VIOL AND FLUTE
WIT
LT thou for the Muses' sake play me somewhat of sweet
on thy twin flutes?
WIT
LT thou for the Muses' sake play me somewhat of sweet
on thy twin flutes?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
In turn he must
Submit to be forgotten, like the rest,
Though high the heart that beat within his breast.
## p. 14767 (#341) ##########################################
CELIA THAXTER
The rose falls, and the music's sound is gone;
Dear voices cease, and clasp of loving hands;
Alone we stand when the brief day is done,
Searching with saddened eyes earth's darkening lands.
Worthless as is the lightest fallen leaf
We seem; yet constant as the night's first star
Kindles our deathless hope, and from our grief
Is born the trust no misery can mar,
That Love shall lift us all despair above,
Shall conquer death,-yea, Love, and only Love!
A
WILD GEESE
FAR, strange sound through the night,
A dauntless and resolute cry,
Clear in the tempest's despite,
Ringing so wild and so high!
Darkness and tumult and dread,
Rain and the battling of gales,
Yet cleaving the storm overhead,
The wedge of the wild geese sails:
Pushing their perilous way,
Buffeted, beaten, and vexed;
Steadfast by night and by day,
Weary, but never perplexed;
Sure that the land of their hope
Waits beyond tempest and dread,
Sure that the dark where they grope
Shall glow with the morning red!
Clangor that pierces the storm
Dropped from the gloom of the sky!
I sit by my hearth-fire warm
And thrill to that purposeful cry.
Strong as a challenge sent out,
Rousing the timorous heart
To battle with fear and with doubt,
Courageously bearing its part.
14767
O birds in the wild, wild sky!
Would I could so follow God's way
Through darkness, unquestioning why,
With only one thought-to obey!
## p. 14768 (#342) ##########################################
14768
CELIA THAXTER
IN AUTUMN
HE aster by the brook is dead,
THE
And quenched the golden-rod's brief fire;
The maple's last red leaf is shed,
And dumb the birds' sweet choir.
'Tis life's November, too. How swift
The narrowing days speed, one by one!
How pale the waning sunbeams sift
Through clouds of gray and dun!
And as we lose our wistful hold
On warmth and loveliness and youth,
And shudder at the dark and cold,
Our souls cry out for Truth.
No more mirage, O Heavenly Powers,
To mock our sight with shows so fair!
We question of the solemn hours
That lead us swiftly- "Where ? »
We hunger for our lost - in vain!
We lift our close-clasped hands above,
And pray God's pity on our pain,
And trust the Eternal Love.
## p. 14769 (#343) ##########################################
14769
THEOCRITUS
(THIRD CENTURY B. C. )
BY J. W. MACKAIL
HE great age of Greek poetry had drawn to an end long
before the extinction of Greek freedom by the Macedonian
2 conquest. The epic, the lyric, and the drama had been suc-
cessively brought to perfection before the close of the period which
is famous in history as the age of Pericles. A century followed
in which intellectual interest was absorbed in the conquest of the
new and fascinating art of prose.
But an
age of great prose has to pay the price of
being prosaic. In the hundred years be-
tween Pericles and Alexander, poetry dried
up at its fountains, and became more and
more an academic art based on older mod-
els. Fifty years later, when prose itself had
been struck with the same academic lan-
guor, Greek poetry put forth its last and not
its least lovely and delicate blossom in the
pastorals of Theocritus.
The time was one of great learning
and refined luxury. Greek culture, following
the conquests of Alexander, had spread in
a broad shallow tide over the whole of the
countries fringing the Eastern Mediterranean. The wealth of the
East flowed into Europe through Egypt and Syria. At the other
end of the Greek world, the States of the larger Greece across the
seas were in fierce competition with Carthage for the control of the
immense commerce of Sicily. The guidance of public affairs had, in
the new epoch of trained professional armies, passed into the hands
small hierarchy of military administrators. Politics, for so
long the single absorbing passion of the Greek cities, were ceasing to
exist. Relieved from the long strain of political excitement, men's
minds fell back on Nature and Art as the two great springs of life.
They had hardly realized till then what treasures each had to offer;
nor perhaps is it easy for us to realize how entirely the life of an-
cient Greece is colored, to our eyes, by a sentiment which only arose
when that life was becoming absorbed in other forms. To see the
XXV-924
THEOCRITUS
## p. 14770 (#344) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14770
beauty of nature afresh through a medium of enriched artistic tradi-
tion was the last task achieved by the Alexandrian poets; when, with
a pathetic insincerity, they turned back to the simple life they had
left so long behind, sought a new refinement in rusticity, and lavished
all their ornament on the portraiture of the plowmen, shepherds, or
fishermen, who were already well on their way towards becoming the
serf-population of the Roman Empire.
As to the life of Theocritus, the first and by far the most emi-
nent of the Greek pastoral poets, nothing is known beyond what may
be gathered from the allusions in his poems. He was a Syracusan by
birth. The idyls show intimate knowledge not only of Eastern Sicily,
but of the fringe of Greek States on the coast of southern Italy. But
his literary education was acquired, and a considerable part of his
life spent, at the court of Alexandria, which then, under the enlight-
ened despotism of Ptolemy II. , was the intellectual and artistic centre
of the Greek world. In later life he probably returned to Syracuse;
and the sixteenth idyl, addressed to King Hiero soon after his acces-
sion to the throne in B. C. 270, gives the only approximately certain
date among his poems. Before Hiero's long reign ended, the axis of
the world had shifted, and Ennius and Plautus were writing at Rome.
The poems, which have come down to us in substantial integ-
rity from a collection of the pastoral poets formed some fifty years
after the death of Theocritus,- while they vary much in subject and
manner, have a common quality which was well understood by the
critics who gave them the name of Idyllia. The name, which seems
to have been coined for this specific purpose, is a diminutive formed
from a word which, originally signifying visible form or shape, took
in later Greek (like its Latin equivalent species) the senses of physical
beauty, of particular form, and (by a curious late reversion from the
abstract to the concrete) of any rare and costly kind of merchandise,
-the sense preserved to the present day in the English word spices.
The book of idyls might be thought of, then, as a collection of select
masterpieces of workmanship on a small scale; a casket of finely
wrought jewels, one might say (like the "Émaux et Camées" of a
modern poet), or of spices remarkable for their rarity and richness.
