay, he would
find then, as he would find now in Sicily, some scene of the idyllic
life, framed between the distant Etna and the sea. If he strayed
in the faint blue of the summer dawn, through the fens to the shore,
he might reach the wattled cabin of the two old fishermen in the twenty-first
idyl. There is nothing in Wordsworth more real, more full of the
incommunicable sense of nature, rounding and softening the toilsome
days of the aged and the poor, than the Theocritean poem of the Fisherman’s
Dream. It is as true to nature as the statue of the naked fisherman
in the Vatican. One cannot read these verses but the vision returns
to one, of sandhills by the sea, of a low cabin roofed with grass, where
fishing-rods of reed are leaning against the door, while the Mediterranean
floats up her waves that fill the waste with sound. This nature,
grey and still, seems in harmony with the wise content of old men whose
days are waning on the limit of life, as they have all been spent by
the desolate margin of the sea.
The twenty-first idyl is one of the rare poems of Theocritus that are
not filled with the sunlight of Sicily, or of Egypt. The landscapes
he prefers are often seen under the noonday heat, when shade is most
pleasant to men. His shepherds invite each other to the shelter
of oak-trees or of pines, where the dry fir-needles are strown, or where
the feathered ferns make a luxurious ‘couch more soft than sleep,’
or where the flowers bloom whose musical names sing in the idyls.
Again, Theocritus will sketch the bare beginnings of the hillside, as
in the third idyl, just where the olive-gardens cease, and where the
short grass of the heights alternates with rocks, and thorns, and aromatic
plants. None of his pictures seem complete without the presence
of water. It may be but the wells that the maidenhair fringes,
or the babbling runnel of the fountain of the Nereids. The shepherds
may sing of Crathon, or Sybaris, or Himeras, waters so sweet that they
seem to flow with milk and honey. Again, Theocritus may encounter
his rustics fluting in rivalry, like Daphnis and Menalcas in the eighth
idyl, ‘on the long ranges of the hills.’ Their kine
and sheep have fed upwards from the lower valleys to the place where
‘The track winds down to the clear stream,
To cross the sparkling shallows; there
The cattle love to gather, on their way
To the high mountain pastures and to stay,
Till the rough cow-herds drive them past,
Knee-deep in the cool ford; for ‘tis the last
Of all the woody, high, well-water’d dells
On Etna, . . .
. . . glade,
And stream, and sward, and chestnut-trees,
End here; Etna beyond, in the broad glare
Of the hot noon, without a shade,
Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare;
The peak, round which the white clouds play.’ {0b}
Theocritus never drives his flock so high, and rarely muses on such
thoughts as come to wanderers beyond the shade of trees and the sound
of water among the scorched rocks and the barren lava. The day
is always cooled and soothed, in his idyls, with the ‘music of
water that falleth from the high face of the rock,’ or with the
murmurs of the sea. From the cliffs and their seat among the bright
red berries on the arbutus shrubs, his shepherds flute to each other,
as they watch the tunny fishers cruising far below, while the echo floats
upwards of the sailors’ song. These shepherds have some
touch in them of the satyr nature; we might fancy that their ears are
pointed like those of Hawthorne’s Donatello, in ‘Transformation.’
It should be noticed, as a proof of the truthfulness of Theocritus,
that the songs of his shepherds and goatherds are all such as he might
really have heard on the shores of Sicily. This is the real answer
to the criticism which calls him affected. When mock pastorals
flourished at the court of France, when the long dispute as to the merits
of the ancients and moderns was raging, critics vowed that the hinds
of Theocritus were too sentimental and polite in their wooings.
Refinement and sentiment were to be reserved for princely shepherds
dancing, crook in hand, in the court ballets. Louis XIV sang of
himself -
‘A son labeur il passe tout d’un coup,
Et n’ira pas dormir sur la fougere,
Ny s’oublier aupres d’une Bergere,
Jusques au point d’en oublier le Loup.’ {0c}
Accustomed to royal goatherds in silk and lace, Fontenelle (a severe
critic of Theocritus) could not believe in the delicacy of a Sicilian
who wore a skin ‘stripped from the roughest of he-goats, with
the smell of the rennet clinging to it still.’ Thus Fontenelle
cries, ‘Can any one suppose that there ever was a shepherd who
could say “Would I were the humming bee, Amaryllis, to flit to
thy cave, and dip beneath the branches, and the ivy leaves that hide
thee”?’ and then he quotes other graceful passages from
the love-verses of Theocritean swains. Certainly no such fancies
were to be expected from the French peasants of Fontenelle’s age,
‘creatures blackened with the sun, and bowed with labour and hunger.’
The imaginative grace of Battus is quite as remote from our own hinds.
But we have the best reason to suppose that the peasants of Theocritus’s
time expressed refined sentiment in language adorned with colour and
music, because the modern love-songs of Greek shepherds sound like memories
of Theocritus. The lover of Amaryllis might have sung this among
his ditties -
Χελιδονακι
θα γενω, σ' τα χειλη
σου να καττω
Να σε φιλησω
μια και δυο, και
παλε να πεταξω
‘To flit towards these lips of thine, I fain would be a swallow,
To kiss thee once, to kiss thee twice, and then go flying homeward.’
{0d}
In his despair, when Love ‘clung to him like a leech of the fen,’
he might have murmured -
‘Ηθελα να ειμαι
σ’ τα βουνα, μ'
αλαφια να κοιμουμαι
Και το δικον
σου το κορμι
να μη το συλλογιουμαι
‘Would that I were on the high hills, and lay where lie the stags,
and no more was troubled with the thought of thee.’
Here, again, is a love-complaint from modern Epirus, exactly in the
tone of Battus’s song in the tenth idyl -
‘White thou art not, thou art not golden haired,
Thou art brown, and gracious, and meet for love.’
Here is a longer love-ditty -
‘I will begin by telling thee first of thy perfections: thy body
is as fair as an angel’s; no painter could design it. And
if any man be sad, he has but to look on thee, and despite himself he
takes courage, the hapless one, and his heart is joyous. Upon
thy brows are shining the constellated Pleiades, thy breast is full
of the flowers of May, thy breasts are lilies. Thou hast the eyes
of a princess, the glance of a queen, and but one fault hast thou, that
thou deignest not to speak to me.’
Battus might have cried thus, with a modern Greek singer, to the shade
of the dead Amaryllis (Idyl IV), the ‘gracious Amaryllis, unforgotten
even in death’ -
‘Ah, light of mine eyes, what gift shall I send thee; what gift
to the other world? The apple rots, and the quince decayeth, and
one by one they perish, the petals of the rose! I send thee my
tears bound in a napkin, and what though the napkin burns, if my tears
reach thee at last!’
The difficulty is to stop choosing, where all the verses of the modern
Greek peasants are so rich in Theocritean memories, so ardent, so delicate,
so full of flowers and birds and the music of fountains. Enough
has been said, perhaps, to show what the popular poetry of Sicily could
lend to the genius of Theocritus.
From her shepherds he borrowed much, - their bucolic melody; their love-complaints;
their rural superstitions; their system of answering couplets, in which
each singer refines on the utterance of his rival. But he did
not borrow their ‘pastoral melancholy.’ There is little
of melancholy in Theocritus. When Battus is chilled by the thought
of the death of Amaryllis, it is but as one is chilled when a thin cloud
passes over the sun, on a bright day of early spring. And in an
epigram the dead girl is spoken of as the kid that the wolf has seized,
while the hounds bay all too late. Grief will not bring her back.
The world must go its way, and we need not darken its sunlight by long
regret. Yet when, for once, Theocritus adopted the accent of pastoral
lament, when he raised the rural dirge for Daphnis into the realm of
art, he composed a masterpiece, and a model for all later poets, as
for the authors of Lycidas, Thyrsis, and Adonais.
Theocritus did more than borrow a note from the country people.
He brought the gifts of his own spirit to the contemplation of the world.
He had the clearest vision, and he had the most ardent love of poetry,
‘of song may all my dwelling be full, for neither is sleep more
sweet, nor sudden spring, nor are flowers more delicious to the bees,
so dear to me are the Muses.’ . . . ‘Never may we
be sundered, the Muses of Pieria and I.’ Again, he had perhaps
in greater measure than any other poet the gift of the undisturbed enjoyment
of life. The undertone of all his idyls is joy in the sunshine
and in existence. His favourite word, the word that opens the
first idyl, and, as it were, strikes the keynote, is αδυ,
sweet. He finds all things delectable in the rural life:
‘Sweet are the voices of the calves, and sweet the heifers’
lowing; sweet plays the shepherd on the shepherd’s pipe, and sweet
is the echo.’
Even in courtly poems, and in the artificial hymns of which we are to
speak in their place, the memory of the joyful country life comes over
him. He praises Hiero, because Hiero is to restore peace to Syracuse,
and when peace returns, then ‘thousands of sheep fattened in the
meadows will bleat along the plain, and the kine, as they flock in crowds
to the stalls, will make the belated traveller hasten on his way.’
The words evoke a memory of a narrow country lane in the summer evening,
when light is dying out of the sky, and the fragrance of wild roses
by the roadside is mingled with the perfumed breath of cattle that hurry
past on their homeward road. There was scarcely a form of the
life he saw that did not seem to him worthy of song, though it might
be but the gossip of two rude hinds, or the drinking bout of the Thessalian
horse-jobber, and the false girl Cynisca and her wild lover Æschines.
But it is the sweet country that he loves best to behold and to remember.
In his youth Sicily and Syracuse were disturbed by civil and foreign
wars, wars of citizens against citizens, of Greeks against Carthaginians,
and against the fierce ‘men of Mars,’ the banded mercenaries
who possessed themselves of Messana. But this was not matter for
his joyous Muse -
κεινος δ' ου
πολεμους, ου
δακρυα, Πανα δ'
εμελπε,
και βουτασ ελιγαινε
και αειδων ενομευε
‘Not of wars, not of tears, but of Pan would he chant, and of
the neatherds he sweetly sang, and singing he shepherded his flocks.’
This was the training that Sicily, her hills, her seas, her lovers,
her poet-shepherds, gave to Theocritus. Sicily showed him subjects
which he imitated in truthful art. Unluckily the later pastoral
poets of northern lands have imitated him, and so have gone far
astray from northern nature. The pupil of nature had still to
be taught the ‘rules’ of the critics, to watch the temper
and fashion of his time, and to try his fortune among the courtly poets
and grammarians of the capital of civilisation. Between the years
of early youth in Sicily and the years of waiting for court patronage
at Alexandria, it seems probable that we must place a period of education
in the island of Cos. The testimonies of the Grammarians who handed
on to us the scanty traditions about Theocritus, agree in making him
the pupil of Philetas of Cos. This Philetas was a critic, a commentator
on Homer, and an elegiac poet whose love-songs were greatly admired
by the Romans of the Augustan age. He is said to have been the
tutor of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was himself born, as Theocritus records,
in the isle of Cos. It has been conjectured that Ptolemy and Theocritus
were fellow pupils, and that the poet may have hoped to obtain court
favour at Alexandria from this early connection. About this point
nothing is certainly known, nor can we exactly understand the sort of
education that was given in the school of the poet Philetas. The
ideas of that artificial age make it not improbable that Philetas professed
to teach the art of poetry. A French critic and poet of our own
time, M. Baudelaire, was willing to do as much ‘in thirty lessons.’
Possibly Philetas may have imparted technical rules then in vogue, and
the fashionable knack of introducing obscure mythological allusions.
