The Poetry of Bion by Bion
The Poetry of Bion highlights the work and legacy of Bion, an ancient Greek pastoral poet often recognized alongside Theocritus and Moschus. Born in the second century BCE near Smyrna, much of Bion's life remains a mystery. His most notable work is the pastoral elegy "Lament for Adonis," which mourns the death of Adonis, a youth cherished by Venus. This poem features a structured lament that reflects the themes of love, loss, and the cyclical nature of life and death, ultimately suggesting that grief is universal and tied to the natural world. Another fragment, "Achilles Among the Maidens," introduces a comedic narrative of Achilles disguised as a woman, showcasing Bion's range from serious elegy to lighter themes. Additionally, various fragments attributed to Bion reveal his deep reflections on beauty, love, and mortality. Bion's poetry emphasizes the healing power of music and the Muses, conveying a longing for love and artistic expression. Overall, Bion's work stands as a significant contribution to pastoral poetry, merging emotion with the beauty of the natural world.
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The Poetry of Bion by Bion
First transcribed: Second century b.c.e.
Critical Evaluation:
In antiquity, Bion was considered the third great pastoral poet after Theocritus and Moschus. This order of ranking is apparently both chronological and stylistic. Very little is known of the life of Bion. He was born in an obscure place called Phlossa near Smyrna sometime in the second century b.c.e. His death provides the subject of a superb pastoral elegy traditionally attributed to Moschus, “Lament for Bion.” Actually this lament occasioned by the death of Bion is not by Moschus but rather by the hand of a pupil of Bion from Magna Graecia. In the lament the poet calls Bion’s work Dorian and invokes the Sicilian Muses as if Bion were from Sicily. This detail, however, may be entirely conventional, for in the same poem Bion is called a shepherd and we know this detail to be simply an assumption customary to such writing which in no way reflects historical reality. According to the lament, Bion drank poison and in the next several lines the poet suggests darkly that justice will be done. If we can take these lines literally, what was the fate of Bion—suicide, murder, political execution? There is no way of knowing.
Probably the most important extant work of Bion is the pastoral elegy, “Lament for Adonis.” Adonis, the youth beloved by Venus the goddess of love, has been slain by a wild boar and this poem laments his death. The structure of the poem is extremely conventional, inviting comparison with other pastoral elegies such as Milton’s LYCIDAS. The poem begins with two lines which state, “I cry for Adonis, the beautiful boy lies dead and the Divinities of Love cry out that darling Adonis dies.” These lines provide a kind of loose refrain or wail of lament recurring periodically throughout the poem and dividing the work into sections. The subject matter of these sections is as follows: 1. Love wakes the sleeping Venus, tells her that Adonis is dead, and advises her to dress in mourning clothes and tell the world of her loss. 2. Adonis lies dying in the hills. The boar’s tusk has pierced his thigh and his blood drips on his snow white flesh. The color departs from his lips and he will never kiss Venus again. 3. The wound in the heart of Venus is greater than that in the thigh of Adonis. She wanders distraught with grief over the face of the world. 4. When Adonis died, all the beauty of Venus died as well. All nature mourns him, the hills, the valleys, the streams, the flowers; even echoes cry woe for the dead Adonis. 5. Who would not weep for Adonis? Venus bends over his corpse, tries to revive him, consigns his soul to Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, and reproaches him for risking his life in the hunt. 6. The blood from Adonis and the tears of Venus spring up as mingled wildflowers. 7. The body of Adonis is prepared for burial with flowers and unguents, perfumes, and ceremonies. The final two lines of the poem advise Venus to leave her grief for today, for as the year passes and the seasons fulfill their cycle her grief will be perpetually renewed. Like all elegies, this poem projects the emotion of the bereaved against the transformations of nature, and as te bereaved passes from desolation to consolation nature dies and becomes renewed. The ultimate consolation of the poem is that all particular grief is part of the cyclical processes of nature; if we must grieve, we ought to grieve for the general fate of all things subject to decay rather than the particular fate of one creature. It is, finally, not Adonis but all living things including you yourself for whom you mourn.
“Achilles Among the Maidens” is a fragment in which one shepherd asks another shepherd to tell him the story of Achilles in Scyros. The background of this story is that Achilles did not want to join the Greek expedition against Troy celebrated in Homer’s ILIAD. Achilles therefore disguised himself for a time as a woman and hid in a harem. This fragment reports a bit of supposed dialogue between the disguised Achilles and a harem girl in which they lament that they cannot sleep together. The poem is both comic and erotic.
The remaining poems and lines attributed to Bion exist only in quotations made by the critics Stobaeus or Orion. Some of these fragments are brilliant bits of verse. For example, there is a sketch in which a boy out hunting finds Cupid perched in a tree. He tries repeatedly to catch the brilliant bird with no success. An old farmer advises him that it would be far better to flee from that harmful creature, for it will only land on those who run away. In another he complains of the lot of the poet. If his poems are good, he will be famous. But if they are not good, what is the point of his life, so short and so toilsome. Most of these fragments are erotic songs touched by the melancholy thought that all beauty must die and all love end in separation. The function of poetry in Bion’s view is summarized in three lines of his verse: “May cupid call the Muses and the Muses bring love; and may the Muses always give me the song I want, sweet as honey, medicinable melody.”