6. Theocritus flourished in the first half of the third century B.C. Some authorities place the younger poets more than a hundred years later.
7. Familiar to English readers through Matthew Arnold's translation.
8. Suidas says that Moschus came from Sicily, and some authorities speak of him as a Syracusan. But in his 'Lament' he alludes to his 'Ausonian' song, apparently as distinguished from that of Theocritus 'of Syracuse.' The passage, however, is rendered obscure by an hiatus. Another tradition made Theocritus a native of the island of Cos. More probably it was between the time of his leaving Syracuse and that of his settling at Alexandria that he was the pupil of the Coan poet and critic, Philetas.
9. Ernest Myers' version from Andrew Lang's delightful volume in the Golden Treasury Series.
10. Placing the romance, that is, in the third century A.D. Authorities assign it to various dates from the second to the sixth centuries, according as they regard it as a model or an imitation of Heliodorus' work.
11. A similar use of ἀναγνώρισις is very frequent in the Italian pastoral drama, where, however, it is more probably derived from Latin comedy.
12. This was not the first Italian version of Longus. Daphnis and Chloe had been translated directly from the Greek by Annibale Caro in the previous century.
13. Two poems, written in close imitation of Theocritus' natural manner, and entitled respectively Moretum and Copa, have sometimes, but wrongly, been attributed to Vergil.
14. Greek Poets, ii. p. 265.
15. Symonds speaks strongly on the point. 'Virgil not only lacks his [Theocritus'] vigour and enthusiasm for the open-air life of the country, but, with Roman bad taste, he commits the capital crime of allegorising.' (Greek Poets, ii. p. 247.)