Syrinx [attributed]
Syracuse (Sicily)
T
Theocritus
Theocritus
c. 300 BCE–c. 260 BCE · Syracuse (Sicily)
Theocritus (c. 300 – c. 260 BCE) was a Greek poet generally regarded as the originator of bucolic (pastoral) poetry. Probably born in Syracuse on Sicily, he studied on the island of Cos (associated with the poet Philetas) and worked for a time in Alexandria under the patronage of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. His surviving corpus, collected as the Idylls, comprises hexameter poems including pastoral dialogues set among herdsmen, mythological narratives, urban mimes, and encomia of rulers; a number of epigrams are also transmitted under his name. The pastoral conventions he established were later taken up by Virgil in the Eclogues and shaped the broader European pastoral tradition.
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Syracuse (Sicily)Magna Graecia
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
About Syracuse (Sicily)
The greatest Greek city of the West—a Corinthian colony that grew into a Mediterranean superpower, fended off both Athens and Carthage, and gave the world the comic poet Epicharmus and the towering genius of Archimedes.
In Syracuse (Sicily) at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Theocritus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Theocritus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.