( 161 ) ART. X.-Theocritus, Bio, et Moschus: ex recognitione Augusti Meinekii. (Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus: from the text of Augustus Meinekius.) Berlin. 1836. WITHIN the last half-century the Germans have given us several good editions of Theocritus. This, to which the very inferior and very different poems of Bion and Moschus are appended, is among the best and the least presuming. No version is added: the notes are few and pertinent, never pugnacious, never prolix. In no age, since the time of Aristarchus, or before, has the Greek language been so profoundly studied, or its poetry in its nature and metre so perfectly understood, as in ours. Neither Athens nor Alexandria saw so numerous or so intelligent a race of grammarians as Germany has recently seen contemporary. Nor is the society diminished, nor are its labours relaxed, at this day. Valckenaer, Schrieber, Schaeffer, Kiesling, Wuesteman, are not the only critics and editors who, before the present one, have bestowed their care and learning on Theocritus. Doubts have long been entertained upon the genuineness of several among his Idyls. But latterly a vast number, even of those which had never been disputed, have been called in question by Ernest Reinhold, in a treatise printed at Jena in 1819. He acknowledges the eleven first, the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth. Against the arbitrary ejection of the remainder rose Augustus Wissowa in 1828. In his Theocritus Theocriteus, vindicating them from suspicion, he subjoins to his elaborate criticism a compendious index of ancient quotations, in none of which is any doubt entertained of their authenticity. But surely it requires no force of argument, no call for extraneous help, to subvert the feeble position, that, because the poet wrote his Pastorals mostly in his native dialect, the Doric, he can never have written in another. If he composed the eighteenth Idyl in the Eolic, why may he not be allowed the twelfth and twenty-second in the Ionic? Not, however, that in the twelfth he has done it uniformly: the older manuscripts of this poem contain fewer forms of that dialect than were afterwards foisted into it, for the sake of making it all of a piece. It is easy to believe that the Idyls he wrote in Sicily were Doric, with inconsiderable variations, and that he thought it more agreeable to Hiero, whose favour he was desirous of conciliating. But when he retired from Sicily to the court of Ptolemy, where Callimachus and Apollonius and Aratus were residing, he would not on every occasion revert to an idiom little cultivated in Egypt. Not only to avoid the charge of rivalry with the poets who were then flourishing there, but also from sound judgment, he wrote heroic poetry in Homeric VOL. XXX. NO. LIX. M verse; in verse no less Ionic than Homer's own; indeed more purely so. Thirty of his poems are entitled IDYLS: in short all but the Epigrams, however different in length, in subject, and in metre. But who gave them this appellation? or whence was it derived? We need go up no higher than to edos for the derivation: and it is probable that the poet himself supplied the title. But did he give it to all his compositions? or even to all those (excepting the Epigrams) which are now extant. We think he did not, although we are unsupported in our opinion by the old scholiast who wrote the arguments. "The poet," says he, "did not wish to specify his pieces, but ranged them all under one title." We believe that he ranged what he thought the more important and the more epic under this category, and that he omitted to give any separate designation to the rest, prefixing to each piece (it may be) its own title. Nay, it appears to us not at all improbable that those very pieces which we moderns call more peculiarly Idyls, were not comprehended by him in this designation. We believe that eduλov means a small image of something great; and that it was especially applied at first to his short poems of the heroic cast and character. As the others had no genuine name denoting their quality, but only the names of the interlocutors or the subjects (which the ancient poets, both Greek and Roman, oftener omitted) they were all after a while comprehended in a mass within one common term. That the term was invented long after the age of Theocritus, is the opinion of Heine and of Wissowa but where is the proof of the fact, or foundation for the conjecture? Nobody has denied that it existed in the time of Virgil; and many have wondered that he did not thus entitle his Bucolics, instead of calling them Eclogues. And so indeed he probably would have done, had he believed that Theocritus intended any such designation for his Pastorals. But neither he nor Calpurnius, nor Nemesian, called by the name of Idyl their bucolic poems; which they surely would have done if, in their opinion or in the opinion of the public, it was applicable to them. It was not thought so when literature grew up again in Italy, and when the shepherds and shepherdesses recovered their lost estates in the provinces of poetry, under the patronage of Petrarca, Boccacio, Pontanus, and Mantuanus. Eobanus Hessus, a most voluminous writer of Latin verses, has translated much from the Greek classics, and among the rest some pieces from Theocritus. From time to time we have spent several hours of idleness over his pages; but the further we proceeded, whatever was the direction, the duller and drearier grew his unprofitable pine-forest, the more wea As risome and disheartening his flat and printless sands. After him,Bruno Sidelius, another German, was the first of the moderns who conferred the