Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Rendered into English Prose

IDYL VIII

The scene is among the high mountain pastures of Sicily: —

and far below shines and murmurs the Sicilian sea. Here Daphnis and Menalcas, two herdsmen of the golden age, meet, while still in their earliest youth, and contend for the prize of pastoral. Their songs, in elegiac measure, are variations on the themes of love and friendship (for Menalcas sings of Milon, Daphnis of Nais), and of nature. Daphnis is the winner; it is his earliest victory, and the prelude to his great renown among nymphs and shepherds. In this version the strophes are arranged as in Fritzsche’s text. Some critics take the poem to be a patchwork by various hands.

As beautiful Daphnis was following his kine, and Menalcas shepherding his flock, they met, as men tell, on the long ranges of the hills. The beards of both had still the first golden bloom, both were in their earliest youth, both were pipe-players skilled, both skilled in song. Then first Menalcas, looking at Daphnis, thus bespoke him.

‘Daphnis, thou herdsman of the lowing kine, art thou minded to sing a match with me? Methinks I shall vanquish thee, when I sing in turn, as readily as I please.’

Then Daphnis answered him again in this wise, ‘Thou shepherd of the fleecy sheep, Menalcas, the pipe-player, never wilt thou vanquish me in song, not thou, if thou shouldst sing till some evil thing befall thee!’

Menalcas. Dost thou care then, to try this and see, dost thou care to risk a stake?

Daphnis. I do care to try this and see, a stake I am ready to risk.

Menalcas. But what shall we stake, what pledge shall we find equal and sufficient?

Daphnis. I will pledge a calf, and do thou put down a lamb, one that has grown to his mother’s height.

Menalcas. Nay, never will I stake a lamb, for stern is my father, and stern my mother, and they number all the sheep at evening.

Daphnis. But what, then, wilt thou lay, and where is to be the victor’s gain?

Menalcas. The pipe, the fair pipe with nine stops, that I made myself, fitted with white wax, and smoothed evenly, above as below. This would I readily wager, but never will I stake aught that is my father’s.

Daphnis. See then, I too, in truth, have a pipe with nine stops, fitted with white wax, and smoothed evenly, above as below. But lately I put it together, and this finger still aches, where the reed split, and cut it deeply.

Menalcas. But who is to judge between us, who will listen to our singing?

Daphnis. That goatherd yonder, he will do, if we call him hither, the man for whom that dog, a black hound with a white patch, is barking among the kids.

Then the boys called aloud, and the goatherd gave ear, and came, and the boys began to sing, and the goatherd was willing to be their umpire. And first Menalcas sang (for he drew the lot) the sweet-voiced Menalcas, and Daphnis took up the answering strain of pastoral song – and ’twas thus Menalcas began:

Menalcas. Ye glades, ye rivers, issue of the Gods, if ever Menalcas the flute-player sang a song ye loved, to please him, feed his lambs; and if ever Daphnis come hither with his calves, nay he have no less a boon.

Daphnis. Ye wells and pastures, sweet growth o’ the world, if Daphnis sings like the nightingales, do ye fatten this herd of his, and if Menalcas hither lead a flock, may he too have pasture ungrudging to his full desire!

Menalcas. There doth the ewe bear twins, and there the goats; there the bees fill the hives, and there oaks grow loftier than common, wheresoever beautiful Milon’s feet walk wandering; ah, if he depart, then withered and lean is the shepherd, and lean the pastures

Daphnis. Everywhere is spring, and pastures everywhere, and everywhere the cows’ udders are swollen with milk, and the younglings are fostered, wheresoever fair Nais roams; ah, if she depart, then parched are the kine, and he that feeds them!

Menalcas. O bearded goat, thou mate of the white herd, and O ye blunt-faced kids, where are the manifold deeps of the forest, thither get ye to the water, for thereby is Milon; go, thou hornless goat, and say to him, ‘Milon, Proteus was a herdsman, and that of seals, though he was a god.’

Daphnis..

Menalcas. Not mine be the land of Pelops, not mine to own talents of gold, nay, nor mine to outrun the speed of the winds! Nay, but beneath this rock will I sing, with thee in mine arms, and watch our flocks feeding together, and, before us, the Sicilian sea.

