When talking about Theocritus and, more generally, bucolic poetry and its reception, it seems quite natural to focus on Greek literary production; and, if one ventures into the Latin world, it appears almost inevitable that the main scholarly effort concentrated on the extraordinary poetic figure of Virgil, who essentially took up Theocritus’ pastoral legacy in the Latin world and shaped the genre in a way that was to influence any further approach to it. However, this beautifully edited book illustrates what kind of fruitful outcomes we can achieve as Classicists by moving beyond such artificial and often superimposed limits. The volume, which partly overlaps with the themes of the many Sammelbände devoted to Theocritus and pastoral poetry in the last fifteen years (one could mention, among others, M. Fantuzzi and T. Papanghelis [edd.], Brill's Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral [2006] or C. Cusset, C. Kossaifi and R. Poignault [edd.], Présence de Théocrit [2017]), in fact widens their purposes and explores the author's reception and intertextuality in the Roman Empire after Virgil and in the modern era, particularly focusing on German production of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. As clearly stated in the methodological introduction (pp. 7–8), the papers collected are not aimed at giving a comprehensive description of the phenomenon, but rather engage with the various aspects implied in the concept of reception from different and layered perspectives. Moreover, through a diacronic approach that covers a time span of nearly fifteen centuries and the extended geographical area considered, the book serves as a case study for a broader notion of tradition and intertextuality. The intention of the collection is therefore to present pastoral production in some historical key periods in order to show Theocritus’ adaptation, be that as a source of inspiration or as a large-scale structural model, to the most diverse contexts and for extremely varied purposes. In keeping with the geographical coverage of the research, the papers are both in English and in German.
The editors have put together a fair number of contributions divided into three thematic sections. The first, headed ‘Ἁδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα. Theokritspuren in nachvergilischer Literatur der Kaiserzeit’, deals with Theocritean echoes in Calpurnius Siculus (Beron) and Longus (V. Pace), and his portrait in the imperial era as we experience it from the scattered information we get from some Latin prose authors (H. Richer). As a general consideration for this part, I very much appreciated the editors’ choice to leave aside Virgil and give space to other authors where Theocritus’ presence is less easy to detect or simply deserves more scholarly attention. This is especially true for Calpurnius, whose long-acknowledged relationship with Virgil's bucolic production has often overshadowed Theocritean traces. As a matter of fact, Beron took the hardest way in focusing on Calpurnius’ political Eclogues, since these are the poems where Virgilian influences are most apparent. Although sometimes her outcomes look, in my view, a little far-fetched (like the metapoetic interpretation of the cows as bucolic poetry at 1.4–5), the overall impression is that Beron indeed succeeds in her intent of pulling Theocritus out of ‘Tityrus’ shadow’, highlighting that the Greek father of the genre still has a place in Calpurnius’ literary succession. More widely investigated is, unsurprisingly, Longus’ debt to Theocritus; yet Pace explores this relationship from an unusual perspective, outlining the two authors’ idea of class in the context of the pastoral motive of ‘retreat and return’ and aguing that Longus displays the same concept of traditional aristocratic class we appreciate in the two Theocritean encomia (Id. 16 and 17). While Longus’ class discourse could indeed find a precedent in Theocritus, I was not entirely convinced by the possibility of extending the idea of ‘retreat and return’ to the arrangement of the Theocritean anthology supposedly available to Longus on the basis of P. Ant. – our only ancient witness – since its fragmentary status only permits speculation on its composition and we do not really know how much is missing. (In fact, the collection was made up of at least three parts; if the poems’ arrangement could suggest, more or less consciously, such movement, what role should we imagine for the third book with the Aeolic poems? On this the author remains vague.) Finally, Richer's paper provides interesting insights on how the scarce knowledge about a famous author could leave space for the most varied depictions of his person, in this case as cowherd, as author of Id. 2, as Virgil's rival in metrical matters. Here we are dealing with another aspect of Theocritus’ reception, that of his persona: his transformation into a symbol is posterity's reaction to the lack of information on him, which was, however, of vital importance since he was considered the founder of an extremely prolific genre.