name of Idyl on their Bucolics. this word was enlarged in its acceptation, so was another in another kind of poetry, namely, the Paean, which at first was appropriated to Apollo and Artemis, but was afterwards transferred to other deities. Servius, on the first Eneid, tells us that Pindar not only composed one on Zeus of Dodona, but several in honour of mortals. The same may be said of the Dithyrambic. Elegy, too, in the commencement, was devoted to grief exclusively, like the naniæ and threna: subsequently it embraced a vast variety of matters, some of them ethic and didactic; some the very opposite to its institution, inciting to war and patriotism, for instance those of Tyrtæus; and some to love and licentiousness, in which Mimnermus has been followed by innumerable disciples to the extremities of the earth. Before we inspect the Idyls of Theocritus, one by one, as we intend to do, it may be convenient in this place to recapitulate what little is known about him. He tells us, in the epigraph to them, that there was another poet of the same name, a native of Chios, but that he himself was a Syracusan of low origin, son of Praxagoras and Philina. He calls his mother repucern (illustrious), evidently for no other reason than because the verse required it. There is no ground for disbelieving what he records of his temper; that he never was guilty of detraction. His exact age is unknown, and unimportant. One of the Idyls is addressed to the younger Hiero, another to Ptolemy Philadelphus. The former of these began his reign in the one hundred and twentysixth Olympiad, the latter in the one hundred and twenty-third. In the sixteenth Idyl the poet insinuates that the valour of Hiero was more conspicuous than his liberality: on Ptolemy he never had reason to make any such remark. Among his friends in Egypt was Aratus, of whom Cicero and Cæsar thought highly, and of whose works both of them translated some parts. Philetus the Coan, was another: and his merit must also have been great; for Propertius joins him with Callimachus, and asks permission to enter the sacred grove of poetry in their company. Callimachi manes et Coi sacra Phileta! In vestrum quæso me sinite ire nemus. It appears, however, that Aratus was more particularly and intimately Theocritus's friend. To him he inscribes the sixth Idyl, describes his loves in the seventh, and borrows from him the religious exordium of the seventeenth. After he had resided several years in Egypt, he returned to his native country, and died there. We now leave the man for the writer, and in this capacity we have a great deal more to say. The poems we possess from him are only a part, although probably the best, of what he wrote. He composed hymns, elegies, and iambics. Hermann, in his dissertation on hexameter verse, expresses his wonder that Virgil, in the Eclogues, should have deserted the practice of Theocritus in its structure; and he remarks, for instance, the first in the first Idyl. ‘Αδυ τι το ψιθυρισμα και & πιτυς . . αιπολε τηνα. : This pause, however, is almost as frequent in Homer as in Theocritus and it is doubtful to us, who indeed have not counted the examples, whether any other pause occurs so often in the Iliad. In reading this verse, we do not pause after Tirus, but after vpioμa: but in the verses which the illustrious critic quotes from Homer the pause is precisely in that place. πίτυς, Χερσιν ρήγνυμενων μεγαλα βρεμει . . αμφι δε τ' ακρας. Although the pause is greatly more common in the Greek hexameter than in the Latin, yet Hermann must have taken up Virgil's Eclogues very inattentively in making his remark. For that which he wonders the Roman has imitated so sparingly from the Syracusan occurs quite frequently enough in Virgil, and rather too frequently in Theocritus. It may be tedious to the inaccurate and negligent; it may be tedious to those whose reading is only a species of dissipation, and to whom ears have been given only as ornaments; nevertheless, for the sake of others, we have taken some trouble to establish our position in regard to the Eclogues, and the instances are given below.* * Ecl. i., containing 83 verses. Ecl. ii. 73 verses. Atque superba fastidia.. Cum placidum ventis staret mare.. Bina die siccant ovis ubera.. Heu, heu! quid volui misero mihi.. Ecl. iii. 111 verses. Dic mihi, Damota, cujum pecus. Thyrsis and the Goatherd. 165 In Theocritus it is not this usage which is so remarkable; it is the abundance and exuberance of dactyls. They hurry on one after another, like the waves of a clear and rapid brook in the sunshine, reflecting all things the most beautiful in nature, but not resting upon any. IDYL I. Of all the poetry in all languages that of Theocritus is the most fluent and easy; but if only this Idyl were extant, it would rather be memorable for a weak imitation of it by Virgil, and a beautiful one by Milton, than for any great merit beyond the harmony of its verse. Indeed it opens with such sounds as Pan himself in a prelude on his pipe might have produced. The dialogue is between Thyrsis and a goatherd. Here is much of appropriate description: but it appears unsuitable to the character and condition of a goatherd to offer so large a reward as he offers for singing a song."If you will sing as you sang in the contest with the Libyan shepherd Chromis, I will reward you with a goat, mother of two kids, which goat you may milk thrice a-day; for, though she suckles two kids, she has milk enough left for two pails. We often hear that such or such a thing "is not worth an old song." Alas! how very few things are! What precious recollections do some of them awaken! What pleasurable tears do they |