by Theocritus
IDYLL XXX. THE SECOND LOVE-POEM
[1] Aye me, the pain and the grief of it! I have been sick of Love’s quartan now a month and more. He’s not so fair, I own, but all the ground his pretty foot covers is grace, and the smile of his face is very sweetness. ’Tis true the ague takes me now but day on day off, but soon there’ll be no respite, no not for a wink of sleep. When we met yesterday he gave me a sidelong glance, afeared to look me in the face, and blushed crimson; at that, Love gripped my reins still the more, till I gat me wounded and heartsore home, there to arraign my soul at bar and hold with myself this parlance: “What wast after, doing so? whither away this fond folly? know’st thou not there’s three gray hairs on thy brow? Be wise in time, or one that is no youth in’s looks shall play new-taster o’ the years. Other toys thou forgettest; ‘twere better, sure, at thy time o’ life to know no more such loves as this. For whom Life carries swift and easy as hoof doth hind, and might endure to cross and cross the sea every day’s morrow that is, can he and the flower o’ sweet Youth abide ever of one date? How much less he that hath yearnful remembrance gnawing at his heart’s core, and dreams often o’ nights and taketh whole years to cure his lovesickness!”
[24] Such lesson and more read I unto my soul, and thus she answered me again: “Whoso thinketh to outvie yon cozening Love, as soon might he think to tell how-many-times-nine stars be i’ th’ skies above us; and so I too, willy-nilly, must fain stretch my neck beneath the yoke and pull, seeing such, my lord, is the will of a god that hath betrayed ev’n the mickle mind of Zeus, and beguiled ev’n the Cyprus-born, and catcheth up and carrieth whither-soever he list (as well he may) a poor mortal leaf like me that needs a puff of air to lift it.”
The Inscriptions
These little poems are all, with the exception of IV, actual inscriptions, and would seem to have been collected from works of art upon which they were inscribed. XII and XXIII are in all probability by other hands, and there is some doubt of the genuineness of SSIV; but the rest are not only ascribed to Theocritus in the best manuscripts, but are fully worthy of him.
I. [AN INSCRIPTION FOR A PICTURE]
Those dewy roses and that thick bushy thyme are an offering to the Ladies of Helicon, and since ’tis the Delphian Rock hath made it honoured, the dark-leaved bay, Pythian Healer, is for thee; and yon horny white he-goat that crops the outmost sprays of the terebinth-tree is to be the blood-offering upon the altar.
II. [FOR A PICTURE]
These stopped reeds, this hurl-bat, this sharp javelin, this fawnskin, and this wallet he used to carry apples in, are an offering unto Pan from the fair-skinned Daphnis, who piped the music o’ the country upon this pretty flute.
III. [FOR A PICTURE]
You sleep there upon the leaf-strown earth, good Daphnis, and rest your weary frame, while your netting-stakes are left planted on the hillside. But Pan is after you, and Priapus also, with the yellow ivy about his jolly head; they are going side by side into your cave. Quick then, put off the lethargy that is shed of sleep, and up with you and away.
IV. [A LOVE-POEM IN THE FORM OF A WAYSIDE INSCRIPTION]
When you turn the corner of yonder lain, sweet Goatherd, where the oak-trees are, you’ll find a new-carved effigy of fig-wood, without legs or ears and the bark still upon it, but nevertheless an able servant of the Cyprian. There’s a brave little sacrificial close runs round it, and a never-ceasing freshet that springs from the rocks there is greened all about with bays and myrtles and fragrant cypress, among which the mother o’ grapes doth spread and twine, and in spring the blackbirds cry their lisping medleys of clear-toned song, and the babbling nightingales cry them back their warblings with the honey voice that sings from their tuneful throats. Thither go, and sit you down and pray that pretty fellow to make cease my love of Daphnis, and I’ll straightway offer him a fat young goat; but should he say me nay, then I’ll make him three sacrifices if he’ll win me his love, a heifer, a shaggy buck-goat, and a pet lamb I am rearing; and may the god hear and heed your prayer.
V. [AN INSCRIPTION FOR A PICTURE]
‘Fore the Nymphs I pray you play me some sweet thing upon the double pipe, and I will take my viol and strike up likewise, and neatherd Daphnis shall join with us and make charming music with the notes of his wax-bound breath; and so standing beside the shaggy oak behind the cave, let’s rob you goat-foot Pan of his slumber.
