Carnis, F. Theocritus' First Idyll

Theocritus' First Idyll: The Literary Programme
Author(s): FRANCIS CAIRNS

Source: Wiener Studien, Vol. 97 (1984), pp. 89-113
Published by: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24746865
Accessed: 13-02-2017 00:33 UTC
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FRANCIS CAIRNS /LIVERPOOL
Theocritus' First Idyll: The Literary

Programme1
1. Introduction
In this paper I shall be exploring those aspects of Idyll 1

which, I believe, constitute a 'literary programme'. I use the terms
'programme' and 'programmatic1 in the ambiguous but useful way
in which they are often used, particularly by German and Italian
scholars writing about ancient literature. In this parlance, a poem
or a part of a poem can be described as 'programmatic1 if it is con
sciously composed in such a way that it contains a very high con
centration of material typical of its literary form. Such a piece can
be regarded as even more obviously 'programmatic1 if it contains
statements about poetry and the art of writing poetry, either impli
cit or explicit. Such statements can sometimes involve evaluations
of poetry or of several different kinds of poetry. Pieces which are
'programmatic1 in one or more of these senses can sometimes use
an agreed symbolic language.
Such programmatic poems or parts of poems are often the
prologues to books of poems or to longer works. Now, Idyll 1
stands first in many of the manuscripts, both ancient and medie
val, in which collections of Theocritean poems are preserved2. But
1 An earlier draft of this paper formed part of a series of lectures on

Idyll 1 given at the International Research Seminar in Classics in Birkbeck
College, London, at the invitation of Professor Giuseppe Giangrande in Janu
ary-March 1979. A revised version was subsequently delivered at the Oxford
Philological Society and in the Universities of Padua, Bologna, Rome and Bari
in May 1979 during a lecture tour of Italy organised by Prof. Enzo Degani. I
am grateful for the valuable observations made on these occasions and also
very much indebted to Prof. W. G. Arnott, Mr I. M. Le M. Du Quesnay, Mr C.
W. Macleod and Dr F. J. Williams for their advice on this paper. All opinions
and remaining errors are my own.
2 Cf. Gow, I, xxx ff., esp. xxxiiiff.: G. Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals,
Washington 1967, Ch. 1, implicitly accepts that Theocritus placed Id. 1 first.
90 Francis Cairns
by describing it as a literary programme, I do not wish to impl

that it was necessarily the prologue of a collection issued by The
critus himself for such material can occur in other circum
stances although the possibility that it was such a prologue

not be rejected out of hand. The presence of such programma
material in Idyll 1 may however at least explain why it was so of
chosen by scribes to head collections of Idylls.
It is not unusual for classical scholars to describe pieces o
poetry as programmatic, particularly if they were written in an
after the Hellenistic period3. But pieces which can be describe
programmatic can be found earlier. Indeed it is clear that Hell
tic poets and scholars regarded some earlier poetry as having
grammatic functions. They showed this by imitating such passag
in their own programmatic pieces4 or by placing them first in t
books into which they organised archaic lyrics5. They may w
have been right in this approach, since the end of the Homer
hymn to the Delian Apollo seems in fact to be programmatic
was the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony6. It is also clear from Ar
tophanes' parodies of the literary claims being made in the la
3 The main scholarly discussions, which will be referred to by name

author only, are: Wilhelm Kroll, Studien zum Verstndnis der rmischen
ratur, Stuttgart 1924; Mario Puelma Piwonka, Lucilius und Kallimachos,
Frankfurt/M. 1949; Walter Wimmel, Kallimachos in Rom (Hermes Einzel
schriften 16), Wiesbaden 1960; Athanasios Kambylis, Die Dichterweihe und
ihre Symbolik, Heidelberg 1965; Jean-Paul Boucher, tudes sur Properce,
Paris 1965; J. K. Newman, Augustus and the New Poetry (Coll. Latomus 88),
Bruxelles-Berchem 1967; and cf. on this subject area most recently my Tibul
lus: a Hellenistic Poet at Rome, Cambridge 1979 (henceforth 'Tibullus'), Ch. 1.
4 Cf. e.g. the use made by Callimachus in Aetia Fr. 2 Pf. of the opening of
the Theogony and the parallel between the end of the Homeric Hymn to
Delian Apollo (H. Horn. 3, 166 ff.) and Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo 2, 105 ff.
(on which see Williams ad loc.).
5 Cf. prominently Sappho Fr. 1 LP, Pindar Olympian 1, Pythian 1 and
the fact that the first three hymns of the first book of Alcaeus in the Alexan
drian edition were addressed to Apollo, Hermes (inventor of the lyre) and the
Nymphs (cf. P. Oxy. 2734 Fr. 1).
6 The shield of Achilles in Iliad 18 has also featured largely in this con
nection. 0. Taplin, The Shield of Achilles within the Iliad, Greece and Rome 27
(1980), 121, builds on the earlier treatments of W. Schadewaldt, Von Ho
mers Welt und Werk, Stuttgart 41965, 352 374; K. Reinhardt, Die Ilias und
ihr Dichter, Gttingen 1961, 401411; W. Marg, Homer ber die Dichtung
(Orbis Antiquus 11), Mnster 11957, 21971, esp. 20ff., to expand the signific
ance of the shield.
Theocritus' First Idyll 91
part of the fifth century BC7, as from fragments of Timotheus and

Choerilus8, that programmatic poetry was being written then.
There does however seem to have been a particular flowering of
the practice in the Hellenistic period, witnessed for example by the
lost but reconstructible Philitean programmatic prologue9, by the
prologue to the Aetia, Iambus 1, and other Callimachean polemical
pieces10, and, most interesting of all in this context, by Theocritus
Idyll 7n. If Idyll 1 does contain programmatic material, it would
therefore lie within a recognised Hellenistic poetic category; and
in Theocritus' own work it would in this respect closely resemble
Idyll 7.
With certain programmatic poems it is possible to offer a logi
cally compelling and internally homogeneous set of proofs to
demonstrate their programmatic nature. But Idyll 1 is program
matic in a number of different ways, and above all it relies often on
implicit statements and symbolism to convey Theocritus' literary
stance as a bucolic poet. For these reasons no single continuous
body of proofs of the Idyll's programmatic nature can be offered.
Rather the arguments about programmatic material offered in this
paper are different in kind and cumulative in nature. There is no
suggestion that any single detail or group of details in isolation
ought to carry conviction. The hypothesis that Idyll 1 is in a signif
icant sense programmatic will only succeed if the accumulated
weight of evidence of many different types is felt to be sufficiently
persuasive.
7 Cf. Wimmel, 115 n. 1; 'Tibullus', 8 ff.

8 Cf. Wimmel, Stellenindex s. w. Choirilos v. Samos; Timotheos.
9 Cf. J.-P. Boucher, Ch. 7 (213 ff.).
m Notably Hymn 2, 105ff.; Iamb. Fr. 203 Pf.; Epigr. 6; 7; 8; 21;27; 28 Pf.
11 Cf. M. Sanchez-Wildberger, Theokrit-Interpretationen (Diss.), Zrich
1955, 62-69; F. Lasserre, Rh. Mus. 102 (1959), 322ff.; M. Puelma, Die Dich
terbegegnung in Theokrits Thalysien, Mus. Helv. 17 (1960), 144164; G.
Lohse, Die Kunstauffassung im VII. Idyll Theokrits und das Programm des
Kallimachos, Hermes 94 (1966), 413425; G. Serrao, Problemi di Poesia Ales
sandrina I. Studi su Teocrito, Rome 1971, Ch. 1; and in: Studi in onore di
Anthos Ardizzoni, ed. E. Livrea and G. A. Privitera, Rome 1978, II, 918928.
Many of the epigrams studied by Mathus Gabathuler, Hellenistische
Epigramme auf Dichter (Diss.), Basel 1937, are also literary-programmatic in
nature.
92 Francis Cairns
2. The Worlds of Theocritean Poetry
Idyll 1 begins with a high concentration of the scenery, char

