Moschus () was an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

bucolic

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

and student of the Alexandrian grammarian

Aristarchus of Samothrace Aristarchus of Samothrace ( ''Aristarchos o Samothrax''; BC) was an ancient Greek grammarian, noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the head librarian of the Library of Alexandria and seems to have succeeded hi ...

. He was born at Syracuse,

Magna Graecia Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...

, and flourished about 150 BC. Aside from his poetry, he was known for his

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formu ...

work, nothing of which survives.

Works

His few surviving works consist of an

epyllion A sleeping Theseus.html" ;"title="Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus">Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus is the topic of an elaborate ecphrasis in Catullus 64, the most famous extant epyllion. (Roman copy of a 2nd-century BCE Greek original; :it:Vil ...

, the ''Europa'', on the myth of Europa, three bucolic fragments and a whole short bucolic poem ''Runaway Love'', and an epigram in

elegiac The adjective ''elegiac'' has two possible meanings. First, it can refer to something of, relating to, or involving, an elegy or something that expresses similar mournfulness or sorrow. Second, it can refer more specifically to poetry composed in ...

couplets. His surviving bucolic material (composed in the traditional

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter used in Ancient Greek epic and didactic poetry as well as in epic, didactic, satirical, and pastoral Latin poetry. Its name is derived from Greek (, "finger") and (, "six"). Dactylic hexameter consists o ...

s and Doric dialect) is short on pastoral themes and is largely erotic and mythological; although this impression may be distorted by the paucity of evidence, it is also seen in the surviving bucolic of the generations after Moschus, including the work of

Bion of Smyrna Bion (Βίων ) was an ancient Greek bucolic poet from Smyrna, probably active at the end of the second or beginning of the first century BC. He is named in the Suda as one of three canonical bucolic poets alongside Theocritus and Moschus. One ...

. Moschus' poetry is typically edited along with other bucolic poets, as in the commonly used Oxford text by A. S. F. Gow (1952), but the ''Europa'' has often received separate scholarly editions, as by Winfried Bühler (Wiesbaden 1960) and Malcolm Campbell (Hildesheim 1991). The epigram is also normally published with the edition by Maximos Planoudes of the

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' () is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical Greece, Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Palatine ...

Influence

The ''Europa'', along with

Callimachus Callimachus (; ; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar, and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which ...

' '' Hecale'' and such Latin examples as

Catullus 64 Catullus 64 is an epyllion or "little epic" poem written by Latin poetry, Latin poet Catullus. Catullus' longest poem, it retains his famed linguistic witticisms while employing an appropriately epic tone. Though ostensibly concerning itself with ...

, is a major example of the Hellenistic phenomenon of the

. Although it is hard to tell because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence, Moschus' influence on Greek bucolic poetry is likely to have been significant; the influence of ''Runaway Love'' is felt in Bion and other later bucolic poets. In later European literature his work was imitated or translated by such authors as

Torquato Tasso Torquato Tasso ( , also , ; 11 March 154425 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' (Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between ...

and

Ben Jonson Benjamin Jonson ( 11 June 1572 – ) was an English playwright, poet and actor. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satire, satirical ...

Apocrypha

Two other poems, attributed to him at one time or another but no longer thought to be his, are also commonly edited with his work. The best known is the ''Epitaph on Bion'' (i.e.

), which had a long history of influence on the pastoral lament for a poet (compare Milton's ''Lycidas''). The other is a miniature epic on

Megara Megara (; , ) is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis Island, Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken ...

(the wife of

Heracles Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a Divinity, divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through ...

), consisting of an epic dialogue between Heracles' mother and his wife on his absence.

Sources

* *For a recent overview of Moschus see A. Porro in ''Eikasmos'' 10 (1999) 125–25. *There are English translations by J. Banks in '' Bohn's Classical Library'' (1853), and by

Andrew Lang Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a folkloristics, collector of folklore, folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectur ...

(1889), together with

and

Theocritus Theocritus (; , ''Theokritos''; ; born 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings ...

. *See also

Franz Susemihl Franz Susemihl (December 10, 1826 – April 30, 1901) was a German classical philologist born in Laage. He studied ancient languages in Leipzig and Berlin, and from 1848 taught classes at the Domgymnasium in Güstrow. In 1852 he received h ...

, ''Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit.'' i. 231 (1891).

External links

* * *
Poems by Moschus
English translations

translated by J.M. Edmonds, 1912
''Anacreon, Bion, and Moschus, etc.''
translated by Thomas Stanley (1651)
Europa. Perseus Digital Library
Greek *''Theocritus, Bion et Moschus graece et latine. Accedunt virorum doctorum animadversiones scholia, indices'', L. F. Heindorfius (ed.), Londini, sumtibus Whittaker, Treacher, et Arnot, 1829
vol. 2 pp. 35-77
*''Poetae bucolici et didactici. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Nicander, Oppianus, Marcellus de piscibus, poeta de herbis'', C. Fr. Ameis, F. S. Lehrs (ed.), Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot, 1862
pp. 77-86
{{Authority control Poets of Magna Graecia 2nd-century BC Greek poets Ancient Syracusans Ancient Greek bucolic poets Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology