Idyll VIII

Idyll VIII, also called Βουκολιασταί βʹ ('The Second Country Singing-Match'), is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus.[1]

Summary

The characters of this dialogue are the mythical personages Daphnis a cowherd and Menalcas a shepherd, and an unnamed goatherd who plays umpire in their contest of song.[1] After four lines by way of stage-direction, the conversation opens with mutual banter between the two young countrymen, and leads to a singing-match with pipes for the stakes.[1] Each sings four alternate elegiac quatrains and an envoy of eight hexameters.[1] In the first three pairs of quatrains Menalcas sets the theme and Daphnis takes it up.[1] The first pair is addressed to the landscape; the remainder deal with love.[1]

Analysis

The scene is among the high mountain pastures of Sicily:

On the sward, at the cliff top
Lie strewn the white flocks;

and far below lies the Sicilian sea.[2] Here Daphnis and Menalcas, two herdsmen of the golden age, meet, while still in their earliest youth, and contend for the prize of pastoral.[2] Their songs, in elegiac measure, are variations on the themes of love and friendship (for Menalcas sings of Milon, Daphnis of Nais), and of nature.[2] Daphnis is the winner; it is his earliest victory, and the prelude to his great renown among nymphs and shepherds.[2]

Transmission

The last pair of quatrains and the two envoys do not correspond in theme.[1] The resemblance of most of the competing stanzas has caused both loss and transposition in the manuscripts.[1] From metrical and linguistic considerations the poem is clearly not the work of Theocritus.[1] Some critics take the poem to be a patchwork by various hands.[2]

See also

References
  1. Edmonds, ed. 1919, p. 109.
  2. Lang, ed. 1880, p. 44.

Sources

Attribution: Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

  • Edmonds, J. M., ed. (1919). The Greek Bucolic Poets (3rd ed.). William Heinemann. pp. 109–21.
  • Lang, Andrew, ed. (1880). Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. London: Macmillan and Co. pp. 44–9.

Further reading
  • Cholmeley, R. J., ed. (1919). The Idylls of Theocritus (2nd ed.). London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. pp. 249–55.
  • Gow, A. S. F., ed. (1950). Theocritus. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 68–75.
  • Gow, A. S. F., ed. (1950). Theocritus. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 170–84.
  • Gutzwiller, Kathryn (1983). "Character and Legend in Idyll 8". Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974–). 113: 171–82.
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