Theocritus and the Art of Allusion

Theocritus is one of the most versatile, witty, and learned poets of the Hellenistic period. Within a short compass his idylls range through the bucolic poetry for which he is best known to urban mimes, mythical narratives, hymns, encomia for monarchs, and homoerotic love poems. Theocritus engages in a constant and subtle intertextual dialogue with the preceding Greek literary tradition which enriches his poems both in tone and in nuance. Both the corpus as a whole and the individual poems mirror his erudition and highly crafted poetic skills, offering us a densely allusive fabric which challenges the reader to respond actively in order to appreciate the full meaning of the text. The chapters in this volume, which began as an international conference held in Athens in 2016, explore the diverse and subtle ways in which Theocritus exploits the Greek literary heritage and the effects he achieves.