acters and language typical of the contemporary bucolic world of
Theocritus' imagination, in which much of his poetry is set; and,
when the idyll reverts at 57 ff. and at 143 ff. to the doings of the
two bucolic characters, it again brings before its audience's eyes
numerous standard features of this world. Thus in lines 1 ff. the
reader meets the pine, the springs, the piping of the goatherd,
Pan, the male and female goat and kid, the shepherd and his song,
the rock from which the spring flows, the Muses, the ewe and
lamb, the Nymphs, the sloping hill and the tamarisks, the Muse,
the elm, the statue of Priapus, the shepherd's seat and the oaks,
the bucolic agon, the milking of a goat with twins and the cup. In
the middle of the poem (57f.) comes a goat and a large cheese;
and in the final section (at lines 143 ff.) the milking of the female
goat into the cup, the Muses, honey and the honeycomb, sweet
figs, the cicada, the sweetness of the cup, the male goat and the
female goat.
The scenes on the cup, as will be seen, add other areas of
Theocritean poetic activity to this contemporary bucolic country
side; and in the song of Daphnis we are transported back to a par
allel universe remote in time and strange in some of its contents
the mythical pastoral world of Daphnis a world in which the
Cyclops of Idylls 6 and 11 would have been at home. Here gods
walk the earth and the nymphs are close to mortals; and in addi
tion to sheep, goats, cattle12 and wolves, familiar in the contempor
ary bucolic scene, there are jackals (71, 115), a lion (72) and bears
(115). But much of the scenery would not be out of place in the
time of Tityrus and the goatherd: mountains, streams and valleys
(67ff., 83), groves (83, 117), oaks, galingale, bees (106 f.), violets,
brambles, thistles, narcissus, apKEU&oi, pine and pears (133 f.),
hounds, stags, owls and nightingales (135 f.) and also hares (110).
12 There are no cattle in the frame only sheep and goats. This feature
may be intended to stress Daphnis1 social superiority as [ioijK/.oc; to Thyrsis
and the goatherd (the last of whom is not even named). Priapus' gibe (86 ff.)
alludes to the same social distinctions as does Daphnis' pointed insistence in
his sarcastic retorts to Aphrodite that Adonis was a shepherd (109) while he
himself is a (ioxa (113). It must be noted however that these social distinc
tions have been questioned by E. A. Schmidt, Hirtenhierarchie in der antiken
Bukolik, Philologus 113 (1969), 183-200.
There is a celebrated pan-pipe (128 f.) and cowherds, shepherds,

goatherds and maidens (80 ff., 90 f.).
The concentration of content typical of a poetic type is paral
leled in such literary programmes as Tibullus 1, 1, Propertius 1, 1,
Horace Epistles 1, 1 and Odes 1, 1, Persius 1 and Juvenal 1; and
the apparently casual reference in lines 68 f. to Kotauoto ufr/av
pov . . . 'Avdrao (68) and then to "Akio iepv 8cop (69) may be a
confirmatory side-glance at a programmatic concept13 which
appears most celebratedly at Callimachus Hymn 2, 108 ff. There
the 'Aaauptou Tioxauoo (lya po (108) note that the phrases
appear in the same 'sedes' in the line is set against . . . tti Ka
$apfi te Kai xpavio vpTtei / maKo iepfj Myr| >acu;
aKpov acoxov (111 f.). Especially close are iepfj (111) and iepv (Id.
1, 69) and the coincidence of xpoiVTO (111) and axpavxov (Id. 1,
60, on which see below) is also noteworthy.
Some specific details of the world of Thyrsis and the goatherd
are programmatic in a direct way. In lines 7 f. the goatherd compli
ments Thyrsis by comparing his song with a stream falling from a
rock. This compliment echoes a previous one paid to the goatherd
by Thyrsis in lines 1 ff., when Thyrsis compared the goatherd's pip
ing with the rustling of a pine tree 'near the springs'. The springs
and the song recur in lines 19 ff., where the goatherd calls upon
Thyrsis to come and sit beneath the elm, opposite the springs, and
sing. These motifs belong to the best-known area of symbolic lan
guage about literature in Hellenistic and indeed in earlier Greek
poetry. Homer as Ocean, the large river as the symbol of the non
Callimachean type of poetry, and the small spring as the symbol of
brief non-Homeric poetry of the type recommended by Callima
chus, all these concepts are too well-known to require illustra
tion14.
In the brief, episodic and highly wrought bucolic idylls of

Theocritus, we have of course 'springs' of a sort to delight Callima
chus, and there are other motifs in plenty in Idyll 1 which confirm
its espousal of a literary programme very similar to his. To begin
13 It must be stressed that a common source (Philetas?) is in question

here and not direct imitation.
14 Cf. Williams on Call. Hymn 2, 105ff., and Appendix, 98f.; Kambylis,
esp. 23ff.; 66ff.; 98ff.; 110ff.; 183ff. Most recently on such topics N. B. Crow
ther, Mnemosyne 32 (1979), 1 11, whose conclusions demonstrate the com
plexity of the problem.
94 Francis Cairns
with, the two compliments employ the adjective 'sweet', S, a8iov

(If. and 7). Callimachus attributes sweetness to Mimnermus in th
programmatic prologue to the Aetia (Fr. 1, 11 Pf.) and honey
sweetness to Aratus in Epigram 27 Pf.15, where the concept is
linked with another Hellenistic manifesto notion ,e7iTxr|16. In
addition, the association between the prize beast and the song,
which occurs in both sets of compliments (4ff., 9ff.), may border on
another programmatic topos popular in Hellenistic and Augusta
poetry. This is the contrast and comparison between Muse and sa
rificial beast first found in Callimachus' image, .. . doi, to uf;
$o TTi TtdxiTOv/Qpiyai, xf)v Moaav 5' cbyaOe ,7iTa^r|
(Aetia, Fr. 1, 23 f. Pf.), a passage with many later reflections, whic
are sometimes inversions of it17. The programmatic motif of th
sacrifice certainly occurs at lines 143 ff. in the form of a libation of
milk to the Muses : a libation of milk to Pales also appears at Tibul
lus 1, 1, 35 f., another literary programme which in addition co
tains the small sacrifice topos (22)18. Within the Callimachean tr
dition it appears that either the fat sacrifices of the poet in con
trast to his slim Muse (i.e. poem) or the poor sacrifice (that is, the
small poem) of the poor poet were equally effective as literary sym
bols.
The concept of sweetness returns in line 145; and after the
song of Thyrsis has ended, the goatherd proceeds in lines 146 f. to
mention another of the most frequent Hellenistic literary symbols,
honey19. The mouth of the poet Thyrsis is to be filled with it. The
sweetness motif of lines 1 f., 7 and 145 is reiterated here and
15 See Pfeiffer ad loco.; for the bee/honey motifs see below p. 94f. and
n. 19.
16 See below p. 100 and n. 47.
17 See Wimmel, Stichwortindex s.v. Opfervergleich.
18 Cf. Tibullus', 21.
19 On bees and honey cf. R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship I,
Oxford 1968, 284; Wimmel, Stichwortindex s.v. Bienen; J. H. Waszink, Biene
und Honig als Symbol des Dichters und der Dichtung in der griechisch
rmischen Antike, Opladen 1974; Williams on Call. Hymn 2, 110. Associations
of the honey motif are labor (on which see below) and purity (on which see
below and Williams). Note also that bees occur as allies of Daphnis for the
explanation see G. Giangrande, Mus. Phil. Lond. 2 (1977), 177 ff. at Id. 1,
107 and honey again in the description of Daphnis' pipe ((ir/jivovjv, 128). Cf.
also the reference to wax at 27 and to honeycomb at 147, and the fact that
honey symbolises labour, i.e. ponos, one of the prime Hellenistic virtues (cf.
Schol. Pind. Nem. 3, 77 = 134a Drachmann). See also below p. 98 and n. 34.
again in the description in line 148 of the figs of Aegilus as eav.

