often called the Smyrnean. He spent the best part of his life in Sicily, and died there by poison. The persons who poisoned him were punished for their crime. There is considerable difficulty in determining the exact period at which he flourished. In the epitaph of Bion written by Moschus, Moschus describes himself as his scholar. Suidas, on the other hand, calls Moschus the friend of Aristarchus. Bion would thus be about eighty or a hundred years younger than Theocritus. Manso, however, regards this as improbable; he supposes Suidas to have confounded two Moschuses, and he places reliance on a few doubtful lines in the epitaph of Bion, which make him contemporary with Asclepiades, Lycidas, and Philetas, the second of whom was the friend, and the third the teacher of Theocritus. Bion was styled a bucolic poet. The exact meaning of this term it is not easy to discover, as we find all kinds of poems, descriptive, narrative, amatory, and lyric, arranged under the title Bucolics; most probably the term was applied to a peculiar style of poetry, written generally in bucolic hexameters. There is only one of the poems of Bion now extant which relates to rural life, and one might hesitate to assign even it to what we should regard as pastoral poetry proper. The rest of them are devoted to love—sometimes describing an adventure of Cupid, and sometimes expressing the feelings to which love gives rise. The most famous of them is the "Epitaph of Adonis," in which the poet bewails the death of the darling of Venus. It was probably composed for some festival of Adonis, and seems to picture an Adonis-drama. The poems are characterized by great beauty and delicacy of expression, the play of a refined fancy, and the flow of gentle, rather artificial, emotion. The "Epitaph of Adonis" has generally been admired for its exquisite melody, its touching expression of grief, its beautiful imagery, and its descriptive powers. It is likely that we have lost most of the poems of Bion. They are generally printed along with those of Theocritus. The first to separate them was Adolph Mekerch, in 1565. They are given in the editions of Theocritus by Valckenaer, Brunck, Gaisford, Schaefer, and Ahrens. The poems of Bion and Moschus were edited by J. C. E. Manso, Leipzig, 1807, along with a German translation, and various notes and dissertations. The Greek pastoral poets, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, were done into English by M. J. Chapman, M.A., of Trinity college, Cambridge; London, 1836.—J. D.
BION, John, born at Dijon in 1668. He was for some time incumbent of Ursy in Burgundy, but resigned that charge to undertake the duties of almoner to the Superb, a vessel in which protestants were imprisoned. His duty was to attempt the conversion of the prisoners, but their patience under sufferings touched his heart so effectually that he became negligent of his work, and finally avowed himself a protestant. He went to Geneva, and afterwards resided in England, supporting himself by teaching, until appointed pastor of an English church in Holland. He is the author of a number of works, the most important of which are "Relation des tourments que l'on fait souffrir aux protestants qui sont sur les galères de France," 1708, and a "Relation exacte et sincère du sujet qui a excité le funeste tumulte de la ville dé Thorn."—J. S., G.
BION, Nicolas, a French engraver, born in 1652. We are indebted to him for an extensive treatise on the construction and uses of mathematical and astronomical instruments. It has a considerable antiquarian and mathematical interest.
BIONDI, John Francis, an Italian man of letters, born in Dalmatia, 1572; died at Aubonne in Switzerland, 1644. He was at first in the service of the republic of Venice, but afterwards was presented by Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador, to James I., who gave him a pension, and employed him in several important missions. He wrote a history of the Houses of York and Lancaster.—J. G.
