Theocritus and Moschus

There is an important generic permeability between the epithalamic and epic registers from the earliest extant examples of these genres. Homeric epic, for instance, adopts the epithalamium to evoke marital situations, as it does in the “Teichoskopia” and Nausicaa episodes (Hague 1983; Karanika 2013). In turn, Sappho’s hexameters appear in her wedding songs – e.g., frr.

This paper argues that Theocritus’ Idyll One shows direct influence from the Ancient Egyptian “Herdsman’s Tale,” adding an important dimension to our understanding of Daphnis’ relationship with Aphrodite in the poem, as well as Theocritus’ corpus as a whole. While scholars have acknowledged the political importance of Theocritus’ poetry to the Ptolemies (Hunt; Stephens 2003, 2006), the influence of Egyptian literature on Theocritus’ poems has been neglected.

The catalogue of Heracles’ education in Theocritus’ Idyll 24 (vv. 103-134), which marks a sudden change in the form and content of the poem, has long troubled modern critics, even causing one to assert that it is an interpolation (Griffiths 1996: 115). Scholarship on this Idyll has traditionally focused on the beginning, which is a quintessentially Alexandrian reworking of Pindar’s Nemean 1.

Formatted title: Agency, Knowledge, and Consent in Moschus' Europa