He was a logician as well as a poet, and is fabled to have died of vexation
because he could not unriddle one of the metaphysical catches or puzzles
of the sophists. His varied activity seems to have worn him to
a shadow; the contemporary satirists bantered him about his leanness,
and it was alleged that he wore leaden soles to his sandals lest the
wind should blow him, as it blew the calves of Daphnis (Idyl IX) over
a cliff against the rocks, or into the sea. {0e}
Philetas seems a strange master for Theocritus, but, whatever the qualities
of the teacher, Cos, the home of the luxurious old age of Meleager,
was a beautiful school. The island was one of the most ancient
colonies of the Dorians, and the Syracusan scholar found himself among
a people who spoke his own broad and liquid dialect. The sides
of the limestone hills were clothed with vines, and with shadowy plane-trees
which still attain extraordinary size and age, while the wine-presses
where Demeter smiled, ‘with sheaves and poppies in her hands,’
yielded a famous vintage. The people had a soft industry of their
own, they fashioned the ‘Coan stuff,’ transparent robes
for woman’s wear, like the υδατινα
βρακη, the thin undulating tissues which
Theugenis was to weave with the ivory distaff, the gift of Theocritus.
As a colony of Epidaurus, Cos naturally cultivated the worship of Asclepius,
the divine physician, the child of Apollo. In connection with
his worship and with the clan of the Asclepiadae (that widespread stock
to which Aristotle belonged, and in which the practice of leechcraft
was hereditary), Cos possessed a school of medicine. In the temple
of Asclepius patients hung up as votive offerings representations of
their diseased limbs, and thus the temple became a museum of anatomical
specimens. Cos was therefore resorted to by young students from
all parts of the East, and Theocritus cannot but have made many friends
of his own age. Among these he alludes in various passages to
Nicias, afterwards a physician at Miletus, to Philinus, noted in later
life as the head of a medical sect, and to Aratus. Theocritus
has sung of Aratus’s love-affairs, and St. Paul has quoted him
as a witness to man’s instinctive consent in the doctrine of the
universal fatherhood of God. These strangely various notices have
done more for the memory of Aratus than his own didactic poem on the
meteorological theories of his age. He lives, with Philinus and
the rest of the Coan students, because Theocritus introduced them into
the picture of a happy summer’s day. In the seventh idyl,
that one day of Demeter’s harvest-feast is immortal, and the sun
never goes down on its delight. We see Theocritus
κουπω ταν μεσαταν
οδον ανυμες,
ουδε το σαμα
αμιν το Βρασιλα
κατεφαινετο
when he ‘had not yet reached the mid-point of the way, nor had
the tomb yet risen on his sight.’ He reveals himself as
he was at the height of morning, at the best moment of the journey,
in midsummer of a genius still unchecked by doubt, or disappointment,
or neglect. Life seems to accost him with the glance of the goatherd
Lycidas, ‘and still he smiled as he spoke, with laughing eyes,
and laughter dwelling on his lips.’ In Cos, Theocritus found
friendship, and met Myrto, ‘the girl he loved as dearly as goats
love the spring.’ Here he could express, without any afterthought,
an enthusiastic adoration for the disinterested joys, the enchanted
moments of human existence. Before he entered the thronged streets
of Alexandria, and tuned his shepherd’s pipe to catch the ear
of princes, and to sing the epithalamium of a royal and incestuous love,
he rested with his friends in the happy island. Deep in a cave,
among the ruins of ancient aqueducts, there still bubbles up, from the
Coan limestone, the well-spring of the Nymphs. ‘There they
reclined on beds of fragrant rushes, lowly strown, and rejoicing they
lay in new stript leaves of the vine. And high above their heads
waved many a poplar, many an elm-tree, while close at hand the sacred
water from the nymph’s own cave welled forth with murmurs musical’
(Idyl VII).
The old Dorian settlers in Syracuse pleased themselves with the fable
that their fountain, Arethusa, had been a Grecian nymph, who, like themselves,
had crossed the sea to Sicily. The poetry of Theocritus, read
or sung in sultry Alexandria, must have seemed like a new welling up
of the waters of Arethusa in the sandy soil of Egypt. We cannot
certainly say when the poet first came from Syracuse, or from Cos, to
Alexandria. It is evident however from the allusions in the fifteenth
and seventeenth idyls that he was living there after Ptolemy Philadelphus
married his own sister, Arsinoë. It is not impossible to
form some idea of the condition of Alexandrian society, art, religion,
literature and learning at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
The vast city, founded some sixty years before, was now completed.
The walls, many miles in circuit, protected a population of about eight
hundred thousand souls. Into that changing crowd were gathered
adventurers from all the known world. Merchantmen brought to Ptolemy
the wares of India and the porcelains of China. Marauders from
upper Egypt skulked about the native quarters, and sallied forth at
night to rob the wayfarer. The king’s guards were recruited
with soldiers from turbulent Greece, from Asia, from Italy. Settlers
were attracted from Syracuse by the prospect of high wages and profitable
labour. The Jewish quarters were full of Israelites who did not
disdain Greek learning. The city in which this multitude found
a home was beautifully constructed. The Mediterranean filled the
northern haven, the southern walls were washed by the Mareotic lake.
If the isle of Pharos shone dazzling white, and wearied the eyes, there
was shade beneath the long marble colonnades, and in the groves and
cool halls of the Museum and the Libraries. The Etesian winds
blew fresh in summer from the north, across the sea, and refreshed the
people in their gardens. No town seemed greater nor wealthier
to the voyager, who (like the hero of the Greek novel Clitophon and
Leucippe) entered by the gate of the Sun, and found that, after
nightfall, the torches borne by men and women hastening to some religious
feast, filled the dusk with a light like that of ‘the sun cut
up into fragments.’ At the same time no town was more in
need of the memories of the country, which came to her in well-watered
gardens, in landscape-paintings, and in the verse of Theocritus.
It is impossible to give a clearer idea of the opulence and luxury of
Alexandria and her kings, than will be conveyed by the description of
the coronation-feast of Ptolemy Philadelphus. This great masquerade
and banquet was prepared by the elder Ptolemy on the occasion of his
admitting his son to share his throne. The entertainment was described
(in a work now lost) by Callixenus of Rhodes, and the record has been
preserved by Atheneaus (v. 25). The inner pavilion in which the
guests of Ptolemy reclined, contained one hundred and thirty-five couches.
Over the roof was placed a scarlet awning, with a fringe of white, and
there were many other awnings, richly embroidered with mythological
designs. The pillars which sustained the roof were shaped in the
likeness of palm-trees, and of thyrsi, the weapons of the wine-god
Dionysus. Round three outer sides ran arcades, draped with purple
tissues, and with the skins of strange beasts. The fourth side,
open to the air, was shady with the foliage of myrtles and laurels.
Everywhere the ground was carpeted with flowers, though the season was
mid-winter, with roses and white lilies and blossoms of the gardens.
By the columns round the whole pavilion were arrayed a hundred effigies
in marble, executed by the most famous sculptors, and on the middle
spaces were hung works by the painters of Sicyon and tapestry woven
with stories of the adventures of the gods. Above these, again,
ran a frieze of gold and silver shields, while in the higher niches
were placed comic, tragic, and satiric sculptured groups ‘dressed
in real clothes,’ says the historian, much admiring this realism.
It is impossible to number the tripods, and flagons, and couches of
gold, resting on golden figures of sphinxes, the salvers, the bowls,
the jewelled vases. The masquerade of this winter festival began
with the procession of the Morning-star, Heosphoros, and then followed
a masque of kings and a revel of various gods, while the company of
Hesperus, the Evening-star followed, and ended all. The revel
of Dionysus was introduced by men disguised as Sileni, wild woodland
beings in raiment of purple and scarlet. Then came scores of satyrs
with gilded lamps in their hands. Next appeared beautiful maidens,
attired as Victories, waving golden wings and swinging vessels of burning
incense. The altar of the God of the Vine was borne behind them,
crowned and covered with leaves of gold, and next boys in purple robes
scattered fragrant scents from golden salvers. Then came a throng
of gold-crowned satyrs, their naked bodies stained with purple and vermilion,
and among them was a tall man who represented the year and carried a
horn of plenty. He was followed by a beautiful woman in rich attire,
carrying in one hand branches of the palm-tree, in the other a rod of
the peach-tree, starred with its constellated flowers. Then the
masque of the Seasons swept by, and Philiscus followed, Philiscus the
Corcyraean, the priest of Dionysus, and the favourite tragic poet of
the court. After the prizes for the athletes had been borne past,
Dionysus himself was charioted along, a gigantic figure clad in purple,
and pouring libations out of a golden goblet. Around him lay huge
drinking-cups, and smoking censers of gold, and a bower of vine leaves
grew up, and shaded the head of the god. Then hurried by a crowd
of priests and priestesses, Maenads, Bacchantes, Bassarids, women crowned
with the vine, or with garlands of snakes, and girls bearing the mystic
vannus Iacchi. And still the procession was not ended.
A mechanical figure of Nysa passed, in a chariot drawn by eighty men,
among clusters of grapes formed of precious stones, and the figure arose,
and poured milk out of a golden horn. The Satyrs and Sileni followed
close, and behind them six hundred men dragged on a wain, a silver vessel
that held six hundred measures of wine. This was only the first
of countless symbolic vessels that were carried past, till last came
a multitude of sixteen hundred boys clad in white tunics, and garlanded
with ivy, who bore and handed to the guests golden and silver vessels
full of sweet wine. All this was only part of one procession,
and the festival ended when Ptolemy and Berenice and Ptolemy Philadelphus
had been crowned with golden crowns from many subject cities and lands.
This festival was obviously arranged to please the taste of a prince
with late Greek ideas of pictorial display, and with barbaric wealth
at his command. Theocritus himself enables us in the seventeenth
idyl to estimate the opulence and the dominion of Ptolemy. He
was not master of fertile Aegypt alone, where the Nile breaks the rich
dank soil, and where myriad cities pour their taxes into his treasuries.
Ptolemy held lands also in Phoenicia, and Arabia; he claimed Syria and
Libya and Aethiopia; he was lord of the distant Pamphylians, of the
Cilicians, the Lycians and the Carians, and the Cyclades owned his mastery.
Thus the wealth of the richest part of the world flowed into Alexandria,
attracting thither the priests of strange religions, the possessors
of Greek learning, the painters and sculptors whose work has left its
traces on the genius of Theocritus.
Looking at this early Alexandrian age, three points become clear to
us. First, the fashion of the times was Oriental, Oriental in
religion and in society. Nothing could be less Hellenic, than
the popular cult of Adonis. The fifteenth idyl of Theocritus shows
us Greek women worshipping in their manner at an Assyrian shrine, the
shrine of that effeminate lover of Aphrodite, whom Heracles, according
to the Greek proverb, thought ‘no great divinity.’
The hymn of Bion, with its luxurious lament, was probably meant to be
chanted at just such a festival as Theocritus describes, while a crowd
of foreigners gossiped among the flowers and embroideries, the strangely-shaped
sacred cakes, the ebony, the gold, and the ivory. Not so much
Oriental as barbarous was the impulse which made Ptolemy Philadelphus
choose his own sister, Arsinoë, for wife, as if absolute dominion
had already filled the mind of the Macedonian royal race with the incestuous
pride of the Incas, or of Queen Hatasu, in an elder Egyptian dynasty.
This nascent barbarism has touched a few of the Alexandrian poems even
of Theocritus, and his panegyric of Ptolemy, of his divine ancestors,
and his sister-bride is not much more Greek in sentiment than are those
old native hymns of Pentaur to ‘the strong Bull,’ or the
‘Risen Sun,’ to Rameses or Thothmes.
Again, the early Alexandrian was what we call a ‘literary’
age. Literature was not an affair of religion and of the state,
but ministered to the pleasure of individuals, and at their pleasure
was composed. {0f}
The temper of the time was crudely critical. The Museum and the
Libraries, with their hundreds of thousands of volumes, were hot-houses
of grammarians and of learned poets. Callimachus, the head librarian,
was also the most eminent man of letters. Unable, himself, to
compose a poem of epic length and copiousness, he discouraged all long
poems. He shone in epigrams, pedantic hymns, and didactic verses.