Hard on the heels of this motif comes another, the cicada: xxTiyo
Tiei xya (ppxepov aei (148). The cicada is used explicitly as a
symbol of his own poetry by Callimachus in Aetia Fr. 1, 29 f. Pf.20.
The related ctKp (cricket) also appears (see below) as a literary
symbol, at Idyll 1, 52 (in (XKpi8o$f]pav); and the ciKpi stands for
superior poetry at Idyll 7, 41.
This cluster of motifs at lines 143148 is striking; and it
introduces in lines 149150 further equally striking literary refer
ences to the cup. Before these are examined in detail a final
very significant aspect of the meeting between Thyrsis and the
goatherd with a literary overtone may be mentioned the time of
it, midday. Midday is the time for many important literary con
frontations, including (in later traditions at any rate) Hesiod's
meeting with the Muses and Simichidas' encounter with Lycidas in
Idyll 721.
3. The Cup
The cup is said to smell sweetly ( k(lXov oaet, 149), which

associates it with the sweetness of the honey in the KaA,v at|ia
(146), the figs (147) and the song (145). Then it is said (150) to have
been dipped in the springs of the Horai. These springs are reminis
cent of the poetic springs at the beginning of the Idyll (lines 2, 7 f.)
and indeed they correspond to them in the ring-compositional
structure of the idyll. The literary associations being invoked here
involve the close connection between the Horai, the Charits and
the Muses. This is summed up aptly by Hans von Geisau: "Literatur
und Kunst bringen sie hufig mit Chariten, Musen, Nymphen
zusammen, mit denen sie in gewissem Sinne auswechselbar sind."22
He notes a number of specific instances including interchange of
Horai / Charits names between the two groups. He also remarks
on one specific cult-occasion relevant here: "Beim Brechen der er
20 Cf. the references to secondary material at C. Segal, WSt 90 (1977),

62, n. 63.
21 Cf. Kambylis, 59 ff., and note especially the link between midday and
ai)%ia at Call. Hymn 5, 72: uEoaufipivri 8' elx' opo cnr/i.
22 Kl. P. 2, 1216, s.v. Horai. An explanation of the presence of the Ho
rai at Id. 1, 150 in terms of their connection with rain-water is offered by
G. Giangrande, Eranos 71 (1973), 73.
96 Francis Cairns
sten reifen Feige singt der Bauer ein Lied auf die Hren (Aristoph.
Pax 1168)." Three lines before Theocritus' mention of the Horai, he
wishes Thyrsis n' Aiyitao ia%a Tpcyo/elav (147 f.).
The Horai therefore appear in Idyll 1 with the same literary
significance as the Charits have in Callimachus cf. Aetia Fr. 3
Pf. (on the Charits and following the programmatic Fr. 1 and 2)
and also the epilogue of the Aetia where they are found linked with
Callimachus' Muse (ejif] |i,oOoa, Fr. 112, If. Pf.). Some program
matic implications of this link are further clarified by Aetia Fr. 7,
13f. Pf., where Callimachus addressing the Charits says: e/Jmte
vOv, Xyoai 8' vu|/f|aaaOe /antboac / %epa (io, va uoi
jtou uvcoCTLV xo23. Another important strand of literary sym
bolism in Idyll 1, 150 relies on the fact that the concept of 'washing
in the wells of the Horai' belongs to the field of Hellenistic water
imagery; and these otherwise unknown wells are presumably to be
explained through that other close association of the Horai, the
Muses, who preside over a number of poetic springs and streams in
Hellenistic poetry. If this is so, then the washing in the wells of the
Horai is a Theocritean combination / equivalent of drinking from
the springs of the Muses and being anointed by the Charits.
The cup has been described earlier and in detail in lines 27 ff.
These lines are a major location of literary symbolism, the signifi
cance of which is enhanced by the fact that above all the cup
together with its contents, milk, is a symbol of the idyll itself. This
equation of a cup and its contents with poetry is a traditional meta
phor24, and the cup is the equivalent in value of Thyrsis' song. In
23 E.g. Call. Aet. Fr. 7, 13f. Pf.; Cat. 1, 9f.; Lucr. 1, 28; Ov. Am. 3, 15,
19f.; Brner on Ov. Fast 5, 377. As often the concept originates in Pindar
(Nem. 4, 6ff.); for later imitations of the Callimachus passage see Pfeiffer ad
loc. and on the immortality theme in literary programmes F. Cairns, Mnemo
syne s. iv 22 (1969), 153 ff.
24 Cf. e.g. Pind. 01. 6, 92 (cup of song); 01. 7, 7 ff. (the poem = nectar);
Nem. 3, 76ff. (the poem = a drink); Isth. 5, 24f. where the mixing metaphor is
preceded (23) by the kXev-Oo xaSap; Isth. 6, Iff. (poem = a cup of the
Muses' songs, cf. 6, 74f., poem = water of Dirce); Dionysius Chalc. Fr. 1, If.
West (poem = drink); AP 11, 24 (Antipater of Thessalonica) = G-P 3 (water of
Dirce = poetry); Ennius Sat., 6 f., Vahlen, with H. D. Jocelyn Riv. Fil. 105
(1977), 139f.; Lucret. 1, 937ff. (poem = a cup containing a bitter drink and
smeared round with the Muses' honey [!]). Cf. also Herzberg on Prop. 4, 6, 7 f.
In addition the whole wine and water-drinking theme in literary programmes
implies this kind of equivalence. See also below p. 96 f. on the equation
between a poem and a work of art.
addition a libation of milk mixed with honey is specifically at

home in a Hesiodic literary imitation context (cf. AP 7, 55, 3 f.,
Alcaeus of Messene25). All this means that what is said of the
cup and its contents may also apply to the poetry of Theocritus
although not every detail of the cup-description need apply26.
The cup is described (27) as a a'K) Kiaaiov Kf;K/A)CT|ivov i
Kpj ("A deep 'kissybion', washed over with sweet wax"). The
precise meaning of Kiaaiov is not certain27. But the first two
syllables of the word must in context have suggested 'ivy' to an
ancient reader, a suggestion quickly confirmed by kictct in
lines 29 and 30, in the midst of a three-line description of the
ivy and its fruits and tendrils. If so the cup is something like the
sjiu Ktaaivov found in Timotheus Fr. 780, 1 (PMG) in a Diony
siac context28. Ivy has complex literary connotations: it appears
in conjunction with the 'pure path' and with Dionysus at Calli
machus Epigram 7, If. Pf.: TH5e 0eaTT)TO KaOap-pv Sv. ei
8' ni Kiaav / tv tev o/ aurt], Bxyt;, kevSo yei, etc.,
and there are many later examples of it29 in literary and dra
matic contexts. The cup is covered with 'sweet1 wax. This again
introduces the literary concept of sweetness30, and wax is
another product of the bees, that common literary symbol in
Hellenistic poetry31.
Wax, in association with ivy (29 f.) may have an even more
specific literary function. The pair are strongly reminiscent of a
25 Cf. for a similar situation Philostr. Vit. Apollon. 5, 15.

26 In a parallel case (Catullus 1) where the poet's physical book is
equated with his poetry (cf. Cairns, Mnem. s. iv 22 [1969], 153 ff.) the inter
changeability of the descriptions is absolute. Here certain aspects of the cup
appear to refer to the cup only.
27 Cf. the discussions of Gow ad loc. and Pfeiffer on Call. Aet. Fr. 178, 12;
A. M. Dale, 'Kiaauiov' CR n.s. 2 (1952), 129 ff. (= Collected Papers, 98ff.); C.
A. Mastrelli, SIFC 23 (1948), 97 ff. The scholia on Id. 1, 27 cite as a Hesiodic
fragment /iycp 5' f|5eto Kiaaup (Merkelbach-West Spuria Fr. 393) which in
fact is Callimachus Aetia Fr. 178, 12 Pf. But the attribution is nevertheless sug
gestive.
28 Cf. e.g. also Eur. Ale. 756 Ttoxipa ... Kiaaivov; Cycl. 390 aK(po . ..
Kiaao; Fr. 146, 2 Kiaaivov . .. aKwpo.
29 Cf. Gow-Page, Hellenistic Epigrams, II, 250 (1567); 256 (1609); Kam
bylis, 166ff.; Nisbet-Hubbard on Hr. Od. 1, 1, 29; Herzberg on Prop. 4, 1,
6If.; Mayor on Juv. 7, 29.
30 See above n. 15; n. 19.
31 See above n. 19.
98 Francis Cairns
line of Propertius (4, 6, 3) which appears in a literary-program

matic context:
cera?2 Philiteis certet Romana corymbis.
Here the ivy berries stand specifically for Philetas; but the distin
guishing adjective Romana is attached to cera so that the cera
Romana is a symbol of Propertius' own poetry (as cera also is in
Propertius 3, 23, 8, in another literary manifesto33). The Proper
tian combination of wax and corymbi hints that they were a Phile
tean symbolic complex34. If this is so, then the whole passage of
Idyll I from 27 to 31 may derive from Philetas; and the symbols in
it may take some of their significance from his use of them. This
suggestion accords with yet another about Philetean influence on
Idyll 1 which will be made below; and it is strengthened by Theo
critus' openly expressed admiration for Philetas in another liter
ary manifesto context (Idyll 7, 3941) where Philetas is signifi
cantly likened to an ctKp. Further support comes from the many
other suspected imitations of Philetas in Theocritus35.
The description of the cup continues in line 28: utpcoe,
veoteu%, xi yXucpvoio otctov. |j,<pe, like aO (27),
seems not to have literary significance and to refer only to the phy
32 The reading cera (O, serta Scaliger) was explained by D. R. Shackleton

