THEOCRITUS was born either at Kos or Syracuse. Most of his life was spent at Alexandria, in the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and in Sicily, from whence he takes the scene and language of his poems. His extant works consist almost entirely of idylls; "little pictures" of pastoral life thrown into dramatic form. It was an ancient custom for Sicilian shepherds to engage in contests in alternate songs or verses -- sometimes of satire, mostly of love. This was the material which Theocritus, keeping and adapting the old hexameter metre, clothed in a literary form for the citizens of Alexandria, wearied of town life, and eager for the breath and beauty of the country.

Previous Greek poets, with the exception of Hesiod, had been interested chiefly in action and character; the beauties of Nature appear but seldom in their poems. Theocritus completely changed this point of view, and made the rustic framework the chief attraction in his pictures. The characters who present the drama of the poems are occasionally only the poet himself and his friends in thin disguise. They discourse of their rival affections, and playfully attack one another in satirical banter. The influence of Theocritus on later poets, especially on Virgil in his Eclogues, was very great.

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