He toyed with anagrams, and won court favour by discovering that the
letters of ‘Arsinoë,’ the name of Ptolemy’s wife,
made the words ιον Ηρας, the violet
of Hera. In another masterpiece the genius of Callimachus followed
the stolen tress of Queen Berenice to the skies, where the locks became
a constellation. A contemporary of Callimachus was Zenodotus,
the critic, who was for improving the Iliad and Odyssey by cutting out
all the epic commonplaces which seemed to him to be needless repetitions.
It is pretty plain that, in literary society, Homer was thought out
of date and rococo. The favourite topics of poets were
now, not the tales of Troy and Thebes, but the amorous adventures of
the gods. When Apollonius Rhodius attempted to revive the epic,
it is said that the influence of Callimachus quite discomfited the young
poet. A war of epigrams began, and while Apollonius called Callimachus
a ‘blockhead’ (so finished was his invective), the veteran
compared his rival to the Ibis, the scavenger-bird. Other singers
satirised each others’ legs, and one, the Aretino of the time,
mocked at king Ptolemy and scourged his failings in verse. The
literary quarrels (to which Theocritus seems to allude in Idyl VII,
where Lycidas says he ‘hates the birds of the Muses that cackle
in vain rivalry with Homer’) were as stupid as such affairs usually
are. The taste for artificial epic was to return; although many
people already declared that Homer was the world’s poet, and that
the world needed no other. This epic reaction brought into favour
Apollonius Rhodius, author of the Argonautica. Theocritus
has been supposed to aim at him as a vain rival of Homer, but M. Couat
points out that Theocritus was seventy when Apollonius began to write.
The literary fashions of Alexandria are only of moment to us so far
as they directly affected Theocritus. They could not make him
obscure, affected, tedious, but his nature probably inclined him to
obey fashion so far as only to write short poems. His rural poems
are ειδυλλια, ‘little
pictures.’ His fragments of epic, or imitations of the epic
hymns are not
οσα ποντος αειδει
- not full and sonorous as the songs of Homer and the sea. ‘Ce
poète est le moins naïf qui se puisse rencontrer, et il
se dégage de son oeuvre un parfum de naïveté rustique.’
{0g} They are,
what a German critic has called them, mythologischen genre-bilder,
cabinet pictures in the manner called genre, full of pretty
detail and domestic feeling. And this brings us to the third characteristic
of the age, - its art was elaborately pictorial. Poetry seems
to have sought inspiration from painting, while painting, as we have
said, inclined to genre, to luxurious representations of the
amours of the gods or the adventures of heroes, with backgrounds of
pastoral landscape. Shepherds fluted while Perseus slew Medusa.
The old order of things in Greece had been precisely the opposite of
this Alexandrian manner. Homer and the later Homeric legends,
with the tragedians, inspired the sculptors, and even the artisans who
decorated vases. When a new order of subjects became fashionable,
and when every rich Alexandrian had pictures or frescoes on his walls,
it appears that the painters took the lead, that the initiative in art
was theirs. The Alexandrian pictures perished long ago, but the
relics of Alexandrian style which remain in the buried cities of Campania,
in Pompeii especially, bear testimony to the taste of the period. {0h}
Out of nearly two thousand Pompeian pictures, it is calculated that
some fourteen hundred (roughly speaking) are mythological in subject.
The loves of the gods are repeated in scores of designs, and these designs
closely correspond to the mythological poems of Theocritus and his younger
contemporaries Bion and Moschus. Take as an example the adventure
of Europa: Lord Tennyson’s lines, in The Palace of Art are
intended to describe picture -
‘Or sweet Europa’s mantle blew unclasp’d,
From off her shoulder backward borne:
From one hand droop’d a crocus: one hand grasp’d
The mild bull’s golden horn.’
The words of Moschus also seem as if they might have derived their inspiration
from a painting, the touches are so minute, and so picturesque -
‘Meanwhile Europa, riding on the back of the divine bull, with
one hand clasped the beast’s great horn, and with the other caught
up her garment’s purple fold, lest it might trail and be drenched
in the hoar sea’s infinite spray. And her deep robe was
blown out in the wind, like the sail of a ship, and lightly ever it
wafted the maiden onward.’
Now every single ‘motive’ of this description, - Europa
with one hand holding the bull’s horn, with the other lifting
her dress, the wind puffing out her shawl like a sail, is repeated in
the Pompeian wall-pictures, which themselves are believed to be derived
from Alexandrian originals. There are more curious coincidences
than this. In the sixth idyl of Theocritus, Damoetas makes the
Cyclops say that Galatea ‘will send him many a messenger.’
The mere idea of describing the monstrous cannibal Polyphemus in love,
is artificial and Alexandrian. But who were the ‘messengers’
of the sea-nymph Galatea? A Pompeian picture illustrates the point,
by representing a little Love riding up to the shore on the back of
a dolphin, with a letter in his hand for Polyphemus. Greek art
in Egypt suffered from an Egyptian plague of Loves. Loves flutter
through the Pompeian pictures as they do through the poems of Moschus
and Bion. They are carried about in cages, for sale, like birds.
They are caught in bird-traps. They don the lion-skin of Heracles.
They flutter about baskets laden with roses; round rosy Loves, like
the cupids of Boucher. They are not akin to ‘the grievous
Love,’ the mighty wrestler who threw Daphnis a fall, in the first
idyl of Theocritus. They are ‘the children that flit overhead,
the little Loves, like the young nightingales upon the budding trees,’
which flit round the dead Adonis in the fifteenth idyl. They are
the birds that shun the boy fowler, in Bion’s poem, and perch
uncalled (as in a bronze in the Uffizi) on the grown man. In one
or other of the sixteen Pompeian pictures of Venus and Adonis, the Loves
are breaking their bows and arrows for grief, as in the hymn of Bion.
Enough has perhaps been said about the social and artistic taste of
Alexandria to account for the remarkable differences in manner between
the rustic idyls of Theocritus and the epic idyls of himself and his
followers Moschus and Bion. In the rural idyls, Theocritus was
himself and wrote to please himself. In the epic idyls, as in
the Hymn to the Dioscuri, and in the two poems on Heracles, he was writing
to please the taste of Alexandria. He had to choose epic topics,
but he was warned by the famous saying of Callimachus (‘a great
book is a great evil’) not to imitate the length of the epic.
{0i} He was
also to shun close imitation of what are so easily imitated, the regular
recurring formulae, the commonplace of Homer. He was to
add minute pictorial touches, as in the description of Alcmena’s
waking when the serpents attacked her child, - a passage rich in domestic
pathos and incident which contrast strongly with Pindar’s bare
narrative of the same events. We have noted the same pictorial
quality in the Europa of Moschus. Our own age has often
been compared to the Alexandrian epoch, to that era of large cities,
wealth, refinement, criticism, and science; and the pictorial Idylls
of the King very closely resemble the epico-idyllic manner of Alexandria.
We have tried to examine the society in which Theocritus lived.
But our impressions about the poet are more distinct. In him we
find the most genial character; pious as Greece counted piety; tender
as became the poet of love; glad as the singer of a happy southern world
should be; gifted, above all, with humour, and with dramatic power.
‘His lyre has all the chords’; his is the last of all the
perfect voices of Hellas; after him no man saw life with eyes so steady
and so mirthful.
About the lives of the three idyllic poets literary history says little.
About their deaths she only tells us through the dirge by Moschus, that
Bion was poisoned. The lovers of Theocritus would willingly hope
that he returned from Alexandria to Sicily, about the time when he wrote
the sixteenth idyl, and that he lived in the enjoyment of the friendship
and the domestic happiness and honour which he sang so well, through
the golden age of Hiero (264 B.C.) No happier fortune could befall
him who wrote the epigram of the lady of heavenly love, who worshipped
with the noble wife of Nicias under the green roof of Milesian Aphrodite,
and who prophesied of the return of peace and of song to Sicily and
Syracuse.
THEOCRITUS
IDYL I
The shepherd Thyrsis meets a goatherd, in a shady place beside a
spring, and at his invitation sings the Song of Daphnis. This
ideal hero of Greek pastoral song had won for his bride the fairest
of the Nymphs. Confident in the strength of his passion, he boasted
that Love could never subdue him to a new question. Love avenged
himself by making Daphnis desire a strange maiden, but to this temptation
he never yielded, and so died a constant lover. The song tells
how the cattle and the wild things of the wood bewailed him, how Hermes
and Priapus gave him counsel in vain, and how with his last breath he
retorted the taunts of the implacable Aphrodite.
The scene is in Sicily.
Thyrsis. Sweet, meseems, is the whispering sound of yonder
pine tree, goatherd, that murmureth by the wells of water; and sweet
are thy pipings. After Pan the second prize shalt thou bear away,
and if he take the horned goat, the she-goat shalt thou win; but if
he choose the she-goat for his meed, the kid falls to thee, and dainty
is the flesh of kids e’er the age when thou milkest them.
The Goatherd. Sweeter, O shepherd, is thy song than the
music of yonder water that is poured from the high face of the rock!
Yea, if the Muses take the young ewe for their gift, a stall-fed lamb
shalt thou receive for thy meed; but if it please them to take the lamb,
thou shalt lead away the ewe for the second prize.
Thyrsis. Wilt thou, goatherd, in the nymphs’ name,
wilt thou sit thee down here, among the tamarisks, on this sloping knoll,
and pipe while in this place I watch thy flocks?
Goatherd. Nay, shepherd, it may not be; we may not pipe
in the noontide. ‘Tis Pan we dread, who truly at this hour
rests weary from the chase; and bitter of mood is he, the keen wrath
sitting ever at his nostrils. But, Thyrsis, for that thou surely
wert wont to sing The Affliction of Daphnis, and hast most deeply
meditated the pastoral muse, come hither, and beneath yonder elm let
us sit down, in face of Priapus and the fountain fairies, where is that
resting-place of the shepherds, and where the oak trees are. Ah!
if thou wilt but sing as on that day thou sangest in thy match with
Chromis out of Libya, I will let thee milk, ay, three times, a goat
that is the mother of twins, and even when she has suckled her kids
her milk doth fill two pails. A deep bowl of ivy-wood, too, I
will give thee, rubbed with sweet bees’-wax, a twy-eared bowl
newly wrought, smacking still of the knife of the graver. Round
its upper edges goes the ivy winding, ivy besprent with golden flowers;
and about it is a tendril twisted that joys in its saffron fruit.
Within is designed a maiden, as fair a thing as the gods could fashion,
arrayed in a sweeping robe, and a snood on her head. Beside her
two youths with fair love-locks are contending from either side, with
alternate speech, but her heart thereby is all untouched. And
now on one she glances, smiling, and anon she lightly flings the other
a thought, while by reason of the long vigils of love their eyes are
heavy, but their labour is all in vain.
Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are fashioned, a rugged
rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags a great net for
his cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldst say that he
is fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big the sinews swell
all about his neck, grey-haired though he be, but his strength is as
the strength of youth. Now divided but a little space from the
sea-worn old man is a vineyard laden well with fire-red clusters, and
on the rough wall a little lad watches the vineyard, sitting there.
Round him two she-foxes are skulking, and one goes along the vine-rows
to devour the ripe grapes, and the other brings all her cunning to bear
against the scrip, and vows she will never leave the lad, till she strand
him bare and breakfastless. But the boy is plaiting a pretty locust-cage
with stalks of asphodel, and fitting it with reeds, and less care of
his scrip has he, and of the vines, than delight in his plaiting.
