APPLES AND ACORNS: ADDRESSING A PROBLEM IN THEOCRITUS 5.92-95.

Theocritus' Idyll 5 details an amoebaean singing contest between two herdsmen in which the goatherd, Comatas, sings an opening couplet and the shepherd, Lacon, replies with a second. This paper considers one exchange between the competitors which has been the cause of particular frustration to readers of the poem due to an obscure, and likely obscene, pastoral analogy offered by Lacon at lines 94-95. After a consideration of evidence drawn from the text, Theocritean scholia and Greek lyric and elegiac poetry, an interpretation of the exchange is offered which may provide some clarity to a much-cited problem in Idyll 5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]