IV. THEOCRITUS
When Philemon died (262) Greek comedy, and in large measure Athenian literature, died with him. The theater flourished, but it produced no masterpieces that time or scholarship thought fit to preserve; and the repetition of old comedies—chiefly those of Menander and Philemon—more and more crowded out original productions. As the third century ended, the spirit of the gay society that had generated the New Comedy died away, and was replaced in Athens by the serious mood of the philosophical schools. Other cities, Alexandria in particular, tried to transplant the dramatic art, but failed.
The great Library and the scholars whom it had attracted set the tone of Alexandrian literature. Books had to meet the tastes of a learned and critical audience, sophisticated by science and history. Even poetry became erudite, and tried to cover up the poverty of its fancy with recondite allusions and subtle turns of phrase. Callimachus wrote dead hymns to dead gods, pretty epigrams that sparkled for a day, judicious eulogies like The Lock of Berenice, and a didactic poem on Causes (Aitia) which contained much learned lore from geography, mythology, and history, and one of the earliest love stories in literature. Acontius, hero of this tale, is incredibly handsome, and Cydippe is painfully beautiful; they fall in love at first sight, are opposed by their money-minded parents, threaten suicide, half die of broken hearts, and finally end the romance with marriage; this is the story that a million poets and novelists have told since then, and which a million more will tell. It must be added, however, that in one of his epigrams Callimachus returned to more orthodox Greek tastes:
Drink now, and love, Democrates;
for we Shall not have wine and boys eternally.24
His only rival in his century was his pupil Apollonius of Rhodes. When the student poached upon the master’s verses and competed for the favor of the Ptolemies, the two men quarreled in life and print, and Apollonius returned to Rhodes. He proved his courage by writing, in an age that preferred brevity; a very passable epic, the Argonautica. Callimachus dismissed it with an epigram—“A big book is a big evil”—of whose truth the reader may find an instance at close hand. In the end Apollonius was rewarded; he received the coveted appointment of librarian, and even persuaded some of his contemporaries to read his epic. It still survives, and contains an excellent psychological study of Medea’s love; but it is not indispensable to a modern education.*
The rise of pastoral poetry betrays almost statistically the growth of an urban civilization. The Greeks of earlier centuries had said little about the beauty of the countryside because most of them had once lived on farms or near them, and knew the lonely hardships, as well as the quiet beauty, of rural life. Doubtless the Alexandria of the Ptolemies was as hot and dusty as Alexandria is today, and the Greeks who lived in it looked back with idealizing memory upon the hills and fields of their motherland; the great city was just the place to breed bucolic poetry. Thither came, about 276, a confident young man with the pleasant name of Theocritus. He had begun life in Sicily, and had continued it in Cos; he had returned to Syracuse to seek the patronage of Hieron II, and had failed; but he could never forget the beauty of Sicily, its mountains and flowers, its coasts and bays. He moved to Alexandria, composed a panegyric on Ptolemy II, and won the passing favor of the court. For some years he seems to have lived amid royalty and scholarship, while his melodious pictures of country life made him popular among the sophisticates of the capital. His Praxinoa describes the terror of Alexandria’s crowded streets:
O Heavens, what a mob! I can’t imagine
How we’re to squeeze through, or how long it’ll take;
An ant-heap is nothing to this hurly-burly . . .
O Gorgon, darling, look!—what shall we do?
The royal cavalry! Don’t ride us down!
Eunoa, get out of the way!26
How could a man with the soul of a poet and memories of Sicily be happy in such an environment? He praised the King for bread, but fed his spirit on fancies of his native island, and perhaps of Cos; he envied the simple life of the shepherd pacing with his placid animals grassy slopes overlooking sunny seas. In this mood he perfected the idyl—the eidyllion or little picture—and gave it the connotation that it keeps today, of a rustic cameo or a poetic tale. Only ten of the thirty-two pieces that have come down to us from Theocritus are pastoral poetry; but these have set a halfrural stamp upon the name that covers them all. Here at last nature entered Greek literature, not as a goddess merely, but as the living and lovable features of the earth. Never before had Greek literature conveyed so feelingly the secret sense of kinship that stirs the soul with gratitude and affection for rocks and streams, water and soil and sky.