They were sharply distinguished on the one hand, by their small
scale, from the larger traditional forms of poetry headed by the
epic; on the other by their lavish and intricate ornament, from the
class of minor poetry known as the epigram, the essence of which
was a studied and grave simplicity. The pastoral is only one form
out of several which the idyl may take; and in fact the Theocritean
idyls include, besides the pastorals, specimens of at least four other
manners: the epic idyl, in which a single incident or episode from
one of the heroic subjects is told separately and with great elabora-
tion; the dramatic idyl, in which the same method of treatment is
## p. 14771 (#345) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14771
applied to a scene from a comedy; the lyric idyl, where (as in Shake-
speare's sonnets) the poet speaks in his own person, but in the enriched
idyllic manner; and the occasional idyl, of which one charming speci-
men survives in the poem Theocritus wrote to go with the present of
an ivory spindle to his friend Theugenis,-the wife of a celebrated
physician of the time, and the happy mistress of one of those lovely
and peaceful Greek homes which gathered up in themselves all that
was best in the ancient world.
It is however on the pure pastoral that the main fame of The-
ocritus rests: and his shepherds, fishermen, and country girls, studied
directly from nature and yet moving in an atmosphere of highly
idealized art, have remained ever since the model for pastoral poets;
for his own successors in Greek poetry, for Virgil and the Latins, and
through Virgil for the literature of more modern Europe. To trace,
even in bare outline, the history of the pastoral since Theocritus,
would be out of place here; but it is important to remember that
Theocritus not only invented but perfected it, and that later varia-
tions on his method involved no substantial change,- with the excep-
tion of that unhappy craze for allegory from which Virgil is not
wholly free, and which deforms so much of the poetry of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries.
From this allegorical tendency the Greek temper - and Theocritus,
though a Sicilian writing in Egypt, is still a Greek was instinct-
ively averse. The Greek purity of line is as dominant in him as
in Homer or Sophocles; and it is this quality which gives the idyls
poetical value even when their subject is coarse or trifling. For
the full appreciation of what is meant by the Greek pastoral, the first
idyl, the Thyrsis,' may be taken as a canon. It includes in itself
the whole range of the idyllic feeling, in language whose movement
and grace are without a fault. Though it is the first known instance
of a pastoral poem, the "bucolic Muse" is spoken of as already a
familiar thing; and indeed long preparation must have been required
before the note struck in the first line-nay, in the first word—
could be struck with such clear certainty. "Sweet and low" (so we
may render the effect of that untranslatable opening cadence), the new
Muse, with flushed serious face and bright blown hair, comes from
the abandoned haunts of an older world in Thessaly or Arcadia; and
on the slopes of Ætna, among pine and oak, where the Dorian water
gushes through rocky lawns, finds a new and lovelier home. The
morning freshness of the mountains mingles with the clear sad vision
that she brings with her from older Greece. "To-morrow I will sing
to you still sweeter," are the last words of Thyrsis: so Greek poetry
might have said when yet in its youth; but the goatherd bids him
sing, with the melancholy encouragement, "since thou wilt not keep
a song where the Dark Realm brings forgetfulness. "
-
## p. 14772 (#346) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14772
This graver note however only comes as an undertone; while the
delicate beauty of the world to still unclouded senses fills the idyls
throughout. "Light and sweet," says Theocritus once of poetry in
his own person,-"light and sweet it is, but not easy to find. " More
especially is this so when the idyls touch on the deeper emotions.
In two instances Theocritus, keeping all the while this light sweet
touch, has given to love in two of its most intense phases an expres-
sion all but unequaled in the ancient world. The story of the fiery.
growth of love, told by the deserted girl of the second idyl all alone
in the flooding moonlight, still comes as fresh to us as a tale of
to-day; and even more remarkable is the strange half-mystical passion
of the twelfth idyl (called 'Aites,' or 'The Passionate Pilgrim' as we
might render the word into Elizabethan English), -with its extraor-
dinary likenesses in thought and expression to the Shakespearean
sonnets, and the sense throughout it, as in the sonnets, of the immor-
tality that verse alone gives.
These two poems are the type of one side of the Theocritean idyl;
the other, and one equally permanent in its truth and beauty, is
represented by the descriptive poems of country life, with their frank
realism and keen delight in simple country pleasures. In the stifling
streets of Alexandria, Theocritus must have turned back with a sort
of passion to the fresh hill-pastures he had known as a boy, with the
blue sea gleaming far down through the chestnut woods. There lay
his true home; and in one idyl, by a beautiful intricacy of imagina-
tion, he heightens the remembrance of a summer day spent in that
beautiful country-side by a dream of two wanderers,-one among
polar snows, one far among the rocks of the burning Soudan, where
the Nile lies sunk beyond the northern horizon. The songs of the
reapers in the eleventh idyl are genuine folk-poetry, such as was
already sung in Greek harvest-fields in the heroic age, and continues
to this day in the less sophisticated parts of modern Greece. The rus-
tic banter of the fourth, where the scene is in southern Italy, has in
it the germs not only of the artificial Latin eclogue, but of the provin-
cial comedy native to all parts of Italy. The fourteenth- even more
remarkable in its truth to nature-is, with all its poetical charm,
almost a literal transcript of a piece of that dull life of the Greek
peasant-proprietary which kept driving its young men into drink or
into the army; while the speech and manners of the same social class
in the great towns are drawn with as light and sure a touch in the
fifteenth idyl, the celebrated 'Adoniazusæ,'- the brilliant sketch of
the "bank holiday" spent by two Syracusan women settled in Alex-
andria.