The second section, ‘Ἄρχετε βουκολικᾶς, Μοῖσαι φίλαι, ἄρχετ’ ἀοιδᾶς. Rezeption griechischer Bukolik im 16. Jahrhundert’, explores the manifold possibilities offered by pastoral poetry once time has turned it into an established genre with its own fixed rules and stylistic devices, and, above all, its models. Through a rich and detailed comparison of Helius Eobanus Hessus’ version in Latin hexameters and Henricus Stephanus’ prose ad verbum of Theocritus’ Id. 1, J. Van Sickle brilliantly highlights how the Latin translation gave two early modern authors the chance to skillfully embed Virgilian echoes into Theocritus’ idylls, virtually following the path of tradition backwards. After all, it appears that no bucolic product in Latin could escape the influence of the one who created the language and imagery for that. On the other hand, both C. Orth and T. Gärtner give evidence of the productiveness of bucolic epitaph, a poetic form already present in Theocritus but better known as an independent sub-genre from his immediate successors, especially when it comes to new, original products. As a matter of fact, the bucolic epitaph at this time seems to enjoy great success, yet going through, in Orth's words, ‘creative rewriting and recontextualisation’ (in this case, religious). In particular, Orth examines Joachim Camerarius’ Greek Eclogue on the death of Johannes Stigelius, brilliantly showing the layered texture of different echoes from Theocritus, Bion and Moschus we can identify in this poem. The subtle intertextuality and the confidence in dealing with different models that emerge from the analysis of the poem is also very ‘Hellenistic’, which is a further way to interpret the concept of reception (in this case of methodological type). The same can be said for the gifted Lorenz Rhodoman, whose three ‘bucolic’ poems (Totenklage um Luther, Threnos Saxonikos and Hymenaios Saxonikos) are the object of Gärtner's contribution. As Gärtner clearly highlights, in these poems, all three imitations of the Hellenistic Ἐπιτάφιος Βίωνος, Rhodoman's experimentation with the genre is closely related to religious issues, which deeply influence the approach to the model. Using the refrain verse's function in the three poems as a common thread of his research, Gärtner shows how an accurate philological analysis of the different uses of models and poetic genres could serve different purposes, depending on the political context in which they are composed. The Greek text of Rhodoman's Totenklage um Luther (1573) with German translation is provided in the appendix.
The third and last section, ‘λήγετε βουκολικᾶς, Μοῖσαι, ἴτε λήγετ’ ἀοιδᾶς. Griechische Bukolik aus dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, opens with Weise's contribution on Theocritus’ imitation by Johann Gottfried Herrichen, who composed bucolic pieces to be performed by his pupils at school. It is extremely fascinating to see how the oral, performative dimension, which originally belongs (or was assumed to belong) to the genre in its early forms and had been stylised by Theocritus through dialogues and songs, could be retrieved again in the seventeenth century and recontextualised in a Christian key. W.M. Barton's paper on Adam Franz Kollár's Χάριτες εἰδύλλιον, a bucolic praise dedicated to Maria Theresa Habsburg, illustrates that pastoral themes could still serve encomiastic purposes in eighteenth-century Vienna and that Theocritus’ poems were still a primary source of inspiration for ‘political pastoral’ production in Greek. As the papers show, pastoral poetry proves to be once again a genre that encourages the intersection of languages, cultures and traditions and the adaptation to various needs.
Lastly, a special mention must be devoted to R. Hunter's ‘Afterword’: in this brief but dense account he traces again the history of Theocritus’ reception outlined through the various contributions, piecing together the themes touched on by each paper and giving the interpretative key that allows readers to appreciate the book's overall sense and the results achieved.
The editors have fulfilled the stated goal of offering an accurate and lively engagement with texts and contexts of different times, providing a wealth of valuable observations and starting points for future studies. Besides the intrinsic merits of each contribution, the book represents an excellent example of how productive a multifaceted and unfettered approach can be.