All about the cup is spread the soft acanthus, a miracle of varied work,
{6} a thing for thee
to marvel on. For this bowl I paid to a Calydonian ferryman a
goat and a great white cream cheese. Never has its lip touched
mine, but it still lies maiden for me. Gladly with this cup would
I gain thee to my desire, if thou, my friend, wilt sing me that delightful
song. Nay, I grudge it thee not at all. Begin, my friend,
for be sure thou canst in no wise carry thy song with thee to Hades,
that puts all things out of mind!
The Song of Thyrsis.
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song! Thyrsis of
Etna am I, and this is the voice of Thyrsis. Where, ah! where
were ye when Daphnis was languishing; ye Nymphs, where were ye?
By Peneus’s beautiful dells, or by dells of Pindus? for surely
ye dwelt not by the great stream of the river Anapus, nor on the watch-tower
of Etna, nor by the sacred water of Acis.
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
For him the jackals, for him the wolves did cry; for him did even the
lion out of the forest lament. Kine and bulls by his feet right
many, and heifers plenty, with the young calves bewailed him.
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
Came Hermes first from the hill, and said, ‘Daphnis, who is it
that torments thee; child, whom dost thou love with so great desire?’
The neatherds came, and the shepherds; the goatherds came: all they
asked what ailed him. Came also Priapus, -
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
And said: ‘Unhappy Daphnis, wherefore dost thou languish, while
for thee the maiden by all the fountains, through all the glades is
fleeting, in search of thee? Ah! thou art too laggard a lover,
and thou nothing availest! A neatherd wert thou named, and now
thou art like the goatherd:
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
‘For the goatherd, when he marks the young goats at their pastime,
looks on with yearning eyes, and fain would be even as they; and thou,
when thou beholdest the laughter of maidens, dost gaze with yearning
eyes, for that thou dost not join their dances.’
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
Yet these the herdsman answered not again, but he bare his bitter love
to the end, yea, to the fated end he bare it.
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
Ay, but she too came, the sweetly smiling Cypris, craftily smiling she
came, yet keeping her heavy anger; and she spake, saying: ‘Daphnis,
methinks thou didst boast that thou wouldst throw Love a fall, nay,
is it not thyself that hast been thrown by grievous Love?’
Begin ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
But to her Daphnis answered again: ‘Implacable Cypris, Cypris
terrible, Cypris of mortals detested, already dost thou deem that my
latest sun has set; nay, Daphnis even in Hades shall prove great sorrow
to Love.
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
‘Where it is told how the herdsman with Cypris - Get thee to Ida,
get thee to Anchises! There are oak trees - here only galingale
blows, here sweetly hum the bees about the hives!
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
‘Thine Adonis, too, is in his bloom, for he herds the sheep and
slays the hares, and he chases all the wild beasts. Nay, go and
confront Diomedes again, and say, “The herdsman Daphnis I conquered,
do thou join battle with me.”
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
‘Ye wolves, ye jackals, and ye bears in the mountain caves, farewell!
The herdsman Daphnis ye never shall see again, no more in the dells,
no more in the groves, no more in the woodlands. Farewell Arethusa,
ye rivers, good-night, that pour down Thymbris your beautiful waters.
Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
‘That Daphnis am I who here do herd the kine, Daphnis who water
here the bulls and calves.
‘O Pan, Pan! whether thou art on the high hills of Lycaeus, or
rangest mighty Maenalus, haste hither to the Sicilian isle! Leave
the tomb of Helice, leave that high cairn of the son of Lycaon, which
seems wondrous fair, even in the eyes of the blessed. {9}
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
‘Come hither, my prince, and take this fair pipe, honey-breathed
with wax-stopped joints; and well it fits thy lip: for verily I, even
I, by Love am now haled to Hades.
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
‘Now violets bear, ye brambles, ye thorns bear violets; and let
fair narcissus bloom on the boughs of juniper! Let all things
with all be confounded, - from pines let men gather pears, for Daphnis
is dying! Let the stag drag down the hounds, let owls from the
hills contend in song with the nightingales.’
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
So Daphnis spake, and ended; but fain would Aphrodite have given him
back to life. Nay, spun was all the thread that the Fates assigned,
and Daphnis went down the stream. The whirling wave closed over
the man the Muses loved, the man not hated of the nymphs.
Give o’er, ye Muses, come, give o’er the pastoral song!
And thou, give me the bowl, and the she-goat, that I may milk her and
poor forth a libation to the Muses. Farewell, oh, farewells manifold,
ye Muses, and I, some future day, will sing you yet a sweeter song.
The Goatherd. Filled may thy fair mouth be with honey,
Thyrsis, and filled with the honeycomb; and the sweet dried fig mayst
thou eat of Aegilus, for thou vanquishest the cicala in song!
Lo here is thy cup, see, my friend, of how pleasant a savour!
Thou wilt think it has been dipped in the well-spring of the Hours.
Hither, hither, Cissaetha: do thou milk her, Thyrsis. And you
young she-goats, wanton not so wildly lest you bring up the he-goat
against you.
IDYL II
Simaetha, madly in love with Delphis, who has forsaken her, endeavours
to subdue him to her by magic, and by invoking the Moon, in her character
of Hecate, and of Selene. She tells the tale of the growth of
her passion, and vows vengeance if her magic arts are unsuccessful.
The scene is probably some garden beneath the moonlit shy, near the
town, and within sound of the sea. The characters are Simaetha,
and Thestylis, her handmaid.
Where are my laurel leaves? come, bring them, Thestylis; and where
are the love-charms? Wreath the bowl with bright-red wool, that
I may knit the witch-knots against my grievous lover, {11}
who for twelve days, oh cruel, has never come hither, nor knows whether
I am alive or dead, nor has once knocked at my door, unkind that he
is! Hath Love flown off with his light desires by some other path
- Love and Aphrodite? To-morrow I will go to the wrestling school
of Timagetus, to see my love and to reproach him with all the wrong
he is doing me. But now I will bewitch him with my enchantments!
Do thou, Selene, shine clear and fair, for softly, Goddess, to thee
will I sing, and to Hecate of hell. The very whelps shiver before
her as she fares through black blood and across the barrows of the dead.
Hail, awful Hecate! to the end be thou of our company, and make this
medicine of mine no weaker than the spells of Circe, or of Medea, or
of Perimede of the golden hair.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Lo, how the barley grain first smoulders in the fire, - nay, toss on
the barley, Thestylis! Miserable maid, where are thy wits wandering?
Even to thee, wretched that I am, have I become a laughing-stock, even
to thee? Scatter the grain, and cry thus the while, ‘’Tis
the bones of Delphis I am scattering!’
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Delphis troubled me, and I against Delphis am burning this laurel; and
even as it crackles loudly when it has caught the flame, and suddenly
is burned up, and we see not even the dust thereof, lo, even thus may
the flesh of Delphis waste in the burning!
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Even as I melt this wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he by
love be molten, the Myndian Delphis! And as whirls this brazen
wheel, {13} so restless,
under Aphrodite’s spell, may he turn and turn about my doors.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Now will I burn the husks, and thou, O Artemis, hast power to move hell’s
adamantine gates, and all else that is as stubborn. Thestylis,
hark, ‘tis so; the hounds are baying up and down the town!
The Goddess stands where the three ways meet! Hasten, and clash
the brazen cymbals.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Lo, silent is the deep, and silent the winds, but never silent the torment
in my breast. Nay, I am all on fire for him that made me, miserable
me, no wife but a shameful thing, a girl no more a maiden.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Three times do I pour libation, and thrice, my Lady Moon, I speak this
spell:- Be it with a friend that he lingers, be it with a leman he lies,
may he as clean forget them as Theseus, of old, in Dia - so legends
tell - did utterly forget the fair-tressed Ariadne.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Coltsfoot is an Arcadian weed that maddens, on the hills, the young
stallions and fleet-footed mares. Ah! even as these may I see
Delphis; and to this house of mine, may he speed like a madman, leaving
the bright palaestra.
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
This fringe from his cloak Delphis lost; that now I shred and cast into
the cruel flame. Ah, ah, thou torturing Love, why clingest thou
to me like a leech of the fen, and drainest all the black blood from
my body?
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
Lo, I will crush an eft, and a venomous draught to-morrow I will bring
thee!
But now, Thestylis, take these magic herbs and secretly smear the juice
on the jambs of his gate (whereat, even now, my heart is captive, though
nothing he recks of me), and spit and whisper, ‘’Tis the
bones of Delphis that I smear.’
My magic wheel, draw home to me the man I love!
And now that I am alone, whence shall I begin to bewail my love?
Whence shall I take up the tale: who brought on me this sorrow?
The maiden-bearer of the mystic vessel came our way, Anaxo, daughter
of Eubulus, to the grove of Artemis; and behold, she had many other
wild beasts paraded for that time, in the sacred show, and among them
a lioness.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
And the Thracian servant of Theucharidas, - my nurse that is but lately
dead, and who then dwelt at our doors, - besought me and implored me
to come and see the show. And I went with her, wretched woman
that I am, clad about in a fair and sweeping linen stole, over which
I had thrown the holiday dress of Clearista.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Lo! I was now come to the mid-point of the highway, near the dwelling
of Lycon, and there I saw Delphis and Eudamippus walking together.
Their beards were more golden than the golden flower of the ivy; their
breasts (they coming fresh from the glorious wrestler’s toil)
were brighter of sheen than thyself Selene!
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Even as I looked I loved, loved madly, and all my heart was wounded,
woe is me, and my beauty began to wane. No more heed took I of
that show, and how I came home I know not; but some parching fever utterly
overthrew me, and I lay a-bed ten days and ten nights.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
And oftentimes my skin waxed wan as the colour of boxwood, and all my
hair was falling from my head, and what was left of me was but skin
and bones. Was there a wizard to whom I did not seek, or a crone
to whose house I did not resort, of them that have art magical?
But this was no light malady, and the time went fleeting on.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Thus I told the true story to my maiden, and said, ‘Go, Thestylis,
and find me some remedy for this sore disease. Ah me, the Myndian
possesses me, body and soul! Nay, depart, and watch by the wrestling-ground
of Timagetus, for there is his resort, and there he loves to loiter.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
‘And when thou art sure he is alone, nod to him secretly, and
say, “Simaetha bids thee to come to her,” and lead him hither
privily.’ So I spoke; and she went and brought the bright-limbed
Delphis to my house. But I, when I beheld him just crossing the
threshold of the door, with his light step, -
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Grew colder all than snow, and the sweat streamed from my brow like
the dank dews, and I had no strength to speak, nay, nor to utter as
much as children murmur in their slumber, calling to their mother dear:
and all my fair body turned stiff as a puppet of wax.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Then when he had gazed on me, he that knows not love, he fixed his eyes
on the ground, and sat down on my bed, and spake as he sat him down:
‘Truly, Simaetha, thou didst by no more outrun mine own coming
hither, when thou badst me to thy roof, than of late I outran in the
race the beautiful Philinus:
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
‘For I should have come; yea, by sweet Love, I should have come,
with friends of mine, two or three, as soon as night drew on, bearing
in my breast the apples of Dionysus, and on my head silvery poplar leaves,
the holy boughs of Heracles, all twined with bands of purple.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
‘And if you had received me, they would have taken it well, for
among all the youths unwed I have a name for beauty and speed of foot.
With one kiss of thy lovely mouth I had been content; but an if ye had
thrust me forth, and the door had been fastened with the bar, then truly
should torch and axe have broken in upon you.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
‘And now to Cypris first, methinks, my thanks are due, and after
Cypris it is thou that hast caught me, lady, from the burning, in that
thou badst me come to this thy house, half consumed as I am! Yea,
Love, ‘tis plain, lights oft a fiercer blaze than Hephaestus the
God of Lipara.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
‘With his madness dire, he scares both the maiden from her bower
and the bride from the bridal bed, yet warm with the body of her lord!’
