Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

THEOCRITUS AND VIRGIL
The Idyll begins with Thyrsis complimenting an unnamed goatherd on the
sweetness of his music:
*ASO TI T6 vfnOxipia-na Kal a TTITUS, a!ir6Ae, TT|va,
& TTOTI Tats irayafoi, p^AtaSETai, &S0 Sk Kai TI>
Sweet is the whispering music of that pinetree, goatherd, the pinetree by the springs,
sweet too your piping.
Casual rustic speech (such is the fiction) is apprehended and, with beautiful
precision, fastened in the rhythm of the hexameter.
' Sweet is the whispering music of that pinetree..." Landscape is necessary
to this poetry: in Theocritus description is accurate and frequently luxuriant,
in Virgil sparse and suggestive. The pastoral landscape is capacious: strange
and oddly assorted figures may be accommodated; it is static, a perpetual
decor or background against which these figures are set off, and thus it serves
to unify what might otherwise seem a discordant collocation of speakers and
topics. In this environment of rural fantasy the sophisticated, city-bred poet,
poet-scholar in the guise of poet-shepherd, is able to speak with a kind of
obtrusive simplicity: he may speak of country things, oftener (in Virgil) he
speaks of political events, of love, of poetry. And, meanwhile, goats will
continue to behave in their goatish way:
al 54 x'^^'P 01 '
ou \xi\ OKipTCKjfJTE, \ii\ 6 Tp&yos Onniv