136 THEOCRITUS—GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS 
than thou hast found the golden fish! of thy vision: dreams 
are but lies. But if thou wilt search these waters, wide awake 
and not asleep, there is some hope in thy slumbers: seek the 
fish of flesh, lest thou die of famine with all thy dreams of 
gold!” 
The influence of Theocritus, though becoming less natural 
and rendered more conventional by the pretty conceits of the 
later Alexandrian period,? permeates the literature of Greece 
and Rome for many centuries. In none, perhaps, is this in- 
fluence more marked than in his pupils Bion and Moschus, and 
in his younger contemporary, Leonidas of Tarentum. 
Three fisher epigrams 3 by Leonidas suffice as evidence of 
this. The realism, the pathos, the detailed treatment, the 
subjects, lowly folk, all alike characterise the Sicilian. 
In the first, the fisherman Diophantus on giving up his 
trade dedicates, according to custom, all the relics of his calling 
to the patron of his craft. The list of the implements, including 
a well-bent hook, long rod, and line of horse hair, here and in 
an epigram by Philippus of Thessalonica (which adds “ the 
1 Callimachus, whom Theocritus probably knew at Alexandria, calls the 
“‘ chrysophrys ”’ sacred— 
“‘ Or shall I rather say the gold-browed fish, 
That sacred fish ? ”’ 
See Athen., VII. 20. 
2 “ Theocritus gives nature, not behind the footlights, but beneath the 
truthful blaze of Sicily’s sunlit sky. For it was here that the first vibrations 
of this spontaneous note were heard in their original purity, before art could 
distort them with allegory, or echo weaken them with imitation. This is all 
the more remarkable from the contrast which it offers to what Kingsley calls 
the ‘ artificial jingle’ of the Alexandrian school. Simplicity, honesty, truth, 
and beauty recommend Theocritus as a genuine artist. His imitators, as 
compared with theirgmodel, were like— 
‘Those many jackdaw-rhymers, who with vain 
Chattering contend against the Chian Bard,’ 
as he himself describes (Id., VII. 47) Homer’s imitators.”” Against this verdict 
by H. Snow on the Alexandrians must be set the more truthful appreciation of 
their work by Mackail, op. cit., pp. 178-207, especially p. 184: ‘‘ They are 
called artificial poets, as though all poetry were not artificial, and the greatest 
poetry were not the poetry of the most consummate artifice.” 
8 “Anth. Pal., VI. 4; VII. 295; VII. 504. While the last two in the MS. 
are headed Acwvidov Tapaytiyvov, and rod airod, the first is simply Acwvldov. 
Hence this has sometimes been thought to be by Leonidas of Alexandria, but 
Professor Mackail informs me that all three epigrams are by the Tarentine, 
both by evidence of style, and because all three come in groups of epigrams 
taken from the Anthology of Meleager. 