So he spake, and I, that was easy to win, took his hand, and drew him
down on the soft bed beside me. And immediately body from body
caught fire, and our faces glowed as they had not done, and sweetly
we murmured. And now, dear Selene, to tell thee no long tale,
the great rites were accomplished, and we twain came to our desire.
Faultless was I in his sight, till yesterday, and he, again, in mine.
But there came to me the mother of Philista, my flute player, and the
mother of Melixo, to-day, when the horses of the Sun were climbing the
sky, bearing Dawn of the rosy arms from the ocean stream. Many
another thing she told me; and chiefly this, that Delphis is a lover,
and whom he loves she vowed she knew not surely, but this only, that
ever he filled up his cup with the unmixed wine, to drink a toast to
his dearest. And at last he went off hastily, saying that he would
cover with garlands the dwelling of his love.
This news my visitor told me, and she speaks the truth. For indeed,
at other seasons, he would come to me thrice, or four times, in the
day, and often would leave with me his Dorian oil flask. But now
it is the twelfth day since I have even looked on him! Can it
be that he has not some other delight, and has forgotten me? Now
with magic rites I will strive to bind him, {19}
but if still he vexes me, he shall beat, by the Fates I vow it, at the
gate of Hell. Such evil medicines I store against him in a certain
coffer, the use whereof, my lady, an Assyrian stranger taught me.
But do thou farewell, and turn thy steeds to Ocean, Lady, and my pain
I will bear, as even till now I have endured it. Farewell, Selene
bright and fair, farewell ye other stars, that follow the wheels of
quiet Night.
IDYL III
A goatherd, leaving his goats to feed on the hillside, in the charge
of Tityrus, approaches the cavern of Amaryllis, with its veil of ferns
and ivy, and attempts to win back the heart of the girl by song.
He mingles promises with harmless threats, and repeats, in exquisite
verses, the names of the famous lovers of old days, Milanion and Endymion.
Failing to move Amaryllis, the goatherd threatens to die where he has
thrown himself down, beneath the trees.
Courting Amaryllis with song I go, while my she-goats feed on the
hill, and Tityrus herds them. Ah, Tityrus, my dearly beloved,
feed thou the goats, and to the well-side lead them, Tityrus, and ‘ware
the yellow Libyan he-goat, lest he butt thee with his horns.
Ah, lovely Amaryllis, why no more, as of old, dust thou glance through
this cavern after me, nor callest me, thy sweetheart, to thy side.
Can it be that thou hatest me? Do I seem snub-nosed, now thou
hast seen me near, maiden, and under-hung? Thou wilt make me strangle
myself!
Lo, ten apples I bring thee, plucked from that very place where thou
didst bid me pluck them, and others to-morrow I will bring thee.
Ah, regard my heart’s deep sorrow! ah, would I were that humming
bee, and to thy cave might come dipping beneath the fern that hides
thee, and the ivy leaves!
Now know I Love, and a cruel God is he. Surely he sucked the lioness’s
dug, and in the wild wood his mother reared him, whose fire is scorching
me, and bites even to the bone.
Ah, lovely as thou art to look upon, ah heart of stone, ah dark-browed
maiden, embrace me, thy true goatherd, that I may kiss thee, and even
in empty kisses there is a sweet delight!
Soon wilt thou make me rend the wreath in pieces small, the wreath of
ivy, dear Amaryllis, that I keep for thee, with rose-buds twined, and
fragrant parsley. Ah me, what anguish! Wretched that I am,
whither shall I turn! Thou dust not hear my prayer!
I will cast off my coat of skins, and into yonder waves I will spring,
where the fisher Olpis watches for the tunny shoals, and even if I die
not, surely thy pleasure will have been done.
I learned the truth of old, when, amid thoughts of thee, I asked, ‘Loves
she, loves she not?’ and the poppy petal clung not, and gave no
crackling sound, but withered on my smooth forearm, even so. {21}
And she too spoke sooth, even Agroeo, she that divineth with a sieve,
and of late was binding sheaves behind the reapers, who said that I
had set all my heart on thee, but that thou didst nothing regard me.
Truly I keep for thee the white goat with the twin kids that Mermnon’s
daughter too, the brown-skinned Erithacis, prays me to give her; and
give her them I will, since thou dost flout me.
My right eyelid throbs, is it a sign that I am to see her? Here
will I lean me against this pine tree, and sing, and then perchance
she will regard me, for she is not all of adamant.
Lo, Hippomenes when he was eager to marry the famous maiden, took apples
in his hand, and so accomplished his course; and Atalanta saw, and madly
longed, and leaped into the deep waters of desire. Melampus too,
the soothsayer, brought the herd of oxen from Othrys to Pylos, and thus
in the arms of Bias was laid the lovely mother of wise Alphesiboea.
And was it not thus that Adonis, as he pastured his sheep upon the hills,
led beautiful Cytherea to such heights of frenzy, that not even in his
death doth she unclasp him from her bosom? Blessed, methinks is
the lot of him that sleeps, and tosses not, nor turns, even Endymion;
and, dearest maiden, blessed I call Iason, whom such things befell,
as ye that be profane shall never come to know.
My head aches, but thou carest not. I will sing no more, but dead
will I lie where I fall, and here may the wolves devour me.
Sweet as honey in the mouth may my death be to thee.
IDYL IV
Battus and Corydon, two rustic fellows, meeting in a glade, gossip
about their neighbour, Aegon, who has gone to try his fortune at the
Olympic games. After some random banter, the talk turns on the
death of Amaryllis, and the grief of Battus is disturbed by the roaming
of his cattle. Corydon removes a thorn that has run into his friend’s
foot, and the conversation comes back to matters of rural scandal.
The scene is in Southern Italy.
Battus. Tell me, Corydon, whose kine are these, - the cattle
of Philondas?
Corydon. Nay, they are Aegon’s, he gave me them to
pasture.
Battus. Dost thou ever find a way to milk them all, on
the sly, just before evening?
Corydon. No chance of that, for the old man puts the calves
beneath their dams, and keeps watch on me.
Battus. But the neatherd himself, - to what land has he
passed out of sight?
Corydon. Hast thou not heard? Milon went and carried
him off to the Alpheus.
Battus. And when, pray, did he ever set eyes on
the wrestlers’ oil?
Corydon. They say he is a match for Heracles, in strength
and hardihood.
Battus. And I, so mother says, am a better man than Polydeuces.
Corydon. Well, off he has gone, with a shovel, and with
twenty sheep from his flock here. {24}
Battus. Milo, thou’lt see, will soon be coaxing the
wolves to rave!
Corydon. But Aegon’s heifers here are lowing pitifully,
and miss their master.
Battus. Yes, wretched beasts that they are, how false a
neatherd was theirs!
Corydon. Wretched enough in truth, and they have no more
care to pasture.
Battus. Nothing is left, now, of that heifer, look you,
bones, that’s all. She does not live on dewdrops, does she,
like the grasshopper?
Corydon. No, by Earth, for sometimes I take her to graze
by the banks of Aesarus, fair handfuls of fresh grass I give her too,
and otherwhiles she wantons in the deep shade round Latymnus.
Battus. How lean is the red bull too! May the sons
of Lampriades, the burghers to wit, get such another for their sacrifice
to Hera, for the township is an ill neighbour.
Corydon. And yet that bull is driven to the mere’s
mouth, and to the meadows of Physcus, and to the Neaethus, where all
fair herbs bloom, red goat-wort, and endive, and fragrant bees-wort.
Battus. Ah, wretched Aegon, thy very kine will go to Hades,
while thou too art in love with a luckless victory, and thy pipe is
flecked with mildew, the pipe that once thou madest for thyself!
Corydon. Not the pipe, by the nymphs, not so, for when
he went to Pisa, he left the same as a gift to me, and I am something
of a player. Well can I strike up the air of Glaucé
and well the strain of Pyrrhus, and the praise of Croton
I sing, and Zacynthus is a goodly town, and Lacinium that
fronts the dawn! There Aegon the boxer, unaided, devoured
eighty cakes to his own share, and there he caught the bull by the hoof,
and brought him from the mountain, and gave him to Amaryllis.
Thereon the women shrieked aloud, and the neatherd, - he burst out laughing.
Battus. Ah, gracious Amaryllis! Thee alone even in
death will we ne’er forget. Dear to me as my goats wert
thou, and thou art dead! Alas, too cruel a spirit hath my lot
in his keeping.
Corydon. Dear Battus, thou must needs be comforted.
The morrow perchance will bring better fortune. The living may
hope, the dead alone are hopeless. Zeus now shows bright and clear,
and anon he rains.
Battus. Enough of thy comforting! Drive the calves
from the lower ground, the cursed beasts are grazing on the olive-shoots.
Hie on, white face.
Corydon. Out, Cymaetha, get thee to the hill! Dost
thou not hear? By Pan, I will soon come and be the death of you,
if you stay there! Look, here she is creeping back again!
Would I had my crook for hare killing: how I would cudgel thee.
Battus. In the name of Zeus, prithee look here, Corydon!
A thorn has just run into my foot under the ankle. How deep they
grow, the arrow-headed thorns. An ill end befall the heifer; I
was pricked when I was gaping after her. Prithee dost see it?
Corydon. Yes, yes, and I have caught it in my nails, see,
here it is.
Battus. How tiny is the wound, and how tall a man it masters!
Corydon. When thou goest to the hill, go not barefoot,
Battus, for on the hillside flourish thorns and brambles plenty.
Battus. Come, tell me, Corydon, the old man now, does he
still run after that little black-browed darling whom he used to dote
on?
Corydon. He is after her still, my lad; but yesterday I
came upon them, by the very byre, and right loving were they.
Battus. Well done, thou ancient lover! Sure, thou
art near akin to the satyrs, or a rival of the slim-shanked Pans! {26}
IDYL V
This Idyl begins with a ribald debate between two hirelings, who,
at last, compete with each other in a match of pastoral song.
No other idyl of Theocritus is so frankly true to the rough side of
rustic manners. The scene is in Southern Italy.
Comatas. Goats of mine, keep clear of that notorious shepherd
of Sibyrtas, that Lacon; he stole my goat-skin yesterday.
Lacon. Will ye never leave the well-head? Off, my
lambs, see ye not Comatas; him that lately stole my shepherd’s
pipe?
Comatas. What manner of pipe might that be, for when gat’st
thou a pipe, thou slave of Sibyrtas? Why does it no more
suffice thee to keep a flute of straw, and whistle with Corydon?
Lacon. What pipe, free sir? why, the pipe that Lycon gave
me. And what manner of goat-skin hadst thou, that Lacon made off
with? Tell me, Comatas, for truly even thy master, Eumarides,
had never a goat-skin to sleep in.
Comatas. ‘Twas the skin that Crocylus gave me, the
dappled one, when he sacrificed the she-goat to the nymphs; but thou,
wretch, even then wert wasting with envy, and now, at last, thou hast
stripped me bare!
Lacon. Nay verily, so help me Pan of the seashore, it was
not Lacon the son of Calaethis that filched the coat of skin.
If I lie, sirrah, may I leap frenzied down this rock into the Crathis!
Comatas. Nay verily, my friend, so help me these nymphs
of the mere (and ever may they be favourable, as now, and kind to me),
it was not Comatas that pilfered thy pipe.
Lacon. If I believe thee, may I suffer the afflictions
of Daphnis! But see, if thou carest to stake a kid - though indeed
‘tis scarce worth my while - then, go to, I will sing against
thee, and cease not, till thou dust cry ‘enough!’
Comatas. The sow defied Athene! See,
there is staked the kid, go to, do thou too put a fatted lamb against
him, for thy stake.
Lacon. Thou fox, and where would be our even betting then?
Who ever chose hair to shear, in place of wool? and who prefers to milk
a filthy bitch, when he can have a she-goat, nursing her first kid?
