SOURCE: An introduction to The Greek Bucolic Poets, Cambridge University Press, 1953, pp. xiii-xxvii.

In the following excerpt, Gow examines the history of bucolic poetry, summarizes the life of Theocritus, and discusses his use of dialects.

(i.) Greek Bucolic Poetry

In a lost treatise on the invention of Bucolic, of which the contents are preserved in the ancient commentary on Theocritus and in various other places, three accounts are given of the origin of Bucolic. One is that it was invented in Sparta during the Persian invasion, when, since the girls were in hiding, rustics in their place entered the temple of Artemis Caryatis and sang their own songs to the goddess; the second, that it arose from songs sung by the people of Tyndaris in Sicily when Orestes arrived there with the statue of Artemis stolen from Tauri; the third, and according to this authority the true, story...