Such was the external world in which Theocritus moved. The
inner world of his poetry, by which his final value has to be esti-
mated, can only reveal itself through the poems themselves; but a
## p. 14773 (#347) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14773
«<
few notes of his style may be pointed out to indicate his relation on
the one hand to the earlier Greek classics, on the other to a more
modern and romantic art. Amid all the richness of his ornament, it
retains the inimitable Greek simplicity,- that quality which so often
makes translations from the Greek seem bare and cold. But the
romantic sense of beauty, in which he is the precursor of Virgil
and the Latins, is something which on the whole is new: and new
too is a certain keenness of perception towards delicate or evanes-
cent phases of nature, shown sometimes in single phrases like the
sea-green dawn," in which he anticipates Shelley; sometimes in a
wonderfully expanded Tennysonian simile; and habitually in the
remarkable faculty of composition and selection which give a per-
ennial freshness and charm to his landscapes. And together with
this natural romanticism, as we may call it, is the literary romanti-
cism which he shares with the other Alexandrian poets. The idyls
addressed to Hiero and Ptolemy give a vivid picture of the position
which literature held at this period, in the enormously enlarged world
where "the rain from heaven makes the wheat-fields grow on ten
thousand continents. " Satiety had followed over-production: "Homer
is enough," became the cry of critics; and to many it seemed better
(in the phrase Tennyson borrowed from Theocritus) "to be born to
labor and the mattock-hardened hand” than to woo further the Muses,
who sat now "with heads sunk on chill nerveless knees. " To bring
a new flush into these worn faces; to renew, if but for a little, the
brightness of poetry and the joy of song; to kindle a light at which
Virgil should fire the torch for the world to follow,- this was the
achievement of Theocritus: nor is it without fitness that the bucolic
hexameter, the lovely and fragile metre of the idyls, should be a
modification of the same verse in which Homer had embodied the
morning glory of the Greek spirit. "With a backward look even
of five hundred courses of the sun," the idyls close, in lingering
cadences, the golden age of poetry which opened with the Iliad.
The selections which follow are chosen with the view of giving
the spirit of the idyls in its most heightened form. The 'Adoniazu-
sæ,' one of the most interesting and certainly the most unique in its
realism, is omitted, as easily accessible to modern readers in the essay
on 'Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment,' in Matthew Arnold's
'Essays in Criticism'; and a few of the most characteristic of the
Theocritean epigrams are added to show his mastery of a peculiarly
Greek form of poetry which is distinct from the idyllic.
J. W. Markal
بدال
## p. 14774 (#348) ##########################################
14774
THEOCRITUS
THE SONG OF THYRSIS
EGIN, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
B'
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 Ætna, 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,
## p. 14775 (#349) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14775
saying: "Daphnis, methinks thou didst boast that 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 wood-
lands. 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 Lycæus,
or rangest mighty Mænalus, 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.
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-topped 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!
## p. 14776 (#350) ##########################################
14776
THEOCRITUS
"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 into 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!
Translation of Andrew Lang.
THE LOVE OF SIMETHA
From the Second Idyl
ELPHIS troubled me, and I against Delphis am burning this
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, 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!
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
## p. 14777 (#351) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14777
I see Delphis; and to this house of mine may he speed like a
madman, leaving the bright palæstra.
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. "
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 Clea-
rista.
-
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 Eudamip-
pus 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 abed
ten days and ten nights.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Translation of Andrew Lang.
## p. 14778 (#352) ##########################################
14778
THEOCRITUS
THE SONGS OF THE REAPERS
From the Tenth Idyl
ATTUS-Ye Muses Pierian, sing ye with me the slender
B 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 plow, 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 Amyclæ
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!
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 noonday sleep; 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 but-
ler 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.
Translation of Andrew Lang.
## p. 14779 (#353) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14779
[The four following extracts are from Select Epigrams from the Greek
Anthology, edited by J. W. Mackail. ]
TO APOLLO AND THE MUSES
TH
HESE dewy roses and yonder close-curled wild tnyme are laid
before the maidens of Helicon, and the dark-leaved laurels
before thee, Pythian Healer, since the Delphic rock made
this thine ornament; and this white-horned he-goat shall stain
your altar, who nibbles the tip of the terebinth shoot.
HEAVEN ON EARTH
TH
Τ
HIS is not the common Cyprian; revere the goddess, and name
her the Heavenly, the dedication of holy Chrysogone in the
house of Amphicles, with whom she had children and life
together: and ever it was better with them year by year, who
began with thy worship, O mistress; for mortals who serve the
gods are the better off themselves.
VIOL AND FLUTE
WIT
LT thou for the Muses' sake play me somewhat of sweet
on thy twin flutes? and I lifting the harp will begin to
make music on the strings; and Daphnis the neatherd
will mingle enchantment with tunable breath of the wax-bound
pipe; and thus standing nigh within the fringed cavern mouth,
let us rob sleep from Pan, the lord of the goats.
THE SINKING OF THE PLEIAD
O
MAN, be sparing of life, neither go on seafaring beyond
the time; even so the life of man is not long. Miserable
Cleonicus, yet thou didst hasten to come to fair Thasos,
a merchantman out of hollow Syria, O merchant Cleonicus; but
hard on the sinking of the Pleiad as thou journeyedst over the
sea, as the Pleiad sank so didst thou.
## p. 14780 (#354) ##########################################
14780
THEOCRITUS
IDYL VII
THE HARVEST FEAST
[The poet, making his way through the noonday heat with two friends
to a harvest feast, meets the goatherd Lycidas. To humor the poet, Lycidas
sings a love song of his own; and the other replies with verses about the pas-
sion of Aratus, the famous writer of didactic verse. After a courteous part-
ing from Lycidas, the poet and his two friends repair to the orchard, where
meter 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, page 18, Paris, 1876. ]
T 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
## p. 14781 (#355) ##########################################
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14781
For such is thy speed that every stone
townsman's wine-press?
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.
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,
so I hate all birds of the Muses that vainly toil with their cack-
ling 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 fash-
ioned on the mountain-side! "
THE SONG OF LYCIDAS
FAIR Voyaging befall Ageanax to Mitylene, 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,—the halcyons that are dearest to the green-haired mer-
maids, of all the birds that take their prey from the salt sea.
Let all things smile on Ageanax to Mitylene 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
## p. 14782 (#356) ##########################################
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THEOCRITUS
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 strown,
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 Achar-
næ, 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 Hæmus, 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.
O blessed Comatas, surely these joyful things befell thee, and
thou wast inclosed within the chest, and feeding on the honey-
comb 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!
THE SONG OF SIMICHIDAS
FOR Simichidas the Loves have sneezed; for truly the wretch
loves Myrto as dearly as goats love the spring. But Aratus,
far the dearest of my friends, deep, deep in his heart he keeps
Desire, and Aratus's love is young! Aristis knows it, an hon-
orable man,-nay, of men the best, whom even Phoebus would
permit to stand and sing, lyre in hand, by his tripods. Aris-
tis 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
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14783
thou shouldst otherwise decree, then may all thy skin be frayed
and torn with thy nails,-yes, and in nettles mayst thou couch!
In the hills of the Edonians mayst thou dwell in midwinter-time,
by the river Hebrus, close neighbor to the Polar star! But in
summer mayst thou range with the uttermost Ethiopians be-
neath 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 crow-
ing 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 Eucri-
tus, 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
ringdove 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 earth-
ward 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 Hera-
cles 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
## p. 14784 (#358) ##########################################
14784
THEOCRITUS
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
while she stands smiling by, with
hands.
