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Theocritus

3 works in the library, 0 with an English translation.

Greek poet, born at Syracuse. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
4th–3rd c. BC
Kinds of writing
Lyric poetry (2)
Dialect
Doric
Analysed
25,380 words

The 3 works

The road of the text

Follow the text from Theocritus's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Debated among scholars The evidence allows more than one reading, and specialists disagree. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Copies
  • Readers
  • Print and editions
  1. c. 300 BCThe authorBorn at Syracuse, about 300 BC or a little earlier2,3 Debated among scholars
  2. about 30 years laterc. 275 BCThe authorIdyll 16 asks Hiero II of Syracuse for patronage (usually dated about 275 BC)2,3 Debated among scholars
  3. about 3 years laterc. 272 BCThe authorIdyll 17 praises Ptolemy II and Arsinoe, in Alexandria (between about 275 and 270 BC)2,3 Debated among scholars
  4. about 200 years laterc. 70 BCCopiesArtemidorus gathers the country poets into one book; his son Theon writes the first commentary3,6 Debated among scholars
  5. about 30 years later40 BCReadersVirgil's fourth Eclogue, dated by a consulship of 40 BC: his pastoral book takes Theocritus as its model21
  6. about 190 years laterc. AD 150CopiesA papyrus at Oxyrhynchus with lines of Idyll 13 (P.Oxy. 694), second century AD2,6
  7. about 40 years laterc. AD 190CopiesP.Oxy. 2064, a roll of the late second century AD, the fullest early witness to a book of Theocritus25
  8. about 1,000 years laterc. 1185CopiesThe Ambrosian manuscript (K), now redated to the 1180s (Wilamowitz: thirteenth century)6,27,28 Debated among scholars
  9. about 300 years laterc. 1481Print and editionsFirst printed edition, Milan, undated (Cholmeley: 1481; a modern list: about 1482), with Idylls 1–18 only3,29 Debated among scholars
  10. about 14 years later1495Print and editionsThe Aldine edition at Venice (1495–96) prints Idylls 1–233,29
  11. 21 years later1516Print and editionsCallierges at Rome prints the ancient notes (scholia) with the poems6,29
  12. 50 years later1566Print and editionsStephanus' edition sets the order of the poems still used today3
  13. about 340 years later1901Print and editionsCholmeley's edition, the Greek text in the reader (new edition 1919)3,11
  14. 4 years later1905Print and editionsWilamowitz's Oxford text, Bucolici Graeci6
  15. 7 years later1912Print and editionsJ. M. Edmonds's Loeb translation, The Greek Bucolic Poets4
  16. 18 years later1930Print and editionsHunt and Johnson publish Two Theocritus Papyri, among them P.Oxy. 206424,25
  17. 20 years later1950Print and editionsA. S. F. Gow's Theocritus, text, translation and commentary (second edition 1952)14,30
  18. 43 years later1993Print and editionsCarlo Gallavotti's third edition of the bucolic poets (Rome)31
  19. 22 years later2015Print and editionsNeil Hopkinson's Loeb edition and translation replaces Edmonds's1

Life and work

Checked against sources · 7 October 2026

Theocritus was a Greek poet of the early third century BC, and the first poet of pastoral: the herdsmen who sing to one another in the shade, in the kind of poetry later called pastoral, begin with him.1,2 He came from Syracuse in Sicily, was born about 300 BC or a little earlier (Cholmeley put it at 310–308), and spent part of his life on the island of Cos in the Aegean and part at the court of King Ptolemy II in Alexandria.1,2,3 The date of his death is unknown.2

What little we know

Debated among scholars Almost nothing about his life comes from outside his own poems: a short notice in the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopaedia, an anonymous life copied before the poems in many manuscripts, and a few notes by ancient commentators. R. J. Cholmeley, whose edition is the Greek text in the reader, judged that these notices are “to a large extent merely inferences from the poet's own works”, and that they do not agree with one another.3 J. M. Edmonds, his Loeb translator of 1912, listed what the poems show and then admitted: “The rest—and that means much of the following account—is conjecture.”4

