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Enough has perhaps been said about the social and artistic taste of Alexandria to account for the remarkable differences in manner between the rustic idyls of Theocritus and the epic idyls of himself and his followers Moschus and Bion. In the rural idyls, Theocritus was himself and wrote to please himself.
It is best to return to the surface. The lyric 'sequences' published towards the close of the sixteenth century frequently contain more or less pastoral matter. Poliziano's Latin translation of Moschus was commended by E. K. in his notes to the Shepherd's Calender, and the same original supplied Tasso with the subject of his Amore fuggitivo, which served as epilogue to the Aminta.
It is equally possible to regard the Cyclops as emblematic merely of the rough neatherd flouted by the more delicate shepherd-maiden the contrast is of constant occurrence in later works for, alike in one of his own fragments and in Moschus' lament, Bion is represented as courting this same Galatea after she has rid herself of the suit of Polyphemus.
Possibly in using the name 'Adonais' he intended to refer the reader indirectly to the 'Adonis' of Bion; and he prefixed to the preface of his poem, as a motto, four verses from the Elegy of Moschus upon Bion. This may have been intended for a hint to the reader as to the Grecian sources of the poem.
Throughout the world today it is unquestionably the most widely grown of all garden herbs, and has the largest number of varieties. In moist, moderately cool climates, it may be found wild as a weed, but nowhere has it become a pest. "Ah! the green parsley, the thriving tufts of dill; These again shall rise, shall live the coming year." Moschus Description.
In the form of this prologue, which became the model for subsequent pastoral writers in Italy , and in the heavenly descent of the principal characters, we may see the influence of the mythological play; while the substance both of the prologue and of the epilogue, or Amore fuggitivo, in which Venus comes to seek her runaway among the ladies and gallants of the court, is of course borrowed from the famous first idyl of Moschus.
It appears, from an elegy by Moschus, that Bion migrated from Asia Minor to Sicily, where he was poisoned. He wrote harmonious verses with a good deal of pathos and tenderness, but he is as inferior to Theocritus as he is superior to Moschus, whose artificial style characterizes him rather as a learned versifier than a true poet.
My tutor had all the hatred for Byron which distinguished the clergy in the poet's life-time, and he was constantly saying the most unjust things against him; as, for example, that the "Bride of Abydos" was not original, but was copied from the Greek of Moschus.
Bion was born in Smyrna, or in a neighbouring village named Phlossa, and may have died at some date not far from 250 B.C. The statement of Moschus that Bion was poisoned by certain enemies appears to be intended as an assertion of actual fact. Of Moschus nothing distinct is known, beyond his being a native of Sicily. Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc.
It is Teniers, rather: boors, indeed; but they are live boors, and not manikin shepherds. I shall call out another Sicilian here, named Moschus, were it only for his picture of a fine, sturdy bullock: it occurs in his "Rape of Europa":
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