Theocritus. Moschus. Bion (Loeb Classical Library)

Theocritus

ISBN 10: 0674996445 / ISBN 13: 9780674996441

Published by Harvard University Press, 2015

About this Item

Theocritus (early third century BCE) was the inventor of the bucolic genre, also known as pastoral. The present edition of his work, along with that of his successors Moschus (fl. mid-second century BCE) and Bion (fl. around 100 BCE), replaces the earlier Loeb Classical Library volume of Greek Bucolic Poets by J. M. Edmonds (1912). Translator(s): Hopkinson, Fellow in Classics Neil (Loughborough University University of Cambridge Loughborough University Loughborough University Loughborough University Loughborough University Loughborough University Loughborough University Loughborough University Loughborough University). Num Pages: 550 pages. BIC Classification: 2AHA; DSBB; DSC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 172 x 117 x 35. Weight in Grams: 438. . 2015. Hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780674996441

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Theocritus. Moschus. Bion (Loeb Classical Library)
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674996445
• ISBN 13: 9780674996441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The father of pastoral poetry and his Hellenistic heirs.

Theocritus (early third century BC), born in Syracuse and also active on Cos and at Alexandria, was the inventor of the bucolic genre. Like his contemporary Callimachus, Theocritus was a learned poet who followed the aesthetic, developed a generation earlier by Philitas of Cos (LCL 508), of refashioning traditional literary forms in original ways through tightly organized and highly polished work on a small scale (thus the traditional generic title Idylls: “little forms”). Although Theocritus composed in a variety of genres or generic combinations, including encomium, epigram, hymn, mime, and epyllion, he is best known for the poems set in the countryside, mostly dialogues or song-contests, that combine lyric tone with epic meter and the Doric dialect of his native Sicily to create an idealized and evocatively described pastoral landscape, whose lovelorn inhabitants, presided over by the Nymphs, Pan, and Priapus, use song as a natural mode of expression.

The bucolic/pastoral genre was developed by the second and third members of the Greek bucolic canon, Moschus (fl. mid second century BC, also from Syracuse) and Bion (fl. some fifty years later, from Phlossa near Smyrna), and remained vital through Greco-Roman antiquity and into the modern era.

This edition of Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion, together with the so-called “pattern poems” included in the bucolic tradition, replaces the earlier Loeb Classical Library edition by J. M. Edmonds (1912), using the critical texts of Gow (1952) and Gallavotti (1993) as a base and providing a fresh translation with ample annotation.

About the Author

Neil Hopkinson (1957–2021) was College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge.