SOURCE: “The Sources of Theocritean Bucolic Poetry,” in Mnemosyne, Series IV, Vol. XLV, No. 3, 1992, pp. 333-44.

In the following essay, Vara deduces that although Theocritus did not gather the pastoral details of the Idylls from real life, but from the writings of others, he can nethertheless properly be called the creator of a new type of poetry.

1. Within Theocritus' work, the problem of the origin of his specifically bucolic poetry (Idylls “I,” “II”¹), “III,” “IV,” “V,” “VI,” “VII,” “IX,” “X,” “XI,” “XIV”) has often, even from the time of antiquity, been a subject for debate. The older theories which argued that this bucolic poetry originated in real life—whether in songs sung by peasants or shepherds at religious gatherings, or in ritual activities performed by certain brotherhoods of shepherd-poets—have at present rightly been discarded.

However, there are still some scholars who accept and defend with varying degrees...