Idyll XV

Idyll XV, also called "The Women at the Adonis-Festival" in English, is a mime by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus.^[1] This idyll describes the visit paid by two Syracusan women residing in Alexandria, to the festival of the resurrection of Adonis.^[2]

Summary

The scene of this mime is Alexandria, and the chief characters are two fellow-countrywomen of the author. Gorgo, paying a morning call, finds Praxinoa, with her two-year-old child, superintending the

The festival is given by Arsinoë, wife and sister of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and according to Andrew Lang the poem cannot have been written earlier than his marriage, in c. 266 BC.^[2] Theocritus is believed to have had a model for this idyll in the Isthmiazusae of Sophron, an older poet.^[2] In the Isthmiazusae two ladies described the spectacle of the Isthmian games.^[2]

Appraisal

According to Lang, "Nothing can be more gay and natural than the chatter of the women, which has changed no more in two thousand years than the song of birds."^[2] Michael Lambert, contrariwise, thinks the "prattling" of these Syracusan "tourists" was intended as light satire.^[4]

See also

• Sanctuary of Arsinoe Aphrodite at Cape Zephyrion

References

Sources

• Lambert, Michael (2001). "Gender and Religion in Theocritus, 'Idyll' 15: Prattling Tourists at the 'Adonia'". Acta Classica. 44: 87–103.
• Whitehorne, John (1995). "Women's Work in Theocritus, Idyll 15". Hermes. 123 (1): 63–75.

Attribution: This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

• Edmonds, J. M., ed. (1919). The Greek Bucolic Poets (3rd ed.). William Heinemann. pp. 175–95.
• Lang, Andrew, ed. (1880). Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. London: Macmillan and Co. pp. 72–80.

Further reading

• Bevan, E. R. (1927). The House of Ptolemy: A History of Hellenistic Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty. London: Methuen. pp. 60–5, 70.
• Cholmeley, R. J., ed. (1919). The Idylls of Theocritus (2nd ed.). London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. pp. 293–302.
• Foster, J. Andrew (2006). "Arsinoe II as Epic Queen: Encomiastic Allusion in Theocritus, Idyll 15". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 136 (1): 133–48.
• Higham, T. F.; Bowra, C. M. (eds.). The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 562–7, 743–4.

External links

•  Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Συρακούσιαι ή Αδωνιάζουσαι
• Media related to Idyll XV at Wikimedia Commons
• "Theocritus, Idylls, Συρακούσιαι ἢ Αδωνιάζουσαι". Perseus Digital Library.