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Updated: May 6, 2025
Yet, though I would willingly pay to Theocritus the honour which is always due to an original author, I am far from intending to depreciate Virgil: of whom Horace justly declares, that the rural muses have appropriated to him their elegance and sweetness, and who, as he copied Theocritus in his design, has resembled him likewise in his success; for, if we except Calphurnius, an obscure author of the lower ages, I know not that a single pastoral was written after him by any poet, till the revival of literature.
Peter fell in love, wrote poetry, witnessed a "mill" at the Fives-Court, and became the Laureate of the Ring. "The difficult and ravaging hand" there is a style for you! Reynolds has himself the enthusiasm of his hero; let us remember that Homer, Virgil, and Theocritus have all described spirited rallies with admiration and good taste.
Treasured there Are multitudes of she-goats and of sheep, Swathed in whose wool from top to toe I sleep." It was an idyl of Theocritus, very well known by Agias, and without the least hesitation he took up the strain, and continued: "The fire boils my pot; with oak or beech Is piled, dry beech logs when the snow lies deep.
Besides all this, the prefect's honesty was well known, and it was strongly suspected that he, as steward of all the taxes of this wealthy province, had been bold enough to reject a proposal made by Theocritus to embezzle the whole freight of a fleet loaded with corn for Rome, and charge it to the account of army munitions.
"He was intoxicated with all the fine works he had heard read there," writes the latter. "There was a eulogy of one named Fontaine by M. de Condorcet. There were translations of Theocritus; tales, fables by I know not whom. And then some eulogies of Helvetius, an extreme admiration of the esprit and the talents of the age; in fine, enough to make one stop the ears.
In the field of polite literature men turned to nature for their laws of daily life and believed that in the pastoral kingdom of Theocritus they had found the promised land. Inevitably it followed that the figure of Orpheus, singing through the earth, and bringing under his dominion the beast and the bird, the very trees and stones, should become the picture of their fondest dreams.
"But there, too, is Apollodorus, the alabarch of the Jews, and the heavy money-bag Archias " "Why look at them!" cried the younger mime. "It's far better worth while to stretch your neck for those farther in front. They are genuine friends of the Muses the poets Theocritus and Zenodotus."
The "Sword of Persia" was rarely so friendly to any one; and Theocritus owed much of the favor shown him by Caracalla to the fact that at their first meeting the lion had been on particularly good terms with him. Still, the brute had never shown so much liking for any stranger as for this young girl, and never responded with such eager swinging of his tail excepting to Caesar's own endearments.
The correctness of his belief was instantly proved to him by the address of gray-haired, highly praised Euphranor, who spoke of the Demeter's countenance with warm admiration. And how ardently the poets Theocritus and Zenodotus extolled his work to the skies! Amid so much laudation, one faint word of dissatisfaction vanished like a drop of blood that falls into a clear stream.
Graetz, as usual, reverses the relation: Canticles took it from Theocritus. But beyond the not very recondite idea that a sunburnt maid may still be charming, there is no parallel. Violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart, Yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown. As goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat, And cranes the ploughman, upon thee I dote!
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