Without discussing the whole hackneyed question of bucolic poetry, a word must be said about its origin, and about the essential difference between Theocritus and modern pastorals. It is natural to suppose that country folk, from the remotest period of Greek history, refreshed themselves with dance and song, and that music formed a part of their religious ceremonials. The trials of strength which supply the _motive_ of so many Theocritean idyls were quite consistent with the manners of the Greeks, who brought all rival claims of superiority to the touchstone of such contests. Their antiquity in the matter of music may be gathered from the legends of Pan and Apollo, and of Apollo and Marsyas. Phoebus, in the character of shepherd to Admetus, gave divine sanction to bucolic minstrelsy. In respect of bodily strength, the gymnastic rivalry of Olympia and other great Hellenic centres was so important as to determine the chronology of Greece, while even claims to personal beauty were decided by the same trial: the three goddesses submitted to the arbitration of Paris; and there were in many states #aristeia# of physical charms, not to mention the boys' prize for kisses at Nisæan Megara. Bucolic poetry may therefore be referred to the pastoral custom of shepherds singing together and against each other at festivals or on the green.
It was the genius of Theocritus in all probability which determined the Doric and Sicilian character of the idyls we possess. He, a Syracusan and a Dorian, perfected the _genre_, and was followed by his imitators. Nothing can be more simple and lifelike than the conversations of his rustics, or more nicely discriminated than the pedestrian style of their dialogue and the more polished manner of their studied songs. The poet has, no doubt, invested these rural encounters with the imaginative beauty which belongs to art. He has attributed to Corydon and Thyrsis much of his own imagination and delicate taste and exquisite sense of natural loveliness. Had he refrained from doing so, his idyls would not have challenged the attention and won the admiration of posterity. As it is, we find enough of rustic grossness on his pages, and even complain that his cowherds and goatherds savor too strongly of their stables. Of his appreciation of scenery it is difficult to speak in terms of exaggerated praise. As I purpose to discuss this subject more minutely further on, it may here be enough to remark that he alone of pastoral poets drew straight from nature, and fully felt the charm which underlies the facts of rustic life.