Ancient Greek Lyrics

Theokritos

171 Theokritos Theokritos The latest of the major Greek poets. An approximate contemporary of Kallimachos, he was born at Syracuse perhaps ca. 310 bce. Active there, at Kos (an island in the Dodekanese), and at the court of Ptolemy II in Alexandria. He died perhaps ca. 250 bce. As his best-known genre, the pastoral mime, suggests, he wrote for an audience of high sophistication. His Idylls (or “Little Forms”) are for the most part on the borderline or outside the range of “lyric” poetry. They include works of the most diverse sort: pastoral and urban mimes (short quasi-realistic dramatic episodes), epyllia (short epic narratives), hymns, and love poetry after the manner of Sappho and Alkaios. Although “literary” Doric is his predominant dialect, Theokritos also used the Epic, Ionic and Aiolic dialects with skill. Some twenty epigrams are included in his surviving corpus. Pastoral art from Vergil to Picasso and Ravel is in his debt. I am not the other Theokritos from Chios.* I am Theokritos who wrote these poems and one of many Syracusans. Son of Praxagoras and noble Philinna, my muse is from my own native land. Theokritos, Introductory Poem to Idylls To the Goatherd Goatherd, when you turn the corner by the oaks you’ll see a freshly carved statue in fig wood. The bark is not peeled off. It is legless, earless, but strongly equipped with a dynamic phallus to perform the labor of Aphrodite. A holy hedge runs around the precinct where a perennial brook spills down from upper rocks and feeds a luxuriance of bay, myrtle and fragrant cypress trees. * A fourth-century bce orator and sophist. The Hellenistic Period 172 A grape vine pours its tendrils along a branch, and spring blackbirds echo in pure transparency of sound to high nightingales who echo back with pungent honey. Come, sit down, and beg Priapos to end my love for Daphnis. Butcher a young goat in sacrifice. If he will not, I make three vows: I will slay a young cow, a shaggy goat and a darling lamb I am raising. May God hear you and assent. Daphnis Daphnis, you lie on the earth on some leaves resting your tired body. The hunting stakes are newly set in the hills. Pan is on your track, and Priapos comes with saffron ivy tied about his forehead. They are heading for your cave. Hurry! Shake off your lethargy and run! Offerings These are gifts for Pan. And Daphnis who pays country tunes on a warbling pipe— he of the milk-white skin—gave them: his double reel, a staff for hunting hare, a fawn hide and keen javelin. And a pouch of leather in which he once carried apples. Sacrificial Goat Morning-wet roses and the redolent thyme are for ladies of Helikon. But laurel trees with black leaves that grace the precipice at Delphi are for you, Apollo: Pythian Healer. 173 Theokritos The horned he-goat lowers his white body as he grazes on the tips of sagging terebinth. His blood will soon spill across the altar. Late Summer Many poplars and many elms shook overhead, and close by, holy water swashed down noisily from a cave of the nymphs. Brown grasshoppers whistled busily through the dark foliage. Far treetoads gobbled in the heavy thornbrake. Larks and goldfinch sang, turtledoves were moaning, and bumblebees whizzed over the plashing brook. The earth smelled of rich summer and autumn fruit: we were ankle-deep in pears, and apples rolled all about our toes. With dark damson plums the young sapling branches trailed on the ground. ...