THE FESTIVAL OF ADONIS
[This famous idyl should rather, perhaps, be called a mimus. It describes
the visit paid by two Syracusan women residing in Alexandria, to the festival
of the resurrection of Adonis. The festival is given by Arsinoë, wife and sis-
ter of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and the poem cannot have been written earlier
than his marriage, in 266 (? ) B. C. Nothing can be more gay and natural
than the chatter of the women, which has changed no more in two thousand
years than the song of birds. ]
G
great fan on her corn-heap,
sheaves and poppies in her
Translation of Andrew Lang.
ORGO Is Praxinoë at home?
Praxinoë- Dear Gorgo, how long is it since you have
been here? She is at home. The wonder is that you
have got here at last.
Eunoë, see that she has a chair. Throw
a cushion on it too.
Gorgo-It does most charmingly as it is.
Praxinoë- Do sit down.
Gorgo—Oh, what a thing spirit is! I have scarcely got to
you alive, Praxinoë! What a huge crowd, what hosts of four-in-
hands! Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform!
And the road is endless: yes, you really live too far away!
Praxinoë- It is all the fault of that madman of mine. Here
he came to the ends of the earth and took a hole, not a house,
and all that we might not be neighbors. The jealous wretch!
always the same, ever for spite!
Gorgo-Don't talk of your husband Dinon like that, my dear
girl, before the little boy: look how he is staring at you! Never
mind, Zopyrion, sweet child,- she is not speaking about papa.
Praxinoë- Our Lady! the child takes notice.
―
-
Gorgo-Nice papa!
Praxinoë- That papa of his the other day- we call every
day "the other day" went to get soap and rouge at the shop,
and back he came to me with salt- the great big endless fel-
low!
0
T
## p. 14785 (#359) ##########################################
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14785
Gorgo-Mine has the same trick too: a perfect spendthrift,
Diocleides! Yesterday he got what he meant for five fleeces,
and paid seven shillings apiece for what do you suppose?
dogskins, shreds of old leather wallets, mere trash-trouble on
trouble. But come, take your cloak and shawl. Let us be off to
the palace of rich Ptolemy the King, to see the Adonis: I hear
the Queen has provided something splendid!
Praxinoë-Fine folks do everything finely.
Gorgo-What a tale you will have to tell about the things
you have seen, to any one who has not seen them! It seems
nearly time to go.
Praxinoë- Idlers have always holiday. Eunoë, bring the
water and put it down in the middle of the room, lazy creature
that you are. Cats like always to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bring
the water; quicker. I want water first; give it me all the same;
don't pour out so much, you extravagant thing. Stupid girl!
why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have washed
my hands, as heaven would have it. Where is the key of the
big chest? Bring it here.
Gorgo-Praxinoë, that full body becomes you wonderfully.
Tell me, how much did the stuff cost you just off the loom?
Praxinoë- Don't speak of it, Gorgo! More than eight pounds
in good silver money,—and the work on it! I nearly slaved my
soul out over it!
Gorgo-Well, it is most successful; all you could wish.
Praxinoë- Thanks for the pretty speech! Bring my shawl,
and set my hat on my head the fashionable way. No, child, I
don't mean to take you. Boo! Bogies! There's a horse that
bites! Cry as much as you please, but I cannot have you lamed.
Let us be moving. Phrygia, take the child, and keep him
amused; call in the dog, and shut the street door.
[They go into the street. ]
Ye gods, what a crowd! How on earth are we ever to get
through this coil? They are like ants that no one can measure
or number. Many a good deed have you done, Ptolemy; since
your father joined the immortals, there's never a malefactor to
spoil the passer-by, creeping on him in Egyptian fashion - Oh!
the tricks those perfect rascals used to play. Birds of a feather,
ill jesters, scoundrels all! Dear Gorgo, what will become of us?
Here come the King's war-horses! My dear man, don't trample
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14786
THEOCRITUS
on me. Look, the bay's rearing; see, what temper! Eunoë, you
foolhardy girl, will you never keep out of the way? The beast
will kill the man that's leading him. What a good thing it is
for me that my brat stays safe at home!
Gorgo-Courage, Praxinoë. We are safe behind them now,
and they have gone to their station.
Praxinoë- There! I begin to be myself again. Ever since I
was a child I have feared nothing so much as horses and the
chilly snake. Come along the huge mob is overflowing us.
Gorgo [to an old woman]-Are you from the court, mother?
Old Woman-I am, my child.
Praxinoë-Is it easy to get there?
Old Woman - The Achæans got into Troy by trying, my
prettiest of ladies. Trying will do everything in the long run.
Gorgo-The old wife has spoken her oracles, and off she
goes.
Praxinoë-Women know everything, yes; and how Zeus mar-
ried Hera!
Gorgo-See, Praxinoë, what a crowd there is about the doors.
Praxinoë- Monstrous, Gorgo! Give me your hand: and you,
Eunoë, catch hold of Eutychis; never lose hold of her, for fear
lest you get lost. Let us all go in together; Eunoë, clutch tight
to me. Oh, how tiresome, Gorgo: my muslin veil is torn in two
already! For heaven's sake, sir, if you ever wish to be fortu-
nate, take care of my shawl!
Stranger I can hardly help myself, but for all that I will be
as careful as I can.
Praxinoë- How close-packed the mob is! they hustle like a
herd of swine.
Stranger-Courage, lady: all is well with us now.
Praxinoë- Both this year and for ever may all be well with
you, my dear sir, for your care of us. A good kind man! We're
letting Eunoë get squeezed: come, wretched girl, push your way
through. That is the way. We are all on the right side of the
door, quoth the bridegroom, when he had shut himself in with.
his bride.
―
Gorgo-Do come here, Praxinoë. Look first at these em-
broideries. How light and how lovely! You will call them the
garments of the gods.
Praxinoë- Lady Athene! what spinningwomen wrought them,
what painters designed these drawings, so true they are? How
## p. 14787 (#361) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14787
woven.
naturally they stand and move, like living creatures, not patterns
What a clever thing is man! Ah, and himself - Adonis
how beautiful to behold he lies on his silver couch, with the
first down on his cheeks, the thrice-beloved Adonis,- Adonis be-
loved even among the dead.
A Stranger-You weariful women, do cease your endless
cooing talk! -They bore one to death with their eternal broad
vowels!
