Idyll VII

Idyll VII, also called θαλύσια ('Harvest Home'), is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus.

[1][2] The dramatic persona, a poet, making his way through the noonday heat, with two friends, to a harvest feast, meets the goatherd, Lycidas.

[3] After a courteous parting from Lycidas, the poet and his two friends repair to the orchard, where Demeter is being gratified with the first-fruits of harvest and vintaging.

[2] Lycidas' song, which was apparently composed the previous November, is primarily a song of good wishes for the safe passage of his beloved Ageanax to Mitylenè, but the greater part of it is concerned with the merrymaking which will celebrate his safe arrival, and includes an address to the mythical goatherd-poet Comatas, whose story is to be sung by Tityrus on the festive occasion.

[2] The scholia preserve a tradition that Simichidas is Theocritus himself, and according to J. M. Edmonds "there is great probability that we are dealing throughout the poem with real persons.