BIONI, Antonio, a musician, was born at Venice in 1698. He was a pupil of Giovanni Porta, and produced his first opera, "Climene," in 1721. Having composed other works in the interim, he wrote "L'Orlando Furioso" for Baden in 1724; he then joined the commonwealth of an Italian opera company, and went to Breslau, where this last work was reproduced in 1725. His office in the company was to play the principal clavecin—there were at that time two employed in the orchestra—at the performances; in addition to the discharge of which he applied himself to composition with singular industry, and produced no less than twenty-one operas in the course of nine years. In 1730 Bioni undertook the entire direction of the company; but this increased responsibility did not lessen his activity as a composer. On the occasion of a visit to Breslau of the elector of Mayence in 1731, Bioni wrote a serenade for instruments intermixed with choruses, in acknowledgment of which he was appointed chamber composer to the elector. The company was dissolved at the end of 1733, when he returned to Italy, from which time nothing is known of him, save that he produced the opera of "Giréta" at Vienna in 1738. Bioni's most esteemed opera was "Endimione," written for Breslau in 1727.—G. A. M.
BIOT, Edouard, son of the celebrated physicist, born July, 1803; died in March, 1850. Young Biot devoted himself very early to oriental studies; in the knowledge of the Chinese language he greatly excelled. We owe him a remarkable work on comets as observed in China—the most authentic list of the ancient appearances of those bodies that has reached us from any nation. He had a keen interest also in social themes. He left a most interesting critical essay on the abolition of slavery in Europe. The Journal Asiatique contains a large number of excellent memoirs by him. He was elected an academician in 1847.
BIOT, Jean Baptiste, a distinguished mathematician and natural philosopher, was born at Paris in 1774. After studying at the college of Louis le Grand, he entered the artillery; but having evinced a higher taste for scientific than for military pursuits, he was sent to the Polytechnic school, where he made such progress in the various branches of knowledge taught in that institution, that he was appointed professor of mathematics in the central school of Beauvais, the principal town in the department of the Oise. There he devoted himself to the study of mathematics; but finding it difficult to procure the works of the most distinguished authors, he applied to Laplace for permission to read the proof sheets of the first volume of the Mecanique Celeste, which was then publishing. Laplace granted the request of the young astronomer, who ever afterwards was one of his warmest friends.
In the year 1800 M. Biot returned to Paris, in consequence of being nominated to the chair of natural philosophy in the college of France. In 1801 he published his "Analysis of the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace;" and, in 1802, his "Analytical Treatise on the Curves of Surfaces of the Second Degree," a work which has gone through many editions. Although meteoric stones had fallen recently in France, at Villefranche, in the department of the Rhone, on the 12th March, 1798, and previously at Barbotan, near Bourdeaux, on the 24th July, 1790, yet the shower of them which fell at Aigle in Normandy, on the 26th April, 1803, caused the most intense interest. M. Biot was deputed by government to inquire into the circumstances of their fall; and having collected all the facts, he communicated them to the minister of the interior, in an able letter, which was afterwards published in 1803 in the form of a memoir, entitled "Account of a Journey into the Department of the Orne, to confirm the fact of a Meteor observed at Aigle."
When M. Delambre was elected one of the perpetual secretaries to the Academy of Sciences in 1803, Biot, on the recommendation of Laplace, was appointed his successor in the section of geometry; and up to the time of his death was one of the ablest and most active members of that distinguished body, of which he had for some years been the dean, or oldest member. Having made the acquaintance of Arago, who had been appointed secretary to the observatory, the two philosophers undertook a joint inquiry into the affinity of bodies for light, and the refractive power of the gases; and their valuable memoir on this subject was published in the Memoirs of the Academy for 1806. On the 27th August, 1804, M. Biot accompanied Gay Lussac in his celebrated balloon ascent to a height of 13,000 feet, in which they carried with them a variety of apparatus for the purposes of observation; but he declined the honour of assisting the distinguished chemist in his second ascent on the 6th of September, in which he reached the extraordinary height of 23,100 feet.
While engaged with Arago in their experimental researches, the two astronomers were led to propose to Laplace the resumption of the measurement of a degree of the meridian in Spain, which had been interrupted by the death of Mechain. Their plan was sanctioned by the government; and in the beginning of 1806, the two astronomers, accompanied by the Spanish commissaries, MM. Chaiz and Rodriguez, left Paris in the beginning of 1806, Spain supplying them with a vessel, and England with a safe passport. M. Arago, having established
