Theocritus the Bucolic poet was a Syracusan by extraction, and the
son of Simichidas, as he says himself, Simichidas, pray whither
through the noon dost thou dray thy feet? (Idyl VII). Some say that
this was an assumed name, for he seems to have been snub-nosed
([Greek]), and that his father was Praxagoras, and his mother
Philinna. He became the pupil of Philetas and Asclepiades, of whom
he speaks (Idyl VII), and flourished about the time of Ptolemy Lagus.
He gained much fame for his skill in bucolic poetry. According to
some his original name was Moschus, and Theocritus was a name he
later assumed.



THEOCRITUS AND HIS AGE



At the beginning of the third century before Christ, in the years
just preceding those in which Theocritus wrote, the genius of Greece
seemed to have lost her productive force. Nor would it have been
strange if that force had really been exhausted. Greek poetry had
hitherto enjoyed a peculiarly free development, each form of art
succeeding each without break or pause, because each--epic, lyric,
dithyramb, the drama--had responded to some new need of the state and
of religion. Now in the years that followed the fall of Athens and
the conquests of Macedonia, Greek religion and the Greek state had
ceased to be themselves. Religion and the state had been the patrons
of poetry; on their decline poetry seemed dead. There were no heroic
kings, like those for whom epic minstrels had chanted. The cities
could no longer welcome an Olympian winner with Pindaric hymns.