Boeo
BoeoorBoio(Ancient Greek:Βοιὼ) was an ancient Greek poet. Her dates are unknown, but the earliest surviving stories about her date to the third century BC,[1]and Ian Plant suggests a third century date for her.[2]
According toPausanias,Boeo was from Delphi.[2]He reports that Boeo wrote a hymn which told how theHypoboreansbuilt the temple to Apollo at Delphi, and that the poetOlenwas the first oracle there and the inventor of thehexameter.[3]Both Olen and the Hypoboreans were more usually associated with the sanctuary of Apollo at Delos than Delphi, and the founding of the oracle at Delphi and the invention of the hexameter were traditionally attributed toPhemonoe;the fusion of these two traditions appears to be Boeo's own innovation.[2]
Boeo was possibly also credited byPhilochorusas the author of theOrnithogonia( "The Birth of the Birds" ), who in other sources is namedBoios.[4]None of the poem survives,[4]but it may have been the source of some of Ovid'sMetamorphoses.W. Robert Connor suggests that the title parodiesHesiod'sTheogony( "the birth of the gods" ).[1]Paul Forbes Irving suggests that theOrnithogoniawas either attributed to Boio, or the author adopted the name Boios in reference to her.[4]
According to the Byzantine encyclopedia theSuda,Boio was sometimes considered the mother of the epic poetPalaephatus of Athens.[5]
References
[edit]- ^abConnor, W. Robert (2019). "Women Poets and the Origin of Greek Hexameter".Arion:87.
- ^abcPlant, Ian M.Women Writers in Ancient Greece and Rome.p. 90.
- ^Connor, W. Robert (2019). "Women Poets and the Origin of Greek Hexameter".Arion:87–88.
- ^abcForbes Irving, P. M. C.Metamorphosis in Greek Myths.p. 33.
- ^Nünlist, René (2008). "Palaiphatos (44): Commentary on T1".Brill's New Jacoby Online.doi:10.1163/1873-5363_bnj_a44.
Further reading
[edit]- Pausanias.Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio,3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903,10.5.7-9.