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Characterization and the Ideal of Innocence in Theocritus' Idylls1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Gary B. Miles
Gary B. Miles*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz, California
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Extract

Theocritus rarely speaks in his own person. As an impersonal narrator he is concerned primarily with dramatic situations, each of which focuses upon the personalities of a few actors. Often, moreover, even as a narrator, Theocritus offers little more than brief introductions to set the scene for dramatic monologues or dialogues between the fictional characters of his poems. Sometimes his characters present themselves without any explicit commentary. As a consequence our assessment of Theocritus' own values and views is bound up with our sense of his relation to the characters whom he portrays. In many cases there is an implicit but nonetheless forceful contrast between the author and his characters, so that there is no question of taking their views as the author's or of taking the characters themselves as embodiments of the author's own values.

Rather, the reverse is true. The characterization of Gorgo and Praxinoa, for example, the two housewives who are childishly awed by the splendor and bustle of Alexandria on a holiday, suggests the poet's own confident urbanity. Similarly, the characterization of the two drinking companions in Idyll 14 who exchange accounts of misadventure in love and the virtues of service in Ptolemy's mercenary army, implies the poet's commitment to the values of refinement and restraint. Contrast between Theocritus and his characters in those poems is self-evident if for no other reason than the contrast between the refinement, self-consciousness, and obvious artificiality of Theocritus' style and the spontaneity and coarseness of the characters whom he portrays.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , 1977 , pp. 139 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1977

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Footnotes

1

In the following article all translations of Theocritus are my own and are based on the text of A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus, Edited with a Translation and Commentary, 2 vols. Cambridge, 1952), hereafter cited as Gow. In addition to Gow's commentary, that which I have used most frequently is K. J. Dover, Theocritus: Select Poems (London, 1971), hereafter cited as Dover. I would like also to acknowledge my grateful indebtedness to my colleague, Harry Berger, Jr. Conversations with him have helped me greatly in developing my ideas about pastoral. He should not be held responsible, however, for my interpretations of Theocritus.

References

2. Although the narrator of Idyll 7 is identified in the course of the poem as one Simichidas, he speaks in the first person. For that reason and because he is, like Theocritus, an urban poet who writes of the countryside, he has regularly been identified with Theocritus by critics. Some Idylls consist of monologues in the first person, but usually this is clearly no more than a dramatic device as in Idyll 3 where the speaker is a lovelorn and rather comic shepherd. With this belongs Idyll 20. There remain three love poems (12, 29, and 30), a poem to commemorate a gift to the wife of a friend (28), and two court poems (16 and 17).

3. Idyll 15.

4. For an excellent, concise survey of changing conceptions of the nature of pastoral in modern criticism see Leach, Eleanor Winsor, Virgil’s Eclogues: Landscapes of Experience (Ithaca, New York, 1974), ch. 1, 25–50Google Scholar.

5. However, see Lawall, Gilbert, Theocritus’ Coan Pastorals (Washington, D.C., 1967Google Scholar), hereafter cited as Lawall. He argues that the first seven Idylls constitute a coherent and distinct entity or ‘book’ of poems within the larger collection, their unity being defined by the carefully developed interplay between ‘real’ and ‘ideal’, city and country.

6. ‘Landscape in Greek Poetry,’ YCS 15 (1957), 10Google Scholar.

7. The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley, 1969Google Scholar), hereafter cited as Rosenmeyer, 280.

8. Lawall (above, n. 5), ‘Chapter I: A Poetry Book and a Pastoral Vision,’ 1–13, especially 5 and 11.

9. Lawall, 13.

10. Lawall, 116.

11. Giangrande, G., ‘Theocritus’ Twelfth and Fourth Idylls: A Study in Hellenistic Irony,’ QUCC 12 (1971), 104Google Scholar, cautions against confusing Theocritus’ views with those of his characters. He does so, however, only in passing and without reference to Theocritus’ attitude toward the ideal of innocence, which is the focus of the present article.

12. See Brooke, Anne, ‘Theocritusō Idyll 11: A Study in Pastoral,’ Arethusa 4 (1971), 73–81Google Scholar. She anticipates part of my argument in her conclusion that ‘For Theocritus … this conflict is not, as it became in later pastoral, that between city and country, society and individual, reality and the ideal – or even a conflict between the actual world and the rival world of poetry. Instead, he is dealing with rival methods of participation in experience and with the potential for life and death which each contains’ (80). I do not agree, however, with her further conclusion that ‘the answer provided by the pastoral process is in part the identification of alternative methods, the equation in Idyll 11 of the worlds produced by poetry and love,’ nor with her claim that Theocritus offers the pastoral process as a kind of dialectic in which alternatives are ‘joined’ and ‘separated’ (80).

13. See Dover (above, n. 1), 230–231, and Gow (above, n. 1), 2.348–361, for the relation of Idyll 18 to the epithalamion form.

