IDYL XV
This famous idyl should rather, perhaps, be called a mimus. It describes the visit paid by two Syracusan women residing in Alexandria, to the festival of the resurrection of Adonis. The festival is given by Arsinoë, wife and sister of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and the poem cannot have been written earlier than his marriage, in 266 B.C. [?] Nothing can be more gay and natural than the chatter of the women, which has changed no more in two thousand years than the song of birds. Theocritus is believed to have had a model for this idyl in the Isthmiazusae of Sophron, an older poet. In the Isthmiazusae two ladies described the spectacle of the Isthmian games.
Gorgo. Is Praxinoë at home?
Praxinoë. Dear Gorgo, how long it is since you have been here! She is at home. The wonder is that you have got here at last! Eunoë, see that she has a chair. Throw a cushion on it too.
Gorgo. It does most charmingly as it is.
Praxinoë. Do sit down.
Gorgo. Oh, what a thing spirit is! I have scarcely got to you alive, Praxinoë! What a huge crowd, what hosts of four-in-hands! Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform! And the road is endless: yes, you really live too far away!
Praxinoë. It is all the fault of that madman of mine. Here he came to the ends of the earth and took—a hole, not a house, and all that we might not be neighbours. The jealous wretch, always the same, ever for spite!
Gorgo. Don’t talk of your husband, Dinon, like that, my dear girl, before the little boy,—look how he is staring at you! Never mind, Zopyrion, sweet child, she is not speaking about papa.
Praxinoë. Our Lady! the child takes notice. [77]