Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/802

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We have no sure facts as to the life of Theocritus beyond those supplied by Idylls xvi. and xvii. It is quite uncertain whether the bucolic poems were written in the pleasant isle of Cos among a circle of poets and students, or in Alexandria and meant for dwellers in streets. The usual view is that Theocritus went first from Syracuse to Cos, and then, after suing in vain for the favour of Hiero, took up his residence permanently in Egypt. Some have supposed on very flimsy evidence that he quarrelled with the Egyptian court and retired to Cos, and would assign various poems to the "later-Coan" period. ) Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, laying stress on the fact that in the best MS. the poem to Ptolemy (xvii.) comes before that to Hiero (xvi.), very ingeniously puts the Egyptian period first and supposes it to have been of very short duration (i.e. 277 to 275), and then makes the poet, after his unsuccessful appeal to Hiero, retire to Cos for the rest of his life. This view would enable us to see a reference to Ptolemy in vii. 93, and even to the young Apollonius Rhodius in 47-48 of the same poem.

The poems of Theocritus were termed Idylls by the grammarians. The word is a diminutive from eKos, and is supposed to mean "little poems." The use of eKos'in the sense of "poem" is somewhat doubtful, and so some have referred e£5uXXta to «i5os in its usual sense of " form " or "type." Thus eKos Povko\i.k6v, eiruchv, \vpmov might be used to classify various kinds of poetry, and these poems might be called eiouXXia, since they include so many types.

THEODECTES (c. 380–340 ), Greek rhetorician and tragic poet, of Phaselis in Lycia, pupil of Isocrates and Plato, and an intimate friend of Aristotle. He at first Wrote speeches for the law courts, but subsequently composed tragedies with success. He spent most of his life at Athens, and was buried on the sacred road to Eleusis. The inhabitants of Phaselis honoured him with a statue, which was decorated with garlands by Alexander the Great on his Way to the East. In the contests arranged by Artemisia, queen of Caria, at the funeral of Mausolus, Theodectes gained the prize with his tragedy Mausolus (extant in the 2nd century ), but was defeated by Theopompus in oratory. According to the inscription on his tomb, he was