Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/14

Rh famous physician Erasistratus, along with the Milesian Nicias to whom he dedicates the Cyclops and the Hglas. Theocritus is also said to have been a pupil of the Samian poet Asclepiades, whose epigrams we know in the Anthology. He certainly spent some years at Cos, sitting at the feet of the great poet and critic Philitas, who numbered among his pupils Zenodotus the grammarian, Hermesianax the elegist, and the young man who was afterwards Ptolemy II. This happy period of our author’s life is almost certainly recalled in a poem written at a later time, the Harvest-home. Philitas probably died about the year 283. Ten years later we find Theocritus at Syracuse, seeking the favour of the young officer who in 274 had been elected general-in-chief after the troubles of Pyrrhus’ régime and was soon to be known as Hiero II. The poem we know as Charites or The Graces probably appeared as epistle-dedicatory to a collection of poems, Charites being really the title of the whole book. Such fancy titles were the fashion of the day. Alexander of Aetolia, for instance, published a collection called The Muses; the “nightingales” of Callimachus’ famous little poem on Heracleitus are best explained as the name of his old friend’s collected poems; and Aratus published a collection actually called by this name, for Helladius x