-
Gorgo-Indeed!
And where may this person come from?
What is it to you if we are chatterboxes?
Submit to be forgotten, like the rest,
Though high the heart that beat within his breast.
## p. 14767 (#341) ##########################################
CELIA THAXTER
The rose falls, and the music's sound is gone;
Dear voices cease, and clasp of loving hands;
Alone we stand when the brief day is done,
Searching with saddened eyes earth's darkening lands.
Worthless as is the lightest fallen leaf
We seem; yet constant as the night's first star
Kindles our deathless hope, and from our grief
Is born the trust no misery can mar,
That Love shall lift us all despair above,
Shall conquer death,-yea, Love, and only Love!
A
WILD GEESE
FAR, strange sound through the night,
A dauntless and resolute cry,
Clear in the tempest's despite,
Ringing so wild and so high!
Darkness and tumult and dread,
Rain and the battling of gales,
Yet cleaving the storm overhead,
The wedge of the wild geese sails:
Pushing their perilous way,
Buffeted, beaten, and vexed;
Steadfast by night and by day,
Weary, but never perplexed;
Sure that the land of their hope
Waits beyond tempest and dread,
Sure that the dark where they grope
Shall glow with the morning red!
Clangor that pierces the storm
Dropped from the gloom of the sky!
I sit by my hearth-fire warm
And thrill to that purposeful cry.
Strong as a challenge sent out,
Rousing the timorous heart
To battle with fear and with doubt,
Courageously bearing its part.
14767
O birds in the wild, wild sky!
Would I could so follow God's way
Through darkness, unquestioning why,
With only one thought-to obey!
## p. 14768 (#342) ##########################################
14768
CELIA THAXTER
IN AUTUMN
HE aster by the brook is dead,
THE
And quenched the golden-rod's brief fire;
The maple's last red leaf is shed,
And dumb the birds' sweet choir.
'Tis life's November, too. How swift
The narrowing days speed, one by one!
How pale the waning sunbeams sift
Through clouds of gray and dun!
And as we lose our wistful hold
On warmth and loveliness and youth,
And shudder at the dark and cold,
Our souls cry out for Truth.
No more mirage, O Heavenly Powers,
To mock our sight with shows so fair!
We question of the solemn hours
That lead us swiftly- "Where ? »
We hunger for our lost - in vain!
We lift our close-clasped hands above,
And pray God's pity on our pain,
And trust the Eternal Love.
## p. 14769 (#343) ##########################################
14769
THEOCRITUS
(THIRD CENTURY B. C. )
BY J. W. MACKAIL
HE great age of Greek poetry had drawn to an end long
before the extinction of Greek freedom by the Macedonian
2 conquest. The epic, the lyric, and the drama had been suc-
cessively brought to perfection before the close of the period which
is famous in history as the age of Pericles. A century followed
in which intellectual interest was absorbed in the conquest of the
new and fascinating art of prose.
But an
age of great prose has to pay the price of
being prosaic. In the hundred years be-
tween Pericles and Alexander, poetry dried
up at its fountains, and became more and
more an academic art based on older mod-
els. Fifty years later, when prose itself had
been struck with the same academic lan-
guor, Greek poetry put forth its last and not
its least lovely and delicate blossom in the
pastorals of Theocritus.
The time was one of great learning
and refined luxury. Greek culture, following
the conquests of Alexander, had spread in
a broad shallow tide over the whole of the
countries fringing the Eastern Mediterranean. The wealth of the
East flowed into Europe through Egypt and Syria. At the other
end of the Greek world, the States of the larger Greece across the
seas were in fierce competition with Carthage for the control of the
immense commerce of Sicily. The guidance of public affairs had, in
the new epoch of trained professional armies, passed into the hands
small hierarchy of military administrators. Politics, for so
long the single absorbing passion of the Greek cities, were ceasing to
exist. Relieved from the long strain of political excitement, men's
minds fell back on Nature and Art as the two great springs of life.
They had hardly realized till then what treasures each had to offer;
nor perhaps is it easy for us to realize how entirely the life of an-
cient Greece is colored, to our eyes, by a sentiment which only arose
when that life was becoming absorbed in other forms. To see the
XXV-924
THEOCRITUS
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14770
beauty of nature afresh through a medium of enriched artistic tradi-
tion was the last task achieved by the Alexandrian poets; when, with
a pathetic insincerity, they turned back to the simple life they had
left so long behind, sought a new refinement in rusticity, and lavished
all their ornament on the portraiture of the plowmen, shepherds, or
fishermen, who were already well on their way towards becoming the
serf-population of the Roman Empire.
As to the life of Theocritus, the first and by far the most emi-
nent of the Greek pastoral poets, nothing is known beyond what may
be gathered from the allusions in his poems. He was a Syracusan by
birth. The idyls show intimate knowledge not only of Eastern Sicily,
but of the fringe of Greek States on the coast of southern Italy. But
his literary education was acquired, and a considerable part of his
life spent, at the court of Alexandria, which then, under the enlight-
ened despotism of Ptolemy II. , was the intellectual and artistic centre
of the Greek world. In later life he probably returned to Syracuse;
and the sixteenth idyl, addressed to King Hiero soon after his acces-
sion to the throne in B. C. 270, gives the only approximately certain
date among his poems. Before Hiero's long reign ended, the axis of
the world had shifted, and Ennius and Plautus were writing at Rome.
The poems, which have come down to us in substantial integ-
rity from a collection of the pastoral poets formed some fifty years
after the death of Theocritus,- while they vary much in subject and
manner, have a common quality which was well understood by the
critics who gave them the name of Idyllia. The name, which seems
to have been coined for this specific purpose, is a diminutive formed
from a word which, originally signifying visible form or shape, took
in later Greek (like its Latin equivalent species) the senses of physical
beauty, of particular form, and (by a curious late reversion from the
abstract to the concrete) of any rare and costly kind of merchandise,
-the sense preserved to the present day in the English word spices.
The book of idyls might be thought of, then, as a collection of select
masterpieces of workmanship on a small scale; a casket of finely
wrought jewels, one might say (like the "Émaux et Camées" of a
modern poet), or of spices remarkable for their rarity and richness.
