Complete Works of Theocritus Quotes

“Several recent writers on the subject have laid down that every translation of Greek poetry, especially bucolic poetry, must be in rhyme of some sort. But they have seldom stated, and it is hard to see, why. There is no rhyme in the original, and primâ facie should be none in the translation.”
― Theocritus, Complete Works of Theocritus

“Pope’s couplet again may possibly best convey the pomposity of some Idylls and the point of others. And there may be divers considerations of this kind. But, speaking generally, where the translator has not to intimate stanzas — where he has on the contrary to intimate that there are none — rhyme seems at first sight an intrusion and a suggestio falsi.”
― Theocritus, Complete Works of Theocritus

“still I cannot see why, in making a version of (say) Theocritus, one should not use by way of preference those names by which he invariably called them, and which are characteristic of him: why, in turning a Greek author into English, we should begin by turning all the proper names into Latin.”
― Theocritus, Complete Works of Theocritus