VI. [FOR A PICTURE]
Well-a-day, you poor Thyrsis! what boots it if you cry your two eyes out of their sockets? Your kid’s gone, the pretty babe, dead and gone, all crushed in the talons of the great rough wolf. True, the gods are baying him; but to what end, when there’s neither ash nor bone of the poor dead left?
VII. [FOR THE GRAVE OF A YOUNG FATHER]
Here you are, Eurymedon, come in your prime to the grave; but you left a little son behind you, and though your dwelling henceforth is with the great o’ the earth, you may trust your countrymen to honour the child for the sake of the father.
VIII. [FOR NICIAS’ NEW STATUE OF ASCLEPIUS]
The Great Healer’s son is come to Miletus now, to live with his fellow-crafsman Nicias, who both maketh sacrifice before him every day, and hath now made carve this statue of fragrant cedar-wood; he promised Eëtion a round price for the finished cunning of his hand, and Eëtion hath put forth all his art to the making of the work.
IX. [FOR THE GRAVE OF A LANDED GENTLEMAN]
This, good Stranger, is the behest of Orthon of Syracuse: Go you never abroad drunk of a stormy night; for that was my fate to do, and so it is I lie here, and there’s weighed me out a foreign country in exchange for much native-land.
X. [FOR AN ALTAR WITH A FRIEZE OF THE MUSES]
This carved work of marble, sweet Goddesses, is set up for the nine of you by the true musician – as all must name him – Xenocles, who having much credit of his art forgets not the Muses whose it is.
XI. [FORTE GRAVE OF A STROLLING PHYSIOGNOMIST]
Here lies Strong-i’-th’-arm the great physiognomist, the man who could read the mind by the eye. And so, for all he is a stranger in a strange land, he has had friends to give him decent burial, and the dirge-writer has been kindness itself. The dead philosopher has all he could have wished; and thus, weakling wight though he be, there is after all somebody that cares for him.
XII. [FOR A PRIZE TRIPOD]
Choir-master Demomeles, who set up this tripod and this effigy, Dionysus, of the sweetest god in heaven, had always been a decent fellow, and he won the victory with his men’s-chorus because he knew beauty and seemliness when he saw them.
XIII. [FOR A COAN LADY’S NEW STATUE OF APHRODITE]
This is not the People’s Cyprian, but pray when you propitiate this goddess do so by the name of Heavenly; for this is the offering of a chaste woman, to wit of Chrysogonè, in the house of Amphicles, whose children and whose life she shared; so that beginning, Great Lady, with worship of thee, they ever increased their happiness with the years. For any that have care for the Immortals are the better off for it themselves.
XIV. [FOR THE TABLE OF A BARBARIAN MONEY-CHANGER]
This table makes no distinction of native and foreigner. You pay in and you receive out in strict accordance with the lie of the counters. If you want shifts and shuffles go elsewhere. Caïcus pays out deposits even after dark.
XV. [FOR THE GRAVE OF A BRAVE MAN]
I shall know, master Wayfarer, whether you prefer the valiant or esteem him even as the craven; for you will say: “Blest be this tomb for lying so light above the sacred head of Eurymedon.”
XVI. [FOR THE GRAVE OF TWO LITTLE CHILDREN]
This little maid was taken untimely, seven years old and her life before her, and ’twas for grief, the poor child, that her brother of twenty months should have tasted, pretty babe, the unkindness of Death; O Peristerè, the pity of it! how near to man and ready hath god set what is woefullest!
XVII. [FOR A STATUE OF ANACREON OF TEOS]
Look well upon this
statue, good Stranger, and when you return home say “I saw Teos a likeness of Anacreon, the very greatest of the old makers of songs”; and you will describe him to the letter if you say also “He delighted in the young.”
XVIII. [FOR A STATUE OF EPICHARMUS IN THE THEATRE OF SYRACUSE]
The speech is the Dorian, and the theme the inventor of comedy, Epicharmus. They that have their habitation in the most mighty city of Syracuse have set him up here, as became fellow-townsmen, unto thee, good Bacchus, in bronze in the stead of the flesh; and thus have remembered to pay him his wages for the great heap of words he hath builded. For many are the things he hath told their children profitable unto life. He hath their hearty thanks.
XIX. [A NEW INSCRIPTION FOR THE GRAVE OF HIPPONAX]
Here lies the bard Hipponax. If you are a rascal, go not nigh his tomb; but if you are a true man of good stock, sit you down and welcome, and if you choose to drop off to sleep you shall.
