This book focuses on the hymns, mimes and erotic poems of the Greek poet Theocritus, and examines how Theocritus uses the traditions of earlier Greek poetry to recreate past forms in a way that exploits the new conditions under which poetry was written in the third century BC. Recent papyri have greatly increased our understanding of how Theocritus read archaic poetry, and these new discoveries are fully drawn on in a set of readings that will change the way we look at Hellenistic poetry.