The Idylls (Penguin Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Theocritus (Author), Robert Wells (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995 | Series: Penguin Classics

Theocritus (308-204 BC) was a Greek Bucolic poet who established the formal characteristics, setting and tone of the pastoral. "The Idylls" evokes the life and arts of the shepherds of his native Sicily, maintaining a balance between idealization and local realism.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Anthony Verity is Formerly Headmaster of Leeds Grammar School and Master of Dulwich College. Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek, University of Cambridge. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140445234
• ISBN-13: 978-0140445237
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,016,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greek Poems for Greekless Readers, August 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Idylls (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

With Homer, you can still appreciate the Iliad and the Odyssey in English -- indeed, the recent translations of Robert Fagles capture the movement and energy of Homeric verse quite well. With Theocritus, however, a translation is a wretched substitute for the Greek, since the exquisitely refined beauty and charm of his poems simply cannot be reproduced in English. What makes Theocritus such an enjoyable experience in Greek is the Doric dialectic in which he writes, his manipulation of the hexameter verse (the same 6 beat verse used by Homer), the echoes of Homer and other authors, and similar curiosities.

Theocritus wrote in the 3d century BC, during the so-called Hellenistic period which arose after the demise of the classical Greek city-state. This era was, in many respects, the first "modern" world. Theocritus was a Sicilian who wrote around 270 BC. He was highly original -- he invented pastoral or "bucolic" poetry, a genre which had a very long and distinguished run in subsequent Latin and European literature. Appearing in the works of this poet for the first time are the cowherds, goatherds, and shepherds playing the pan pipes under the shade of spreading trees, bantering with each other as they sing their rustic songs. If you wish to appreciate Vergil's Eclogues, Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar, or Milton's Lycidas, to name a few of the more well known examples of the form in later literature, you must at least have a taste of the master who invented this important genre.

In this Penguin paperback edition, Robert Wells offers up straightforward, readable translations of the 22 "Idylls" (meaning "short sketches") which are commonly attributed by scholars to Theocritus. Accompanying the translations is an excellent 52 page Introduction which provides the general reader with important background information about the poet, his art, his era, and his compositional techniques.

WARNING!!! The poems of Theocritus are not intended for poorly educated or unsophisticated readers. Do not attempt to read these poems if you lack imagination, curiosity, and an appreciation for the delicate craftsmanship of a sensitive and learned poet

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review of Oxford's Theocritus, March 10, 2010

By 

Ryan S. Mease "scott.godwin" (Chicago, IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Idylls (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

This is an air-tight edition of the bucolic poet. The introduction has everyone the reader wants to know, and the Greek translation is an excellent read. I wish they would have included all of the extant poems, and used footnotes, but even so, this was a pleasure to use.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There can be no remedy for love, except the Muses, May 11, 2008

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Idylls (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

These bucolic poems (bucolic = sung by a herdsman) constitute an important link in the history of literature, as Robert Wells notes in his excellent introduction. They influenced directly the pastoral tradition created in the Renaissance by poets like Ronsard.

Besides proper herdsman stories about song contests or love laments, Theocritus treats well-known subjects in his poems:

`The Bacchae': `no tears must fall for the transgressors, grown men or young boys.'

`The Cyclops': `Galatea, you are whiter than ricotta, gentler than a lamb, livelier than a calf, firmer than an unripe grape ... and when sleep lets me go, then you slip away as if you were a sheep and I the great grey wolf.'

`The Passion of Daphnis': `Let the stag hunt the hounds, let the nightingale attend to the screech-owl's cries.'

`The Graces': `Let the armoury be shrouded in cobwebs, the war-cry become a forgotten song.'

`Helen': `A race-bound filly, a cypress tree that rears its dark adornment over field and garden.'

`The Dioscuri' (Castor & Pollux): `rescuers of horses panicked in battle's bloody turmoil'.

`The Childhood of Heracles': `two monstrous snakes ... The steel-blue scales stood up as they rippled their coils.'

Theocritus's poems shine through their freshness and innocence, their alternation of elegiac and ecstatic tones, their evocation of street and pastoral noises, their images and comparisons and their candid (bi)sexuality.

Not to be missed by all lovers of classical texts.