Idylls

Unlike Homer, Theocritus did not engage in heroes and warfare. His idylls are limited to a small intimate world, and describe scenes from everyday life. Later imitators include the Roman poets Virgil and Catullus, Italian poets Torquato Tasso, Sannazaro and Leopardi, the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Idylls of the King), and Nietzsche's Idylls from Messina. Goethe called his poem Hermann and Dorothea—which Schiller considered the very climax in Goethe's production—an idyll.