Moschion (Greek: Μοσχίων; 3rd century BC), was an Athenian tragic poet. Nothing is known about his life; he probably lived in the second half of the 3rd century BC.[1] Three titles and a few fragments of his plays are preserved by Stobaeus. He wrote a Telephus, and two historical plays: Themistocles, of which we have a three line fragment, and the Men of Pherae (Pheraioi), which dealt with the death of Jason, the cruel tyrant of Pherae.[2] Also extant are 33 lines of a speech from an anonymous play which deals with the history of human progress. In this fragment, he states that humans originally lived like animals, without houses or technology, law was absent, and cannibalism was rife. In the course of time, agriculture, cooking, wine, houses, and cities were introduced, civilisation was born, and people buried their dead so that people would not be reminded of their earlier cannibalism.[3]

Notes

  1. ^ Moschion entry in Brill's New Pauly Online
  2. ^ P. E. Easterling, Bernard Knox, (1989), Greek Literature, page 92. Cambridge University Press
  3. ^ Theories of Progress, in Sue Blundell, (1986), The Origins of Civilization in Greek & Roman Thought, page 187. Routledge. Translations of the fragment in W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists, p. 82, and in W.B. Tyrrell and F.S. Brown, Athenian Myths and Institutions, p. 81.
Categories