Idyll V

Idyll V, sometimes called Αιπολικόν και Ποιμενικόν ('The Goatherd and the Shepherd'), is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus. This Idyll begins with a ribald debate between two hirelings, who, at last, compete with each other in a match of pastoral song. The scene is in Southern Italy.

Summary

The scene of this shepherd-poem is laid in the wooded pastures near the mouth of the river Crathis in the district of Sybaris and Thurii in Southern Italy. The foreground is the shore of a lagoon near which stand effigies of the Nymphs who preside over it, and there is close by a rustic statue of Pan of the seaside. The characters are a goatherd named Comatas and a young shepherd named Lacon who are watching their flocks. Having seated themselves some little distance apart, they proceed to converse in no very friendly spirit, and the talk gradually leads to a contest of song with a woodcutter named Morson for the judge and a lamb and a goat for the stakes. The contest is a spirited, not to say a bitter, one, and consists of a series of alternate couplets, the elder man first singing his couplet and the younger than trying to better him at the same theme. After fourteen pairs of couplets, Morson breaks in before Lacon has replied and awards his lamb to Comatas.

Analysis

According to J. M. Edmonds, "The themes Comatas chooses are various, but the dominant note, as often in Theocritus, is love.