SOURCE: “The Literary Background of the Idylls” and “The Influence of Theocritus,” in Theocritus, Twayne Publishers, 1980, pp. 113-49.

In the following excerpt, Walker examines Theocritus's use of the herdsman-poet figure, his mixing of genres, his relationship to his contemporaries, and his influence and reputation.

Theocritus began his career as a poet in the first quarter of the third century b.c.—that is, after a glorious period of almost five hundred years during which most of the Greek literary masterpieces which we study, admire, and enjoy today had found their first audiences. Thanks to the labors of the scholar-poets of the Alexandrian world, beginning with Theocritus' teacher Philetas of Cos, most of this impressive literary heritage was available to him—if only at the Library in Alexandria. It is thus hardly surprising that Theocritus' poetry, like the poetry of his Alexandrian contemporaries, echoes at times with the themes...