author
Theocritus
-300–-260
Best known as the poet who shaped pastoral verse, this Hellenistic writer turned shepherd songs, lively dialogue, and everyday scenes into lasting literature. Though little is certain about his life, his idylls helped set the pattern for later bucolic poetry.
4 Audiobooks
Theocritus, translated into English Verse
by Theocritus
Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Rendered into English Prose
by Theocritus, of Phlossa near Smyrna Bion, Moschus
Ειδύλλια
by Theocritus
Theocritos' Idyller
by Theocritus
About the author
Theocritus was a Greek poet from Sicily, usually placed around 300 BCE to after 260 BCE. He is widely regarded as the creator or earliest great master of ancient Greek pastoral poetry, especially through the poems later known as the Idylls.
Very little about his life can be confirmed with confidence. Ancient and modern reference works connect him with Syracuse and suggest he may also have spent time on Cos and in Alexandria, but much of what is said about him is inferred from the poems themselves rather than from firm biographical records.
What has endured is the writing: Theocritus mixed rural song, myth, humor, and sharp observation in ways that strongly influenced later Greek and Roman poets, including the long tradition of pastoral literature that followed.