Bailey, Propertiana, Cambridge 1956, 244 ff., but was wrongly rejected by
Boucher, 222 and n. 2. It should be noted that the collocation of passages made
here speaks further in favour of cera.
33 On which see F. Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman
Poetry, Edinburgh 1972, 76 ff.
34 It may have been derived by him from Pindar. Cf. the legend recorded
by Pausanias 9, 23, 2 that bees placed wax on Pindar's lips on his way (at mid
day!) to Thespiae (cf. Kam by] is, 60). One notes also however the legend of the
second temple of Apollo at Delphi, made of feathers and wax. Cf. C. Sourvinou
Inwood, The Myth of the First Temples at Delphi, CQ n.s. 29 (1979), 231251
(also containing some relevant material linking bees and Apollo).
35 Cf. the suggestions of G. Kuchenmller, Philetae Coi Reliquiae (Diss.),
Berlin 1928, 20 f., 29, n. 1, 57 f., about imitations in Ic". 7; also Id. 3, 40 and 10,
4 with Gow ad locc. I have suggested that Id. 11,1 ff. may be another Philetean
echo ('Tibullus', 26 and n. 116) and in this context it might be speculated that
the name Daphnis for a bucolic character also came to Theocritus via Philetas,
although of course it goes back further. It should be noted however that the
ultimate and, some might argue, the only source of Id. 11, Iff. is Philoxenus
(Fr. 822 PMG) see Gow on Id. 11, 7 and most recently M. Fantuzzi, MD
(Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, publ. Giardini, Pisa) 4
(1980), 183 f.
sical cup. But veOTeu% as a literary reference hardly requires

explanation: it refers to the standard Hellenistic claim to novelty
and originality36. This claim is intrinsically linked with another
characteristic Hellenistic aspiration, to purity37; and as if to con
firm the link, the latter concept crops up explicitly later in Idyll 1,
at 59 f., when the goatherd says, in emulous imitation of Iliad 16,
225 ff.38, that his cup has never been drunk from by him, but is still
Xpavxov, pure. Callimachus, as was noted above (p. 93), created
the bye-form %pdavTO in one of his literary manifesto passages
to convey exactly the same concept of purity/originality39.
The cup is finally said in line 28 to be y/oxpavoio tiotct8ov.
This phrase, like its equivalent tcav aei (149), naturally
alludes to the literary concept of sweetness (on which see above).
But it also touches on the standard wood-working and metalwork
ing metaphor which Hellenistic poets used to express their ideal of
nvo/labor40 and its product, the fine-turned or well-worked
object41. This metaphor is part of a long-established ancient tradi
tion of comparing poems with works of art or craft42 and it is used
particularly appropriately here given the context, in which the cup
stands for the song of Thyrsis. Around the lip of the cup |j,ap6exai
(weaves) ivy (line 29). uapexai is a word from another standard
area of Hellenistic craft metaphor used to describe poetry weav
ing43 and I have already made suggestions about the ivy's signif
icance and links with Philetas.
36 Cf. 'Tibullus', 10, n. 37.

37 Cf. 'Tibullus', 10, n. 38; Williams on Call. Hymn 2, 111.
38 This does not mean that the bucolic ethos is ignored. Dr Simonetta
Nannini kindly refers me to the testimonium of Alcm. Fr. 56 PMG: 'AaK/.r|m
Sr| ' Mupêav v t> Ttepi xf^ NecrtopiSo (pr]aiv xi x> aKcpei Kai tw
Kicrauup tv (iv v atei Kai jiexpicov o8ei %pfjTO, auctai Kai vo|j.e
Kai oi v dyp! <*> 6 E|iaio (Od. 14, 112 seqq.). Note that in Id. 1 the Kicyau
iov of 1. 27 is described as a aKixpo at 1. 143. In Alcman Fr. 56 PMG Diony
sus (!) will fill a golden ctkv'kpo with lion's milk (!).
39 See Williams on Call. Hymn. 2, 111.
40 Cf. 'Tibullus1, 5, n. 20.
41 Cf. Puelma Piwonka, 161; Prop. 2, 34, 43 with Rothstein and Herzberg
ad loc. ; 3, 1, 5 and Herzberg ad loc.
42 Cf. e.g. 01. 6, Iff.; Pyth. 6, 7ff.; Nem. 5, Iff.; Isthm. 6, Iff.; Bacch.
Epin. 5, 9ff.
43 Cf. above n. 41; Brner on Ov. Met. 1, 4; D. 0. Ross Jr., Backgrounds
to Augustan Poetry: Gallus Elegy and Rome, Cambridge 1975; Index rerum
notabiliorum s.v. deducere.
100 Francis Cairns
It remains to note first, that the name of the she-goat milked

into the cup at line 151 is Kissaitha and second, to remark on th
universal associations of the ivy with Dionysus. These can hardly
be irrelevant facts here, since the ivy appears on a ,
type of cup linked with Dionysus (see above p. 97), which will b
given to a shepherd with the Dionysiac name Thyrsis and ivy is
one of the main constituents of the Dionysiac wand the thy
sus44. The prcis significance of Dionysus in various Hellenisti
literary programmes remains to be elucidated; but his importan
in this area is indubitable45.
Two other botanical dtails are worth mentioning at this point.

The meaning of in the phrase
(30) is disputed. But it is probably the plant helichryse46 and
it adds a further literary point, which can be grasped by compar
ison of 1. 30 with Callimachus Fr. 274 Pf. where the word appears in
the same 'sedes1 and in the same grammatical form:
/ ("He
too had just grown around his face a fine down like the golden
helichryse"). Since is another of the commonest Hellenis
tic literary concepts47, it is plausible that the same symbolism is at
tached to the word here, particularly since occurs in Calli
machus Ep. 27 Pf. in Company with sweetness and hard work
(sleeplessness), both of which are also found in the proximity of the
(30) sweetness in line 27 and work in line 28.
The second botanical point involves the acanthus, mentioned
(55) in the resumed description of the physical shape of the cup
There are two kinds of acanthus, and Theocritus spcifis the
. It may be relevant that the acanthus is good for
giving bees honey48. But what is obviously relevant is that the
44 Cf. Dodds on Eur. Bacchae 82; 113; Kl.-P. s.v. Thyrsos.

45 Cf. Kroll, 30f.; Wimmel, Stichwortindex s.v. Dionysisches; Kambylis,
166ff.; Dionysus is of course involved in the wine/water antithesis common in
Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic poetry: cf. Kambylis, 118 ff. It may be noted
also that in a very small surviving corpus Philetas twice mentions Dionysu
(Fr. 14, 2; 17, 1, Kuchenmller). This may be significant if the Philetean asso
ciations hypothesised for Idyll 1 are correct.
46 Cf. C. Gallavotti, Le coppe istoriate di Teocrito e di Virgilio, Par. del
Pass. 21 (1966), 421436.
47 Cf. 'Tibullus', 5, n. 21 and E. Reitzenstein, Zur Stiltheorie des Kallima
chos, in: Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein, Leipzig - Berlin 1931, 2369.
48 Cf. Columella RR 9, 4, 4.
Theocritus1 First Idyll 101
ypTT| or mollitia of the acanthus symbolises that 'softness'

achieved by brief Hellenistic poems (particularly erotic poems)
which is stressed in programmatic poetry in contrast to the
'hardness' of Homericising epic49. This can be concluded with cer
tainty from the way in which Virgil has recognised Theocritus'
framing of the scenes on the cup with acanthus as having literary
significance. When imitating this passage in Eclogue 3, 44 ff. Virgil
placed acanthus round the handles of his cups and Orpheus in the
centre part, with the woods following him as a sign of his poetic
power, yp he translated as molli (45).
The cup is not the only artefact in Idyll 1 which stands for
poetry and has literary programmatic significance. There are two
more such objects. The first is Daphnis' panpipe which is described
in lines 128 ff. in terms which may again be in origin Philetean50.
The panpipe is an even more straightforward symbol of the bucolic
poetry which Theocritus is writing than the cup is of Thyrsis' song,
since the ability of the musical instrument to stand for a particular
type of poetry is even more clearly and universally recognised (e.g.
lyre for lyric, tibia for elegy etc.). This gives the details of the
description of the panpipe great significance. It is UEtnvou
honey51 and sweet odours/sounds being linked here. The scent was
from its 'wax'52 (!) which is tkxkt the adjective emphasising
that it is an artefact and alluding to the term naKii sometimes,
but not always, used of a pipe53; and finally it is UKT;, 'bound
round'.
These details remind us of the cup the honey breath looks

to the sweetness (27) of the cup which is still scented from the car
ver's knife (28), which smells beautifully koc/.ov (149) cf. kccAxxv
(129) and which is to be given to Thyrsis with the wish that his
mouth may be filled with honey (146). The wax of the pipe recalls
the sweet wax into which the cup has been dipped (27), and the fact
that it is bound round (ikt) recalls not only the /%puao of 1.
49 Cf. Hermesianax Fr. 7, 36, Powell; Kambylis, 148; Nisbet-Hubbard on

