Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

136 THEOCRITUS—GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTSthan thou hast found the golden fish ^ of thy vision : dreamsare but lies. But if thou wilt search these waters, wide awakeand not asleep, there is some hope in thy slumbers : seek thefish of flesh, lest thou die of famine with all thy dreams of"gold !The influence of Theocritus, though becoming less naturaland rendered more conventional by the pretty conceits of thelater Alexandrian period, 2 permeates the literature of Greeceand Rome for many centuries. In none, perhaps, is this influencemore marked than in his pupils Bion and Moschus, andin his younger contemporary, Leonidas of Tarentum.Three fisher epigrams 3 by Leonidas suffice as evidence ofthis. The realism, the pathos, the detailed treatment, thesubjects, lowly folk, all alike characterise the Sicilian.In the first, the fisherman Diophantus on giving up histrade dedicates, according to custom, all the relics of his callingto the patron of his craft. The list of the implements, includinga well-bent hook, long rod, and line of horse hair, here and inan epigram by Philippus of Thessalonica (which adds " the* Callimachus, whom Theocritus probably knew at Alexandria, calls the" chrysophrys " sacred" Or shall I rather say the gold-browed fish,That sacred fish ? "See Athen., VII. 20.2 " Theocritus gives nature, not behind the footlights, but beneath thetruthful blaze of Sicily's sunlit sky. For it was here that the first vibrationsof this spontaneous note were heard in their original purity, before art coulddistort them with allegory, or echo weaken them with imitation. This is allthe more remarkable from the contrast which it offers to what Kingsley callsthe ' artificial jingle of the Alexandrian ' school. Simphcity, honesty, truth,and beauty recommend Theocritus as a genuine artist. His imitators, ascompared with their^model, were like'Those many jackdaw-rhymers, who with vainChattering contend against the Chian Bard,'as he himself describes (Id., VII. 47) Homer's imitators." Against this verdictby H. Snow on the Alexandrians must be set the more truthful appreciation oftheir work by Mackail, op. cii., pp. 178-207, especially p. 184: "They arecalled artificial poets, as though all poetry were not artificial,and the greatestpoetry were not the poetry of the most consummate artifice."3 Anth. Pal., VI. 4; VII. 295 ; VII. 504. V^ile the last two in the MS.are headed AewpiSov Tapaprivov, and rod avrov, the first is simply AfwviSov.Hence this has sometimes been thought to be by Leonidas of Alexandria, butProfessor Mackail informs me that all three epigrams are by the Tarentine,both by evidence of style, and because all three come in groups of epigramstaken from the Anthology of Meleager.