Idyll I, sometimes called Θύρσις ('Thyrsis'), is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poetTheocritus which takes the form of a dialogue between two rustics in a pastoral setting.[1] Thyrsis meets a goatherd in a shady place beside a spring, and at his invitation sings the story of Daphnis.[2] This ideal hero of Greek pastoral song had won for his bride the fairest of the Nymphs.[2] Confident in the strength of his passion, he boasted that Love could never subdue him to a new affection.[2] Love avenged himself by making Daphnis desire a strange maiden, but to this temptation he never yielded, and so died a constant lover.[2] The song tells how the cattle and the wild things of the wood bewailed him, how Hermes and Priapus gave him counsel in vain, and how with his last breath he retorted the taunts ofAphrodite.[2]
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A shepherd and a goatherd meet in the pastures one noontide and compliment each other upon their piping.[1] The shepherd, Thyrsis by name, is persuaded by the other—for a cup which he describes but does not at first show—to sing himThe Affliction of Daphnis, a ballad which tells how the legendary cowherd, friend not only of Nymph and Muse, but of all the wild creatures, having vowed to his first love that she should be his last, pined and died for the love of another.[1]
The song is divided into three parts marked by changes in therefrain.[1] The first part, after a complaint to the Nymphs of their neglect, tells how the herds and the herdsmen gathered about the dying man, and Hermes his father, andPriapus the country-god of fertility whom he had flouted, came and spoke and got no answer.[1] In the second part, the slightedLove-Goddess comes, and gently upbraids him, whereat he breaks silence with a threat of vengeance after death.[1] He then makes a speech,[a] and the speech is continued with a farewell to the wild creatures, and to the wells and rivers ofSyracuse.[4] In the third part he bequeaths his pipe toPan, ends his dying speech with an address to all Nature, and is overwhelmed at last in theriver of Death.[4] Thyrsis comes fromSicily, which is the scene of his song.[4]
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Theecphrasis of the cup inspired drawings byJohn Flaxman from which four silver-gilt Neoclassical vases were produced. The first was commissioned byQueen Charlotte as a gift for her son thePrince Regent in 1812.[5]
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Attribution:
This article incorporates text from these sources, which are in thepublic domain.
GreekWikisource has original text related to this article:Θύρσις
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