They were sharply distinguished on the one hand, by their small
scale, from the larger traditional forms of poetry headed by the
epic; on the other by their lavish and intricate ornament, from the
class of minor poetry known as the epigram, the essence of which
was a studied and grave simplicity. The pastoral is only one form
out of several which the idyl may take; and in fact the Theocritean
idyls include, besides the pastorals, specimens of at least four other
manners: the epic idyl, in which a single incident or episode from
one of the heroic subjects is told separately and with great elabora-
tion; the dramatic idyl, in which the same method of treatment is
## p. 14771 (#345) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14771
applied to a scene from a comedy; the lyric idyl, where (as in Shake-
speare's sonnets) the poet speaks in his own person, but in the enriched
idyllic manner; and the occasional idyl, of which one charming speci-
men survives in the poem Theocritus wrote to go with the present of
an ivory spindle to his friend Theugenis,-the wife of a celebrated
physician of the time, and the happy mistress of one of those lovely
and peaceful Greek homes which gathered up in themselves all that
was best in the ancient world.
It is however on the pure pastoral that the main fame of The-
ocritus rests: and his shepherds, fishermen, and country girls, studied
directly from nature and yet moving in an atmosphere of highly
idealized art, have remained ever since the model for pastoral poets;
for his own successors in Greek poetry, for Virgil and the Latins, and
through Virgil for the literature of more modern Europe. To trace,
even in bare outline, the history of the pastoral since Theocritus,
would be out of place here; but it is important to remember that
Theocritus not only invented but perfected it, and that later varia-
tions on his method involved no substantial change,- with the excep-
tion of that unhappy craze for allegory from which Virgil is not
wholly free, and which deforms so much of the poetry of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries.
From this allegorical tendency the Greek temper - and Theocritus,
though a Sicilian writing in Egypt, is still a Greek was instinct-
ively averse. The Greek purity of line is as dominant in him as
in Homer or Sophocles; and it is this quality which gives the idyls
poetical value even when their subject is coarse or trifling. For
the full appreciation of what is meant by the Greek pastoral, the first
idyl, the Thyrsis,' may be taken as a canon. It includes in itself
the whole range of the idyllic feeling, in language whose movement
and grace are without a fault. Though it is the first known instance
of a pastoral poem, the "bucolic Muse" is spoken of as already a
familiar thing; and indeed long preparation must have been required
before the note struck in the first line-nay, in the first word—
could be struck with such clear certainty. "Sweet and low" (so we
may render the effect of that untranslatable opening cadence), the new
Muse, with flushed serious face and bright blown hair, comes from
the abandoned haunts of an older world in Thessaly or Arcadia; and
on the slopes of Ætna, among pine and oak, where the Dorian water
gushes through rocky lawns, finds a new and lovelier home. The
morning freshness of the mountains mingles with the clear sad vision
that she brings with her from older Greece. "To-morrow I will sing
to you still sweeter," are the last words of Thyrsis: so Greek poetry
might have said when yet in its youth; but the goatherd bids him
sing, with the melancholy encouragement, "since thou wilt not keep
a song where the Dark Realm brings forgetfulness. "
-
## p. 14772 (#346) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14772
This graver note however only comes as an undertone; while the
delicate beauty of the world to still unclouded senses fills the idyls
throughout. "Light and sweet," says Theocritus once of poetry in
his own person,-"light and sweet it is, but not easy to find. " More
especially is this so when the idyls touch on the deeper emotions.
In two instances Theocritus, keeping all the while this light sweet
touch, has given to love in two of its most intense phases an expres-
sion all but unequaled in the ancient world. The story of the fiery.
growth of love, told by the deserted girl of the second idyl all alone
in the flooding moonlight, still comes as fresh to us as a tale of
to-day; and even more remarkable is the strange half-mystical passion
of the twelfth idyl (called 'Aites,' or 'The Passionate Pilgrim' as we
might render the word into Elizabethan English), -with its extraor-
dinary likenesses in thought and expression to the Shakespearean
sonnets, and the sense throughout it, as in the sonnets, of the immor-
tality that verse alone gives.
These two poems are the type of one side of the Theocritean idyl;
the other, and one equally permanent in its truth and beauty, is
represented by the descriptive poems of country life, with their frank
realism and keen delight in simple country pleasures. In the stifling
streets of Alexandria, Theocritus must have turned back with a sort
of passion to the fresh hill-pastures he had known as a boy, with the
blue sea gleaming far down through the chestnut woods. There lay
his true home; and in one idyl, by a beautiful intricacy of imagina-
tion, he heightens the remembrance of a summer day spent in that
beautiful country-side by a dream of two wanderers,-one among
polar snows, one far among the rocks of the burning Soudan, where
the Nile lies sunk beyond the northern horizon. The songs of the
reapers in the eleventh idyl are genuine folk-poetry, such as was
already sung in Greek harvest-fields in the heroic age, and continues
to this day in the less sophisticated parts of modern Greece. The rus-
tic banter of the fourth, where the scene is in southern Italy, has in
it the germs not only of the artificial Latin eclogue, but of the provin-
cial comedy native to all parts of Italy. The fourteenth- even more
remarkable in its truth to nature-is, with all its poetical charm,
almost a literal transcript of a piece of that dull life of the Greek
peasant-proprietary which kept driving its young men into drink or
into the army; while the speech and manners of the same social class
in the great towns are drawn with as light and sure a touch in the
fifteenth idyl, the celebrated 'Adoniazusæ,'- the brilliant sketch of
the "bank holiday" spent by two Syracusan women settled in Alex-
andria.
Such was the external world in which Theocritus moved. The
inner world of his poetry, by which his final value has to be esti-
mated, can only reveal itself through the poems themselves; but a
## p. 14773 (#347) ##########################################
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14773
«<
few notes of his style may be pointed out to indicate his relation on
the one hand to the earlier Greek classics, on the other to a more
modern and romantic art. Amid all the richness of his ornament, it
retains the inimitable Greek simplicity,- that quality which so often
makes translations from the Greek seem bare and cold. But the
romantic sense of beauty, in which he is the precursor of Virgil
and the Latins, is something which on the whole is new: and new
too is a certain keenness of perception towards delicate or evanes-
cent phases of nature, shown sometimes in single phrases like the
sea-green dawn," in which he anticipates Shelley; sometimes in a
wonderfully expanded Tennysonian simile; and habitually in the
remarkable faculty of composition and selection which give a per-
ennial freshness and charm to his landscapes. And together with
this natural romanticism, as we may call it, is the literary romanti-
cism which he shares with the other Alexandrian poets. The idyls
addressed to Hiero and Ptolemy give a vivid picture of the position
which literature held at this period, in the enormously enlarged world
where "the rain from heaven makes the wheat-fields grow on ten
thousand continents. " Satiety had followed over-production: "Homer
is enough," became the cry of critics; and to many it seemed better
(in the phrase Tennyson borrowed from Theocritus) "to be born to
labor and the mattock-hardened hand” than to woo further the Muses,
who sat now "with heads sunk on chill nerveless knees. " To bring
a new flush into these worn faces; to renew, if but for a little, the
brightness of poetry and the joy of song; to kindle a light at which
Virgil should fire the torch for the world to follow,- this was the
achievement of Theocritus: nor is it without fitness that the bucolic
hexameter, the lovely and fragile metre of the idyls, should be a
modification of the same verse in which Homer had embodied the
morning glory of the Greek spirit. "With a backward look even
of five hundred courses of the sun," the idyls close, in lingering
cadences, the golden age of poetry which opened with the Iliad.