Daphnis..

Menalcas..

Daphnis. Tempest is the dread pest of the trees, drought of the waters, snares of the birds, and the hunter’s net of the wild beasts, but ruinous to man is the love of a delicate maiden. O father, O Zeus, I have not been the only lover, thou too hast longed for a mortal woman.

Thus the boys sang in verses amoebaean, and thus Menalcas began the crowning lay:

Menalcas. Wolf, spare the kids, spare the mothers of my herd, and harm not me, so young as I am to tend so great a flock. Ah, Lampurus, my dog, dost thou then sleep so soundly? a dog should not sleep so sound, that helps a boyish shepherd. Ewes of mine, spare ye not to take your fill of the tender herb, ye shall not weary, ’ere all this grass grows again. Hist, feed on, feed on, fill, all of you, your udders, that there may be milk for the lambs, and somewhat for me to store away in the cheese-crates.

Then Daphnis followed again, and sweetly preluded to his singing:

Daphnis. Me, even me, from the cave, the girl with meeting eyebrows spied yesterday as I was driving past my calves, and she cried, ‘How fair, how fair he is!’ But I answered her never the word of railing, but cast down my eyes, and plodded on my way.

Sweet is the voice of the heifer, sweet her breath, 24 sweet to lie beneath the sky in summer, by running water.

Acorns are the pride of the oak, apples of the apple tree, the calf of the heifer, and the neatherd glories in his kine.

So sang the lads; and the goatherd thus bespoke them, ‘Sweet is thy mouth, O Daphnis, and delectable thy song! Better is it to listen to thy singing, than to taste the honeycomb. Take thou the pipe, for thou hast conquered in the singing match. Ah, if thou wilt but teach some lay, even to me, as I tend the goats beside thee, this blunt-horned she-goat will I give thee, for the price of thy teaching, this she-goat that ever fills the milking pail above the brim.’

Then was the boy as glad, – and leaped high, and clapped his hands over his victory, – as a young fawn leaps about his mother. But the heart of the other was wasted with grief, and desolate, even as a maiden sorrows that is newly wed.

From this time Daphnis became the foremost among the shepherds, and while yet in his earliest youth, he wedded the nymph Nais.

IDYL IX

Daphnis and Menalcas, at the bidding of the poet, sing the joys of the neatherds and of the shepherds life. Both receive the thanks of the poet, and rustic prizes—a staff and a horn, made of a spiral shell. Doubts have been expressed as to the authenticity of the prelude and concluding verses. The latter breathe all Theocritus’s enthusiastic love of song.

Sing, Daphnis, a pastoral lay, do thou first begin the song, the song begin, O Daphnis; but let Menalcas join in the strain, when ye have mated the heifers and their calves, the barren kine and the bulls. Let them all pasture together, let them wander in the coppice, but never leave the herd. Chant thou for me, first, and on the other side let Menalcas reply.

Daphnis. Ah, sweetly lows the calf, and sweetly the heifer, sweetly sounds the neatherd with his pipe, and sweetly also I! My bed of leaves is strown by the cool water, and thereon are heaped fair skins from the white calves that were all browsing upon the arbutus, on a time, when the south-west wind dashed me them from the height.

And thus I heed no more the scorching summer, than a lover cares to heed the words of father or of mother.

So Daphnis sang to me, and thus, in turn, did Menalcas sing.

Menalcas. Aetna, mother mine, I too dwell in a beautiful cavern in the chamber of the rock, and, lo, all the wealth have I that we behold in dreams; ewes in plenty and she-goats abundant, their fleeces are strown beneath my head and feet. In the fire of oak-faggots puddings are hissing-hot, and dry beech-nuts roast therein, in the wintry weather, and, truly, for the winter season I care not even so much as a toothless man does for walnuts, when rich pottage is beside him.

Then I clapped my hands in their honour, and instantly gave each a gift, to Daphnis a staff that grew in my father’s close, self-shapen, yet so straight, that perchance even a craftsman could have found no fault in it. To the other I gave a goodly spiral shell, the meat that filled it once I had eaten after stalking the fish on the Icarian rocks (I cut it into five shares for five of us), – and Menalcas blew a blast on the shell.