Hr Od. 2, 12, 3; Brner on Ov. Fasti 2, 3; Owen on Ov. Trist. 2, 307.
50 Cf. Tibullus', 27.
51 See above p. 94 and n. 19.
52 See above p. 97 f.
53 The term is ambivalent see Heather White, Studies in Theocritus
and Other Hellenistic Poets (London Studies in Classical Philology 3), Amster
dam - Uithoorn 1979, 37 ff. I should note that, as will be clear from this sec
tion, I cannot subscribe to Dr White's view of the meaning of lines 128 f.
102 Francis Cairns
30 but also, more prominently, the ivy which tiot . . . XEt-A,r| (J-Ctpe
Tca i.e. around the lips of the cup (29) and 8 kcct' axv/ Kapn
Xi ei,etai ya/.O(iva KpoKevxi (30 f.). The coincidence
(29)/%e,o (129) naturally strengthens (particularly given th
context) the idea that the %e.o of 129 is the lip of the instrument
and not of the player just as the of 29 are definitely those
of the cup54.
The emphasis on intertwining in both these passages is
another manifestation of the 'weaving' metaphor55, which crops up
a third time in the idyll in the account of the last object with liter
ary programmatic force the cricket cage which the boy Tt-tcei
(52) in one of the scenes on the cup, and which is made in part (as
the panpipe is wholly made) of reeds (53, see below).
4. The Scenes on the Cup
Upon Theocritus' cup are three separate and diverse scenes.

These give the cup the episodic quality which Callimachus prized
(Aetia Fr. 1, 3 Pf.)56 and the TOiKiXia sought by Hellenistic poets57.
From a different viewpoint, the scenes on the cup also supplement
the imaginary bucolic ambiences of the present, revealed at the
beginning and end of the idyll, and of the past, revealed in the
song of Thyrsis. They offer visions of other, non-bucolic sections of
the imaginary world of the present in which Theocritus' poetry is
set. The first scene comes from an urban milieu of the type found
in Idylls 2 and 15: the well-dressed woman and the men with fine
hairstyles are not rustics. The second scene, that of the fisherman,
is reminiscent of Idyll 21. That idyll is generally believed to be
pseudo-Theocritean58. But whatever its authorship, it represents a
subject area found elsewhere in Hellenistic poetry59, which Theo
54 See above n. 53.

55 Cf. n. 43.
36 Cf. Hr. Od. 1,7,5 and Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc.; Puelma Piwonka, 138 ff. ;
Wimmel, Stichwortindex s.v. 8lT| V8KT)- pe rpe tu us : B m e r on Ov. Met. 1,4.
57 C. M Dawson, The Iambi of Callimachus, YClSt 11 (1950), 141-145;
Puelma Piwonka, Sachregister s.v.; Kroll, Sachregister s.v.; Wimmel, Stich
wortindex s.v. variatio.
58 See Gow, Intr. to Id. 21 (369 f.). Recently G. Giangrande, Ant. Class. 46
(1977), 495, has stated his belief in Theocritean authorship.
59 See Gow, n. 58.
critus may have treated in lost idylls. The third scene belongs to
the cultivated countryside, in which Idyll 10 is also set.
Another aspect of the cup which has literary significance is
that the three scenes on it are arranged in a way which suggests
the 'Priamel der Werte'. This is a standard format of ancient po
etry and prose60, and it is particularly well established in early
Greek lyric poetry a fact of literary interest, given Theocritus'
indebtedness to that area. In the 'Priamel der Werte' the various
values or aspirations or ways of life described can either be

declared equal in value; or alternatively one of them can be
declared superior to the others. The priamel is thus a special type
of synkrisis61, the bucolic agon being another82, as the initial c'xb
(line 1) and aiov (line 7) of Idyll 1 recalls.
The judgement which Theocritus suggests to us about the
three scenes on the cup is implicit but unmistakeable; and it has a
literary dimension. In the first scene, two young men in love with a
single woman toil in vain (Tcbaia (xo%0tovTi, 38); in the second, a
fisherman, GTtecov (40) and k6|xvovti . . . oiKto (41), casts his
net; in the third, one fox is going up and down the rows of vines
damaging the grapes while the other wants the boy's wallet JtdvTfx
o/.ov teuôiaa (50). But, in contrast to all this strenuous activity,
the little boy cares nothing for practical matters. Instead he is
totally involved with plaiting a cricket-cage out of rushes and
asphodel. Now the K/.au.o has a well-known literary significance
and weaving is, as was noted above, a standard Hellenistic symbol
for literary composition. At Eclogue 10, 7072 Virgil links weav
ing a basket with writing a poem in a way which makes it clear that
the basket is a symbol of the bucolic poem being written:
haec sat erit, divae, vestrum cecinisse poetam,
dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco,
Pierides63.
60 On the Priamel and as support for what follows cf. Walter Krhling,
Die Priamel (Beispielreihung) als Stilmittel in der griechisch-rmischen Dich
tung (Diss.), Greifswald 1935; Ulrich Schmid, Die Priamel der Werte im Grie
chischen von Homer bis Paulus, Wiesbaden 1964; Tilman Krischer, Die
logischen Formen der Priamel, Graz. Beitr. 2 (1974), 7991.
61 This conclusion is founded particularly on Krischer's observations
(see n. 60).
62 On the agon see Walter Johannes Froleyks, Der ATON AO TON in der
antiken Literatur (Diss.), Bonn 1973; on the link with the synkrisis 11 ff., 281 ff.
63 Cf. Servius ad loc. (on gracili): allegoricos significat se composuisse hunc
libellum tenuissimo stilo.
104 Francis Cairns
Moreover the prototype of Theocritus' boy, the n of the Ho

meric shield of Achilles (Iliad 18, 569 ff.)64, is specifically described
as playing the lyre and singing the Xivo song65 (5 70) s.nxakkv
(povrj66 (571) in an enclosed vineyard67 (564 f.) from which young
men and girls are carrying the vintage ti/.ekto v xadpoiai (
568). Homer and Virgil thus confirm the symbolic status of th
cricket-cage, and the use which Theocritus makes of the cicada at a
later point in the poem (148) as an explicit symbol for the singer, i
yet another confirmation that the plaiting of the cricket-cage is a
third symbol of the poem itself and of the art of composing po
try68.
The symbolism is strengthened by two further facts. The first
is the material and construction of the cage. The boy is 'weaving' it
(tt^kei); it is beautiful (KaXdv, 52, the same word in the same
'sedes' as in the description of the panpipe, 129); and it is being
woven with a%oivo (53). This member of the reed family has, by
virtue of the confusion in ancient life of the different species of
reeds69, the same literary associations as e.g. the calamus10, so that
the cage here is again very close to the panpipe. Secondly, the cur
rency of the woven container as a symbol of the poet's environ
ment in the Hellenistic period is assured by Timon Fr. 60 W with
its comic image of the 'grammatici' in Egypt 'in the basket71 of the
Muses' (Mouacov v xa^dp).
So the third scene on the cup symbolises the life of the bucolic
poet, the life that, in the song of Thyrsis, Daphnis has preferred
above all else. Viewed in these terms, the scenes on the cup are a
priamel in which the life of the bucolic poet is compared favour
64 On the literary prototypes of the cup cf. U. Ott, Die Kunst des Gegen
satzes in Theokrits Hirtengedichten (Spudasmata 22), Hildesheim - New York
1969, 99 ff. and also above (p. 90 and n. 6).
65 For the associations of the Linos song with death cf. E. Reiner, Die
rituelle Totenklage der Griechen (Tbinger Beitr. 30), Stuttgart - Berlin 1938,
Register A s.v. Linos; M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, Cam
bridge 1974, 55 ff.
66 Cf. above p. 94 and n. 16.
67 Cf. below on the cricket cage, p. 104.
68 Cf. Ch. Segal, WSt. 90 (1977), 41 f.
69 Cf. RE III, 476 ff., s.v. Binsen. The same seems to have been true of a
number of species of cicadas, crickets etc.
70 Cf. usefully, in a context of cicadas, Xejit Kcx/.ajio. Aristophanes Fr.
51, 3, Kock.
71 Cf. G. Arnott, CQ 21 (1971), 155 ff.
ably with two other lives, a life of vain love and a life of striving for
livelihood, the first of which is of course tantalisingly related to the
love of Daphnis in Thyrsis' song. A more explicit poetic manifesto
comparing the poet's life favourably with other lives is Horace Od.
1, 1 and the choice of life is a favourite programmatic topic in
Roman elegy72. Theocritus is more oblique in that he merely
describes three different ways of life; but he allows the final posi
tion of the third scene, its links with the panpipe and the similarity
between the boy's neglect of work for poetry and Daphnis' choice
of life in the song of Thyrsis, to make his point implicitly, that the
life of the poet is the life preferred in this bucolic context.
5. Literary Predecessors
The large amount of literary symbolism in Idyll 1 character

