introducing obscure mythological allusions. He was a logician as
well as a poet, and is fabled to have died of vexation because he
could not unriddle one of the metaphysical catches or puzzles of the
sophists. His varied activity seems to have worn him to a shadow;
the contemporary satirists bantered him about his leanness, and it
was alleged that he wore leaden soles to his sandals lest the wind
should blow him, as it blew the calves of Daphnis (Idyl IX) over a
cliff against the rocks, or into the sea. {0e} Philetas seems a
strange master for Theocritus, but, whatever the qualities of the
teacher, Cos, the home of the luxurious old age of Meleager, was a
beautiful school. The island was one of the most ancient colonies of
the Dorians, and the Syracusan scholar found himself among a people
who spoke his own broad and liquid dialect. The sides of the
limestone hills were clothed with vines, and with shadowy plane-trees
which still attain extraordinary size and age, while the wine-presses
where Demeter smiled, 'with sheaves and poppies in her hands,'
yielded a famous vintage. The people had a soft industry of their
own, they fashioned the 'Coan stuff,' transparent robes for woman's
wear, like the [Greek], the thin undulating tissues which Theugenis
was to weave with the ivory distaff, the gift of Theocritus. As a
colony of Epidaurus, Cos naturally cultivated the worship of
Asclepius, the divine physician, the child of Apollo. In connection
with his worship and with the clan of the Asclepiadae (that
widespread stock to which Aristotle belonged, and in which the
practice of leechcraft was hereditary), Cos possessed a school of
medicine. In the temple of Asclepius patients hung up as votive
offerings representations of their diseased limbs, and thus the
temple became a museum of anatomical specimens. Cos was therefore
resorted to by young students from all parts of the East, and
Theocritus cannot but have made many friends of his own age. Among