Theocritus

c. 300–260 BCE

Theocritus of Syracuse, who worked in Sicily, Cos and Alexandria, invented pastoral poetry. His Idylls bring herdsmen singing in the Sicilian hills, the love-sick Cyclops, the women of Syracuse at the festival of Adonis, and small epics on Heracles and the Dioscuri into polished Doric hexameters; Virgil's Eclogues and the whole pastoral tradition descend from him.