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258 SHEEP BREEDING AND
" I will set my verses to the tune of a Sicilian shepherd."
Buc. X. 51.
The historian Diodorus, himself a Sicilian, who hved about
the commencement of the Christian sera, supposes bucolic poet-
ry and music to be the peculiar invention and exercise of }iis
own country, and says, that it continued in use at his time and
was held in the same estimation as formerly*. In less than
200 years fiom this period the art lost much of its original sim-
plicity. Maximus Tyrius (Diss, xxi.) says, that " the Dori-
ans of Sicily became, to use the mildest term, mo7'e weak in
understanding ^^^ {more dissolute) " when instead of the simple
Alpine music, which they used to employ in the presence of
their flocks and herds, they began to love the times of the Syb-
arites, and a style of dancing adapted to them, such as was re-
quired by the Ionic pipe."
But, although the rustic Dorians of Sicily had the full credit
of this invention and were never surpassed in the practice of it
by any other people, yet the imitation of it was attempted in
various instances by the pastoral inhabitants of other countries.
More especially, it appears to have been adopted in the neigh-
boring district of Magna Greecia ; for it is near Syharis that
Theocritus has placed the scene of his Fifth Idyll, in which, a
shepherd having staked a lamb and a goatherd a kid, they
contend in alternate verses, whilst a wood-cutter, whom they
have called from his labor, listens as judge, and awards the
prize to the goatherd, who hereupon joyfully sacrifices his newly
acquired lamb to the Nymphs.
In the Seventh Idyll [v. 12, 27, 40.) Theocritus mentions
the goatherd, Lycidas of Crete, who was his contemporary,
and also his predecessors and supposed instructors, Asclepiades
of iSamos, and Philetas of Cos, as distinguished for skill in
pastoral music.
The bucolic poems of Theocritus prove, that the Arcadian
belief in the attributes of Pan had extended itself into Sicily
and the South of Italy, so that the rustics of those countries
not only invoked him by name, but even sometimes offered
* L. iv. c. 84, p. 283.