Comatas. Why, he that deems himself as sure of getting
the better of his neighbour as thou dost, a wasp that buzzes against
the cicala. But as it is plain thou thinkst the kid no fair stake,
lo, here is this he-goat. Begin the match!
Lacon. No such haste, thou art not on fire! More
sweetly wilt thou sing, if thou wilt sit down beneath the wild olive
tree, and the groves in this place. Chill water falls there, drop
by drop, here grows the grass, and here a leafy bed is strown, and here
the locusts prattle.
Comatas. Nay, no whit am I in haste, but I am sorely vexed,
that thou shouldst dare to look me straight in the face, thou whom I
used to teach while thou wert still a child. See where gratitude
goes! As well rear wolf-whelps, breed hounds, that they may devour
thee!
Lacon. And what good thing have I to remember that I ever
learned or heard from thee, thou envious thing, thou mere hideous manikin!
* * *
But come this way, come, and thou shalt sing thy last of country song.
Comatas. That way I will not go! Here be oak trees,
and here the galingale, and sweetly here hum the bees about the hives.
There are two wells of chill water, and on the tree the birds are warbling,
and the shadow is beyond compare with that where thou liest, and from
on high the pine tree pelts us with her cones.
Lacon. Nay, but lambs’ wool, truly, and fleeces,
shalt thou tread here, if thou wilt but come, - fleeces more soft than
sleep, but the goat-skins beside thee stink - worse than thyself.
And I will set a great bowl of white milk for the nymphs, and another
will I offer of sweet olive oil.
Comatas. Nay, but an if thou wilt come, thou shalt tread
here the soft feathered fern, and flowering thyme, and beneath thee
shall be strown the skins of she-goats, four times more soft than the
fleeces of thy lambs. And I will set out eight bowls of milk for
Pan, and eight bowls full of the richest honeycombs.
Lacon. Thence, where thou art, I pray thee, begin the match,
and there sing thy country song, tread thine own ground and keep thine
oaks to thyself. But who, who shall judge between us? Would
that Lycopas, the neatherd, might chance to come this way!
Comatas. I want nothing with him, but that man, if thou
wilt, that woodcutter we will call, who is gathering those tufts of
heather near thee. It is Morson.
Lacon. Let us shout, then!
Comatas. Call thou to him.
Lacon. Ho, friend, come hither and listen for a little
while, for we two have a match to prove which is the better singer of
country song. So Morson, my friend, neither judge me too kindly,
no, nor show him favour.
Comatas. Yes, dear Morson, for the nymphs’ sake neither
lean in thy judgment to Comatas, nor, prithee, favour him.
The flock of sheep thou seest here belongs to Sibyrtas of Thurii, and
the goats, friend, that thou beholdest are the goats of Eumarides of
Sybaris.
Lacon. Now, in the name of Zeus did any one ask thee, thou
make-mischief, who owned the flock, I or Sibyrtas? What a chatterer
thou art!
Comatas. Best of men, I am for speaking the whole truth,
and boasting never, but thou art too fond of cutting speeches.
Lacon. Come, say whatever thou hast to say, and let the
stranger get home to the city alive; oh, Paean, what a babbler thou
art, Comatas!
THE SINGING MATCH.
Comatas. The Muses love me better far than the minstrel
Daphnis; but a little while ago I sacrificed two young she-goats to
the Muses.
Lacon. Yea, and me too Apollo loves very dearly, and a
noble ram I rear for Apollo, for the feast of the Carnea, look you,
is drawing nigh.
Comatas. The she-goats that I milk have all borne twins
save two. The maiden saw me, and ‘alas,’ she cried,
‘dost thou milk alone?’
Lacon. Ah, ah, but Lacon here hath nigh twenty baskets
full of cheese, and Lacon lies with his darling in the flowers!
Comatas. Clearista, too, pelts the goatherd with apples
as he drives past his she-goats, and a sweet word she murmurs.
Lacon. And wild with love am I too, for my fair young darling,
that meets the shepherd, with the bright hair floating round the shapely
neck.
Comatas. Nay, ye may not liken dog-roses to the rose, or
wind-flowers to the roses of the garden; by the garden walls their beds
are blossoming.
Lacon. Nay, nor wild apples to acorns, for acorns are bitter
in the oaken rind, but apples are sweet as honey.
Comatas. Soon will I give my maiden a ring-dove for a gift;
I will take it from the juniper tree, for there it is brooding.
Lacon. But I will give my darling a soft fleece to make
a cloak, a free gift, when I shear the black ewe.
Comatas. Forth from the wild olive, my bleating she-goats,
feed here where the hillside slopes, and the tamarisks grove.
Lacon. Conarus there, and Cynaetha, will you never leave
the oak? Graze here, where Phalarus feeds, where the hillside
fronts the dawn.
Comatas. Ay, and I have a vessel of cypress wood, and a
mixing bowl, the work of Praxiteles, and I hoard them for my maiden.
Lacon. I too have a dog that loves the flock, the dog to
strangle wolves; him I am giving to my darling to chase all manner of
wild beasts.
Comatas. Ye locusts that overleap our fence, see that ye
harm not our vines, for our vines are young.
Lacon. Ye cicalas, see how I make the goatherd chafe: even
so, methinks, do ye vex the reapers.
Comatas. I hate the foxes, with their bushy brushes, that
ever come at evening, and eat the grapes of Micon.
Lacon. And I hate the lady-birds that devour the figs of
Philondas, and flit down the wind.
Comatas. Dost thou not remember how I cudgelled thee, and
thou didst grin and nimbly writhe, and catch hold of yonder oak?
Lacon. That I have no memory of, but how Eumarides bound
thee there, upon a time, and flogged thee through and through, that
I do very well remember.
Comatas. Already, Morson, some one is waxing bitter, dust
thou see no sign of it? Go, go, and pluck, forthwith, the squills
from some old wife’s grave.
Lacon. And I too, Morson, I make some one chafe, and thou
dost perceive it. Be off now to the Hales stream, and dig cyclamen.
Comatas. Let Himera flow with milk instead of water, and
thou, Crathis, run red with wine, and all thy reeds bear apples.
Lacon. Would that the fount of Sybaris may flow with honey,
and may the maiden’s pail, at dawning, be dipped, not in water,
but in the honeycomb.
Comatas. My goats eat cytisus, and goatswort, and tread
the lentisk shoots, and lie at ease among the arbutus.
Lacon. But my ewes have honey-wort to feed on, and luxuriant
creepers flower around, as fair as roses.
Comatas. I love not Alcippe, for yesterday she did not
kiss me, and take my face between her hands, when I gave her the dove.
Lacon. But deeply I love my darling, for a kind kiss once
I got, in return for the gift of a shepherd’s pipe.
Comatas. Lacon, it never was right that pyes should contend
with the nightingale, nor hoopoes with swans, but thou, unhappy swain,
art ever for contention.
Morson’s Judgement. I bid the shepherd cease.
But to thee, Comatas, Morson presents the lamb. And thou, when
thou hast sacrificed her to the nymphs, send Morson, anon, a goodly
portion of her flesh.
Comatas. I will, by Pan. Now leap, and snort, my
he-goats, all the herd of you, and see here how loud I ever will laugh,
and exult over Lacon, the shepherd, for that, at last, I have won the
lamb. See, I will leap sky high with joy. Take heart, my
horned goats, to-morrow I will dip you all in the fountain of Sybaris.
Thou white he-goat, I will beat thee if thou dare to touch one of the
herd before I sacrifice the lamb to the nymphs. There he is at
it again! Call me Melanthius, {34}
not Comatas, if I do not cudgel thee.
IDYL VI
Daphnis and Damoetas, two herdsmen of the golden age, meet by a well-side,
and sing a match, their topic is the Cyclops, Polyphemus, and his love
for the sea-nymph, Galatea.
The scene is in Sicily.
Damoetas, and Daphnis the herdsman, once on a time, Aratus, led
the flock together into one place. Golden was the down on the
chin of one, the beard of the other was half-grown, and by a well-head
the twain sat them down, in the summer noon, and thus they sang.
‘Twas Daphnis that began the singing, for the challenge had come
from Daphnis.
Daphnis’s Song of the Cyclops.
Galatea is pelting thy flock with apples, Polyphemus, she says the
goatherd is a laggard lover! And thou dost not glance at her,
oh hard, hard that thou art, but still thou sittest at thy sweet piping.
Ah see, again, she is pelting thy dog, that follows thee to watch thy
sheep. He barks, as he looks into the brine, and now the beautiful
waves that softly plash reveal him, {36}
as he runs upon the shore. Take heed that he leap not on the maiden’s
limbs as she rises from the salt water, see that he rend not her lovely
body! Ah, thence again, see, she is wantoning, light as dry thistle-down
in the scorching summer weather. She flies when thou art wooing
her; when thou woo’st not she pursues thee, she plays out all
her game and leaves her king unguarded. For truly to Love, Polyphemus,
many a time doth foul seem fair!
He ended and Damoetas touched a prelude to his sweet song.
I saw her, by Pan, I saw her when she was pelting my flock.
Nay, she escaped not me, escaped not my one dear eye, - wherewith I
shall see to my life’s end, - let Telemus the soothsayer, that
prophesies hateful things, hateful things take home, to keep them for
his children! But it is all to torment her, that I, in my turn,
give not back her glances, pretending that I have another love.
To hear this makes her jealous of me, by Paean, and she wastes with
pain, and springs madly from the sea, gazing at my caves and at my herds.
And I hiss on my dog to bark at her, for when I loved Galatea he would
whine with joy, and lay his muzzle on her lap. Perchance when
she marks how I use her she will send me many a messenger, but on her
envoys I will shut my door till she promises that herself will make
a glorious bridal-bed on this island for me. For in truth, I am
not so hideous as they say! But lately I was looking into the
sea, when all was calm; beautiful seemed my beard, beautiful my one
eye - as I count beauty - and the sea reflected the gleam of my teeth
whiter than the Parian stone. Then, all to shun the evil eye,
did I spit thrice in my breast; for this spell was taught me by the
crone, Cottytaris, that piped of yore to the reapers in Hippocoon’s
field.
Then Damoetas kissed Daphnis, as he ended his song, and he gave Daphnis
a pipe, and Daphnis gave him a beautiful flute. Damoetas fluted,
and Daphnis piped, the herdsman, - and anon the calves were dancing
in the soft green grass. Neither won the victory, but both were
invincible.
IDYL VII
The poet making his way through the noonday heat, with two friends,
to a harvest feast, meets the goatherd, Lycidas. To humour the
poet Lycidas sings a love song of his own, and the other replies with
verses about the passion of Aratus, the famous writer of didactic verse.
After a courteous parting from Lycidas, the poet and his two friends
repair to the orchard, where Demeter is being gratified with the first-fruits
of harvest and vintaging.
In this idyl, Theocritus, speaking of himself by the name of Simichidas,
alludes to his teachers in poetry, and, perhaps, to some of the literary
quarrels of the time.
The scene is in the isle of Cos. G. Hermann fancied that the scene
was in Lucania, and Mr. W. R. Paton thinks he can identify the places
named by the aid of inscriptions (Classical Review, ii. 8, 265).
See also Rayet, Mémoire sur l’île de Cos,
p. 18, Paris, 1876.
The Harvest Feast.
It fell upon a time when Eucritus and I were walking from the city
to the Hales water, and Amyntas was the third in our company.
