5.50. 
é,” being defined in the 
Dictionnaire Rovdl, *“moucheté comme 
un tigre;” spotted like a tiger. This 
definition appears to me to correspond 
with the expressive description, “ sprink- 
led with yellowish sagitlated dois,” as tue 
spots of the ferocious animal may be 
termed “ sagitfate,” from their ending 
acutely. The colour also, *‘ yellowish,” 
strengthens the analogy. 
War TINQLON, T. K. GrazeBRook. 
May 24, 1810. 
——_ 
For the Monihlu Wigaxine: 
LYCEUM OF ANCIENT LITERA- 
TURE.—No. XXX, 
THEOCRITUS, 
ie anxiety of the ancient gramma- 
lans to raise difficulties where ther 
was no room for any, 1s in no case more 
conspicuous than in the biography of 
Theocritus. ‘The agein which he lived, 
and the place of his birth, are stated in 
the most confused and contradictory 
manner; when, in truth, nothing can be 
clearer than the short account which the 
poet himself has transmitted. By his 
own, and other credible authorities,* 
we may safely consider him asa native ie 
Sicily. As to the age in which he flou- 
rished, it,seems indisputably to be as- 
certained by two idylliums that remain; 
one addressed to Hiero king of Syracuse ; 
the other to Ptolemy Philadelphas. the 
Egyptian monarch, iero began his 
reign, according to Casaubon,f in the 
second year of the 126th Oiymp. or 
about 275 years B.C.; and Ptolemy, in 
the 4th year of the 123d Olymp. Though 
the exploits of Hiero are recorded greatly 
to his advantage by Polybius, in the first 
book of his History; ; though he had many 
virtues, bad frequently ‘signalized his 
courage id gonduct, and distinguished 
himself by several achievements in wat, 
adjective “tigr 
* Virgil invokes the Sicilian Muses, be- 
eause Theocritus, whom he professedly imi- 
tates, was of that country: hig: Musa, 
paulo majora canamus, ec. £0, Bevis 
called a Sicilian poet by the sanekor pio 
in one of his epistles. Manilius, (lib. i 
40,) speaks of him as Siculo tellure mr a 
‘Phat he was born at Syracuse, Virgil seems 
to intimate when’ he says, Prima Syracosio 
dignata est ludere versu. eci. vi. 1. But the 
following epigram, written by himself, is 
decisive on this point : 
Adr\0g 0 Kites” eyw de Ocouprroe o¢ TUdse 5 yeala, 
Eig a7o THY TOARGY Et ees Opa 
E105 Tgafayagao, T EEL: whertig F £ dirivngy 
Macay dcOvemny amor epekuveaprnye 
+ Cas. in Polyb. 127. 
Lyceum of Ancient Literature—No, XXX. 
[July 1, 
yet he seems, at least in the early part of 
his reign, to have expressed no great. 
aifection for learning, or men of letters. 
This is supposed to bave given occasion 
to the 16th Idyll. inscribed with the 
name of Hiero; where the poet asserts 
the dignity of his profession, complains 
that it met with neither favour nor pro- 
tection ; and, in a:delicate and - artful 
Inanner, touches upon some of the vir- 
tues of ‘this prince, and insinuates what 
an illustrious figure he would have made 
in poetry, had he been as nabig a patron, 
as he was am argument, for the Muses. 
Theocritus’ had been the scholar of 
Philetas, an elegiac poet of the island 
of Cos, and of Asclepiades or Sicelidas, 
a native of Samos, both of whom are 
mentioned by him in terms of respect in, 
the 7th Idyll, The little patronage or 
encouragement which he experienced 
from Uiero, his own sovereign, induce 
him to leave Syracuse, for the more 
brilliant and friendly soil of Alexandria, 
where Ptolemy Philadelphus then reign- 
ed—the splendid promoter of science, 
and rewarder of genius. If we are to 
judge of the success of this removal fr om. 
his works, and they are the only certain 
guide we have, we may collect from the 
ith. Idvli. that he, like every other 
stranger of merit, partook of the royal 
bounty af, Ptolemy. He celebrates his 
heneficent patron, and in the 15th, the 
mother and wife of Ptolemy, in strains 
which soar above the pastoral Muse, 
and ‘prove that he was capable of 
greater exertions. 
~ Rejecting as we do the fictions ae 
Grammarians, who, mistaking The ritus 
of Chios, a rhetorician, for Theocritus 
of Syracuse, give to the poet many of 
the incidents that might possibly occur 
in the life of the ] philosopher; we should 
only have to sane that he was ‘the friend 
of Aratus, to mhipie he addresses h his 6th 
Idyll. whose loves he describes in the 
7th, and from whom he has borrowed 
the pithy beginning of the 17th. But 
it may be proper to rescue him from the 
imputation of having suffered a v iolent 
and ignominious death. From a distic 
in the Ibis of Ovid,* it has uniformly 
been asserted by all the biographers of 
Theocritus, that it was he to whom the 
allusion of Ovid apples. Kennet,f. 
however, has judiciously observed, that 
either Ovid himself was mistaken, or 
that the commentators have again con- 
‘ founded 
Pe TANI Ae DAIS» SUNY San ny loa cc WR oh ie 
’#* Utque Syracosio prastricta fauce poetz, 
Sic anime laqueo sit via clausa tue. 
+ Life. of Theoc, 145, 
———o eee ~~ —_ _ 
the. 
