No translation of Theocritus can give more than a rude idea of the original. Strictly speaking, poetry cannot be translated; and in a translation of Theocritus not only is the music gone, but his words are so accurately chosen that the foreign equivalents are merely makeshifts. For English readers perhaps the best translation of the 15th idyl is that in Matthew Arnold's essay on 'Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment,' and for the other idyls, the prose versions by Andrew Lang. Edmund Clarance Stedman translated four, the I, X, XIII and XIX, following the hexameters of the originals. Many other translators in prose and verse have tried their hands, and some with a reasonable measure of success.
Bion is an imitator of Theocritus. Little that he wrote remains: there is the 'Dirge of Adonis,' half a dozen short idyls and some fragments; he himself is a shadow. From the poem, a 'Lament for Bion,' attributed to Moschus, it appears that Bion was born in Asia Minor near Smyrna, and. possibly that he traveled in Thrace and Macedonia, also that he lived in Sicily and died by poisoning, and that Theocritus mourned him. But modern criticism denies that the 'Lament' was written by Moschus, denies the story of poisoning, and puts Bion about 150 B.C. The 'Dirge of Adonis' is by far the most celebrated of his poems; for if the earliest suggestion for 'Lycidas,' Adonais' and (Thyrsis' comes from the 'Lament for Daphnis, it certainly comes by way of the 'Dirge of Adonis.' The poem is a lament by Aphrodite over the dead Adonis; in part it is passionate to frenzy, with an element of Asiatic extravagance, but in other parts florid, pretty. elegant and artificial. His
other poems, for the most part, are love songs, delicate, sweet and elegant.
Moschus seems more shadowy still. His fame is united to that of Theocritus and Bion, as one of the three chief pastoral poets of Sicily; and this union in renown has been strengthened by the common practice of pub lishing their works together. To Moschus were usually attributed six or seven idyls, 'Eros,' 'The Runaway,' 'Europa,' the 'Lament for Bion,' the Wife of Hercules,' and others. The 'Lament for Bion' is the poem on which his fame has chiefly rested. It represents the poet as Bion's pupil, and is framed upon the models of the 'Lament for Daphnis' and the 'Dirge of Adonis,' it is pathetic, delicate and imagina tive. But the style is too ornate to befit a contemporary of Theocritus, and seems to prove that the poem belongs to a later age. Modern criticism, therefore, takes away its authorship from Moschus and that of the Megara as well. Moschus himself is now be lieved to have lived at Syracuse about 150 B.C. The authoritative text of 'Bion and Moschus' is that by U. von Wilarnowitz-Mollendorff, 'Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca' (Ox ford 1905).
No translation of any of these poems gives more than a rough and ready idea• of the original. The more imaginative the poei; the more delicate his workmanship, the less the translator can imitate him. This is as true of Bion and Moschus, or whoever wrote the 'Lament for Bion,) as it is of Theocritus.