Idyll I

Idyll I, sometimes called Θύρσις ('Thyrsis'), is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus which takes the form of a dialogue between two rustics in a pastoral setting.

[2] Love avenged himself by making Daphnis desire a strange maiden, but to this temptation he never yielded, and so died a constant lover.

[2] The song tells how the cattle and the wild things of the wood bewailed him, how Hermes and Priapus gave him counsel in vain, and how with his last breath he retorted the taunts of Aphrodite.

[1] The first part, after a complaint to the Nymphs of their neglect, tells how the herds and the herdsmen gathered about the dying man, and Hermes his father, and Priapus the country-god of fertility whom he had flouted, came and spoke and got no answer.

[4] In the third part he bequeaths his pipe to Pan, ends his dying speech with an address to all Nature, and is overwhelmed at last in the river of Death.