Boeo or Boio (Greek Βοιὼ) was an ancient Greek poetess. Her dates are unknown, but the earliest surviving stories about her date to the third century BC, and Ian Plant suggests a third century date for her. According to

Pausanias Pausanias ( el, Παυσανίας) may refer to: *Pausanias of Athens, lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's ''Symposium'' *Pausanias the Regent, Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC * Pausanias of Sicily, physician of t ...

, Boeo was from Delphi. He reports that Boeo wrote a hymn which told how the Hypoboreans built the temple to Apollo at Delphi, and that the poet

Olen Olen may refer to: Places *Olen, Belgium, a municipality in the province of Antwerp, Belgium * Olen, Russia, a village in Tula Oblast, Russia *Ølen, a former municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway **Ølensjøen, a village formerly within t ...

was the first oracle there and the inventor of the

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

. Both Olen and the Hypoboreans were more usually associated with the sanctuary of Apollo at Delos than Delphi, and the founding of the oracle at Delphi and the invention of the hexameter were traditionally attributed to

Phemonoe In Greek mythology, Phemonoe ( ; grc, Φημονόη) was a Greek poet of the ante-Homeric period. She was said to have been the daughter of Apollo, his first priestess at Delphi, or of his possible son Delphus, and the inventor of the hexameter v ...

; the fusion of these two traditions appears to be Boeo's own innovation. Boeo was possibly also credited by

Philochorus Philochorus of Athens (; grc, Φιλόχορος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος; c. 340 BC – c. 261 BC), was a Greek historian and Atthidographer of the third century BC, and a member of a priestly family. He was a seer and interpreter of signs, and a ...

as the author of the ''Ornithogonia'' ("The Birth of the Birds"), who in other sources is named

Boios Boios (Βοῖος), Latinized Boeus, was a Greek grammarian and mythographer, remembered chiefly as the author of a lost work on the transformations of mythic figures into birds, his ''Ornithogonia'', which was translated into Latin by Aemilius M ...

. None of the poem survives, but it may have been the source of some of Ovid's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...

''. W. Robert Connor suggests that the title parodies

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...

's ''

Theogony The ''Theogony'' (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 10 ...

'' ("the birth of the gods"). Paul Forbes Irving suggests that the ''Ornithogonia'' was either attributed to Boio, or the author adopted the name Boios in reference to her.

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