eunica

Updated: August 12, 2024

And his mother laughed out, and said, 'Art thou not even such a creature as the bees, for tiny art thou, but what wounds thou dealest! A herdsman, who had been contemptuously rejected by Eunica, a girl of the town, protests that he is beautiful, and that Eunica is prouder than Cybele, Selene, and Aphrodite, all of whom loved mortal herdsmen.

of Phlossa near Smyrna Bion - Theocritus Bion and Moschus Rendered into English Prose

But Eunica alone would not kiss the herdsman; Eunica, she that is greater than Cybele, and Cypris, and Selene! Well, Cypris, never mayst thou, in city or on hillside, kiss thy darling, and lonely all the long night mayst thou sleep! After some verses addressed to Diophantus, a friend about whom nothing is known, the poet describes the toilsome life of two old fishermen.

of Phlossa near Smyrna Bion - Theocritus Bion and Moschus Rendered into English Prose

The most abundant, next to the very common sulphur-yellow and orange-coloured kinds, were about a dozen species of Eunica, which are of large size, and are conspicuous from their liveries of glossy dark-blue and purple. A superbly-adorned creature, the Callithea Markii, having wings of a thick texture, coloured sapphire-blue and orange, was only an occasional visitor.

Henry Walter Bates - The Naturalist on the River Amazons

For grammatical and other reasons, some critics consider this idyl apocryphal. Eunica laughed out at me when sweetly I would have kissed her, and taunting me, thus she spoke: 'Get thee gone from me! Wouldst thou kiss me, wretch; thou a neatherd? I never learned to kiss in country fashion, but to press lips with city gentlefolks. Never hope to kiss my lovely mouth, nay, not even in a dream.

of Phlossa near Smyrna Bion - Theocritus Bion and Moschus Rendered into English Prose