XX. [AN INSCRIPTION FOR THE GRAVE OF A NURSE]
This memorial the little Medeius hath builded by the wayside to his Thracian nurse, and written her name upon it, “Cleita.” She hath her reward for the child’s good upbringing, and what is it? to be called “a good servant” evermore.
XXI. [FOR THE STATUE OF ARCHILOCHUS]
Stand and look at Archilochus, the old maker of iambic verse, whose infinite renown hath spread both to utmost east and furthest west. Sure the Muses and Delian Apollo liked him well, such taste and skill had he to bring both to the framing of the words and to the setting of them to the lyre.
XXII. [FOR A STATUE OF PEISANDER AT CAMIRUS]
This is Peisander of Camirus, the bard of old time who first wrote you of the lion-fighting quick-o’-th’-hand son of Zeus and told of all the labours he wrought. That you may know this for certain, the people have made this likeness in bronze and set it here after many months and many years.
XXIII. [FOR THE GRAVE OF ONE GLAUCE]
The writing will say what the tomb is and who lies beneath it: “I am the grave of one that was called Glaucè.”
XXIV. [FOR A NEW BASE TO SOME OLD OFFERINGS]
These offerings Apollo had possessed before; but the base of you see below them is younger, than this by twenty years and that by seven, this by five and that by twelve, and this again by two hundred. For when you reckon them that is what it comes to.
The Fragments
Three fragments of Theocritus have been preserved in quotations.
FRAGMENT I.
Eustathius commening upon Iliad 5.904 says:-
Hebe is the sister of Ares, as Theocritus tells us.
FRAGMENT II.
In the Etymologicum Magnum we read:-
To fight against two, as in Theocritus.
FRAGMENT III.
The third passage is quoted by Athenaeus (7.284A) from a poem in honour of Berenicè, the queen either of Ptolemy III; it is also referred to be Eustathius upon Iliad 16.407 (1076.43):-
. . . And if a man whose living is of the deep, a man whose ploughshares are his nets, prayeth for luck and lucre with an evening sacrifice unto this Goddess of one of the noble fishes which being noblest of all they call Leucus, then when he shall set his trammels he shall draw them from out the sea full to the brim...
The Greek Text
Alexandria, Egypt — it is believed Theocritus lived in Alexandria for a while, where he wrote about everyday life, notably Pharmakeutria.
CONTENTS OF THE GREEK TEXT
In this section of the eBook, readers can view the original Greek text of Theocritus’ poems. You may wish to Bookmark this page for future reference.
CONTENTS
IDYLLS. Εἰδύλλια
IDYLL I. Θύρσις ἢ ᾠδή
IDYLL II. Φαρμακεύτριαι
IDYLL III. κῶμος
IDYLL IV. νομεῖς Βάττος καὶ Κορύδων
IDYLL V. Βουκολιασταὶ Κομάτας καὶ Λάκων
IDYLL VI. Βουκολιασταὶ Δάφνις καὶ Δαμοίτας
IDYLL VII. θαλύσια
IDYLL VIII. Βουκολιασταὶ Δάφνις καὶ Μενάλκας
IDYLL IX. Βουκολιασταὶ Δάφνις καὶ Μενάλκας
IDYLL X. ἐργατίναι ἢ Θερισταί
IDYLL XI. Κύκλωψ
IDYLL XII. Ἀίτης
IDYLL XIII. ὕλας
IDYLL XIV. Κυνίσκας Ἔρως ἢ Θυώνιχος.
