THEOCRITUS, a Greek poet; a native of Syracuse and son of Praxagoras and Philina. Suidas, however, says that some made him the son of Simichus or Si machidas, and that he was a native of Cos and only a metoikos at Syracuse. This statement vanishes on investigation. Theocritus seems to have been intimately associated with the poet Aratus, author of the "Phwnornena." The court of the Ptolemies was the mart of intellect then; and it is known that Theocritus at least once in his life visited that great center of poetry and philosophy. More than one of his idylls may have been written there. His 10th "Idyll" was unquestion ably written at Syracuse, after the ac cession of Hiero (270 B. C.). The infer ence from all that can be gleaned from the poet himself as to his period, is that he flourished 284-262 B. C. It is at least certain that Theocritus was in Syracuse during the reign of Hiero II., and it is extremely probable that his 16th "Idyll" was written after that monarch's alli ance with the Romans, 263 B. C.
How he spent his later years is wholly unknown. The genuineness of some of the idylls is disputed. This could hardly be otherwise. But the chief glory of Theocritus lies in his being the founder of a fresh and fertile school of poetry. Sion and Moschus, a little later, achieved distinction in the same walk. Vergil drawing from the same sweet well en riched Roman literature with poems of marvelous beauty, however inferior to those of his prototype. His idylls might
have been written yesterday. In charac ter they are mimetic and dramatic. In nocence, simplicity, fidelity—the charac teristics of the early Sicilian race—con stitute his objective theme. The "Adon iazuse," a masterpiece of depiction of female character, is characterized throughout by genuine dramatic force and spirit.
It may be mentioned that the pieces, the genuineness of which is disputed, are the 12th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 26th, 27th, 29th, 30th. For full information on the integrity of the poems, the reader is referred to the works of Eichstadt (1794); E. Rheinhold (1819), and A. Wissova (1828), with the prefaces of Wharton, Meineke and Wiistemann, in their editions of Theocritus. The editio princeps of the idylls without place or date is supposed to have been printed at Venice in 1481. The next is the Aldine (1495). More recent editions are those of Wharton (1770); Brunck (1772); Gaisford (1816, 1820-1823) ; Meineke (1825); Wiistermann (1830); Words worth (1844), and Paley (1863). One of the best versions in verse is C. S. Cal verly's (1869), Andrew Lang's prose ver sion (1889) may be commended.