Of all the writers of the Alexandrian period, the bucolic poets have enjoyed the most popularity. Their pastoral poems were called Idyls, from their pictorial and descriptive character, that is, little pictures of common life, a name for which the later writers have sometimes substituted the term Eclogues, that is, _selections_, which is applicable to any short poem, whether complete and original, or appearing as an extract. The name of Idyls, however, was afterwards applicable to pastoral poems. Theocritus (fl. 272 B.C.) gives his name to the most important of these extant bucolics. He had an original genius for poetry of the highest kind; the absence of the usual affectation of the Alexandrian school, constant appeals to nature, a fine perception of character, and a keen sense of both the beautiful and the ludicrous, indicate the high order of his literary talent, and account for his universal and undiminished popularity. The two other bucolic poets of the Alexandrian school were Bion (fl. 275 B.C.), born near Smyrna, and his pupil Moschus of Syracuse (fl. 273 B.C.). It appears, from an elegy by Moschus, that Bion migrated from Asia Minor to Sicily, where he was poisoned. He wrote harmonious verses with a good deal of pathos and tenderness, but he is as inferior to Theocritus as he is superior to Moschus, whose artificial style characterizes him rather as a learned versifier than a true poet. 3. PROSE WRITERS OF ALEXANDRIA.--Many of the most eminent poets were also prose writers, and they exhibited their versatility by writing on almost every subject of literary interest. The progress of prose writing manifested itself from grammar and criticism to the more elaborate and learned treatment of history and chronology, and to observations and speculations in pure and mixed mathematics. Demetrius the Phalerian (fl. 295 B.C.), Zenodotus (fl. 279 B.C.), Aristophanes (fl. 200 B.C.), and Aristarchus (fl. 156 B.C.), the three last of whom were successively intrusted with the management of the Library, were the representatives of the Alexandrian school of grammar and criticism. They devoted themselves chiefly to the revision of the text of Homer, which was finally established by Aristarchus.