author
Moschus
A pastoral poet from Hellenistic Syracuse, he is remembered for graceful, compact verse that helped carry the bucolic tradition forward after Theocritus. Only a small body of work survives, but pieces such as Europa kept his name alive for centuries.
1 Audiobook
Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Rendered into English Prose
by Theocritus, of Phlossa near Smyrna Bion, Moschus
About the author
Moschus was an ancient Greek poet, probably active around the 2nd century BCE and associated with Syracuse. Ancient and modern reference works describe him as a bucolic, or pastoral, poet, and also connect him with the scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace.
Only a handful of works are usually attributed to him with confidence. Among the pieces linked to his name, Europa is the best known, and shorter works such as Love the Runaway also helped shape his reputation. Some ancient material connected with Moschus survives only in fragments, and scholars have long debated the authorship of a few poems traditionally passed down with his work.
Even with so little surviving, Moschus remains an important figure in Greek pastoral poetry. His verse stands at the meeting point of literary refinement and myth, and later readers valued him as one of the poets who preserved and extended the Hellenistic pastoral style.