Theocritus, the pastoral poet of Greece, was born early in the 3d century B.C. in Syracuse. The dates of his birth and death are not known, and we know but little of his life. He was educated at Cos under Philetas, a poet then famous, of whom Theocritus speaks with high respect (Id. 7). Cos then possessed a school of medicine, and Theocritus repeatedly mentions friends of his own, Nicias and Philinus, who were physicians, and whom probably he first met during their student days. Probably here also his friendship with the poet Aratus was formed. It is certain that a number of Theocritus' poems were composed between the years 270 and 250 B.C. He lived for a long time at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Alexandria, where he wrote several of his idylls. In his pastoral poems Theocritus struck out an entirely new form of literature, which lives and is fresh for ever. Many of the poems which Suidas attributes to him are lost, and those which we have appear to be a selection from his writings. There is some question as to the authenticity of the thirty poems which we have. They show great differences of style, but this is quite consistent with the versatility of his genius. We do not question that dramas so widely different as Prometheus Bound and Agamemnon were written by one poet. His poems fall under three classes—half-epic, mimic, and idyllic. Probably the half-epic poems were the earliest written. The form of poetry most popular in Theocritus' day was the epic, as the Alexandra of Lycophron and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, both contemporaries of his, survive to show us, and during his youth Theocritus was most likely to be influenced by the tendency of the time. He has written a series of poems dealing with heroic legend, the infant Hercules, Hercules at the stables of Augeas, his encounter with the Nemean lion, and the episode of the Argonautic expedition when Hercules lost his young squire Hylas. In another very characteristic poem he describes the fight between the Greek hero, Polydeuces (a kinsman of Hercules), and the barbarian giant who is defeated in boxing, and made to promise to respect the rites of hospitality for the future; the combat is described with the utmost spirit. These poems are full of the spirit of Greek chivalry, and show Theocritus to be a Hellene at heart. Possibly he may have contemplated an epic poem on the exploits of Heracles, the great Dorian hero, and these poems may be fragments of it. Some of the poems, such as the 2d, 14th, 15th, and 21st, are dramatic scenes, and have been called mimic because they closely resemble in form the mimes of the Syracusan poet Sophron (Plato's favourite author), who wrote with great dramatic power dialogues probably in rhythmical prose, with male and female characters. Theocritus' famous 15th Idyll, The Ladies of Syracuse, is said to be copied from Sophron. It describes the visit of a Syracusan lady and her friend, both living in Alexandria, to the festival of Adonis. Nothing could be more natural than this poem. Lang says truly, 'the chatter of the women has changed no more in 2000 years than the song of birds.'
The Doric settlers in Sicily delighted in poetry resembling the ballads, love-songs, and dirges, and the improvised poems in answering couplets which are still sung in Sicily and in Southern Italy. Theocritus raised this rude pastoral poetry into a new and perfect form of literature. His short poems dealing with pastoral subjects, and, like paintings, representing a single scene, came to be called Idylls (eidyllia) or 'little pictures,' a name probably not used by Theocritus himself. It is possible that the reaction between experience of country life on the Sicilian coast or on the slopes of Etna, and of life in a great and refined Greek city like Syracuse, and later in an enormous metropolis like Alexandria, was necessary to produce such poetry. Theocritus writes of the country because he loves it. His countrymen are not mere lay-figures dressed up with crook in hand. They are genuine country-folks, and show that combination of simplicity and love of nature with shrewdness in making a bargain which is found in the peasant everywhere. Every touch in these poems is natural and lifelike. After reading Theocritus the Eclogues of Virgil strike us as artificial. Take for instance the Journey to the Feast, which tells how the poet and two friends took their way from Syracuse to join a harvest-home party. On the road they overtake Lycidas, a goat-herd. To beguile the way Lycidas and Theocritus recite short poems of their own composition. Keats has written nothing more luscious than the description of the orchard-nook where the feast is held, which concludes the poem: verses which exhale the very mellowness and scent of summer. 'All things breathed the rich scent of summer, the scent of the time of ripe fruits.' Take again the poem of The Fishers—two old fishermen in their poor wattled cabin, filled with the implements of their craft, wake at midnight, and one of them tells how he dreamed that he caught a golden fish, and swore never to tempt the sea again; a poem which, in its sympathy with poverty and the toilers of the sea, is worthy of the author of Les Misérables. Strange power is shown in the idyll on the love of Polyphemus the Cyclops for Galatea. Nothing could seem further from love than the Cyclops, yet Theocritus makes us feel for the monster and pity him in the humility of his love and his hopeless passion. Hardly anywhere is there truer pathos than this poem contains. One of Theocritus' greatest charms is his power of landscape-painting. His landscapes bask in full sunlight. Kingsley says truly, 'Theocritus floods the whole scene with the gorgeous Sicilian air like one of Titian's pictures.' When Theocritus lived, Greek national life had ceased to be; imperial Athens was no longer; Greek religion had lost its vitality. No poet of Pericles' day could have written the fulsome eulogy on Ptolemy's repulsive marriage in the 17th Idyll. Had Theocritus lived in the age of Pericles, no doubt a stronger and more bracing air would have blown through his Arcadia, which remains for us a country good to wander in, a sunny realm where men labour without care, and where life is undisturbed by anxious questionings. Dealing with pastoral life, Theocritus comes most into comparison with Robert Burns, who has far more depth, humour, and passion, but is without Theocritus' sense of beauty. Compared with the Scottish poet, Theocritus stands out at once as the man not only of genius but also of highest culture, accustomed to refined city ways, while the comparative roughness of Burns shows him as the man born and bred from earliest years in the 'pastoral world far from city and mart.' The power of Theocritus is seen in his influence over other poets. Virgil imitates him closely in his Ecologues. Tennyson has been deeply influenced by him: poems like Enone and the idylls of country life remind us both in form and spirit of the Greek poet.
There are editions by Valckenaer (1810), Wüstemann (1830), Meineke (1856), Wordsworth (2d ed. 1877); two editions by Fritzsche, the larger with Latin notes (Leip. 1865-69), another with German notes and glossary (reprinted 1857); translations in verse by Chapman (1866) and Calverley (1869). Idylls 7 and 11 are exquisitely translated by Leigh Hunt (Jar of Honey). Prose translation by A. Lang (1889), with introduction.