Ye pastoral Muses, farewell! Bring ye into the light the song that I sang there to these shepherds on that day! Never let the pimple grow on my tongue-tip. 25

Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, and hawks to hawks, but to me the Muse and song. Of song may all my dwelling be full, for sleep is not more sweet, nor sudden spring, nor flowers are more delicious to the bees – so dear to me are the Muses. 26 Whom they look on in happy hour, Circe hath never harmed with her enchanted potion.

IDYL X

THE REAPERS

This is an idyl of the same genre as Idyl IV. The sturdy reaper, Milon, as he levels the swathes of corn, derides his languid and love-worn companion, Buttus. The latter defends his gipsy love in verses which have been the keynote of much later poetry, and which echo in the fourth book of Lucretius, and in the Misanthrope of Molière. Milon replies with the song of Lityerses—a string, apparently, of popular rural couplets, such as Theocritus may have heard chanted in the fields.

Milan. Thou toilsome clod; what ails thee now, thou wretched fellow? Canst thou neither cut thy swathe straight, as thou wert wont to do, nor keep time with thy neighbour in thy reaping, but thou must fall out, like an ewe that is foot-pricked with a thorn and straggles from the herd? What manner of man wilt thou prove after mid-noon, and at evening, thou that dost not prosper with thy swathe when thou art fresh begun?

Battus. Milon, thou that canst toil till late, thou chip of the stubborn stone, has it never befallen thee to long for one that was not with thee?

Milan. Never! What has a labouring man to do with hankering after what he has not got?

Battus. Then it never befell thee to lie awake for love?

Milan. Forbid it; ’tis an ill thing to let the dog once taste of pudding.

Battus. But I, Milon, am in love for almost eleven days!

Milan. ’Tis easily seen that thou drawest from a wine-cask, while even vinegar is scarce with me.

Battus. And for Love’s sake, the fields before my doors are untilled since seed-time.

Milan. But which of the girls afflicts thee so?

Battus. The daughter of Polybotas, she that of late was wont to pipe to the reapers on Hippocoon’s farm.

Milan. God has found out the guilty! Thou hast what thou’st long been seeking, that grasshopper of a girl will lie by thee the night long!

Battus. Thou art beginning thy mocks of me, but Plutus is not the only blind god; he too is blind, the heedless Love! Beware of talking big.

Milan. Talk big I do not! Only see that thou dust level the corn, and strike up some love-ditty in the wench’s praise. More pleasantly thus wilt thou labour, and, indeed, of old thou wert a melodist.

Battus. Ye Muses Pierian, sing ye with me the slender maiden, for whatsoever ye do but touch, ye goddesses, ye make wholly fair.

They all call thee a gipsy, gracious Bombyca, and lean, and sunburnt, ’tis only I that call thee honey-pale.

Yea, and the violet is swart, and swart the lettered hyacinth, but yet these flowers are chosen the first in garlands.

The goat runs after cytisus, the wolf pursues the goat, the crane follows the plough, but I am wild for love of thee.

Would it were mine, all the wealth whereof once Croesus was lord, as men tell! Then images of us twain, all in gold, should be dedicated to Aphrodite, thou with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and I in fair attire, and new shoon of Amyclae on both my feet.

Ah gracious Bombyca, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I cannot tell of them! 27

Milan. Verily our clown was a maker of lovely songs, and we knew it not! How well he meted out and shaped his harmony; woe is me for the beard that I have grown, all in vain! Come, mark thou too these lines of godlike Lityerses

Demeter, rich in fruit, and rich in grain, may this corn be easy to win, and fruitful exceedingly!

Bind, ye bandsters, the sheaves, lest the wayfarer should cry, ‘Men of straw were the workers here, ay, and their hire was wasted!’

See that the cut stubble faces the North wind, or the West, ’tis thus the grain waxes richest.

They that thresh corn should shun the noon-day steep; at noon the chaff parts easiest from the straw.

As for the reapers, let them begin when the crested lark is waking, and cease when he sleeps, but take holiday in the heat.

Lads, the frog has a jolly life, he is not cumbered about a butler to his drink, for he has liquor by him unstinted!