ises it clearly as a literary programme. It is nonpolemical in that
Theocritus does not attack literary opponents, as for example Cal
limachus does in Aetia Fr. 1 and elsewhere, and as Theocritus
makes Lycidas do at Idyll 7, 45 ff. Idyll 1 simply states Theocritus'
own literary position through a group of symbols which clearly
place him in the same camp as Callimachus and Philetas73.
Another less explicit feature of Idyll 1, in comparison with Idyll 7,
is that it mentions no other poet. But this does not obscure Theo
critus' message. By putting forward in Idyll 1 as acceptable literary
goals novelty, laborious artisanship, originality, sweetness and so
forth, Theocritus is issuing a manifesto as clear in its direction as
any other piece of Hellenistic literary criticism.
Moreover, although Theocritus fails to mention other poets by
name, he alludes to them fairly clearly. First of all he imitates and
alludes to Philetas, who had put forward, perhaps in a more expli
cit way, similar ideals. This, together with the fact that Philetas
probably also composed bucolic verse and may have written about
a character called Daphnis74, would have made Theocritus' readers
72 Cf. W. Steidle, Das Motiv der Lebenswahl bei Tibull und Properz, WSt.
75 (1962), 100140; P. Cairns, Propertius, 2.30 A and B, CQ n.s. 21 (1971),
204-213.
73 It may be more characteristic for the first poem of books of dis
poems to be implicitly programmatic and non-polemical and for the fir
grammatic section of longer poems to be more explicit and polemical.
106 Francis Cairns
see Idyll 1 as extending and supporting the literary manifesto o

Philetas75. More remotely, Idyll 1 imitates the ultimate sources of
its literary ideals76. These derive, as does the language of much
Hellenistic literary polemic, from early Greek literature, notably
from Hesiod and Pindar77. It does so in that it exploits the concep
tual links between works of art, gifts and poems made in early
Greek poetry78 and derives inspiration from the Triamel der
Werte' of early lyric in its ecphrasis of the cup.
Another striking concept from the world of Pindar, Bacchy
lides and Simonides, involves the gift by the goatherd to Thyrsis of
the excellently fashioned, beautiful and valuable cup which he ha
bought from the seaman of Calydon79 at a considerable price, and
which has retained its value by being kept unused. Now one sta
dard theme of choric lyric is that patrons ought to be generous to
poets80, a theme taken up with considerable enthusiasm by The
critus in Idylls 16 and 17. In Idyll 16, which draws much of it
inspiration from epinician poetry, Theocritus complains about the
general lack of such generosity, but praises Hieron by implication
as a generous patron81. In Idyll 17 Ptolemy's generosity is praise
outright in an encomium also drawing on Homeric language and
motifs (112120)82. This same theme recurs in Idyll 1 in a mor
oblique form: if the goatherd, a poor man, can give Thyrsis such a
valuable gift in return for one performance of a song, then by
implication Theocritus' contemporary patrons of his own social
class ought to be equally generous.

76 For various additional suggestions about imitations of earlier Greek
literature in Id. 1, cf. Lawall, 2. I do not mean to exclude other literary influ
ences but simply note that early Greek lyric influences are strong.
77 On the Pindaric influence cf. Newman, 45 ff.; on Hesiod cf. H. Reinsch
Werner, Callimachus Hesiodicus, Berlin 1976.
78 See above p. 99 and P. Cairns, The Distaff of Theugenis Theocritus
Idyll 28, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 1976 (ARCA 2, Liverpool
1977), 301 ff.
79 Cf. Ott (v.u. 64), 120, n. 341.
80 On "wealth" in Pindar, cf. most recently P. R. Colace, Considerazioni
sul concetto di "IIXoOto" in Pindaro, in: Studi in onore di Anthos Ardizzoni,
II, 737745.
81 Cairns, The Distaff of Theugenis, 303f.; 'Tibullus', 159f.; F. T. Grif
fiths, Theocritus at Court, Mnemosyne Suppl. 55, Leiden 1979, 7 ff.
82 W. Meincke, Untersuchungen zu den Enkomiastischen Gedichten Theo
krits (Diss.), Kiel 1965,85 ff. ; Cairns, Generic Composition, 104 ff. ; Griffiths, 71 ff.
But the remotest and at the same time the nearest literary
predecessor for Theocritus is Homer in Iliad 18. U. Ott (see above
p. 104, n. 64) has analysed fully the detailed resemblances between
Theocritus' cup and Homer's shield, and the shield is program
matic in the same ways as the cup is. The shield reveals the whole
world of which the war at Troy is only a part and the portrayal of
the world on the shield of Achilles is a tragic reminder that by the
choice which brought him the shield, Achilles has abandoned that
world irrevocably. So too the cup reveals a larger world than the
struggle with love which Daphnis has chosen, another choice which
is irrevocable and loses Daphnis that larger world. In both cases
the evaluation being offered has a large element of ambivalence. A
suggestion which will be made about Daphnis and Achilles below
reinforces the significance of Theocritus' imitation of Homer in
this passage.
In addition to these allusions to real poets of Theocritus' past,
he creates for himself in the person of Daphnis a mythical prede
cessor in bucolic poetry of far greater antiquity and authority than
Philetas. Daphnis' tradition and inspiration is mediated to Thyrsis,
who, in turn, because he is singing of 'the woes of Daphnis',
'reaches the heights of bucolic song' (Kai xct oUKoA-iKC^ em t
Ttov keo uolaa, 20). This is not to say of course that Thyrsis is
simply Theocritus in disguise. But, as the poet who sings of Thyr
sis, Theocritus is himself naturally achieving the same standard in
bucolic song as his subject.
Daphnis' pre-eminence in song is sketched by Theocritus in
such a way as to introduce another standard feature of literary
manifestoes, the god who is patron of the kind of poetry being
praised, in this case Pan. Daphnis' pre-eminence in bucolic is seen
most significantly in his ability to hand over his pipe at death to
none other than Pan, the very inventor of the pipe (123 ff.),
another detail probably deriving from Philetas83. This is a telling
variation on the ordinary motif of dedicating the tools of one's
trade to a god at the end of a career. Here the gift is made in a con
text where gods and men really do have daily intercourse and
where Pan will certainly use the gift; and the reason for it is that
Daphnis has achieved such a high standard in his art that he is far
above other men and second only to the god (cp. the goatherd in
83 Cf. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 2, 32 f.
108 Francis Cairns
line 3 and Thyrsis with respect to the Muses in 9 f.). Daphnis ca

therefore without absurdity make this bequest, no other morta
being worthy to possess his pipe. As well as Pan, the Muses, both at
the beginning of the poem in 9f. and in the libation to them a
144 f., appear as patron deities of bucolic poetry; and the allusions
to Dionysus already discussed discreetly introduce him as the third
patron.
Further confirmation of Theocritus' intentions in this area
come from one of the two Epitaphioi written in the late Hellenistic
period in imitation of Idyll 1, the Epitaphios Bionos84, which offers
a useful commentary on some aspects of Idyll 1, since it states
many things which Theocritus left implicit. In the Epitaphios the
poet says that when Bion PodkXo died, song perished with
him, as did Dorian poetry (11 f.). This is similar to Daphnis' atti
tude at Idyll 1, 132 ff., where Daphnis sees his own death as initiat
ing the end of an era. The notion of Dorian poetry is picked up
again at Epitaphios Bionos 18, in the words "The Dorian Orpheus
is dead" and a third time in line 122 (note the recurrence of
Orpheus in 123). This description of Bion as the Dorian Orpheus is
revealing, in that it underlines one of Theocritus' difficulties in
finding literary predecessors in bucolic, namely, that compara
tively little poetry had been written in the Dorian dialect. It also
shows the eagerness with which poets who were writing in a new
form or unusual dialect sought for literary predecessors even to
the extent of analogising in this way.
The concern of Nature for Bion's death in lines 23 f. recalls the
parallel material in Idyll 1, 71 ff., and reminds us that the primary

