this literature first appeared the _romance_, unknown to the
ancients. The historical romance began with Hecataeus of Abdera, the
philosophical romance with Evemerus of Messenia, who pretended to have
found an ancient inscription proving that the gods of ancient Greece were
old-time kings of the land deified after death, an ingenious invention
from which was to come a whole school of criticism of ancient mythology.

THE ELEGY AND IDYLL: THEOCRITUS.--True and, at the same time, great poets
belonged to this period. One was Philetas of Cos, founder of the Grecian
elegy, celebrated and affectionately saluted centuries later by Andre
Chenier. Of his works only a few terse fragments remain. Another was
Asclepiades of Samos, both elegiac and lyric, of whose _epigrams_,
(short elegies) those preserved to us are charming. Yet another was the
sad and charming Leonidas of Tarentum. The two leaders of this choir were
Theocritus and Callimachus. Theocritus, a Sicilian, passes as the founder
of the idyll which he did not invent, but to which he gave the importance
of a type by marking it with his imprint. The idyll of Theocritus was
always a picture of popular customs and even a little drama of popular
morals; but at times it had its scene set in the country, at others in a
town, or again by the sea, and consequently there are rustic idylls
(properly _bucolics_), maritime idylls, popular urban idylls. An
astonishing sense of reality united to a personal poetic gift and a
highly alert sensitiveness made his little poems alike beautiful for
their truth and also for a certain ideal of ardent and profound passion.
It is curious without being astonishing that the idyll of Theocritus
often suggests the poetry of the Bible.

PUPILS OF THEOCRITUS.--Moschus and Bion were the immediate pupils of
Theocritus. He had more illustrious ones, commencing with Virgil in his
_Eclogues_, continuing with the numerous idylls of the Renaissance