Boil the lentils better, thou miserly steward; take heed lest thou chop thy fingers, when thou’rt splitting cumin-seed.

’Tis thus that men should sing who labour i’ the sun, but thy starveling love, thou clod, ’twere fit to tell to thy mother when she stirs in bed at dawning.

IDYL XI

THE CYCLOPS IN LOVE

Nicias, the physician and poet, being in love, Theocritus reminds him that in song lies the only remedy. It was by song, he says, that the Cyclops, Polyphemus, got him some ease, when he was in love with Galatea, the sea-nymph.

The idyl displays, in the most graceful manner, the Alexandrian taste for turning Greek mythology into love stories. No creature could be more remote from love than the original Polyphemus, the cannibal giant of the Odyssey.

There is none other medicine, Nicias, against Love, neither unguent, methinks, nor salve to sprinkle, – none, save the Muses of Pieria! Now a delicate thing is their minstrelsy in man’s life, and a sweet, but hard to procure. Methinks thou know’st this well, who art thyself a leech, and beyond all men art plainly dear to the Muses nine.

’Twas surely thus the Cyclops fleeted his life most easily, he that dwelt among us, – Polyphemus of old time, – when the beard was yet young on his cheek and chin; and he loved Galatea. He loved, not with apples, not roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy, and all things else he held but trifles by the way. Many a time from the green pastures would his ewes stray back, self-shepherded, to the fold. But he was singing of Galatea, and pining in his place he sat by the sea-weed of the beach, from the dawn of day, with the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty Cypris’s sending, – the wound of her arrow in his heart!

Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff, and looking to the deep, ’twas thus he would sing: —

O milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More white than is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb art thou, than the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened grape! Here dust thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses me, and home straightway dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go, fleeing me like an ewe that has seen the grey wolf.

I fell in love with thee, maiden, I, on the day when first thou camest, with my mother, and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from the hill, and I was thy guide on the way. But to leave loving thee, when once I had seen thee, neither afterward, nor now at all, have I the strength, even from that hour. But to thee all this is as nothing, by Zeus, nay, nothing at all!

I know, thou gracious maiden, why it is that thou dust shun me. It is all for the shaggy brow that spans all my forehead, from this to the other ear, one long unbroken eyebrow. And but one eye is on my forehead, and broad is the nose that overhangs my lip. Yet I (even such as thou seest me) feed a thousand cattle, and from these I draw and drink the best milk in the world. And cheese I never lack, in summer time or autumn, nay, nor in the dead of winter, but my baskets are always overladen.

Also I am skilled in piping, as none other of the Cyclopes here, and of thee, my love, my sweet-apple, and of myself too I sing, many a time, deep in the night. And for thee I tend eleven fawns, all crescent-browed, 28 and four young whelps of the bear.

Nay, come thou to me, and thou shalt lack nothing that now thou hast. Leave the grey sea to roll against the land; more sweetly, in this cavern, shalt thou fleet the night with me! Thereby the laurels grow, and there the slender cypresses, there is the ivy dun, and the sweet clustered grapes; there is chill water, that for me deep-wooded Ætna sends down from the white snow, a draught divine! Ah who, in place of these, would choose the sea to dwell in, or the waves of the sea?

But if thou dust refuse because my body seems shaggy and rough, well, I have faggots of oakwood, and beneath the ashes is fire unwearied, and I would endure to let thee burn my very soul, and this my one eye, the dearest thing that is mine.

Ah me, that my mother bore me not a finny thing, so would I have gone down to thee, and kissed thy hand, if thy lips thou would not suffer me to kiss! And I would have brought thee either white lilies, or the soft poppy with its scarlet petals. Nay, these are summer’s flowers, and those are flowers of winter, so I could not have brought thee them all at one time.

Now, verily, maiden, now and here will I learn to swim, if perchance some stranger come hither, sailing with his ship, that I may see why it is so dear to thee, to have thy dwelling in the deep.

Come forth, Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I that sit here have forgotten, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go shepherding, with me to milk the flocks, and to pour the sharp rennet in, and to fix the cheeses.