The Suda names his parents as Praxagoras and Philinna, “though others [say], of Simmichas”, calls him a Syracusan, and adds that some said he came from Cos and moved to Syracuse.5 The Suda's entry begins with a different Theocritus, an orator from the island of Chios,5 and an epigram that ancient editions carried with the poems, not written by Theocritus himself according to Cholmeley, makes the poet say: “The Chian is someone else; I, Theocritus, who wrote these poems, am one of the many people of Syracuse, son of Praxagoras and famous Philinna” (our translation).3,6 His own poems point to Sicily too: in Idyll 11 the one-eyed giant Polyphemus is «ὁ Κύκλωψ ὁ παρʼ ἁμῖν», “the Cyclops who lived among us” (our translation).2,7

Debated among scholars Idyll 7, the Harvest Feast, is set on Cos.2,3 Its narrator, whom his friends call Simichidas,2,8 says modestly that he does not yet win against the best: «οὔτε τὸν ἐσθλὸν Σικελίδαν νίκημι τὸν ἐκ Σάμω οὔτε Φιλητᾶν ἀείδων», “in singing I beat neither the good Sicelidas from Samos nor Philitas” (our translation).9 Philitas was the famous poet and scholar of Cos, and ancient commentators took Sicelidas to be the poet Asclepiades of Samos.2,3 The ancient life makes Theocritus a pupil of both; Cholmeley thought this seemed “merely an inference” from this very passage, though he found some support for it in the surviving lines of Philitas.3

Two poems give the only dates. Idyll 16 asks Hiero II, the new leader of Syracuse, to become the poet's patron; Idyll 17 praises Ptolemy II and his queen Arsinoe, who was also his sister.2,3 By the usual reckoning both belong between about 275 and 270 BC, though nineteenth-century scholars argued for later dates for Idyll 16.2,3 In Idyll 14 a man unlucky in love is told that Ptolemy is the best of paymasters, and advised to go and serve him as a soldier: «ᾇ τάχος εἰς Αἴγυπτον», “quick, off to Egypt!” (our translation).2,10

What survives

Under his name we have a book of poems called Idylls, a set of epigrams, and a riddle-poem called the Syrinx, and the reader has all three.11,12,13 The reader's edition counts thirty Idylls; Gow's counts thirty-one.11,14 The title comes from the Greek eidyllion, a diminutive of the word for “form”, so “little forms”; LSJ defines it as a “short, highly wrought descriptive poem, mostly on pastoral subjects”, citing it from the ancient notes on Theocritus.1,15

The book is much wider than the fame of its country poems suggests. There are mimes, little scenes of town life: in Idyll 2 Simaetha, deserted by her lover, tells her story to the moon, and in Idyll 15 two Syracusan housewives push through the crowds to the palace of King Ptolemy to see the festival of Adonis.2,16 There are poems of praise and hymns (16, 17, 22), short tales of heroes such as Hylas (13) and the infant Heracles (24), and poems in the Aeolic dialect and metre (28, 29 and 30, the last found only in 1864, in one late manuscript); Idyll 28 went with the gift of a distaff (a spinning stick) to the wife of his friend Nicias, a doctor of Miletus.2,3

Debated among scholars Not all of it is his. Ancient editors put other country poets into the same books, and later poems came down under his name.3,6 Scholars disagree over which. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which Wikipedia still follows, counted Idylls 19, 20, 21, 23 and 25 as spurious;2 Cholmeley rejected 19, 20, 21, 23 and 27;3 Wilamowitz, in his Oxford text of 1905, moved 19–21, 23 and 25–27 to an appendix and judged 8 and 9 not to be his at all.6 Many of the epigrams under his name are doubtful too.2,6 The Syrinx is a puzzle-poem whose answer is a shepherd's pipe dedicated to Pan by Theocritus. A. S. F. Gow argued that it cannot be his, because the pipes of Theocritus' day had reeds of equal length; Edmonds reported the argument, answered it, and kept the poem as Theocritus'.4,13

Songs of herdsmen

The ancient name for this poetry was bucolic, from a Greek verb meaning “to tend cattle”, and LSJ's only example of the word for a “pastoral poet” comes from Idyll 5.15