IDYLL XV. Συρακούσιαι ἢ Αδωνιάζουσαι
IDYLL XVI. Χάριτες ἢ Ἱέρων
IDYLL XVII. ἐγκώμιον εἰς Πτολεμαῖον
IDYLL XVIII. Ἑλένης Ἐπιθάλαμιος
IDYLL XIX. Κηριοκλέπτης
IDYLL XX. Βουκολίσκος
IDYLL XXI. ἁλιεῖς
IDYLL XXII. Διόσκουροι
IDYLL XXIII. ἐραστής
IDYLL XXIV. Ἡρακλίσκος
IDYLL XXV. Ἡρακλῆς Λεοντοφόνος
IDYLL XXVI. Λῆναι ἢ Βάκχαι
IDYLL XXVII. Οαριστύς
IDYLL XXVIII. Ἠλακάτη
IDYLL XXIX. Εἰδύλλιον Ἐρῶντος
IDYLL XXX. Παιδικά
INSCRIPTIONS. Ἐπιγράμματα
INSCRIPTION I. A Pal vi.336
INSCRIPTION II. A Pal vi.177
INSCRIPTION III. A Pal ix.338
INSCRIPTION IV. A Pal ix.437
INSCRIPTION V. A Pal ix.433
INSCRIPTION VI. A Pal ix.432
INSCRIPTION VII. A Pal vii.659
INSCRIPTION VIII. A Pal vi.337
INSCRIPTION IX. A Pal vii.660
INSCRIPTION X. A Pal vi.338
INSCRIPTION XI. A Pal vii.661
INSCRIPTION XII. A Pal vi.339
INSCRIPTION XIII. A Pal vi.340
INSCRIPTION XIV. A Pal ix.435
INSCRIPTION XV. A Pal vii.658
INSCRIPTION XVI. A Pal vii.662
INSCRIPTION XVII. A Pal ix.599
INSCRIPTION XVIII. A Pal ix.600
INSCRIPTION XIX. A Pal xiii.3
INSCRIPTION XX. A Pal vii.663
INSCRIPTION XXI. A Pal vii.664
INSCRIPTION XXII. A Pal ix.598
INSCRIPTION XXIII. ἐκ τῆς Βερενίκης Athenaeus vii. 284.
INSCRIPTION XXIV. Μεγάρα
Source text: Idylls. Theocritus. R. J. Cholmeley, M.A. London. George Bell & Sons. 1901. With thanks to the Pegasus Digital Library.
IDYLLS. Εἰδύλλια
IDYLL I. Θύρσις ἢ ᾠδή
Θύρσις
῾Αδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα καὶ ἁ πίτυς αἰπόλε τήνα,
ἃ ποτὶ ταῖς παγαῖσι μελίσδεται, ἁδὺ δὲ καὶ τὺ
συρίσδες: μετὰ Πᾶνα τὸ δεύτερον ἆθλον ἀποισῇ.
αἴκα τῆνος ἕλῃ κεραὸν τράγον, αἶγα τὺ λαψῇ.
αἴκα δ᾽ αἶγα λάβῃ τῆνος γέρας, ἐς τὲ καταρρεῖ 5
ἁ χίμαρος: χιμάρῳ δὲ καλὸν κρέας, ἕστέ κ᾽ ἀμέλξῃς.
Αἴπολος
῞Αδιον ὦ ποιμὴν τὸ τεὸν μέλος ἢ τὸ καταχὲς
τῆν᾽ ἀπὸ τᾶς πέτρας καταλείβεται ὑψόθεν ὕδωρ.
αἴκα ταὶ Μοῖσαι τὰν οἰίδα δῶρον ἄγωνται,
ἄρνα τὺ σακίταν λαψῇ γέρας: αἰ δέ κ᾽ ἀρέσκῃ 10
τήναις ἄρνα λαβεῖν, τὺ δὲ τὰν ὄιν ὕστερον ἀξῇ.
Θύρσις
λῇς ποτὶ τᾶν Νυμφᾶν, λῇς αἰπόλε τεῖδε καθίξας,
ὡς τὸ κάταντες τοῦτο γεώλοφ
ον αἵ τε μυρῖκαι,
συρίσδεν; τὰς δ᾽ αἶγας ἐγὼν ἐν τῷδε νομευσῶ.
Αἴπολος
οὐ θέμις ὦ ποιμὴν τὸ μεσαμβρινόν, οὐ θέμις ἄμμιν 15
συρίσδεν. τὸν Πᾶνα δεδοίκαμες: ἦ γὰρ ἀπ᾽ ἄγρας
τανίκα κεκμακὼς ἀμπαύεται: ἔστι δὲ πικρός,
καί οἱ ἀεὶ δριμεῖα χολὰ ποτὶ ῥινὶ κάθηται.
ἀλλὰ τὺ γὰρ δὴ Θύρσι τὰ Δάφνιδος ἄλγε᾽ ἀείδες
καὶ τᾶς βουκολικᾶς ἐπὶ τὸ πλέον ἵκεο μοίσας, 20
δεῦρ᾽ ὑπὸ τὰν πτελέαν ἑσδώμεθα, τῶ τε Πριήπω
καὶ τᾶν Κραναιᾶν κατεναντίον, ᾇπερ ὁ θῶκος