The harvest-feast of Deo was then being held by Phrasidemus and Antigenes,
two sons of Lycopeus (if aught there be of noble and old descent), whose
lineage dates from Clytia, and Chalcon himself - Chalcon, beneath whose
foot the fountain sprang, the well of Buriné. He set his
knee stoutly against the rock, and straightway by the spring poplars
and elm trees showed a shadowy glade, arched overhead they grew, and
pleached with leaves of green. We had not yet reached the mid-point
of the way, nor was the tomb of Brasilas yet risen upon our sight, when,
- thanks be to the Muses - we met a certain wayfarer, the best of men,
a Cydonian. Lycidas was his name, a goatherd was he, nor could
any that saw him have taken him for other than he was, for all about
him bespoke the goatherd. Stripped from the roughest of he-goats
was the tawny skin he wore on his shoulders, the smell of rennet clinging
to it still, and about his breast an old cloak was buckled with a plaited
belt, and in his right hand he carried a crooked staff of wild olive:
and quietly he accosted me, with a smile, a twinkling eye, and a laugh
still on his lips:-
‘Simichidas, whither, pray, through the noon dost thou trail thy
feet, when even the very lizard on the rough stone wall is sleeping,
and the crested larks no longer fare afield? Art thou hastening
to a feast, a bidden guest, or art thou for treading a townsman’s
wine-press? For such is thy speed that every stone upon the way
spins singing from thy boots!’
‘Dear Lycidas,’ I answered him, ‘they all say that
thou among herdsmen, yea, and reapers art far the chiefest flute-player.
In sooth this greatly rejoices our hearts, and yet, to my conceit, meseems
I can vie with thee. But as to this journey, we are going to the
harvest-feast, for, look you some friends of ours are paying a festival
to fair-robed Demeter, out of the first-fruits of their increase, for
verily in rich measure has the goddess filled their threshing-floor
with barley grain. But come, for the way and the day are thine
alike and mine, come, let us vie in pastoral song, perchance each will
make the other delight. For I, too, am a clear-voiced mouth of
the Muses, and they all call me the best of minstrels, but I am not
so credulous; no, by Earth, for to my mind I cannot as yet conquer in
song that great Sicelidas - the Samian - nay, nor yet Philetas.
‘Tis a match of frog against cicala!’
So I spoke, to win my end, and the goatherd with his sweet laugh, said,
‘I give thee this staff, because thou art a sapling of Zeus, and
in thee is no guile. For as I hate your builders that try to raise
a house as high as the mountain summit of Oromedon, {40}
so I hate all birds of the Muses that vainly toil with their cackling
notes against the Minstrel of Chios! But come, Simichidas, without
more ado let us begin the pastoral song. And I - nay, see friend
- if it please thee at all, this ditty that I lately fashioned on the
mountain side!’
The Song of Lycidas.
Fair voyaging befall Ageanax to Mytilene, both when the Kids
are westering, and the south wind the wet waves chases, and when
Orion holds his feet above the Ocean! Fair voyaging betide him,
if he saves Lycidas from the fire of Aphrodite, for hot is the love
that consumes me.
The halcyons will lull the waves, and lull the deep, and the south wind,
and the east, that stirs the sea-weeds on the farthest shores, {41}
the halcyons that are dearest to the green-haired mermaids, of all the
birds that take their prey from the salt sea. Let all things smile
on Ageanax to Mytilene sailing, and may he come to a friendly haven.
And I, on that day, will go crowned with anise, or with a rosy wreath,
or a garland of white violets, and the fine wine of Ptelea I will dip
from the bowl as I lie by the fire, while one shall roast beans for
me, in the embers. And elbow-deep shall the flowery bed be thickly
strewn, with fragrant leaves and with asphodel, and with curled parsley;
and softly will I drink, toasting Ageanax with lips clinging fast to
the cup, and draining it even to the lees.
Two shepherds shall be my flute-players, one from Acharnae, one from
Lycope, and hard by Tityrus shall sing, how the herdsman Daphnis once
loved a strange maiden, and how on the hill he wandered, and how the
oak trees sang his dirge - the oaks that grow by the banks of the river
Himeras - while he was wasting like any snow under high Haemus, or Athos,
or Rhodope, or Caucasus at the world’s end.
And he shall sing how, once upon a time, the great chest prisoned the
living goatherd, by his lord’s infatuate and evil will, and how
the blunt-faced bees, as they came up from the meadow to the fragrant
cedar chest, fed him with food of tender flowers, because the Muse still
dropped sweet nectar on his lips. {42}
O blessed Comatas, surely these joyful things befell thee, and thou
wast enclosed within the chest, and feeding on the honeycomb through
the springtime didst thou serve out thy bondage. Ah, would that
in my days thou hadst been numbered with the living, how gladly on the
hills would I have herded thy pretty she-goats, and listened to thy
voice, whilst thou, under oaks or pine trees lying, didst sweetly sing,
divine Comatas!
When he had chanted thus much he ceased, and I followed after him again,
with some such words as these:-
‘Dear Lycidas, many another song the Nymphs have taught me also,
as I followed my herds upon the hillside, bright songs that Rumour,
perchance, has brought even to the throne of Zeus. But of them
all this is far the most excellent, wherewith I will begin to do thee
honour: nay listen as thou art dear to the Muses.’
The Song of Simichidas.
For Simichidas the Loves have sneezed, for truly the wretch loves
Myrto as dearly as goats love the spring. {43}
But Aratus, far the dearest of my friends, deep, deep his heart he keeps
Desire, - and Aratus’s love is young! Aristis knows it,
an honourable man, nay of men the best, whom even Phoebus would permit
to stand and sing lyre in hand, by his tripods. Aristis knows
how deeply love is burning Aratus to the bone. Ah, Pan, thou lord
of the beautiful plain of Homole, bring, I pray thee, the darling of
Aratus unbidden to his arms, whosoe’er it be that he loves.
If this thou dost, dear Pan, then never may the boys of Arcady flog
thy sides and shoulders with stinging herbs, when scanty meats are left
them on thine altar. But if thou shouldst otherwise decree, then
may all thy skin be frayed and torn with thy nails, yea, and in nettles
mayst thou couch! In the hills of the Edonians mayst thou dwell
in mid-winter time, by the river Hebrus, close neighbour to the Polar
star! But in summer mayst thou range with the uttermost Æthiopians
beneath the rock of the Blemyes, whence Nile no more is seen.
And you, leave ye the sweet fountain of Hyetis and Byblis, and ye that
dwell in the steep home of golden Dione, ye Loves as rosy as red apples,
strike me with your arrows, the desired, the beloved; strike, for that
ill-starred one pities not my friend, my host! And yet assuredly
the pear is over-ripe, and the maidens cry ‘alas, alas, thy fair
bloom fades away!’
Come, no more let us mount guard by these gates, Aratus, nor wear our
feet away with knocking there. Nay, let the crowing of the morning
cock give others over to the bitter cold of dawn. Let Molon alone,
my friend, bear the torment at that school of passion! For us,
let us secure a quiet life, and some old crone to spit on us for luck,
and so keep all unlovely things away.
Thus I sang, and sweetly smiling, as before, he gave me the staff, a
pledge of brotherhood in the Muses. Then he bent his way to the
left, and took the road to Pyxa, while I and Eucritus, with beautiful
Amyntas, turned to the farm of Phrasidemus. There we reclined
on deep beds of fragrant lentisk, lowly strown, and rejoicing we lay
in new stript leaves of the vine. And high above our heads waved
many a poplar, many an elm tree, while close at hand the sacred water
from the nymphs’ own cave welled forth with murmurs musical.
On shadowy boughs the burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil, far
off the little owl cried in the thick thorn brake, the larks and finches
were singing, the ring-dove moaned, the yellow bees were flitting about
the springs. All breathed the scent of the opulent summer, of
the season of fruits; pears at our feet and apples by our sides were
rolling plentiful, the tender branches, with wild plums laden, were
earthward bowed, and the four-year-old pitch seal was loosened from
the mouth of the wine-jars.
Ye nymphs of Castaly that hold the steep of Parnassus, say, was it ever
a bowl like this that old Chiron set before Heracles in the rocky cave
of Pholus? Was it nectar like this that beguiled the shepherd
to dance and foot it about his folds, the shepherd that dwelt by Anapus,
on a time, the strong Polyphemus who hurled at ships with mountains?
Had these ever such a draught as ye nymphs bade flow for us by the altar
of Demeter of the threshing-floor?
Ah, once again may I plant the great fan on her corn-heap, while she
stands smiling by, with sheaves and poppies in her hands.
IDYL VIII
The scene is among the high mountain pastures of Sicily:-
‘On the sword, at the cliff top
Lie strewn the white flocks,’
and far below shines and murmurs the Sicilian sea. Here Daphnis
and Menalcas, two herdsmen of the golden age, meet, while still in their
earliest youth, and contend for the prize of pastoral. Their songs,
in elegiac measure, are variations on the themes of love and friendship
(for Menalcas sings of Milon, Daphnis of Nais), and of nature.
Daphnis is the winner,- it is his earliest victory, and the prelude
to his great renown among nymphs and shepherds. In this version
the strophes are arranged as in Fritzsche’s text. Some critics
take the poem to be a patchwork by various hands.
As beautiful Daphnis was following his kine, and Menalcas shepherding
his flock, they met, as men tell, on the long ranges of the hills.
The beards of both had still the first golden bloom, both were in their
earliest youth, both were pipe-players skilled, both skilled in song.
Then first Menalcas, looking at Daphnis, thus bespoke him.
‘Daphnis, thou herdsman of the lowing kine, art thou minded to
sing a match with me? Methinks I shall vanquish thee, when I sing
in turn, as readily as I please.’
Then Daphnis answered him again in this wise, ‘Thou shepherd of
the fleecy sheep, Menalcas, the pipe-player, never wilt thou vanquish
me in song, not thou, if thou shouldst sing till some evil thing befall
thee!’
Menalcas. Dost thou care then, to try this and see, dost
thou care to risk a stake?
Daphnis. I do care to try this and see, a stake I am ready
to risk.
Menalcas. But what shall we stake, what pledge shall we
find equal and sufficient?
Daphnis. I will pledge a calf, and do thou put down a lamb,
one that has grown to his mother’s height.
Menalcas. Nay, never will I stake a lamb, for stern is
my father, and stern my mother, and they number all the sheep at evening.
Daphnis. But what, then, wilt thou lay, and where is to
be the victor’s gain?
Menalcas. The pipe, the fair pipe with nine stops, that
I made myself, fitted with white wax, and smoothed evenly, above as
below. This would I readily wager, but never will I stake aught
that is my father’s.
Daphnis. See then, I too, in truth, have a pipe with nine
stops, fitted with white wax, and smoothed evenly, above as below.
But lately I put it together, and this finger still aches, where the
reed split, and cut it deeply.
Menalcas. But who is to judge between us, who will listen
to our singing?
Daphnis. That goatherd yonder, he will do, if we call him
hither, the man for whom that dog, a black hound with a white patch,
is barking among the kids.
Then the boys called aloud, and the goatherd gave ear, and came, and
the boys began to sing, and the goatherd was willing to be their umpire.
And first Menalcas sang (for he drew the lot) the sweet-voiced Menalcas,
and Daphnis took up the answering strain of pastoral song - and ‘twas
thus Menalcas began:
Menalcas. Ye glades, ye rivers, issue of the Gods, if ever
Menalcas the flute-player sang a song ye loved, to please him, feed
his lambs; and if ever Daphnis come hither with his calves, nay he have
no less a boon.
Daphnis. Ye wells and pastures, sweet growth o’ the
world, if Daphnis sings like the nightingales, do ye fatten this herd
of his, and if Menalcas hither lead a flock, may he too have pasture
ungrudging to his full desire!
Menalcas. There doth the ewe bear twins, and there the
goats; there the bees fill the hives, and there oaks grow loftier than
common, wheresoever beautiful Milon’s feet walk wandering; ah,
if he depart, then withered and lean is the shepherd, and lean the pastures
Daphnis. Everywhere is spring, and pastures everywhere,
and everywhere the cows’ udders are swollen with milk, and the
younglings are fostered, wheresoever fair Nais roams; ah, if she depart,
then parched are the kine, and he that feeds them!
