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Rh Nicias, who was now settled in practice at Miletus. The Cyclops is generally regarded as a consolation addressed to the lovesick Nicias. If this is true, it would follow on this placing of the Distaff that the Cyclops was written before the Charites; for it implies that Nicias, to whom it was doubtless sent as a letter, was then unmarried. The probable age of the two friends in 273 points, as we shall see, the same way. If on the other hand we may regard the Cyclops as an outpouring of soul on the part of the lovesick Theocritus, the author likening himself, and not Nicias, to Polyphemus, the two lines—all that has been preserved—of Nicias’ reply may be interpreted with more point: “Love has, it seems, made you a poet,” a compliment upon the first serious piece of work of his friend’s that he had seen. This interpretation puts the Cyclops long before the Charites, independently of the dating of the Distaff. In any case, the Cyclops is certainly an early poem. The same visit to Nicias may have been the occasion of the eighth epigram, an inscription for the base of the new statue of Asclepius with which the doctor had adorned his consulting-room. We may well imagine that Nicias employed his friend in order to put a little money in his pocket; for his own epigrams in the Anthology show clearly that he could have written an excellent inscription himself.

The Love of Cynisca, with its hint of autobiography xii