Idyll 1 sets the pattern. A shepherd, Thyrsis, and a goatherd meet in the pastures at noon. For the gift of a cup, Thyrsis sings how the legendary herdsman Daphnis, stricken by love, wasted away and died, while the gods came one by one to ask what ailed him.2,4 Other poems are singing contests, in which the second singer takes the theme of the first and answers it with a variation of his own.2 The landscape probably reflects Cos, and Theocritus may have drawn on real songs of Sicilian shepherds.17 What made the new form was a mixture: the hexameter, the metre of epic and of the grandest Greek poetry, in the mouths of goatherds speaking the Doric of Sicily.1,17

His Doric Greek

Theocritus wrote most of his poems in Doric, the dialect of his native Sicily, not in the Attic Greek of Athens that learners usually meet first.1,5 The first lines of Idyll 1 show it: «Ἁδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα καὶ ἁ πίτυς αἰπόλε τήνα, ἃ ποτὶ ταῖς παγαῖσι μελίσδεται, ἁδὺ δὲ καὶ τὺ συρίσδες», “Sweet is the whispering of that pine, goatherd, the one that makes its music by the springs; and sweet, too, is your piping” (our translation).18 Where an Athenian would say ἡδύ for “sweet”, ἐκείνη for “that”, πρός for “by” and πηγή for “spring”, the goatherd hears ἁδύ, τήνα, ποτί and παγά: LSJ gives each as the Doric form, and quotes this very line for ψιθύρισμα, “any low whispering noise, as of trees rustling”.15

Theocritus could even make a joke of it. In Idyll 15 a man in the festival crowd loses patience with the two Syracusan women: «παύσασθʼ ὦ δύστανοι, ἀνάνυτα κωτίλλοισαι τρυγόνες. ἐκκναισεῦντι πλατειάσδοισαι ἅπαντα», “Stop it, you poor things, with your endless chatter, turtle-doves! They'll wear everything out with their broad vowels” (our translation). LSJ explains the verb as “pronounce broadly, like the Dorians”.15,19 The answer comes straight back: «Συρακοσίαις ἐπιτάσσεις;», “Is it Syracusan women you are giving orders to?”, and then «Πελοποννασιστὶ λαλεῦμες· δωρίσδεν δʼ ἔξεστι δοκῶ τοῖς Δωριέεσσι», “We talk Peloponnesian; Dorians may speak Doric, I should think” (our translation).15,19

Reading him

He is not easy. Cholmeley called his Greek “naturally difficult”, made harder by his place “at the beginning of a new epoch”.3 But the voices are vivid. Idyll 11 turns the monster of Homer's Odyssey into a lovesick giant who finds comfort in song.2 It opens with advice to his friend Nicias, a doctor: «οὐδὲν πὸτ τὸν ἔρωτα πεφύκει φάρμακον ἄλλο», “there is no other medicine for love” than the Muses (our translation).7 At the end the giant scolds himself: «ὦ Κύκλωψ Κύκλωψ, πᾷ τὰς φρένας ἐκπεπότασαι;», “Cyclops, Cyclops, where have your wits flown off to?” (our translation).20

Why he matters

Debated among scholars Ancient readers made him a classic. In the first century BC, probably about 70 BC, the scholar Artemidorus gathered the country poets into one book, with a little poem of welcome: “The country Muses, once scattered, are now all together, in one fold, in one flock” (our translation).3,15 His son Theon wrote the first commentary. Wilamowitz thought that this edition won Theocritus a fame greater than he had in his own lifetime, “above all through Virgil” (our translation).3,6

Virgil's Eclogues, ten pastoral poems in Latin from the troubled years around 40 BC, take Theocritus as their model: Eclogue 2 adapts Idyll 11, Eclogue 3 is mostly based on Idyll 5, and Eclogue 7 on the doubtful Idyll 8.21 Virgil says so himself at the start of his sixth: his Muse, Thalia, Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere uersu, “first deigned to play in Syracusan verse” (our translation).22 The pastoral lived on through antiquity and into the modern world,1 from Edmund Spenser to Alexander Pope's Pastorals (1709) and Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis (1867), which carries the name of the singer of Idyll 1.17,18

