Author: THEOCRITUS
Biography:
THEOCRITUS (fl 3rd century BCE: OCD)
Theocritus probably came from Syracuse, Sicily, and was associated with the Alexandrian court. It is not known when or where he died. An innovator, he was a master at blending literary styles and he is seen as having a major influence on Virgil’s (q.v.) Eclogues and on pastoral poetry in the western tradition. His compositions include poems traditionally known as idylls (OCD prefers “vignettes”), mimes, and epigrams. The Rev. Richard Polwhele (q.v.) was the translator of all but one of the editions listed in this bibliography. His preface to the first edition of his The Idyllia, Epigrams, and Fragments of 1786 grants approval to just one earlier translation, The Idylliums of Theocritus (1767) by Francis Fawkes. (For information on Fawkes, see the headnote to Musaeus.) However, the preface also includes five pages of detailed criticism of Fawkes’s translation. Although Polwhele’s own translation met with general approval, it inevitably also attracted criticism and he omitted the discussion of Fawkes in prefaces to the revised later editions. Richard Whiffen’s The Elegies of Tibullus, with Other Translations from Ovid, Horace, Theocritus, etc. (1829) includes just one poem by Theocritus, “Idyllion III. The Goatherd.” (OCD 28 Feb. 2025; Francis Fawkes, The Idylliums of Theocritus [1767]) SR