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Bion of Phlossa

Bion of Phlossa

? · Smyrna

Bion of Phlossa (fl. c. 100 BCE), also known as Bion of Smyrna, was a Greek bucolic poet active in the late second or early first century BCE. According to the Suda, he came from Phlossa, a locality near Smyrna in Ionia (modern İzmir, Turkey). The ancient canon of pastoral poets grouped him with Theocritus and Moschus as the third of the genre's principal exponents. His best-known surviving work is the Epitaph of Adonis (Lament for Adonis), a ninety-eight-line hexameter lament on the death of Adonis and the mourning of Aphrodite; about seventeen shorter fragments are also attributed to him. His exact birth and death years are not recorded.

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SmyrnaIonia (Asia Minor)

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Smyrna

Smyrna, modern İzmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey, was a leading Ionian Greek polis and a major center of rhetoric and learning under Rome. The sophist Marcus Antonius Polemon taught there, the orator Aelius Aristides was closely associated with the city, and it was one of several places claiming to be the birthplace of Homer. The mathematician Theon of Smyrna and the epic poet Quintus Smyrnaeus take their names from it.

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Works(3)