function of many of the details of Thyrsis' song is to contribute
towards building up a portrait of Daphnis as a great singer. Lines
51 ff. of the Epitaphios deal with Bion's instrument. They exem
plify, by their exaggerated 'variatio' of Idyll 1, 123 ff., the theme
which Theocritus expresses in a more restrained way when he
makes Daphnis leave his pipes to Pan (128 ff.). The Epitaphios
(55 f.) says that no man would dare use Bion's pipe if Pan got it,
even he would be afraid to play it "lest he come off second to you
(Bion)" ((if] Seuxepa aeo (pprjTai, 56) words which of course
allude to the initial scene of Idyll 1 as well as to Idyll 1, 128 ff.
84 Cf. V. Mumprecht, Epitaphios Bionos, Zrich 1964, 33 ff., where the

influence of Id. 1 and of other Theocritean works is explained; cf. also I. M.
DuQuesnay, Virgil's Fifth Eclogue, Proc. Virg. Soc. 16 (1976/77), 23 ff.
6. Bion, Homer and Daphnis
Lines 71 ff. of the Epitaphios Bionos are also revealing in

another set of literary terms, when they compare and contrast Bion
and Homer. Bion, so it is said, did not, like Homer, sing of wars or
tears, but he sang of Pan and other rustic subjects. Such a contrast
between epic and bucolic was easy for the Greeks, who divided liter
ature up by metrical types so that Homeric epic and hexameter
bucolic poetry were both enr|85, particularly when Hesiod, himself a
hero of Hellenistic literary polemic, also wrote in hexameters. The
appearance of the contrast in the Epitaphios therefore raises the
question whether Theocritus may have thought of himself, in Idyll 1,
in similar terms, that is, as a minor Homer. It would not be out of
keeping with Theocritus' normal practice for him to have done so,
for he often writes with an eye to the place of his own work in the
history of Greek literature. So in Idyll 18 he recreated the heroic
age in terms of choric lyric; and he reproduced the world of Aeolic
personal lyric in Idylls 28 30, and the ethos of Pindar and Simo
nides in Idyll 16. As for setting himself against Homer, we have
already observed how, in Idyll 1 itself, Theocritus created in his
description of the cup a bucolic analogue of the Homeric shield of
Achilles86. Again, in Idyll 17 Theocritus created in the character of
Ptolemy a contemporary analogue of the Homeric Agamemnon.
If the hint in the Epitaphios is to be taken seriously and Theo
critus is trying in Idyll 1 to be a minor Homer, then an interpreta
tion of the characterisation of Daphnis can be suggested. This is
that Theocritus sees Daphnis as a bucolic analogue of the Homeric
Achilles87 and has placed him, not, like Ptolemy, in an idealised
contemporary world, but in a mythical bucolic past, when gods
walked the earth and spoke without disguise to men, and when
men and gods were closely related. The link between the shield of
Achilles and the cup which is the reward for Thyrsis' song about
Daphnis fits well with this suggestion.
85 Cf. J. Van Sickle, Epic and Bucolic, Quaderni Urbinati 19 (1975),

4572; Theocritus and the Development of the Conception of Bucolic Genre,
Ramus 5 (1976), 1844.
86 Cf. Ott, 99 ff.
87 None other than Alexander the Great had been closely identified with
and, to some extent had identified himself with Achilles. Cf. W. W. Tarn, Alex
ander the Great (2 vols Cambridge 1948), Indexes s.v. Achilles; on Hiero in Id.
16 as another Achilles cf. Griffiths, 16, n. 3, General Index s.v. Achilles.
110 Francis Cairns
If it has some substance, then Daphnis would not be intended as

a simple and straightforward analogue of Achilles; their differ
ences would be intended to be just as eloquent as their similarities and
would be meant to underscore the gulf between the epic and the
bucolic hero. So Daphnis' attitude to love can be seen as parallel to
Achilles' attitude towards fighting the Trojans. Daphnis, as it were,
sulks in his tent, and like Achilles, he receives a triadic embassy.
But Achilles defies Agamemnon up to Patroclus' death, and then
makes the choice of a short but glorious life and a death in action,
whereas Daphnis defies love consistently up to his own death,
and this makes his death almost more heroic than that of Achilles.
7. The Dominant Themes of the Programme
Many of the themes common to Idyll 1 and other literary pro

grammes have now been explored. All are important to the bucolic
programme and to Theocritus' poetics. But two remain to be
examined which are given particular emphasis by Theocritus. The
first of these is the theme of death. Its importance in the idyll is
signalled by the amount of space given to it; and final confirmation
that it is an integral part of the poetic manifesto as it is part of
the poetic manifestos of the Roman elegists is provided by the
botanical details which Theocritus gives about the poetic cricket
cage made of asphodel and a%ovo (52 f.); the asphodel was sacred
to the gods of the underworld88 and, along with ivy and oak, it is
employed in Theocritus Idyll 26, 4 ff. for the construction of altars
in the open air dedicated to Semele and Dionysus. There the ivy is
called coovta and the asphodel xv Ttp y. In addition the
ct%ovo, as well as standing symbolically for bucolic poetry (see
above) may, since reeds (K/.auo/ harundo and VO.) are a stand
ard feature of underworld descriptions89, carry associations of
death. So Theocritus' poetic cricket-cage is made of two plants, one
certainly, the other probably, associated with the underworld. The
boy's cage combining poetry with death is to be linked with the
death of the two poets who appear in the idyll, Daphnis in far-off
88 Cf. K. Lembach, Die Pflanzen bei Theokrit, Heidelberg 1970, 32 f.

89 Kaha\ioc,/harundo: Virg. Georg. 4, 477; Prop. 2, 27, 13; Pausanias 10,
28, 1; 56vai;: Hermesianax Fr. 7, 6, Powell.
antiquity and Thyrsis, whose death is mentioned a few lines later

at 62 f., in the contemporary world.
When death appears as a programmatic theme in Roman
elegy90 it has one of two functions. The first is to enhance the
poet's claims to immortality for his work. Cf. e.g. Prop. 3, 2, 21 f.:
at mihi quod vivo detraxerit invida turba

post obitum duplici faenore reddet Honos.
That this is in Theocritus' mind is shown through the Achilles/

Daphnis analogue: Achilles had, like Daphnis, a choice of his way
of life and he sums it up briefly at Iliad 9, 412416:
ei jj,v k' auOt uvcov Tpojtov no/av u(pi|arr/vc)uai,

ASTO UV UXH VCTTO, tp KO UpOlTOV EOTfXl
ei icev otca' KGtjii (p(r]v Ttaxpia yaav,
&Xet (xoi K/vo aSXv, m ripv uoi aicov
eaaexai, o jj.' cokcx xô avxoio Kixer|.
Daphnis, by choosing, like Achilles, an early death, has also

achieved undying fame (kao). The song about him, i.e. x A(pvi
o /.yea (19) has preserved his tale by enshrining it in immortal
bucolic poetry, just as Homer immortalised Achilles in epic, so
that, even in death, Daphnis indeed continues to be a koikov . ..
d/.yo "Epcoxi (103). The link between akyza and fame is of course
itself Homeric with the epic being K/.a vpcv for the hearers
and Kf)ea for the agents91. The theme of death therefore adds to
Idyll 1 another important literary programmatic motif the wide
spread Hellenistic poetic aspiration to immortality92, here specif
ically referring to bucolic poetry.
The second function of the death theme in Roman elegy is to
enhance the poet's love, the source, inspiration and equivalent of
his love poetry, by stressing that he will die from and in love. In
Idyll 1 death has a similar but markedly different function. Daph
nis is not dying in a state of acceptance of love but is dying because
90 On death in Propertius cf. Boucher, Ch. 3; in a wider area Wimmel,

