Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry

220 Pages·2006·6.07 MB·English

by  Richard Hunter

The poems of Theocritus are our best witness to a brilliant poetic
culture that flourished in the first half of the third century BC.
This book considers the context from which these poems grew
and, in particular, the manner in which they engage with and
re-create the poetic forms of the Greek archaic age. The focus is
not on the familiar bucolic poems of Theocritus, but on the
hymns, mimes, and erotic poems of the second half of the corpus.
Recent papyri have greatly increased our understanding of how
Theocritus read archaic poetry, and these new discoveries are
fully exploited in a set of readings which will change the way we
look at Hellenistic poetry.
Scholars and students interested in Greek and Latin literature,
and especially the poetry of the Hellenistic period, will find this
an important book. All Greek is translated.

THEOCRITUS AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY
OF GREEK POETRY

THEOCRITUS AND THE
ARCHAEOLOGY OF
GREEK POETRY
RICHARD HUNTER
University Lecturer in Classics, University of Cambridge,
and Fellow of Pembroke College
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521560405
© Richard L. Hunter 1996
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1996
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Hunter, R. L. (Richard L.)
Theocritus and the archaeology of Greek poetry / Richard Hunter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 56040 3 (hardback)
1. Theocritus. Idylls. 2. Greek poetry, Hellenistic - Egypt - Alexandria
— History and criticism. 3. Greek poetry, Hellenistic — Greek influences.
4. Theocritus - Knowledge - Literature. 5. Literary form.
6. Poetics. I. Title.
PA4444.H86 1996
884'.01-dc20 95-32705 CIP
ISBN-13 978-0-521-56040-5 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-56040-3 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-03526-2 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-03526-0 paperback
Contents
Preface page ix
List of conventions and abbreviations xi
1 Locating the site i
Towards Theocritus
The poetic context
The languages of Theocritus
2 'All the twos': Idyll 22 46
Hymns of praise
Hymning the Dioscuri
Two gods and two poets
Pleading with the divine
The seal of the poet
3 Idyll 16: poet and patron 77
The Ptolemaic pattern
The Pindaric pattern
Theocritus and Homer
Theocritus and Simonides
4 Idyll 15: imitations of mortality no
Theocritus and comedy
Mime and mimesis
Adonis and the Ptolemies
5 Idyll 18 and the lyric past 139
The lyric past and the Argonautica
A song for Sparta
vii
viii Contents
6 For the love of boys: Idylls 12, 29 and 30 167
The paederastic past
Idylls 29 and 30
Idyll 12
Epilogue 196
Bibliography 197
General index 202
Index of passages discussed 205
Preface
Theocritean studies are in a curious state. For one thing, we need a
new text. Gow's text is careful and readable, but it becomes
increasingly clear that his conservatism has not always served the
poet well. Moreover, Gow's apparatus is simply not adequate for the
serious study of the text and language of the Idylls; Gallavotti's third
edition goes some way towards remedying these deficiencies, but in
Gallavotti also many worthwhile conjectures and suggestions are
ignored. As for exegesis, Gow's commentary is an extremely rich one,
and the longer I worked on this book the more indebted to it I
became; I very much hope that the extent of my debt will be obvious
to those familiar with Gow's work, and his name stands second in this
Preface after that of Theocritus to indicate just how great that debt is.
Nevertheless, Gow's commentary (inevitably) has very clear interests
and biases, and an unfortunate result - certainly not Gow's fault - is
that many questions in which Gow did not show himself interested
have remained unasked. The bulk and sheer quality of his work have,
broadly speaking, set the scholarly agenda, but the items of'any other
business' grow ever more numerous. It is to be hoped that the 1994
Groningen conference on Theocritus will prove to have marked a
genuine turn of scholarly attention towards some of these pressing issues.
This book is about Theocritus' restoration and re-creation of
various poetic traditions, in particular, though not exclusively, the
traditions of the archaic age. The focus is not on the 'bucolic
Theocritus', but rather on parts of the second half of the corpus as it is
conventionally presented in modern editions. I have made no
attempt, which would have been doomed from the outset, to be
comprehensive in my coverage; 'surface survey' belongs to quite
another branch of archaeology. Rather I have tried to open up some
of the extraordinary richness and variety of these poems, which have
on the whole received less critical attention than the bucolics. Our