THE HAPPY FISHERMAN,
ATTRIBUTED TO THE ARTIST CHACHRYLION.
From P. Hartwig’s Die griechischen Meisterschalen, p. 57, pl. 5.
Meniscus and Diotimus (in Sappho and Alcæus) are aged, lonely, and miserably poor. They are not “white-limbed” like Daphnis in The Herdsman’s Offering. They play no flute, nor carry the apples of Love.
So too the circumstances, the life, the recreations of the Shepherd of the Pastoral Idyll of Theocritus are as far removed as can be from those of the Fisherman of the Piscatory Idyll by the same author. The locus is the same. The characters dwell near each other, but how dissimilar their lots!
CHAPTER VII
THEOCRITUS—THE GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS
But to return to our second locus classicus, ‘The Fisherman’s Dream’ of Theocritus.[309] The whole Idyll (XXI.), an exquisite piece of word painting, deserves careful reading as a study of the piscatory genre, but room can only be found for part of it here.[310]