Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/309



''poem, known to the Latin poets, cannot be ascribed to Theocritus. It was apparently sent by a lover to his neglectful beloved. The author tells how in a like case unrequited friendship led to the suicide of the one, and to the death of the other at the hands of an effigy of Love. The actual death of a boy through the accidental falling of a statue probably gave rise to a folk-tale which is here put into literary shape.'' Rh