Festival piety and convivial play: Theocritus' 'Idylls' in their contemporary performance contexts (Greece)

This dissertation promotes a view of Greek literary history positing greater continuity between elite Hellenistic poetry and earlier Greek poetic culture than generally supposed. Contrary to prevailing conceptions of elite Hellenistic poetry as produced essentially for reception by an audience of readers, I argue that Theocritus' Idylls were composed for recitation in public religious festivals and private symposia. While devoting close scrutiny to individual Idylls (and drawing several examples from Callimachus), I base my argument on four larger claims: (1) that we lack credible evidence that Theocritus published his poetry in book form, (2) that Hellenistic festivals and symposia incorporated a broader range of poetic forms than in earlier eras, (3) that the performance hypothesis best explains how Theocritus' Idylls are pitched to various grandees, and (4) that dividing his Idylls into two groups, festival poems and sympotic pieces, allows us to resolve apparent ideological conflicts between individual poems (as between Idylls 13 and 24) by explaining them in terms of distinct social contexts.; Chapter 1 describes how the pose of piety toward Greek cult figures adopted by Theocritus in Idylls 16, 18, 22, 24, and 26 would have been especially appropriate for a Hellenistic festival setting. In particular, Idylls 16 and 24 show how Theocritus' persona as performer greatly augments his praise of potentates (Hieron II of Sicily, Ptolemy Philadelphus) if these pieces were actually performed.; Chapters 2 and 3, focusing on Idylls addressed to Nicias of Miletus, argue that many of Theocritus' other Idylls likely were composed within a personal patronage context. Chapter 2 shows how Idyll 28 casts Theocritus' relationship with Nicias as one of reciprocity-governed patronage. Chapter 3 turns to Theocritus' contribution to that relationship in Idylls 1 and 11.; Chapter 4 posits that Idylls 1--13 and 29--30, a group including Theocritus' poems for Nicias, are convivial poems for entertaining select groups of intimates from the Greek cultural elite, based on the recognizably sympotic elements in these poems and the contrasts between these Idylls and Theocritus' festival poetry.