Moero

File:Moero Lévy-Dhurmer.jpg

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer's portrait of Moero for Les Kitharèdes by Renée Vivien

Moero (Template:Langx) or Myro (Template:Langx) was a woman poet of the Hellenistic period from the city of Byzantium. Little of her poetry survives: ten lines of her epic poem Mnemosyne are quoted by Athenaeus, and two of her epigrams are preserved in the Greek Anthology; two other poems are known only through mentions in other sources.

Life

Moero was the wife of Andromachus Philologus and the mother – the Suda says daughter, but this is less likely – of the tragedian Homerus of Byzantium. She was probably active during the late fourth and early third centuries BC.

Work

Little of Moero's poetry has survived. Ten lines from her epic poem Mnemosyne are quoted by Athenaeus, and though Meleager mentions "many" epigrams by Moero in the introductory poem to his Garland, only two four-line poems remain in the Greek Anthology. She also wrote a poem called Arai ("Curses"). This is known only through a scholion on Parthenius of Nicaea's Erotica Pathemata, which notes that the myth of Alcinoë is told in it. Finally, Eustathios mentions that she wrote a hymn to Poseidon.

The surviving fragment of Moero's Mnemonsyne tells the story of Zeus' childhood on Crete, where he had been hidden by his mother Rhea to save him from being killed by his father Cronus. Like the surviving fragment of Corinna's poem on the contest between Cithaeron and Helicon (PMG 654 col. i), it retells an episode of Zeus' early life to emphasise the role of women. Moero's surviving epigrams are stylistically similar to the works of Anyte. One is addressed to a bunch of grapes; the other asks some dryads to protect a man who has carved a statuette for them. The latter is imitated by Hermocreon (AP 9.327). Judging by her surviving poetry, Moero's work explored motherhood, women's responsibilities to their families, and female sexual desire.

Reception

Moero seems to have had a high reputation as a poet in antiquity. Antipater of Thessalonica includes her in his list of famous women poets, and Meleager's proem to his Garland refers to her as a "lily", putting her alongside Sappho and Anyte. According to Tatian, Cephisodotus, the son of Praxiteles, sculpted her. Two epigrams which refer to Moero, composed by Anyte and Marcus Argentarius, survive in the Greek Anthology, and may be a reworking of a now-lost poem by Moero. In the twentieth century, Moero was referenced by the imagist poet H. D. in her poem "Nossis" and novel Palimpsest, and was included in Judy Chicago's Heritage Floor.