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 long poem about Adonis and seventeen shorter fragments of his poetry survive.

Quotes

• Sleep no more, Cypris, beneath thy purple coverlet, but awake to thy misery; put on the sable robe and fall to beating thy breast, and tell it to the world, The beauteous Adonis іs dead.
  • I ("The Lament for Adonis"), as translated by J. M. Edmonds, The Greek Bucolic Poets (1912), p. 387

• I be no thief nor highwayman—tis not for that I’m abroad at night—, but a lover; and lovers deserve all aid.
  • IX ("To Hesperus"), as translated by Edmonds (1912), p. 411. Cp. the verse translation by Willis Barnstone, Greek Lyric Poetry (1967), p. 206:

    I am no thief, no highway man to plague a traveler at night.
    A lover I am. And those in love must be helped.

• ... But I will go my way to yonder hillside, singing low to sand and shore my supplication of the cruel Galatea; for I will not give over my sweet hopes till I come unto uttermost old age ...
  • XII ("Galatea's Lover"), as translated by Edmonds (1912), p. 413. Cp. the verse translation by M. J. Chapman, The Greek Pastoral Poets (1836), p. 284:

    I to the sandy shore and seaward slope
      Will go, and try with murmured song to bend
    The cruel Galatea: my sweet hope
      I'll cast away—when life itself doth end.

• Μολπαν ται Μοισαι μοι αει ποθεοντι διδοιεν,
  Ταν γλυκεραν μολπαν, τας φαρμακον αδιον ουδεν.
  • Fragment quoted by Stobaeus, 1, 9, 3
  • Quoted as an epigraph in H. F. Cary, Sonnets and Odes (1788)