SOURCE: “Bucolic and Pastoral in Theocritus,” in Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry, Yale University Press, 1983, pp. 118-37.

In the following excerpt, Halperin explores Theocritus's use of pastoral poetry and discusses to what extent it is correct to credit him with originality in working within the bucolic tradition.

Yet even should it be conceded, as indeed it must, that Theocritus is the first writer to employ a fully elaborated system of pastoral conventions to express the outlook or set of attitudes we regard as distinctively pastoral and that this fusion, further consolidated by Virgil, would subsequently dominate an important part of European poetry, Theocritus' claim to originality is still not free of difficulty. The originality of Theocritus takes on a different meaning when it is viewed from the vantage point of the previous artistic tradition instead of with the steady gaze of historical hindsight...