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

Ancient editions. The poems were first gathered with those of other country poets by Artemidorus, a scholar of the first century BC: Cholmeley puts him about 70 BC, Wikipedia's account in the time of Sulla.2,3 His little poem on the collection survives in the Greek Anthology; LSJ explains its word “scattered” as “not collected into a volume”.15 His son Theon wrote the first commentary, and later editors followed.3,6 Wilamowitz put the consequence bluntly: nobis necessario Theocritus is est quem Artemidorus edidit, “for us, necessarily, Theocritus is the one whom Artemidorus edited” (our translation).6 Some poems were lost on the way. The Suda lists works that some ascribed to him, among them Daughters of Proetus, Hopes, hymns, funeral songs, elegies and iambics.5 Athenaeus quotes a few lines from one lost poem: “Theocritus the Syracusan, in his poem entitled Berenice, calls the fish which is called leucus the sacred fish”.23 The reader's file of epigrams keeps that fragment, and also the Megara, a poem that Cholmeley printed with Theocritus and that others give to Moschus.1,3,12

Papyri. In 1905 the only papyrus Wilamowitz could use was a scrap with a few words of Idyll 13, found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and copied in the second century AD; he knew of other scraps, but their owners kept them hidden.2,6 In 1930 A. S. Hunt and J. Johnson published Two Theocritus Papyri.24 One was P.Oxy. 2064, a roll of the late second century AD. Very little of it is intact, but when Bulloch wrote in 1987 it was still the most important witness before the fifth century, and more of the same roll had been published in 1983.25 The other, the Antinoë Theocritus, is a papyrus book (a codex, with pages) of late antiquity; its notes in the margins are many but patchy, and fall short of the standard of the ancient commentary preserved in the manuscripts.26

Manuscripts. After late antiquity, Wilamowitz wrote, the study of the country poets fell silent until the days of the Byzantine scholars Tzetzes and Eustathius; from the twelfth century on, Byzantine scholars hunted out, copied and corrected the poems.6 No manuscript is older than the twelfth century, most are of the fourteenth and fifteenth, and the fuller ones are compilations from scattered sources.3 Scholars sort them into three families, the Ambrosian, the Vatican and the Laurentian.25 The single most valuable copy is K, a book in Milan (Ambrosianus C 222 inf.) that holds Idylls 1–17, 29 and the epigrams, with old notes in the margins.6,27,34 Wilamowitz judged that K alone weighs as much as all the others together, but that no editor may follow it alone.6 He dated it to the thirteenth century; Carlo Mazzucchi has since redated the whole book, which also holds Pindar, to the 1180s.6,28 For the first twelve poems Wilamowitz gave the next place to M (Vaticanus 915, thirteenth century); the two Florentine manuscripts, Laurentianus 32.37 and 32.16, are of the fourteenth century.6

Print. The first printed Theocritus appeared at Milan without a date (Cholmeley puts it in 1481, a modern list about 1482), and had only Idylls 1–18.3,29 Aldus Manutius printed Idylls 1–23 at Venice in 1495–96.3,29 In 1516 Zacharias Callierges at Rome added the ancient scholia; his edition and the Florentine one of Junta both drew, through the scholar Marcus Musurus, on a manuscript from Padua that is now lost.3,6,29 The order in which the poems are numbered today goes back only to the editions of Stephanus (1566 and 1579).3 In the nineteenth century H. L. Ahrens did the work on which later editors built: most of the small corrections of spelling and dialect in Cholmeley's text go back to him, and Wilamowitz said that whatever praise his Oxford text of 1905 deserved was almost all owed to Ahrens.3,6 The great modern editions are A. S. F. Gow's text, translation and commentary (1950; second edition 1952), his Oxford text of the bucolic poets (1952), and Carlo Gallavotti's edition, in its third form in 1993.13,14,30,31

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

Which order? The manuscripts vary enormously in which poems they contain and in what order.3 The numbering in modern texts follows the Vatican family, and Bulloch notes that it “still has no ancient support”: P.Oxy. 2064, the earliest roll with much evidence for the order, is closest, apart from the place of Idyll 5, to the Laurentian family.25 Cholmeley warned readers not to be misled by this “now traditional order”, which goes back only to Stephanus, and Wilamowitz rearranged the poems in his edition.3,6

