Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/408

384 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE There is such unity of style and atmosphere in Theo- critus that one easily overlooks the great variety of his subjects. We call his poems ' Idylls/ and expect them to be ' idyllic' But in origin the word elhvXXiov is merely the diminutive of elSo?, ' form ' or ' style ' ; and our use of the name appears to come from the practice of heading these pastoral poems with the musical direction elSvXkiov ^ovkoXlkov, or aliroXiKov, ' cow-herd style/ or ' goat-herd style/ or whatever the case might require. Only ten of the thirty-two Idylls of Theocritus which have come down to us are strictly about pastoral life, real or idealised ; six are epic, two are written for 'occasions,' two are addresses to patrons, six are definite love-poems, and four are realistic studies of common life. The most famous of these last is the Adoniazttsce (Id. xv.), a mime describ- ing the mild adventures of two middle-class Syracusan women, Gorgo and Praxithea, at the great feast of Adonis celebrated at Alexandria by Ptolemy II. The piece is sometimes acted in Paris, and has some real beauty amid its humorous but almost unpleasant close- ness to life. There is not so much beauty in the pre- ceding mime (xiv.) with its brief sketch of the kind of thing that drives young men to enlist for foreign service ; but there is perhaps even more depth and truth, and, we must add, more closely-studied vulgarity. The second Idyll, narrating the unhappy love of Simaetha and her heart-broken sorceries, is hard to classify : it is realistic, beautiful, tragic, strangely humorous, and utterly unfor- gettable. It does for the heart of life what the ordinary mime does for the surface ; and, in spite of several conscious imitations, has remained a unique masterpiece in literature. Three poems appear to express the poet's personal feelings ; they are addressed to his squire, and