But another theme reaches even more deeply into the heart of Theocritus—romantic love. He is still a Greek, indites two lyrics (xii and xxix) to homosexual friendship, and tells with vivid sentiment the story of Heracles and Hylas (xiii)—how the giant, “who withstood the ferocity of the lion, loved a youth and taught him like a father everything by which he might become a good and illustrious man; nor would he leave the lad at dawn, or noon, or evening, but sought continually to fashion him after his own heart, and to make him a right yoke-fellow with him in mighty deeds.” A more famous idyl (i) rehearses Stesichorus’ tale of Daphnis the Sicilian shepherd, who piped and sang so well that legend made him the inventor of bucolic (i.e., cow-tending) poetry. For a while Daphnis watched his herd, and envied their amorous play. When the first hair had sprouted on his lip a divine nymph fell in love with him, and had him for her mate. But as the price of her favors, she made him swear that he would never love another woman. He tried hard to keep his vow, and succeeded till a king’s daughter became enamored of his youth and gave herself to him in the fields. Aphrodite saw it, and revenged her fellow goddess by making Daphnis waste away with unrequited love. As he died he bequeathed his pipe to Pan in a song to which the narrator adds a haunting refrain:
“Master, approach; take to thee this fair pipe
Bedded in wax that breathes of honey still,
Bound at the lips with twine. For Love has come
To hale me off unto the house of Death.”
Muses, forego, forego the pastoral song.
“Now let the briar and the thistle flower
With violets, and the fair narcissus bloom
On junipers; let all things go awry,
And pines grow pears, since Daphnis is for death.
Let stags pursue the hounds, and from the hills
The screeching owls outsing the nightingales.”
Muses, forego, forego the pastoral song.
So said he then—no more. And Aphrodite
Was fain to raise him; but the Destinies
Had spun his thread right out. So Daphnis went
Down-stream; the whirlpool closed above his head,
The head of him whom all the Muses loved,
Of him from whom the Nymphs were not estranged.
Muses, forego, forego the pastoral song.27
The second idyl continues the theme of love, but in a fiercer mood. Simaetha, maid of Syracuse, seduced and deserted by Delphis, seeks to command his love by filters and charms; if she fails she is resolved to poison him. Standing under the stars she tells Selene, goddess of the moon, with what hot jealousy she saw Delphis walking with his comrade.
Scarce had we reached the midpoint of the road by the dwelling of Lycon,
Delphis when I beheld with Eudanippus advancing:
Blonder of cheek and chin were the youths than yellowing ivy,
Yea, and their breasts far brighter of sheen than thou, O Selene,
Showing they just had come from the noble toil of the wrestlers.
Think on my love, and think whence it came, thou Lady Selene.
I, when I saw, how I raged, how the flame took hold of my bosom, Burned my love-lost heart! My beauty waned, and no longer
Watched I the pomp as it passed; nor how I returned to my homestead
Knew I, for some fell bane, some parching disease had undone me.
Ten days, stretched on my bed, and ten nights dwelt I in anguish.
Think on my love, and think whence it came, thou Lady Selene.
Often the bloom of my flesh grew dry and yellow as dye-wood, Yea, and the hairs of my head fell off, and of all that I once was Naught but skin was left, and bones; and to whom did I not turn, Whose road left I unsought where an old crone chanted a lovecharm? Still no solace I found, and time sped ever a-flying.
Think on my love, and think whence it came, thou Lady Selene.
The third idyl introduces us to the nymph Amaryllis, and her unattainable charms; the fourth to the shepherd Corydon, the seventh to the poetic goatherd Lycidas—names destined to be invoked by a thousand poets again from Virgil to Tennyson. These rustics are idealized, and speak the most exquisite Greek; any one of them can sing hexameters lovelier than Homer’s; but we learn to accept their incredible gifts as a tolerable convention when we surrender to the plaintive lilt of their songs. Theocritus redeems their reality with the smell of their jackets and the occasional obscenity of their thoughts; a lusty vein of humor salts their sentiment, and makes them men. All in all, this is the most perfect Greek poetry written after Euripides, the only extant Hellenistic verse that has the breath of life.