14. Od. 4.120–185.

15. See Mastronande, D. J., ‘Theocritus Idyll 13: Love and the Hero,’ TAPA 99 (1968), 273–290Google Scholar. Although he does not consider associations between pederastic love and the ideal of heroism which I believe are relevant to interpretation of this poem, Mastronande has offered a very detailed discussion, to which I am indebted, of the important contrast between heroic and erotic perspectives in this Idyll.

16. Dover (179) notes the contrast between Heracles’ reaction to the disappearance of Hylas here in Theocritus and in Apollonius Rhodius’ version of the story (Arg. 1.1187–1357). In the latter, ‘Heracles’ fury … reflect[s] the shame of a hero who has failed to protect his squire. In Theokritos … Heracles is the lover of Hylas.’

17. Compare Theocritus’ description of Heracles’ relationship with Hylas to Phaedrus’ encomium of Eros in Plato’s Symposium 178a-180b.

18. See Dover 180 and Mastronande (above, n. 5), 277–278, for further elements of incongruity in the application of the lion simile to Heracles.

19. I have found Anne Brooke’s discussion of this Idyll (above, n. 12) most helpful, although I do not agree with it in its entirety. She argues that through poetry both Theocritus and Polyphemus reach a world which is ideal (‘self-contained, selfsufficient’) except for its impermanence (79). She does not stress as I do the distance created between the Cyclops and Theocritus by the fact that the former does not perceive the impermanence of his idyll while the latter does. Nor does she interpret Polyphemus’ innocence as an act of self-deception which makes him vulnerable. And yet the girls’ mockery seems clearly to anticipate Odysseus’ more disastrous exploitation of the Cyclops’ naiveté.

20. Commentators have noted a series of quite precise verbal parallels which further suggest the mutuality of the two herdsmen. See Dover (77) and Chomly, R. J., Theocritus (London, 1913), 187–188Google Scholar.

21. In addition to my argument below see the remarks of Lawall (27).

22. Segal, Charles, ‘Since Daphnis Dies: The Meaning of Theocritus’ First Idyll,’ MH 31 (1974), 1–22Google Scholar, offers a quite different interpretation of the love scene on the bowl. He regards it as a representation of ‘playful love’ to be contrasted with Daphnis’ tragic love (p. 36).

23. Elaborate attempts such as that of Gow 2.14 to reconstruct the disposition of the scenes on the bowl are based upon information which is simply too ambiguous and too incomplete to yield a secure answer. What is more, such attempts have distracted attention from considering the significance of the scenes in the order in which they are presented to us.

24. This scene, like the one that precedes it, has, although less clearly a Hesiodic model. Cf. The Shield, 213–215.

25. Cf. WD, 112–116.

26. WD, 180–188, Th, 603–612.

27. Lawall (29) and see the more general remarks on ekphrasis of Rosenmeyer (above, n. 7), 192–194.

28. As an example of ekphrasis the goatherd’s bowl calls to our attention yet another perspective upon reality besides those of bucolic innocence and Hesiodic realism. That is the epic, suggested both by the fact that ekphrasis has its origins there and especially by formal parallels between the decoration of the bowl and Achilles’ shield, Il. 18, 477–607.

29. This is precisely what provides the basis for the humor of Idyll 3, the selfdramatizing monologue of a lovelorn shepherd who attempts to escape his misery by alternate attempts to woo his girl, threats of suicide, escapes into wish-fulfilling fantasy, and further threats of suicide.

30. The very form of Priapus’ comparison may further convey a tone of humorous condescension, if, as Dover (xlviii-1) suggests, it is patterned after an epic usage which was frequently exploited for comic effect.

31. I tend more toward the views of Lawall (19–20) and Parry (above, n. 6) 3–29, who stress the affinity between Daphnis and the protagonists of Greek tragedy, than to the views of critics who argue that an understanding of Daphnis’ role here depends upon discovering his role in a Sicilian myth which may have been Theocritus’ source. For discussions of the latter see most recently Ogilvie, R. M., ‘The Song of Thyrsis,’ JHS 82 (1962) 121–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmidt, E. A., ‘Die Leiden des verliebten Daphnis,’ Hermes 85 (1968) 539–552Google Scholar; Williams, F. J., ‘Theocritus, Idyll i 81–91,’ JHS 89 (1969), 121–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Parry (above, n. 6), 11–12.

33. Segal (above, n. 22), 19, suggests that Daphnis is more pathetic than tragic because heroism is out of place in a pastoral setting. Here and elsewhere I find much to agree with in Segal’s interpretation of Daphnis. I do not, however, agree with his larger thesis that Daphnis, on the one hand, and the two herdsmen, on the other, are dialectically related to each other and that Theocritus seeks in this Idyll to mediate their relationship (19, 22). Fundamentally, my objections stem from two differences with Segal. I think that he is mistaken in identifying the world of the two herdsmen and that evoked by the goatherd’s bowl as closely and completely as he does. In addition, I do not believe that Segal has given sufficient weight to the extent to which the herdsmen of this poem alter conflicting visions of reality to suit their own naive vision.

