Idealism of bucolic poetry 



this age of cities and extensive maritime intercourse urban life was 

 generally developing and rural life shrinking. Now it had been, and 

 still was, the case that mixture of population normally took place in 

 active cities, especially in seaport towns. It was in quiet country towns 

 and hamlets that native purity of blood was most easily preserved. 



If the general outline of circumstances has been fairly sketched in 

 the above paragraphs, we should expect to find that agriculture on a 

 small scale was not prospering in this period. Unhappily there is hardly 

 any direct evidence on the point. Even indirect evidence is meagre 

 and sometimes far from clear. One notable symptom of the age is seen 

 in the rise of bucolic poetry. This is not a rustic growth, the rude 

 utterance of unlettered herdsmen, but an artificial product of town- 

 dwelling poets, who idealize the open-air life to amuse town-bred 

 readers somewhat weary of the everlasting streets. In the endeavour 

 to lend an air of reality to scenes of rural life, it was convenient to 

 credit the rustics (shepherds goatherds etc) with a grossness of amoro- 

 sity that may perhaps be exaggerated to suit the taste of urban readers. 

 Of this tendency the idylls of Theocritus furnish many instances. 

 We need not accept them as accurate pictures of the life of herds and 

 hinds in Sicily or elsewhere, but they give us some notion of the ideas 

 of rural life entertained by literary men of the Alexandrian school. 

 Beside the guardians of flocks and herds with their faithful dogs, their 

 flutes and pan-pipes, idling in the pleasant shade and relieving the 

 tiresome hours with musical competition, we have the hinds ploughing 

 mowing or busy with vintage and winepress. Some are evidently free- 

 men, others are slaves ; and we hear of overseers. There is milking and 

 making of cheese, and woodmen 1 are not forgotten. The bloom of 

 flowers, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the whisper of the 

 refreshing breeze, form the setting of these rural scenes, and might 

 almost persuade us that we are privileged spectators of a genuine golden 

 age. But the sayings and doings of the rustics undeceive us. And the 

 artificiality of this poetry is further betrayed by that of the panegyric and 

 pseudo-epic poems of the same author. His admiration of Hiero 2 of 

 Syracuse may be mainly sincere, but his praises of Ptolemy 3 Phila- 

 delphus are the utterances of a courtier. His excursions into the region 

 of mythology are brief, for the reading public of his day could not stand 

 long epics on the adventures 4 of Heracles or the Dioscuri. And the 

 literary apparatus is antiquarian, a more or less direct imitation of the 

 old Homeric diction, but unable to reproduce the varied cadences. It 

 is generally remarked that the genius of Theocritus finds its happiest 

 and liveliest expression in the fifteenth idyll, which depicts urban 

 scenes. In this respect that idyll may be compared with the mimes of 



1 v 



A 



64-5, cf xvn 9, 10. 



2 xvi. 



3 XVII. 



4 XXII, XXV. 

 82 



