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mission, but in the end it all works out, and he rejoins the heroes. This is Theocritus' way of defending himself against the criticism which Nicias voiced concerning his love life. In Webster's view (1964: 85), this Idyll was intended to console Nicias, but he adds that the last verse contains a hint for Nicias "that however much he indulges in love-affairs he will have to return to his ordinary life as a doctor in the end" (86). 21 Pretagostini elaborates on the idea of a consolatory poem. Nicias, he posits, is grieving over a broken relationship, and Theocritus is trying to console him. Nicias'  has outgrown this phase in his life and has moved on to the role of  in a heterosexual relationship; the Hylas story demonstrates that this is part of the inevitable course of events. This also explains the presence of the three nymphs: he has reached the age at which a young man becomes attractive to women in general.22 |
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Assertions of this type concerning the amorous relationships of Theocritus and Nicias are little more than speculations, and fail to address the essence of the poem itself. An essential element in this Idyll is the fact that the love of Heracles for Hylas is unsuited to his heroic status as a result of which he is confronted with a world which is not his own, and which he cannot enter. And in this confrontation it is he who is the loser. Hylas accompanies the heroes as Heracles'  , although he does not seem to be truly at home among them. And the one time he is separated from his  , he inspires love in that other world as well, and in this way becomes a helpless victim. |
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Heracles' traditional weapons and his unbridled and potentially violent activity are pointless in the service of this unheroic quest. They are useless against the weak, mysterious and yet dangerous beings who, surrounded by the plants of their lush meadow, make their home in the water. The confrontation with this other world gently mocks and undermines his heroism and, to some extent, epic poetry itself. Here I am expressly not thinking of Homer, but rather of the epic poetry imitative of Homer written in Theocritus' own day.23 |
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And now we turn once more to intertextuality and its function in this poem. As we have seen, in this epyllion it is above all the epic genre, and the Homeric epic in particular, to which Theocritus is referring. In some cases it is a question of a single word, a presumably made-up word |
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21 Cf. Walker (1980) 102, who even remarks: "Theocritus was right: Nicias got married and settled down as a doctor in his native Miletus (cf. Idyll XXVIII)". But how do we know about the chronological relation between Idyll 13 and Nicias' settling down as a doctor? |
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22 Mastronarde, although not sharing the views of Petragostini, does think of a kind of rite de passage: "Hylas . . . is pulled into the water, becomes immortal, and will (by implication) graduate to the active role of male lover of females" (1968: 275). But it is, indeed, by implication. Theocritus' final image of him does little to suggest it. |
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23 Cf. Mastronarde (1968) 288: "Theocritus' Idyll 13 questions the value of the traditional conception of the epic and the heroic in contemporary literature". |
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