title for a volume of short poems; there is a collection bearing this name among the works of Ausonius. But it was apparently unknown as the title of Theocritus’ poems to Suidas and his predecessors. The meaning of it is “little poems.” We are told that Pindar’s Epinician Odes were known as εἴδη, and Suidas uses the same word in describing the works of Sotades. There is no warrant for the interpretation “little pictures”.
If we may accept the identification of the “pretty little Amyntas” with Philadelphus, we can get a very close approximation to the date of Theocritus’ birth. Philadelphus was born in 309. At the time described in the Harvest-home he is obviously about fifteen. In the same poem Theocritus has already attained something of a reputation, but is still a young man. We shall not be far wrong if we put his age at twenty-two or three. He was born then about the year 316, and when he wrote the Charites he was about forty-three. This would suit admirably the autobiographical hint in the Love of Cynisca that the poet’s hair at the time of writing was just beginning to go grey. If the Berenice of the fragment preserved by Athenaeus is the wife, not of Soter, but of Euergetes, it would follow that Theocritus was at the Alexandrian court in his seventieth year. It is at any rate certain that he did not die young; for Statius calls him Siculus senex.[1]
- ↑ Silv. 5. 3. 151.
