Was Theocritus A Botanist?

Alice Lindsell

doi:10.1017/S0017383500004563

Was Theocritus A Botanist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009

Alice Lindsell

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Theocritus sings of eighty-seven different trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, and ferns. Practically all the references are in the Pastoral Idylls: that is to say, that in the small compass of about 1,200 lines he mentions nearly twice as many plants as Homer does in the whole Iliad and Odyssey. Many of these plants are mentioned several times, and some many times, so the number is impressively great, and implies a great interest: an interest not shown by any other Greek poet. The selection, too, is unprecedented. The Comic Poets may write of things to eat (kitchen-garden produce); the Tragic and Lyric poets, of ceremonial adjuncts; garlands for gods, athletes, feasters (nursery-garden produce). Theocritus' plants are none of these: they are the plants of the mountains, foot-hills, meadows, and shores of the place in which he lived:

αίγίπυρος καί κνύЗα καί εύώλης μελίτεια.

He Writes of plants for their own sakes, and it is this that makes his attitude modern and interesting. Fourteen hundred years before him Minoan painters looked at plants with his eyes: except for them he is unique in Greek history.

Type: Research Article
Information: Greece & Rome , Volume 6 , Issue 17 , February 1937 , pp. 78 - 93

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017383500004563 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Classical Association 1937

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^{page 78 note 1} This paper was written in August 1935, before the delivery of Professor Foster's paper on ‘Trees and Plants in Homer’.

^{page 78 note 2} Hist. Plant, i. 14. 4.Google Scholar

^{page 78 note 3} Companion to Greek Studies, Flora.

^{page 79 note 1} Sir Hort, Arthur, Theophr. Hist. Plant., introduction, p. xx.Google Scholar

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^{page 80 note 1} Ecl. iv. 2.Google Scholar

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^{page 80 note 3} xi. 57.

^{page 80 note 4} vii. 68.

^{page 80 note 5} xiii. 42.

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^{page 81 note 1} xxiv. 45.

^{page 81 note 2} xviii. 43.

^{page 81 note 3} Line 41.

^{page 81 note 4} Line 23.

^{page 81 note 5} iii. 14. 8.

^{page 81 note 6} iv. 23.

^{page 82 note 1} H.P. iii. 3. 1.Google Scholar

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^{page 82 note 3} v. 97.

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^{page 82 note 5} v. 95.

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^{page 83 note 1} Line 28.

^{page 83 note 2} de Halacsy, E., Conspectus Florae Graecae, Leipzig, 1901–1904.Google Scholar

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^{page 85 note 1} x. 4.

^{page 85 note 2} H.P. vi. 4. 10.Google Scholar

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^{page 86 note 1} H.P. iv. 5, 6.Google Scholar

^{page 86 note 2} ‘Italy’ means S. Italy—as elsewhere in Theophrastus.

^{page 86 note 3} Ath. 597 A.

^{page 86 note 4} H.P. iv. 5. 2Google Scholar; cp. Strabo, x. 4. 4.

^{page 87 note 1} Cp. Plut, , de Iside, 357 A.Google Scholar

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^{page 87 note 6} vii. 34.

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^{page 88 note 7} x. 55.

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^{page 89 note 4} x. 30.

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^{page 90 note 1} vii. 63.

^{page 90 note 2} Ecl. ii. 48.Google Scholar

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