Stichwortindex s.v. Todesgedanke etc.; on the love-death link R. J. Baker,
Laus in amore mori: Love and Death in Propertius, Latomus 29 (1970),
670-698.
91 Horn. Od. 8, 73 and 9, 15. For discussion of another Homeric emp

on this fact cf. 'Tibullus'', 201.
92 E.g. Call. Aet. Fr. 7, 13f. Pf.; Cat. 1, 9f.; Lucr. 1, 28; Ov. Am. 3
19f.; Brner on Ov. Fast. 5, 377f.
112 Francis Cairns
of his resistance to love. His Love-Death is not a glorification of

love and love-poetry but the opposite a glorification of his role
as bucolic singer. There are echoes here of the traditional bucoli
antithesis between poetry and love alluded to in Id. 11, Iff., and
other similar passages where the Muses are an antidote to love93
But at the same time the value of Daphnis" Love-Death as a glorifi
cation of bucolic not erotic poetry must to some extent rely on
pre-existent tradition of love-poets glorifying love by their Lov
Death.
But all this does not mean that the reader is supposed to
regard the death of Daphnis as a simple model for imitation. This
is clear from a number of indications. The first is that his analogue
Achilles, although also heroic, was recognised in antiquity to have
a number of faults94. Again, although, on one hand, Daphnis95 does
embody attitudes which the average lover, who cannot resist love
and who is nevertheless made miserable by love, would wish to
adopt but cannot, on the other hand, however, he carries his view
point to an unnatural extreme; and this is reflected in the fact
that, even in his own world with its jackals etc., Daphnis is not in
harmony with Nature in a true sense: the Nymphs are absent from
his death-bed (66 ff.); and he is visited there not, as is standard in
these circumstances, by the gods of death96, but by the gods of life
seeking to save him from death in vain (77 ff.). The mythical
bucolic world of the past is heroic but not a model.
In contrast with Daphnis, Thyrsis and the goatherd are pre
sented in their world as being much more in harmony with nature
and the gods: the springs and the nymphs are present; and the
bucolic singer Thyrsis continues his occupation in a lucrative fash
ion. That the dichotomy is intentional is clear from the piquant
similarity between the goatherd's injunction to Thyrsis to sing
(60 ff.), on the grounds that he will not take his song to Hades with
him the etymological link between doictv (62) and AiSav (63)
93 Cf. Fantuzzi (v. n. 35); Gow ad Id. 11, 1 7.

94 For discussion of these in the ancient scholia cf. N. J. Richardson, CQ
n.s. 30 (1980), 273.
95 I intend to discuss Daphnis' attitude to love, the background to the
myth of Daphnis and the nature of Daphnis' death in another paper and for
this reason have omitted references to scholarly discussions of these problems
in this paper.
96 Cf. J. Esteve Forriol, Die Trauer- und Trostgedichte in der rmischen
Literatur (Diss.), Munich 1962, 140, 40.
stressing further the significance of the passage97 , and Daphnis'

reply to Aphrodite that he will continue to be a torment to Love
even in Hades (103, cf. also 130). Indeed the contrast goes further.
The world of Thyrsis and the goatherd seems immune even to the
necessity of harsh labour like that of the old man fishing in one of
the scenes on the cup and to the non-fatal but vain love of the two
men in another. The rustics are, it might be suggested, like the boy
in the third scene on the cup, who neglects his material cares and
occupies himself with a poetic ttvo which is true aau%ia. If this is
the dominant theme of the contemporary bucolic world of Idyll 1,
then it would bring Idyll 1 fully into accord with Idyll 7 where
(io\jyia also is one of the principal literary values expressed98.
The friendly interchanges between Thyrsis and the goatherd, their
good relations with the gods, the natural beauty which surrounds
them, and the locus amoenus where their encounter takes place
resemble the interchanges and destination of the characters of
Idyll 7.
In Idyll 7 (laxr/ia (also a Hellenistic philosophical goal) stands
along with Ofua as the two literary ideals put forward as the
most significant values of Theocritean poetry. Here in Idyll 1
air/La is paired with immortality. Truth and immortality are also
programmatic aspects of many other sorts of poetry. But aauîrx is
a characteristically bucolic ideal and so a fitting dominant motif
for the whole bucolic programme of Idyll 1.
Addendum:
David M. Halperin's valuable book, Before Pastoral: Theocri

tus and the ancient tradition of bucolic poetry, New Haven/Lon
don 1983, was published while this paper was in press. A number
of its conclusions supplement and reinforce my own.
97 On such 'etymologies' cf. most recently 'Tibullus', Ch. 4.

98 Cf. Serrao (see n. 11). Cf. also n. 21 for the link between midday (the
time of the meetings in both idylls) and (iixtyjia.

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Theocritus' First Idyll: The Literary Programme

Author(s): FRANCIS CAIRNS

Theocritus' First Idyll: The Literary

In this paper I shall be exploring those aspects of Idyll 1

1 An earlier draft of this paper formed part of a series of lectures on

by describing it as a literary programme, I do not wish to impl

stances although the possibility that it was such a prologue

3 The main scholarly discussions, which will be referred to by name

part of the fifth century BC7, as from fragments of Timotheus and

7 Cf. Wimmel, 115 n. 1; 'Tibullus', 8 ff.

2. The Worlds of Theocritean Poetry

Idyll 1 begins with a high concentration of the scenery, char

There is a celebrated pan-pipe (128 f.) and cowherds, shepherds,

In the brief, episodic and highly wrought bucolic idylls of

13 It must be stressed that a common source (Philetas?) is in question

with, the two compliments employ the adjective 'sweet', S, a8iov

again in the description in line 148 of the figs of Aegilus as eav.

The cup is said to smell sweetly ( k(lXov oaet, 149), which

20 Cf. the references to secondary material at C. Segal, WSt 90 (1977),

addition a libation of milk mixed with honey is specifically at

25 Cf. for a similar situation Philostr. Vit. Apollon. 5, 15.

line of Propertius (4, 6, 3) which appears in a literary-program

cera?2 Philiteis certet Romana corymbis.

32 The reading cera (O, serta Scaliger) was explained by D. R. Shackleton

sical cup. But veOTeu% as a literary reference hardly requires

36 Cf. 'Tibullus', 10, n. 37.

It remains to note first, that the name of the she-goat milked

Two other botanical dtails are worth mentioning at this point.

44 Cf. Dodds on Eur. Bacchae 82; 113; Kl.-P. s.v. Thyrsos.

ypTT| or mollitia of the acanthus symbolises that 'softness'

These details remind us of the cup the honey breath looks

49 Cf. Hermesianax Fr. 7, 36, Powell; Kambylis, 148; Nisbet-Hubbard on

4. The Scenes on the Cup

Upon Theocritus' cup are three separate and diverse scenes.

54 See above n. 53.

values or aspirations or ways of life described can either be

Moreover the prototype of Theocritus' boy, the n of the Ho

The large amount of literary symbolism in Idyll 1 character

see Idyll 1 as extending and supporting the literary manifesto o

75 See above p. 91 and n. 9.

83 Cf. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 2, 32 f.

line 3 and Thyrsis with respect to the Muses in 9 f.). Daphnis ca

parallel material in Idyll 1, 71 ff., and reminds us that the primary

84 Cf. V. Mumprecht, Epitaphios Bionos, Zrich 1964, 33 ff., where the

6. Bion, Homer and Daphnis

Lines 71 ff. of the Epitaphios Bionos are also revealing in

85 Cf. J. Van Sickle, Epic and Bucolic, Quaderni Urbinati 19 (1975),

If it has some substance, then Daphnis would not be intended as

7. The Dominant Themes of the Programme

Many of the themes common to Idyll 1 and other literary pro

88 Cf. K. Lembach, Die Pflanzen bei Theokrit, Heidelberg 1970, 32 f.

antiquity and Thyrsis, whose death is mentioned a few lines later

at mihi quod vivo detraxerit invida turba

That this is in Theocritus' mind is shown through the Achilles/

ei jj,v k' auOt uvcov Tpojtov no/av u(pi|arr/vc)uai,

Daphnis, by choosing, like Achilles, an early death, has also

90 On death in Propertius cf. Boucher, Ch. 3; in a wider area Wimmel,

91 Horn. Od. 8, 73 and 9, 15. For discussion of another Homeric emp

of his resistance to love. His Love-Death is not a glorification of

93 Cf. Fantuzzi (v. n. 35); Gow ad Id. 11, 1 7.

stressing further the significance of the passage97 , and Daphnis'

David M. Halperin's valuable book, Before Pastoral: Theocri

97 On such 'etymologies' cf. most recently 'Tibullus', Ch. 4.

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