THE EVOLUTION OF ALLEGORY IN THE PASTORAL ... - Repositories

Theocritus created the acknowledged classic model
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for pastoral expression, and he bequeathed to this literary
heritage three basic forms:
1) the pastoral masquerade,
2) the dirge or lover's plaint, and 3) the amoebaean singing
match.
His idylls convey the joy produced by sunshine
and man's very existence in nature.
There is very little
to cause melancholy:
only unrequited love and "the awareness
that death brings and end to all pastoral song."^^
With his idylls Theocritus evokes the "ever necessary
reconciliation of man with the simplicity of his own being.
"^^
In the Greek tradition Bion and Moschus follow the
master.
Using the same theme, dialect (Doric), and meter
(hexameter) as Theocritus, they accomplish the task of
developing the pastoral conditions which Theocritus only
outlined and intimated.
These poets produce no new type,
but they give a special prominence to the elegiac form,
which was to find supreme expression in Milton's Lycidas.
Bion, who is regarded by most as more original and vivid
than Moschus, contributes the artificial style of the pastoral.
The elegy which was written for Bion and still
bears the name of Moschus as its author begins the traditional
association of nature with personal grief and
introduces sentimentality.
Virgil goes a step further than Bion and Moschus
in fixing certain Theocritean elements as pastoral