How much Doric? The manuscripts do not agree on the dialect forms, and editors have to choose. Wilamowitz complained that one family often thrusts in Doric forms “with brazen interpolation” (our translation). He himself changed nothing in the dialect against the agreement of the manuscripts without telling the reader, and in the doubtful poems of his appendix he even kept forms he knew to be false where he despaired of finding the truth.6 Cholmeley, to save space, did not record most of his small corrections of spelling and dialect, the great majority of which go back to Ahrens.3

Debated among scholars Is it Theocritus? Idyll 26, on the death of Pentheus, was attacked by Wilamowitz for the crudeness of its language, and he put it in his appendix; the 1911 Britannica defended it, noting that the Byzantine scholar Eustathius quotes it as Theocritus', and Cholmeley counted it genuine.2,3,6 Idylls 8 and 9 divide scholars in the same way.2,6

A word about his father. The ancient note on Idyll 7.21 explains the name Simichidas, and one word in it, patriou, is corrupt. Editors have proposed words meaning “step-father” (Hauler), “adoptive father” (Meineke) and “fellow-countryman” (Hiller).3,15 On the first reading a whole theory was built, that his widowed mother married a Coan; Cholmeley argued that the note is not about the poet at all.3

A doctor's classmate. The ancient introduction to Idyll 11 says that Theocritus addresses Nicias, a doctor from Miletus, “who was a fellow-student of Erasistratus” (our translation), the famous physician. Edmonds altered a few words so that Theocritus himself, a doctor too, becomes Nicias' fellow-student under Erasistratus, arguing that the words as they stand are unintelligible; on this he based his guess that Theocritus studied medicine.3,4

Books to read it in

  • R. J. Cholmeley, The Idylls of Theocritus (London: George Bell, 1901; new edition, revised and augmented, 1919).3,11 The Greek text of the Idylls and Epigrams in the reader, with a long English introduction and notes.
  • A. S. F. Gow, Bucolici Graeci (Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).13 The Greek text of Theocritus, Moschus and Bion; the reader's Syrinx is taken from it.
  • A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus, 2 vols (Cambridge University Press, 1950; second edition 1952).14,30 Greek text, English translation and full commentary.
  • C. Gallavotti, Theocritus quique feruntur Bucolici Graeci, 3rd edition (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1993).31 A critical edition of the Greek text.
  • R. Hunter, Theocritus: A Selection. Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13 (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, Cambridge University Press, 1999).32 Greek text with an English commentary on eight poems, most of them country poems, with the Hylas.
  • Theocritus, Idylls, translated by Anthony Verity, with an introduction and notes by Richard Hunter (Oxford University Press, 2002).33 An English translation.
  • N. Hopkinson, Theocritus, Moschus, Bion (Loeb Classical Library 28, Harvard University Press, 2015).1 Greek text with facing English translation, with the fragments and the epigrams.
  • J. M. Edmonds, The Greek Bucolic Poets (Loeb Classical Library, 1912; the copy read is the printing of 1916, London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam).4 The older Loeb, free to read online.

