BION
Πίδακος έξ ίερης ολίγη λιβας ακρον αωτον.—Callimachus.
Bion was born at Smyrna, one of the towns which claimed the honour of being Homer’s birthplace. On the evidence of a detached verse (94) of the dirge by Moschus, some have thought that Theocritus survived Bion. In that case Theocritus must have been a preternaturally aged man. The same dirge tells us that Bion was poisoned by certain enemies, and that while he left to others his wealth, to Moschus he left his minstrelsy.
I
THE LAMENT FOR ADONIS
This poem was probably intended to be sung at one of the spring celebrations of the festival of Adonis, like that described by Theocritus in his fifteenth idyl.
Woe, woe for Adonis, he hath perished, the beauteous Adonis, dead is the beauteous Adonis, the Loves join in the lament. No more in thy purple raiment, Cypris, do thou sleep; arise, thou wretched one, sable-stoled, and beat thy breasts, and say to all, ‘He hath perished, the lovely Adonis!’
Woe, woe for Adonis, the Loves join in the lament!
Low on the hills is lying the lovely Adonis, and his thigh with the boar’s tusk, his white thigh with the boar’s tusk is wounded, and sorrow on Cypris he brings, as softly he breathes his life away.
His dark blood drips down his skin of snow, beneath his brows his eyes wax heavy and dim, and the rose flees from his lip, and thereon the very kiss is dying, the kiss that Cypris will never forego.
To Cypris his kiss is dear, though he lives no longer, but Adonis knew not that she kissed him as he died.