Narrative Technique in Theocritus's Idyll 12

Theocritus's Idyll 12 is a monologue in which an unnamed speaker addresses a lover who has recently returned after an absence of some days. The poem has stylistic, formal and thematic affinities with the pastoral Idylls. On the other hand it is in the Ionic dialect, and contains no explicit indications of dramatic setting or of the speaker's fictional identity. I conclude therefore that Idyll 12 lies midway between Theocritus's Aeolic love poems, spoken by a persona of the poet himself, and the fully realized mise-en-scène of the dramatic poems, composed in the Doric dialect.