Idyll III
Idyll III, also called Κώμος ('The Serenade'), is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus.[1] The poet appears to personate a young goatherd, who after five lines dedicatory to a friend whom he calls Tityrus, serenades his mistress Amaryllis outside her cave.[1][2] The poem is a monologue, but, like Idyll II, preserves the dialogue-form by means of a dumb character.[1]
Summary
[edit]A goatherd, leaving his goats to feed on the hill-side, in the charge of Tityrus, approaches the cavern of Amaryllis, with its veil of ferns and ivy, and attempts to win back the heart of the girl by song.[3] He mingles promises with threats, and repeats in verse the names of the famous lovers of old days, Milanion and Endymion.[3] Failing to move Amaryllis, the goatherd threatens to die where he has thrown himself down, beneath the trees.[3]
Analysis
[edit]According to J. M. Edmonds, "The appeal to Amaryllis may be regarded as consisting of three parts each ending with the offer of a gift—apples, garland, a goat—and a fourth part containing a love-song of four stanzas. The reciter would doubtless make a slight pause to mark the rejection of each gift and the failure of the song before the renewal of the cry of despair."[1]
Illustrations
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'Ah, lovely Amaryllis, why no more, as of old, dost thou glance through this cavern after me, nor callest me, thy sweetheart, to thy side'
Endymion asleep, watched by Selene; engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert and Theodor Matham after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, c. 1635–8
The complaint of the shepherd (Amaryllis); painted by Arnold Böcklin, 1866
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See also
[edit]References
[edit]Sources
[edit]- Chesi, G. M. (2018). "Intertextuality and Poetic Voice in Theocritus' Idyll 3". Mnemosyne. 71 (3): 489–96. doi:10.1163/1568525X-12342227. JSTOR 26572931.
Attribution: 
This article incorporates text from these sources, which are in the public domain.
- Edmonds, J. M., ed. (1919). The Greek Bucolic Poets (3rd ed.). William Heinemann. pp. 41–7.
- Lang, Andrew, ed. (1880). Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. London: Macmillan and Co. pp. 16–18.
Further reading
[edit]- Cholmeley, R. J., ed. (1919). The Idylls of Theocritus (2nd ed.). London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. pp. 211–20.
- Higham, T. F.; Bowra, C. M., eds. (1938). The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 550, 742.
- Segal, Charles (1969). "Adonis and Aphrodite: Theocritus, Idyll III, 48". L'Antiquité Classique. 38 (1): 82–8. doi:10.3406/antiq.1969.1537. JSTOR 41649274.
External links
[edit]
Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Κώμος
Media related to Idyll III at Wikimedia Commons- "Theocritus, Idylls, κῶμος". Perseus Digital Library.
