Author: BION
Biography:
BION (fl c. 100 BCE: EB)
A Greek poet born in Smyrna in Lydia (now Izmir, Turkey), he lived in Syracuse, Sicily, and was renowned as a bucolic poet after the model of Theocritus (q.v.), who was a near contemporary. In his day he had disciples, made a good living, and had substantial property, but the only extant examples of his work are 17 fragments and the great elegy for Adonis, which may have been composed for recitation at a festival in honour of the god. The famous “Lament for Bion,” which was composed by one of his followers, suggests that he died by poison at the hand of an envious enemy, but that story is now regarded as an invention. (It was taken at face value, however, by translators of the Romantic period. Edward Jackson Lister and Richard Polwhele have headnotes of their own; for Francis Fawkes see the headnote to Musaeus.) The “Lament” is traditionally attributed to Moschus (q.v.) but given the difference in their ages that attribution is doubtful. Their names are commonly linked both because of the imagined personal connection and because they were practitioners of a similar style of poetry. (EB 17 Feb. 2025; Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911], 3: 956; Harvey) HJ