The selections which follow are chosen with the view of giving
the spirit of the idyls in its most heightened form. The 'Adoniazu-
sæ,' one of the most interesting and certainly the most unique in its
realism, is omitted, as easily accessible to modern readers in the essay
on 'Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment,' in Matthew Arnold's
'Essays in Criticism'; and a few of the most characteristic of the
Theocritean epigrams are added to show his mastery of a peculiarly
Greek form of poetry which is distinct from the idyllic.
J. W. Markal
بدال
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THEOCRITUS
THE SONG OF THYRSIS
EGIN, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
B'
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 Ætna, 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,
## p. 14775 (#349) ##########################################
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14775
saying: "Daphnis, methinks thou didst boast that 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 wood-
lands. 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 Lycæus,
or rangest mighty Mænalus, 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.
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-topped 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!
## p. 14776 (#350) ##########################################
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THEOCRITUS
"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 into 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!
Translation of Andrew Lang.
THE LOVE OF SIMETHA
From the Second Idyl
ELPHIS troubled me, and I against Delphis am burning this
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, 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!
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
## p. 14777 (#351) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14777
I see Delphis; and to this house of mine may he speed like a
madman, leaving the bright palæstra.
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. "
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 Clea-
rista.
-
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 Eudamip-
pus 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 abed
ten days and ten nights.
Bethink thee of my love, and whence it came, my Lady Moon!
Translation of Andrew Lang.
## p. 14778 (#352) ##########################################
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THEOCRITUS
THE SONGS OF THE REAPERS
From the Tenth Idyl
ATTUS-Ye Muses Pierian, sing ye with me the slender
B 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 plow, 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 Amyclæ
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!
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 noonday sleep; 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 but-
ler 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.
Translation of Andrew Lang.
## p. 14779 (#353) ##########################################
THEOCRITUS
14779
[The four following extracts are from Select Epigrams from the Greek
Anthology, edited by J. W. Mackail. ]
TO APOLLO AND THE MUSES
TH
HESE dewy roses and yonder close-curled wild tnyme are laid
before the maidens of Helicon, and the dark-leaved laurels
before thee, Pythian Healer, since the Delphic rock made
this thine ornament; and this white-horned he-goat shall stain
your altar, who nibbles the tip of the terebinth shoot.
HEAVEN ON EARTH
TH
Τ
HIS is not the common Cyprian; revere the goddess, and name
her the Heavenly, the dedication of holy Chrysogone in the
house of Amphicles, with whom she had children and life
together: and ever it was better with them year by year, who
began with thy worship, O mistress; for mortals who serve the
gods are the better off themselves.
VIOL AND FLUTE
WIT
LT thou for the Muses' sake play me somewhat of sweet
on thy twin flutes? and I lifting the harp will begin to
make music on the strings; and Daphnis the neatherd
will mingle enchantment with tunable breath of the wax-bound
pipe; and thus standing nigh within the fringed cavern mouth,
let us rob sleep from Pan, the lord of the goats.
THE SINKING OF THE PLEIAD
O
MAN, be sparing of life, neither go on seafaring beyond
the time; even so the life of man is not long. Miserable
Cleonicus, yet thou didst hasten to come to fair Thasos,
a merchantman out of hollow Syria, O merchant Cleonicus; but
hard on the sinking of the Pleiad as thou journeyedst over the
sea, as the Pleiad sank so didst thou.
## p. 14780 (#354) ##########################################
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THEOCRITUS
IDYL VII
THE HARVEST FEAST
[The poet, making his way through the noonday heat with two friends
to a harvest feast, meets the goatherd Lycidas. To humor the poet, Lycidas
sings a love song of his own; and the other replies with verses about the pas-
sion of Aratus, the famous writer of didactic verse. After a courteous part-
ing from Lycidas, the poet and his two friends repair to the orchard, where
meter 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, page 18, Paris, 1876. ]
T 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
## p. 14781 (#355) ##########################################
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14781
For such is thy speed that every stone
townsman's wine-press?
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.
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,
so I hate all birds of the Muses that vainly toil with their cack-
ling 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 fash-
ioned on the mountain-side! "
THE SONG OF LYCIDAS
FAIR Voyaging befall Ageanax to Mitylene, 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,—the halcyons that are dearest to the green-haired mer-
maids, of all the birds that take their prey from the salt sea.
Let all things smile on Ageanax to Mitylene 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
## p. 14782 (#356) ##########################################
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THEOCRITUS
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 strown,
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 Achar-
næ, 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 Hæmus, 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.
O blessed Comatas, surely these joyful things befell thee, and
thou wast inclosed within the chest, and feeding on the honey-
comb 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!
THE SONG OF SIMICHIDAS
FOR Simichidas the Loves have sneezed; for truly the wretch
loves Myrto as dearly as goats love the spring. But Aratus,
far the dearest of my friends, deep, deep in his heart he keeps
Desire, and Aratus's love is young! Aristis knows it, an hon-
orable man,-nay, of men the best, whom even Phoebus would
permit to stand and sing, lyre in hand, by his tripods. Aris-
tis 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
## p. 14783 (#357) ##########################################
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14783
thou shouldst otherwise decree, then may all thy skin be frayed
and torn with thy nails,-yes, and in nettles mayst thou couch!
In the hills of the Edonians mayst thou dwell in midwinter-time,
by the river Hebrus, close neighbor to the Polar star! But in
summer mayst thou range with the uttermost Ethiopians be-
neath 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 crow-
ing 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 Eucri-
tus, 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
ringdove 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 earth-
ward 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 Hera-
cles 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
## p. 14784 (#358) ##########################################
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THEOCRITUS
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
while she stands smiling by, with
hands.
