Moschus, Greek bucolic poet and friend of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus, was born at Syracuse and flourished about 150 BC.

He was the author of a short epic poem, Europa, and a pretty little epigram, Love, the Runaway, imitated by Torquato Tasso and Ben Jonson. The epitaph on Bion of Smyrna, wrongly supposed to have been his tutor, was in all probability written about the time of Sulla (see F Bücheler in Rheinisches Museum, xxx., 1875). The poem on Megara (the wife of Heracles) is probably not his, but a few other pieces, undoubtedly genuine, have been preserved. His poems are nearly all in hexameters. They are usually printed in editions of Bion and Theocritus, and have been translated into many European languages.

The text has been edited by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in the Oxford Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca (1905); there are English translations by J Banks in Bohn's Classical Library (1853), and by Andrew Lang (1889), together with Bion and Theocritus. See F Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit. i. 231 (1891).

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