Originally published in 1953, this book provides a series of English translations from ancient Greek bucolic poetry by Theocritus, Moschus and Bion. A detailed introduction is included, with information on each of the poets. Textual notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in ancient Greek literature, literary criticism and bucolic poetry.

MOSCHUS of Syracuse, 2nd century B.C., came next. As a 'grammarian' he wrote a (lost) work on Rhodian dialect. Though he was classed as bucolic, his extant poetry (mainly 'Runaway Love' and the story of 'Europa') is not really pastoral, the 'Lament for Bion' not being Moschus's work. 'Megara' may be Theocritus; but 'The Dead Adonis' is much later. BION of Phlossa near Smyrna lived in Sicily, probably late 2nd and early 1st century B.C. Most of the extant poems are not really bucolic, but 'Lament for Adonis' is floridly brilliant. 'Myrson and Lycidas' is probably not by Bion. The so-called Pattern-Poems, included in the 'bucolic' tradition, are found also in the Greek Anthology.

A sequence of poems that interrogates American civics and citizenry from its foundation in the pastoral tradition. In Irredenta, Oscar Oswald raises the prospect of pastoral opposition to state power, elaborating and investigating the genre through ethical and spiritual inquiry. As a citizen is a stranger to itself, so too does Oswald's pastoral speaker define the tensions between identity and nationality inherent in a civic body as they are traversed across the American political geography: land, water, and country, from the Mojave to Wisconsin.

Brill's Companion to Theocritus offers an up-to-date guide to a thorough understanding of Theocritus’ literary output. Exploring his corpus from a variety of novel perspectives, it presents a detailed account of the intricacy of Theocritus’ poetic art.

Now available in paperback for the first time, the twenty-three contributions collected in this volume on Greek and Latin Pastoral focus mainly on the historical genesis, the stylistic and narrative features, the literary self-definition, and the fortunes of pastoral from its Theocritean origins to the Byzantine age.

Agonistic or friendly song exchange in idyllic settings forms the very heart of Roman pastoral. By examining in detail the evolution of a wide variety of literary, linguistic, stylistic, and metrical features, the present book focuses on how politics, panegyrics, elegy, heroic, and didactic poetry function as guest genres within the pastoral host genre, starting from Vergil and continuing with Calpurnius Siculus, the Einsiedeln Eclogues and Nemesianus.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: A Lost Pastoral Rhythm: The Poetry of John Montague -- Chapter 2: "The God in the Tree" : Seamus Heaney and the Pastoral Tradition -- Chapter 3: "Love Poems, Elegies: I am losing my place " : Michael Longley's Environmental Elegies -- Chapter 4: Learning the Lingua Franca of a Lost Land: Eavan Boland's Suburban Pastoral -- Chapter 5: "In My Handerkerchief of a Garden" : Medbh McGuckian's Miniature Pastoral Retreats -- Chapter 6: "When Ireland Was Still under a Spell" : Miraculous Transformations in the Poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill -- Conclusion: The Future of Pastoral -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

This volume offers a strikingly innovative account of Propertius' relationship with Virgil, positing a keen rivalry between two of the greatest poets of Latin literature, contemporaries within the circle of Maecenas. It begins by examining all of the references to Greek mythology in Propertius' first book; these passages emerge as strongly intertextual in nature, providing a way for the poet to situate himself with respect to his predecessors, both Greek and Roman. More specifically, myth is also the medium of a sustained polemic with Virgil's Eclogues, published only a few years earlier. Virgil's response can be traced in the Georgics, and subsequently, in his second and third books, Propertius continued to use mythology and its relationship to contemporary events as a vehicle for literary polemic. This volume argues that their competition can be seen as exemplifying a revised model for how the poets within Maecenas' circle interacted and engaged with each other's work - a model based on rivalry rather than ideological adhesion or subversion - while also painting a revealing picture of how Virgil was viewed by a contemporary in the days before his death had canonized his work as an instant classic. In particular, its novel interpretation offers us a new understanding of Propertius, one of the foundational figures in Western love poetry, and how his frequent references to other poets, especially Gallus and Ennius, take on new meanings when interpreted as responses to Virgil's changing career.