THE FESTIVAL OF ADONIS
[This famous idyl should rather, perhaps, be called a mimus. It describes
the visit paid by two Syracusan women residing in Alexandria, to the festival
of the resurrection of Adonis. The festival is given by Arsinoë, wife and sis-
ter of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and the poem cannot have been written earlier
than his marriage, in 266 (? ) B. C. Nothing can be more gay and natural
than the chatter of the women, which has changed no more in two thousand
years than the song of birds. ]
G
great fan on her corn-heap,
sheaves and poppies in her
Translation of Andrew Lang.
ORGO Is Praxinoë at home?
Praxinoë- Dear Gorgo, how long is it since you have
been here? She is at home. The wonder is that you
have got here at last.
Eunoë, see that she has a chair. Throw
a cushion on it too.
Gorgo-It does most charmingly as it is.
Praxinoë- Do sit down.
Gorgo—Oh, what a thing spirit is! I have scarcely got to
you alive, Praxinoë! What a huge crowd, what hosts of four-in-
hands! Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform!
And the road is endless: yes, you really live too far away!
Praxinoë- It is all the fault of that madman of mine. Here
he came to the ends of the earth and took a hole, not a house,
and all that we might not be neighbors. The jealous wretch!
always the same, ever for spite!
Gorgo-Don't talk of your husband Dinon like that, my dear
girl, before the little boy: look how he is staring at you! Never
mind, Zopyrion, sweet child,- she is not speaking about papa.
Praxinoë- Our Lady! the child takes notice.
―
-
Gorgo-Nice papa!
Praxinoë- That papa of his the other day- we call every
day "the other day" went to get soap and rouge at the shop,
and back he came to me with salt- the great big endless fel-
low!
0
T
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Gorgo-Mine has the same trick too: a perfect spendthrift,
Diocleides! Yesterday he got what he meant for five fleeces,
and paid seven shillings apiece for what do you suppose?
dogskins, shreds of old leather wallets, mere trash-trouble on
trouble. But come, take your cloak and shawl. Let us be off to
the palace of rich Ptolemy the King, to see the Adonis: I hear
the Queen has provided something splendid!
Praxinoë-Fine folks do everything finely.
Gorgo-What a tale you will have to tell about the things
you have seen, to any one who has not seen them! It seems
nearly time to go.
Praxinoë- Idlers have always holiday. Eunoë, bring the
water and put it down in the middle of the room, lazy creature
that you are. Cats like always to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bring
the water; quicker. I want water first; give it me all the same;
don't pour out so much, you extravagant thing. Stupid girl!
why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have washed
my hands, as heaven would have it. Where is the key of the
big chest? Bring it here.
Gorgo-Praxinoë, that full body becomes you wonderfully.
Tell me, how much did the stuff cost you just off the loom?
Praxinoë- Don't speak of it, Gorgo! More than eight pounds
in good silver money,—and the work on it! I nearly slaved my
soul out over it!
Gorgo-Well, it is most successful; all you could wish.
Praxinoë- Thanks for the pretty speech! Bring my shawl,
and set my hat on my head the fashionable way. No, child, I
don't mean to take you. Boo! Bogies! There's a horse that
bites! Cry as much as you please, but I cannot have you lamed.
Let us be moving. Phrygia, take the child, and keep him
amused; call in the dog, and shut the street door.
[They go into the street. ]
Ye gods, what a crowd! How on earth are we ever to get
through this coil? They are like ants that no one can measure
or number. Many a good deed have you done, Ptolemy; since
your father joined the immortals, there's never a malefactor to
spoil the passer-by, creeping on him in Egyptian fashion - Oh!
the tricks those perfect rascals used to play. Birds of a feather,
ill jesters, scoundrels all! Dear Gorgo, what will become of us?
Here come the King's war-horses! My dear man, don't trample
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on me. Look, the bay's rearing; see, what temper! Eunoë, you
foolhardy girl, will you never keep out of the way? The beast
will kill the man that's leading him. What a good thing it is
for me that my brat stays safe at home!
Gorgo-Courage, Praxinoë. We are safe behind them now,
and they have gone to their station.
Praxinoë- There! I begin to be myself again. Ever since I
was a child I have feared nothing so much as horses and the
chilly snake. Come along the huge mob is overflowing us.
Gorgo [to an old woman]-Are you from the court, mother?
Old Woman-I am, my child.
Praxinoë-Is it easy to get there?
Old Woman - The Achæans got into Troy by trying, my
prettiest of ladies. Trying will do everything in the long run.
Gorgo-The old wife has spoken her oracles, and off she
goes.
Praxinoë-Women know everything, yes; and how Zeus mar-
ried Hera!
Gorgo-See, Praxinoë, what a crowd there is about the doors.
Praxinoë- Monstrous, Gorgo! Give me your hand: and you,
Eunoë, catch hold of Eutychis; never lose hold of her, for fear
lest you get lost. Let us all go in together; Eunoë, clutch tight
to me. Oh, how tiresome, Gorgo: my muslin veil is torn in two
already! For heaven's sake, sir, if you ever wish to be fortu-
nate, take care of my shawl!
Stranger I can hardly help myself, but for all that I will be
as careful as I can.
Praxinoë- How close-packed the mob is! they hustle like a
herd of swine.
Stranger-Courage, lady: all is well with us now.
Praxinoë- Both this year and for ever may all be well with
you, my dear sir, for your care of us. A good kind man! We're
letting Eunoë get squeezed: come, wretched girl, push your way
through. That is the way. We are all on the right side of the
door, quoth the bridegroom, when he had shut himself in with.
his bride.
―
Gorgo-Do come here, Praxinoë. Look first at these em-
broideries. How light and how lovely! You will call them the
garments of the gods.
Praxinoë- Lady Athene! what spinningwomen wrought them,
what painters designed these drawings, so true they are? How
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woven.
naturally they stand and move, like living creatures, not patterns
What a clever thing is man! Ah, and himself - Adonis
how beautiful to behold he lies on his silver couch, with the
first down on his cheeks, the thrice-beloved Adonis,- Adonis be-
loved even among the dead.
A Stranger-You weariful women, do cease your endless
cooing talk! -They bore one to death with their eternal broad
vowels!
-
Gorgo-Indeed!
And where may this person come from?
What is it to you if we are chatterboxes?