Where this comes from

Sources (34)
  1. Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogue record of Theocritus, Moschus, Bion, ed. and tr. Neil Hopkinson (Loeb Classical Library 28, Harvard University Press, 2015), with its contents and the jacket text
  2. Wikipedia, Theocritus (life, the Suda's list of works, the kinds of poem, the dating of Idylls 16 and 17, the spurious poems, the Aeolic poems, P.Oxy. 694; much of it follows A. C. Clark's article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911)
  3. R. J. Cholmeley, The Idylls of Theocritus, new edition (London: G. Bell, 1919; first published 1901), Internet Archive: preface, introduction (life, authenticity, manuscripts and early editions) and addenda
  4. J. M. Edmonds, The Greek Bucolic Poets (Loeb Classical Library; preface dated 8 October 1912), Internet Archive copy of the printing of 1916 (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam): introduction, the argument of Idyll 1, the note on the Syrinx
  5. Suda On Line, theta 166, Theokritos, translated by Malcolm Heath
  6. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Bucolici Graeci (Oxford Classical Texts, 1905), Internet Archive: the Latin preface, the list of poems and the list of manuscripts
  7. Theocritus, Idyll 11.1–8, in the reader
  8. Theocritus, Idyll 7.21, in the reader
  9. Theocritus, Idyll 7.39–41, in the reader
  10. Theocritus, Idyll 14.58–68, in the reader
  11. The reader's Idylls (poems 1–30) and Epigrams: Perseus's copy of Cholmeley's edition (London: George Bell and Sons, 1901–1919), as the file header says
  12. The reader's Epigrams, from the same edition (24 numbered pieces, the last two being the Berenice fragment and the Megara)
  13. Theocritus, Syrinx, in the reader (Open Greek and Latin's copy of Gow's Bucolici Graeci, Oxford, 1952 printing, as the file header says)
  14. Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogue record of Theocritus, edited with a translation and commentary by A. S. F. Gow, 2nd edition, 2 vols (Cambridge: University Press, 1952)
  15. Liddell–Scott–Jones, Greek–English Lexicon: the entries ἡδύς, τῆνος, ποτί, πηγή, μελίζω, συρίζω, ψιθύρισμα, εἰδύλλιον, βουκολέω, βουκολικός, βουκολιαστής, πλατειάζω, ἐκκναίω, Δωρίζω, μάνδρα and σποράς (read in the site's copy; also on the Perseus Digital Library)
  16. Theocritus, Idyll 15.22–24, in the reader (to King Ptolemy's palace to see the Adonis)
  17. Wikipedia, Pastoral (Theocritus' Doric and the epic hexameter; Cos; Bion and Moschus; Spenser, Pope, Arnold)
  18. Theocritus, Idyll 1.1–3, in the reader
  19. Theocritus, Idyll 15.87–95, in the reader
  20. Theocritus, Idyll 11.72, in the reader
  21. Wikipedia, Eclogues (Virgil's model in Theocritus; Eclogues 2, 3 and 7; Eclogue 4 dated to 40 BC)
  22. The Latin Library, Virgil, Eclogue 6
  23. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists 7.20 (Kaibel's chapter numbering; 7.284a), in the reader, with C. D. Yonge's translation
  24. A. S. F. Gow, review of Two Theocritus Papyri, ed. A. S. Hunt and J. Johnson (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1930), The Classical Review 44.6 (1930) 228–230, on Cambridge Core
  25. A. W. Bulloch, “An Early Theocritus Book (P. Oxy. 2064 + 3548): Placing Fragments”, The Classical Quarterly 37.2 (1987) 505–512: the opening and footnote 1, on Cambridge Core
  26. Kathleen McNamee, “Missing Links in the Development of Scholia”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 36.4 (1995) 399–414 (note 7 and the table, on the Antinoë Theocritus)
  27. ParaText (University of Pavia), Milano, Ambr. C 222 inf., f. 350r: Theocritus 9.18–36 and 10.1–22 with scholia
  28. Almut Fries, “For Use in Schools: Prosodical Marks in Two Pre-Palaeologan Manuscripts of Pindar”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017) 745–770 (Mazzucchi's redating of Ambr. C 222 inf.)
  29. Wikipedia, List of editiones principes in Greek (Theocritus: Milan, undated, c. 1482, ed. Bonus Accursius, Idylls 1–18; Aldine, 1495–1496, Idylls 1–23; Callierges, Rome, 1516, with the scholia)
  30. Internet Archive, library record of A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus, volume 1 (1950)
  31. The Classical Review 46.1 (1996) 154–155, F. Williams's notice of C. Gallavotti (ed.), Theocritus quique feruntur Bucolici Graeci, 3rd edition (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1993)
  32. Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogue record of Theocritus, A Selection: Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13, ed. R. Hunter (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, Cambridge University Press, 1999)
  33. Bibliothèque nationale de France, catalogue record of Theocritus, Idylls, translated by Anthony Verity, with an introduction and explanatory notes by Richard Hunter (Oxford University Press, 2002)
  34. ParaText (University of Pavia), Elisa Bianchi, “Ambr. C 222 inf.: Theocritus’ poems with scholia” (the manuscript K, its contents and its family)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 7 October 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

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