MOSCHUS, of Syracuse, is one of the Greek bucolic poets; he was a friend of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus (about 200 B.C.). His chief work is the epitaph of Bion of Smyrna, another of the bucolic poets, who seems to have lived in Sicily. It is probable that the miscellaneous collection of poems which we possess by the three poets Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus was known to Artemidorus in 200 b.c. His poetry is the work of a well-educated man with a trained artistic eye; he models his works on those of Bion, writing epigrammatic, epic, and idyllic or elegiac verses, all except a few lines being in hexameter verse; but he treats all his subjects in a descriptive, not in a narrative or an epigrammatic style. Besides the epitaph of Bion, he wrote two little epic poems, “Europa” and “Megara,” and a pretty little epigram, “Love the Runaway;” and a few short pieces of his are also preserved. They are written with much elegance, but the style is perhaps too refined and carefully wrought, and he has few of the higher qualities of a poet.