Menalcas. O bearded goat, thou mate of the white herd,
and O ye blunt-faced kids, where are the manifold deeps of the forest,
thither get ye to the water, for thereby is Milon; go, thou hornless
goat, and say to him, ‘Milon, Proteus was a herdsman, and that
of seals, though he was a god.’
Daphnis. . . .
Menalcas. Not mine be the land of Pelops, not mine to own
talents of gold, nay, nor mine to outrun the speed of the winds!
Nay, but beneath this rock will I sing, with thee in mine arms, and
watch our flocks feeding together, and, before us, the Sicilian sea.
Daphnis . . . .
Menalcas . . . .
Daphnis. Tempest is the dread pest of the trees, drought
of the waters, snares of the birds, and the hunter’s net of the
wild beasts, but ruinous to man is the love of a delicate maiden.
O father, O Zeus, I have not been the only lover, thou too hast longed
for a mortal woman.
Thus the boys sang in verses amoebaean, and thus Menalcas began the
crowning lay:
Menalcas. Wolf, spare the kids, spare the mothers of my
herd, and harm not me, so young as I am to tend so great a flock.
Ah, Lampurus, my dog, dost thou then sleep so soundly? a dog should
not sleep so sound, that helps a boyish shepherd. Ewes of mine,
spare ye not to take your fill of the tender herb, ye shall not weary,
‘ere all this grass grows again. Hist, feed on, feed on,
fill, all of you, your udders, that there may be milk for the lambs,
and somewhat for me to store away in the cheese-crates.
Then Daphnis followed again, and sweetly preluded to his singing:
Daphnis. Me, even me, from the cave, the girl with meeting
eyebrows spied yesterday as I was driving past my calves, and she cried,
‘How fair, how fair he is!’ But I answered her never
the word of railing, but cast down my eyes, and plodded on my way.
Sweet is the voice of the heifer, sweet her breath, {50}
sweet to lie beneath the sky in summer, by running water.
Acorns are the pride of the oak, apples of the apple tree, the calf
of the heifer, and the neatherd glories in his kine.
So sang the lads; and the goatherd thus bespoke them, ‘Sweet is
thy mouth, O Daphnis, and delectable thy song! Better is it to
listen to thy singing, than to taste the honeycomb. Take thou
the pipe, for thou hast conquered in the singing match. Ah, if
thou wilt but teach some lay, even to me, as I tend the goats beside
thee, this blunt-horned she-goat will I give thee, for the price of
thy teaching, this she-goat that ever fills the milking pail above the
brim.’
Then was the boy as glad, - and leaped high, and clapped his hands over
his victory, - as a young fawn leaps about his mother.
But the heart of the other was wasted with grief, and desolate, even
as a maiden sorrows that is newly wed.
From this time Daphnis became the foremost among the shepherds, and
while yet in his earliest youth, he wedded the nymph Nais.
IDYL IX
Daphnis and Menalcas, at the bidding of the poet, sing the joys of
the neatherds and of the shepherds life. Both receive the thanks
of the poet, and rustic prizes - a staff and a horn, made of a spiral
shell. Doubts have been expressed as to the authenticity of the
prelude and concluding verses. The latter breathe all Theocritus’s
enthusiastic love of song.
Sing, Daphnis, a pastoral lay, do thou first begin the song, the
song begin, O Daphnis; but let Menalcas join in the strain, when ye
have mated the heifers and their calves, the barren kine and the bulls.
Let them all pasture together, let them wander in the coppice, but never
leave the herd. Chant thou for me, first, and on the other side
let Menalcas reply.
Daphnis. Ah, sweetly lows the calf, and sweetly the heifer,
sweetly sounds the neatherd with his pipe, and sweetly also I!
My bed of leaves is strown by the cool water, and thereon are heaped
fair skins from the white calves that were all browsing upon the arbutus,
on a time, when the south-west wind dashed me them from the height.
And thus I heed no more the scorching summer, than a lover cares to
heed the words of father or of mother.
So Daphnis sang to me, and thus, in turn, did Menalcas sing.
Menalcas. Aetna, mother mine, I too dwell in a beautiful
cavern in the chamber of the rock, and, lo, all the wealth have I that
we behold in dreams; ewes in plenty and she-goats abundant, their fleeces
are strown beneath my head and feet. In the fire of oak-faggots
puddings are hissing-hot, and dry beech-nuts roast therein, in the wintry
weather, and, truly, for the winter season I care not even so much as
a toothless man does for walnuts, when rich pottage is beside him.
Then I clapped my hands in their honour, and instantly gave each a gift,
to Daphnis a staff that grew in my father’s close, self-shapen,
yet so straight, that perchance even a craftsman could have found no
fault in it. To the other I gave a goodly spiral shell, the meat
that filled it once I had eaten after stalking the fish on the Icarian
rocks (I cut it into five shares for five of us), - and Menalcas blew
a blast on the shell.
Ye pastoral Muses, farewell! Bring ye into the light the song
that I sang there to these shepherds on that day! Never let the
pimple grow on my tongue-tip. {53}
Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, and hawks to hawks, but to
me the Muse and song. Of song may all my dwelling be full, for
sleep is not more sweet, nor sudden spring, nor flowers are more delicious
to the bees - so dear to me are the Muses. {54}
Whom they look on in happy hour, Circe hath never harmed with her enchanted
potion.
IDYL X - THE REAPERS
This is an idyl of the same genre as Idyl IV. The sturdy reaper,
Milon, as he levels the swathes of corn, derides his languid and love-worn
companion, Buttus. The latter defends his gipsy love in verses
which have been the keynote of much later poetry, and which echo in
the fourth book of Lucretius, and in the Misanthrope of Molière.
Milon replies with the song of Lityerses - a string, apparently, of
popular rural couplets, such as Theocritus may have heard chanted in
the fields.
Milan. Thou toilsome clod; what ails thee now, thou wretched
fellow? Canst thou neither cut thy swathe straight, as thou wert
wont to do, nor keep time with thy neighbour in thy reaping, but thou
must fall out, like an ewe that is foot-pricked with a thorn and straggles
from the herd? What manner of man wilt thou prove after mid-noon,
and at evening, thou that dost not prosper with thy swathe when thou
art fresh begun?
Battus. Milon, thou that canst toil till late, thou chip
of the stubborn stone, has it never befallen thee to long for one that
was not with thee?
Milan. Never! What has a labouring man to do with
hankering after what he has not got?
Battus. Then it never befell thee to lie awake for love?
Milan. Forbid it; ‘tis an ill thing to let the dog
once taste of pudding.
Battus. But I, Milon, am in love for almost eleven days!
Milan. ‘Tis easily seen that thou drawest from a
wine-cask, while even vinegar is scarce with me.
Battus. And for Love’s sake, the fields before my
doors are untilled since seed-time.
Milan. But which of the girls afflicts thee so?
Battus. The daughter of Polybotas, she that of late was
wont to pipe to the reapers on Hippocoon’s farm.
Milan. God has found out the guilty! Thou hast what
thou’st long been seeking, that grasshopper of a girl will lie
by thee the night long!
Battus. Thou art beginning thy mocks of me, but Plutus
is not the only blind god; he too is blind, the heedless Love!
Beware of talking big.
Milan. Talk big I do not! Only see that thou dust
level the corn, and strike up some love-ditty in the wench’s praise.
More pleasantly thus wilt thou labour, and, indeed, of old thou wert
a melodist.
Battus. Ye Muses Pierian, sing ye with me the slender maiden,
for whatsoever ye do but touch, ye goddesses, ye make wholly fair.
They all call thee a gipsy, gracious Bombyca, and lean, and
sunburnt, ‘tis only I that call thee honey-pale.
Yea, and the violet is swart, and swart the lettered hyacinth, but
yet these flowers are chosen the first in garlands.
The goat runs after cytisus, the wolf pursues the goat, the crane follows
the plough, but I am wild for love of thee.
Would it were mine, all the wealth whereof once Croesus was lord, as
men tell! Then images of us twain, all in gold, should be dedicated
to Aphrodite, thou with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and
I in fair attire, and new shoon of Amyclae on both my feet.
Ah gracious Bombyca, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice
is drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I cannot tell of them! {57}
Milan. Verily our clown was a maker of lovely songs, and
we knew it not! How well he meted out and shaped his harmony;
woe is me for the beard that I have grown, all in vain! Come,
mark thou too these lines of godlike Lityerses
THE LITYERSES SONG.
Demeter, rich in fruit, and rich in grain, may this corn be easy
to win, and fruitful exceedingly!
Bind, ye bandsters, the sheaves, lest the wayfarer should cry, ‘Men
of straw were the workers here, ay, and their hire was wasted!’
See that the cut stubble faces the North wind, or the West, ‘tis
thus the grain waxes richest.
They that thresh corn should shun the noon-day steep; at noon the chaff
parts easiest from the straw.
As for the reapers, let them begin when the crested lark is waking,
and cease when he sleeps, but take holiday in the heat.
Lads, the frog has a jolly life, he is not cumbered about a butler to
his drink, for he has liquor by him unstinted!
Boil the lentils better, thou miserly steward; take heed lest thou chop
thy fingers, when thou’rt splitting cumin-seed.
‘Tis thus that men should sing who labour i’ the sun,
but thy starveling love, thou clod, ‘twere fit to tell to thy
mother when she stirs in bed at dawning.
IDYL XI - THE CYCLOPS IN LOVE
Nicias, the physician and poet, being in love, Theocritus reminds
him that in song lies the only remedy. It was by song, he says,
that the Cyclops, Polyphemus, got him some ease, when he was in love
with Galatea, the sea-nymph.
The idyl displays, in the most graceful manner, the Alexandrian taste
for turning Greek mythology into love stories. No creature could
be more remote from love than the original Polyphemus, the cannibal
giant of the Odyssey.
There is none other medicine, Nicias, against Love, neither unguent,
methinks, nor salve to sprinkle, - none, save the Muses of Pieria!
Now a delicate thing is their minstrelsy in man’s life, and a
sweet, but hard to procure. Methinks thou know’st this well,
who art thyself a leech, and beyond all men art plainly dear to the
Muses nine.
‘Twas surely thus the Cyclops fleeted his life most easily, he
that dwelt among us, - Polyphemus of old time, - when the beard was
yet young on his cheek and chin; and he loved Galatea. He loved,
not with apples, not roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy,
and all things else he held but trifles by the way. Many a time
from the green pastures would his ewes stray back, self-shepherded,
to the fold. But he was singing of Galatea, and pining in his
place he sat by the sea-weed of the beach, from the dawn of day, with
the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty Cypris’s sending,
- the wound of her arrow in his heart!
Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff,
and looking to the deep, ‘twas thus he would sing:-
Song of the Cyclops.
O milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More
white than is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb
art thou, than the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened
grape! Here dust thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses
me, and home straightway dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go,
fleeing me like an ewe that has seen the grey wolf.
I fell in love with thee, maiden, I, on the day when first thou camest,
with my mother, and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from the hill,
and I was thy guide on the way. But to leave loving thee, when
once I had seen thee, neither afterward, nor now at all, have I the
strength, even from that hour. But to thee all this is as nothing,
by Zeus, nay, nothing at all!
I know, thou gracious maiden, why it is that thou dust shun me.
It is all for the shaggy brow that spans all my forehead, from this
to the other ear, one long unbroken eyebrow. And but one eye is
on my forehead, and broad is the nose that overhangs my lip. Yet
I (even such as thou seest me) feed a thousand cattle, and from these
I draw and drink the best milk in the world. And cheese I never
lack, in summer time or autumn, nay, nor in the dead of winter, but
my baskets are always