BION

flourished 100 BC, ; b. Smyrna, Lydia, Asia Minor [now Izmir, Turkey] minor Greek bucolic poet. The Lament for Bion, written by an Italian pupil of the poet, suggests that he lived in Sicily. The 17 surviving fragments of Bion's Bucolica, mostly concerned with love, strike a playful, sometimes sententious note. Since the Renaissance Bion has also been credited with the Lament for Adonis, whose overheated and highly coloured emotionalism may reflect the cult of Adonis, which was popular in the poet's homeland. The Greek text is in Bucolici Graeci (ed. A.S.F. Gow, 1952), and there is a translation by the same author in The Greek Bucolic Poets (1953).