page_title: Theocritus
section_title: Epics
hierarchical_section_title: Theocritus / Works / Epics
caption_attribution_description: English: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 694 - Princeton University Library, AM 4424 - Theocritus, Idyll XIII.19-34 (Hylas and the Nymphs)
context_page_description: Theocritus was a Sicilian poet and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry.
context_section_description: Three of these are Hymns: 16, 17, and 22. In 16, the poet praises Hiero II of Syracuse, in 17 Ptolemy Philadelphus, and in 22 the Dioscuri. The other poems are 13, the story of Hylas and the Nymphs, and 24 the youthful Heracles. It cannot be said that Theocritus exhibits signal merit in his Epics. In 13 he shows some skill in word-painting; in 16 there is some delicate fancy in the description of his poems as Charites, and a passage at the end, where he foretells the joys of peace after the enemy have been driven out of Sicily, has the true bucolic ring. The most that can be said of 22 and 24 is that they are very dramatic. Otherwise they differ little from work done by other poets, such as Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius.
  From another point of view, however, these two poems 16 and 17 are supremely interesting, since they are the only ones which can be dated. In 17 Theocritus celebrates the incestuous marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus with his sister Arsinoë. This marriage is held to have taken place in 277 BC, and a recently discovered inscription shows that Arsinoë died in 270, in the fifteenth year of her brother's reign. This poem, therefore, together with xv, which Theocritus wrote to please Arsinoë must fall within this period. The encomium upon Hiero II would seem prior to that upon Ptolemy, since in it Theocritus is a hungry poet seeking for a patron, while in the other he is well satisfied with the world. Now Hiero first came to the front in 275 when he was made General: Theocritus speaks of his achievements as still to come, and the silence of the poet would show that Hiero's marriage to Phulistis, his victory over the Mamertines at the Longanus and his election as "King", events which are ascribed to 270, had not yet taken place. If so, 17 and 15 can only have been written within 275 and 270.
caption: Theocritus's Idyll 13, Hylas and the Nymphs. P. Oxy. 694, 2nd century AD
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