34. See Segal (above, n. 22), 7–8, who characterizes Daphnis’ speech as ‘hyperbolic.’

35. Diehl, frg. 74.

36. In addition to vv. 138–139, the interpretation of vv. 95–96 is central to the understanding of Aphrodite’s motive and role. I agree with the position of Zuntz, G., ‘Theocritus 1.95f.,’ CQ N.S. 10 (1960), 37–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argues that lathra meu gelaoisa means ‘inwardly delighted’, not ‘smiling treacherously.’ See also Segal (above, n.22), 4 and 11, on Daphnis’ misunderstanding of Aphrodite’s motives and character.

37. See Rosenmeyer (120), although I cannot agree with his further conclusion that ‘The sign of his will and the absence of an intelligent reason why he should have to die constitute the triumph of freedom, and mark his death as, in its way, a conquest of death.’

38. Regarding Daphnis’ fate Rosenmeyer (82) concludes that ‘the special qualities of the pastoral mode … severely limit the scope of passionate eros within the pleasance.’ Lawall (25) says of Daphnis that ‘By retaining his chastity, he remains faithful to nature, wild animals, woods, and streams.’ This is in keeping with his larger opposition between the real and ideal worlds (18–33): Erotic passion dominates the former and is the source of disorder in it; relationships in the ideal world are chaste.

39. See also Segal (above, n. 22), 10.

40. Fellowship between man, beasts, and divinities becomes a central, if not the central feature of the Golden Age in the Hellenistic period. In Hesiod the departure of Aidōs and Nemesis marks the full arrival of the Iron Age (WD 197–201). The idea is more fully developed in Aratus (Phaen. 96–136). From the end of the Golden Age Astraea who had regularly intermingled with men gradually withdrew until with the Iron Age she deserted mankind utterly. Aratus also designates the first slaughter of oxen as a decisive stage in the transition from Silver Age to Iron Age (Phaen. 132); cf. Catullus 64.382–408 and Georgics 2.458–474, 536–540.

41. Cf. Idyll 5.104–107, and see the remarks of Rosenmeyer (17).

42. Gow 2.32 ad v. 152. Rosenmeyer cites the final lines of Idyll 1 as an example of undercutting, ‘the pastoral punch line,’ which he regards as a recurrent aspect of Theocritean pastoral (175–177). However, he thinks that the use of this device enhances rather than qualifies our enthusiasm for the ideal of innocence which Theocritus presents. See 176 and 178 esp.

43. Edquist, Harriet, ‘Aspects of Theocritean Otium,’ Ramus 4 (1975CrossRefGoogle Scholar) (= Ancient Pastoral, Ramus Essays on Oreek and Roman Pastoral Poetry, ed. A. J. Boyle, Berwick, Victoria, 1975) 101–113Google Scholar, also sees hadys (which she translates ‘sweet’) as a central motif, but differs from me in concluding that ‘the success of the first Idyll lies to a large degree in the success of Thyrsis’ song – a song which is essentially a strong affirmation of the joy and sweetness of life’ (108). Underlying our different conclusions is the fact that she believes that the effect of the herdsmen’s repetition of hadys is to emphasize the poet’s own judgments, while I see it as enforcing a distance between the herdsmen’s sensibilities and those of the poem’s audience.

44. Giangrande, G., ‘Theocrite, Simichidas et les “Thalysies,”’ Ant. Class. 37 (1968), 515–531Google Scholar, reviews previous discussions of Lycidas’ identity and argues against attributing any symbolic value to Lycidas whom he sees as a strictly realistic characterization of a goatherd. More recently Segal, Charles, ‘Theocritus’ Seventh Idyll and Lycidas,’ WS 8 (1974), 20–79Google Scholar, has modified and strengthened the arguments in favor of ascribing symbolic value to the character of Lycidas. See esp. 26–34.

45. Cf. Hesiod, Theog. 29–35 and note also Idyll 7.92–93.

46. Apollodorus 2.5.4.

47. Od. 9.116–564.

48. See also Rosenmeyer (191). Segal (above, n. 44), who regards Simichidas and Lycidas as figures symbolic of different relations to nature and of different kinds of poetic imagination, argues that the poet’s point of view assimilates both possibilities and consequently sees greater ambivalence in the concluding scene than I do (73–74).

49. I have not entered the debate about Simichidas’ identity or the possibility of his representing the poet himself, because that has seemed irrelevant to my argument and possibly misleading. Regardless of Simichidas’ identity, Idyll 7 offers a commentary upon the urge to escape to an ideal existence of ease and plenty which is consistent with Theocritus’ general commentary upon the ideal of innocence as it is embodied by other characters in his poems. For reference to relevant bibliography see G. Giangrande (above, n. 44) who, arguing against the identification of Theocritus and Simichidas, characterizes the latter as a fatuous urbanite (esp. 531–533). More recently Segal (above, n. 44) has surveyed the literature from a different point of view (20–26).

50. Ramus 4 (1975) (= Ancient Pastoral, Ramus Essays on Greek and Roman Pastoral Poetry, ed. A. J. Boyle, Berwick, Victoria, 1975), 140Google Scholar.

51. Ibid., 101–113.

52. Ibid., 91.

53. Ibid., 132.