There is none that wrongs me but that mother of mine, and her do I blame. Never, nay, never once has she spoken a kind word for me to thee, and that though day by day she beholds me wasting. I will tell her that my head, and both my feet are throbbing, that she may somewhat suffer, since I too am suffering.

O Cyclops, Cyclops, whither are thy wits wandering? Ah that thou wouldst go, and weave thy wicker-work, and gather broken boughs to carry to thy lambs: in faith, if thou didst this, far wiser wouldst thou be!

Milk the ewe that thou hast, why pursue the thing that shuns thee? Thou wilt find, perchance, another, and a fairer Galatea. Many be the girls that bid me play with them through the night, and softly they all laugh, if perchance I answer them. On land it is plain that I too seem to be somebody!

Lo, thus Polyphemus still shepherded his love with song, and lived lighter than if he had given gold for ease.

IDYL XII

THE PASSIONATE FRIEND

This is rather a lyric than an idyl, being an expression of that singular passion which existed between men in historical Greece. The next idyl, like the Myrmidons of Aeschylus, attributes the same manners to mythical and heroic Greece. It should be unnecessary to say that the affection between Homeric warriors, like Achilles and Patroclus, was only that of companions in arms and was quite unlike the later sentiment.

Hast thou come, dear youth, with the third night and the dawning; hast thou come? but men in longing grow old in a day! As spring than the winter is sweeter, as the apple than the sloe, as the ewe is deeper of fleece than the lamb she bore; as a maiden surpasses a thrice-wedded wife, as the fawn is nimbler than the calf; nay, by as much as sweetest of all fowls sings the clear-voiced nightingale, so much has thy coming gladdened me! To thee have I hastened as the traveller hastens under the burning sun to the shadow of the ilex tree.

Ah, would that equally the Loves may breathe upon us twain, may we become a song in the ears of all men unborn.

‘Lo, a pair were these two friends among the folk of former time,’ the one ‘the Knight’ (so the Amyclaeans call him), the other, again, ‘the Page,’ so styled in speech of Thessaly.

‘An equal yoke of friendship they bore: ah, surely then there were golden men of old, when friends gave love for love!’

And would, O father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this might be; and that when two hundred generations have sped, one might bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream.

‘The loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend, is even now in all men’s mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young.’

Nay, verily, the gods of heaven will be masters of these things, to rule them as they will, but when I praise thy graciousness no blotch that punishes the perjurer shall spring upon the tip of my nose! Nay, if ever thou hast somewhat pained me, forthwith thou healest the hurt, giving a double delight, and I depart with my cup full and running over!

Nisaean men of Megara, ye champions of the oars, happily may ye dwell, for that ye honoured above all men the Athenian stranger, even Diodes, the true lover. Always about his tomb the children gather in their companies, at the coming in of the spring, and contend for the prize of kissing. And whoso most sweetly touches lip to lip, laden with garlands he returneth to his mother. Happy is he that judges those kisses of the children; surely he prays most earnestly to bright-faced Ganymedes, that his lips may be as the Lydian touchstone wherewith the money-changers try gold lest perchance base metal pass for true.

IDYL XIII

HYLAS AND HERACLES

As in the eleventh Idyl, Nicias is again addressed, by way of introduction to the story of Hylas. This beautiful lad, a favourite companion of Heracles, took part in the Quest of the Fleece of Gold. As he went to draw water from a fountain, the water-nymphs dragged him down to their home, and Heracles, after a long and vain search, was compelled to follow the heroes of the Quest on foot to Phasis.

Not for us only, Nicias, as we were used to deem, was Love begotten, by whomsoever of the Gods was the father of the child; not first to us seemed beauty beautiful, to us that are mortal men and look not on the morrow. Nay, but the son of Amphitryon, that heart of bronze, who abode the wild lion’s onset, loved a lad, beautiful Hylas – Hylas of the braided locks, and he taught him all things as a father teaches his child, all whereby himself became a mighty man, and renowned in minstrelsy. Never was he apart from Hylas, not when midnoon was high in heaven, not when Dawn with her white horses speeds upwards to the dwelling of Zeus, not when the twittering nestlings look towards the perch, while their mother flaps her wings above the smoke-browned beam; and all this that the lad might be fashioned to his mind, and might drive a straight furrow, and come to the true measure of man.