Papers of the Manchester Literary Club
by Manchester Literary Club (9781458838261)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THEOCRITUS, THE POET OF SICILY. By Arthur W. Fox. the life of Theocritus nothing accurate is known. He would seem to have been in his prime between the years 280 and 260 u.c. during the reigns of Hiero II., King of Sicily, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, monarch of Egypt.1 An epigram,2 which cannot be his, asserts that he was a native of Syracuse, while Suidas maintains that he was born at Cos. But the place of his birth matters little in such a study as the present. It is clear from his surviving poems that he had an intimate knowledge of the habits and minstrels)' of Sicily, while he was no less familiar with the splendours of Alexandria. Both Sicily and Alexandria enjoyed a wondrous prosperity under their respective rulers. The two kings were wise statesmen and patrons of literature. At Alexandria a new life had set in in the world of letters, and the great city was graced by a goodly band of poets such as Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius, and of grammarians of the unique capacity of Aristarchus. The learned men combined intheir single persons the diverse arts of commentator, poet, scientist, and man of letters, and if their poetry was tinged with pedantry, it was of no mean power and of no inferior delicacy. Theocritus himself was essentially Sicilian in his subjects and Alexandrian in his method of treatment, a fact which points to the certainty of his having travelled much during his period of education. . Id. xvii., which mentions as recent the marriage of Ptolemy Phila- delphns with his sister Arsinoe IL C f. Id. xvi., which speaks of " wars and rumours of wars," and must therefore have preceded the first Punic War, and may be dated about 266 B.c. ." Epigram, xxii. In ancient Sicily the peasants spent many hours in musical contests, which would seem to hav...

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