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Theocritus

American  
[thee-ok-ri-tuhs] / θiˈɒk rɪ təs /

noun

  1. flourished c270 b.c., Greek poet.


Theocritus British  
/ θɪˈɒkrɪtəs, θɪˌɒkrɪˈtiːən /

noun

  1. ?310–?250 bc , Greek poet, born in Syracuse. He wrote the first pastoral poems in Greek literature and was closely imitated by Virgil

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

  • Theocritan adjective
  • Theocritean adjective

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Aldo published the Greek poet Theocritus’s “Idylls” and his 1501 edition of Virgil opened with the “Eclogues.”

From New York Times

It marks his emergence, relatively late in life, as a translator, containing work by various Greek and Latin authors: Theocritus, Lucretius, Horace, Ovid among them.

From The Guardian

In the same year he edited Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, having edited Hesiod in 1603.

From Project Gutenberg

Artistic pleasure, Art and literature. grown less delicate, required the stimulus of a more sensational effect or a more striking realism, as we may see by the Pergamene and Rhodian schools of sculpture, by the bas-reliefs with the genre subjects drawn from the life of the countryside, or, in literature by the sort of historical writing which became popular with Cleitarchus and Duris, by the studied emotional or rhetorical point of Callimachus, and by the portrayal of country life in Theocritus.

From Project Gutenberg

The rule of “Ne quid nimis” has been sufficiently respected to forbid tedious reiteration of types of the same style, so that in Greek verse into English only three examples of Theocritus occur, one a sweet piece of idyllic description, a second illustrative of the mimes of Sophron, a third breathing the Alexandrian tone of poetic stimulus to the halting liberality of the would-be literary Ptolemies.

From Project Gutenberg