Editing Moschus (section)

== Works ==
[[File:Europa poem by Moschus, Greek, 15th century.png|thumb|Page from a 15th-century Byzantine manuscript of ''Europa'']]His few surviving works consist of an [[epyllion]], the ''Europa'', on the myth of [[Europa (mythology)|Europa]], three  bucolic fragments and a whole short bucolic poem ''Runaway Love'', and an epigram in [[elegiac]] couplets. His surviving bucolic material (composed in the traditional [[dactylic hexameter]]s and [[Doric Greek|Doric dialect]]) is short on pastoral themes and is largely erotic and mythological; although this impression may be distorted by the paucity of evidence, it is also seen in the surviving bucolic of the generations after Moschus, including the work of [[Bion of Smyrna]]. Moschus' poetry is typically edited along with other bucolic poets, as in the commonly used Oxford text by [[A. S. F. Gow]] (1952), but the ''Europa'' has often received separate scholarly editions, as by Winfried Bühler (Wiesbaden 1960) and  Malcolm Campbell (Hildesheim 1991). The epigram is also normally published with the edition by [[Maximos Planoudes]] of the [[Greek Anthology]]. 

=== Influence ===
The ''Europa'', along with [[Callimachus]]' ''[[Hecale (poem)|Hecale]]'' and such Latin examples as [[Catullus 64]], is a major example of the Hellenistic phenomenon of the [[epyllion]]. Although it is hard to tell because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence, Moschus' influence on Greek bucolic poetry is likely to have been significant; the influence of ''Runaway Love'' is felt in Bion and other later bucolic poets. In later European literature his work was imitated or translated by such authors as [[Torquato Tasso]] and [[Ben Jonson]]. 

=== Apocrypha ===
Two other poems, attributed to him at one time or another but no longer thought to be his, are also commonly edited with his work. The best known is the ''Epitaph on Bion'' (i.e. [[Bion of Smyrna]]), which had a long history of influence on the pastoral lament for a poet (compare [[John Milton|Milton]]'s ''Lycidas''). The other is a miniature epic on [[Megara (mythology)|Megara]] (the wife of [[Heracles]]), consisting of an epic dialogue between Heracles' mother and his wife on his absence.