“At length Hydaspes said to Sisimithres, ‘O sage! What are we to do?

To defraud the gods of their victims is not pious; to sacrifice those

who appear to be preserved and restored by their providence is

impious. It needs that some expedient be found out.’

Sisimithres, speaking, not in the Grecian, but in the Ethiopian

tongue, so as to be heard by the greatest part of the assembly,

replied: ‘O king! The wisest among men, as it appears, often have the

understanding clouded through excess of joy, else, before this time,

you would have discovered that the gods regard not with favour the

sacrifice which you have been preparing for them. First they, from the

very altar, declared the all-blessed Chariclea to be your daughter;

next they brought her foster-father most wonderfully from the midst of

Greece to this spot; they struck panic and terror into the horses and

oxen which were being prepared for sacrifice, indicating, perhaps, by

that event, that those whom custom considered as the more perfect and

fitting victims were to be rejected. Now, as the consummation of all

good, as the perfection of the piece, they show this Grecian youth to

be the betrothed husband of the maiden. Let us give credence to these

proofs of the divine and wonder-working will; let us be fellow workers

with this will; let us have recourse to holier offerings; let us

abolish, for ever, these detested human sacrifices.’”[124]

A few words must be said on the style of Heliodorus. It is predominantly

literary, but extremely varied. He uses Homer almost as much as Chariton

does. His adaptation of Homeric episodes has already been

described.[125] A discussion of Homer and his parentage between

Calasiris and Cnemon is introduced in the style of the rhetorical

schools.[126] Descriptions as well as episodes owe much to Homeric

coloring, witness the epiphany of Odysseus.[127] But above all the

language itself is almost as rich in quotations from Homer as is

Chariton’s.

Often reminiscent phraseology betrays quotations in solution. Frequently

too very famous phrases are quoted directly. Calasiris greets Nausicles

with that best of all wishes: “May the gods give you your heart’s

desire!” Nausicles reminds Calasiris that the gifts of the gods are not

to be despised. The maid Cybele assures Arsace that soon Theagenes will

desert Chariclea for her, exchanging bronze for gold.[128] Emotional

crises are described or expressed in Homer’s words. Arsace’s

sleeplessness has the same manifestations as Achilles. Cnemon upbraids

Chariclea for her pessimism about Theagenes’ fate in the words of

Agamemnon to Chalchas. And Chariclea when she is questioned by

physicians as to the cause of her illness only keeps repeating:

“Achilles, Peleus’ son, noblest of Greeks!” as though only the

apostrophe uttered by Patroclus could describe her dear Theagenes.[129]

These are but a few illustrations of Heliodorus’ constant use of Homeric

diction.

No less did he use the language of the theater.[130] We have already

seen how much his plot owes to the structure of Greek tragedy. From

drama he took also a vocabulary of pungent metaphors to describe the

progress of events in his story. Repeatedly the action is referred to as

a tragedy.[131] And certain scenes by their wording imply a recognition,

a _deus ex machina_, a prologue and a change from tragedy to comedy.

These may, as Calderini suggests, be reminiscences of contemporary plays

now lost, which readers of the time would recognize.[132] Certainly

structure and language of the romance attest Heliodorus’ deep interest

in the theater.

The third striking element in the diction of Heliodorus is the

rhetorical. He often uses all the artifices taught in the schools:

alliterations, antitheses, set phrases. He loves the grand style. A

speech, even one uttered by his charming heroine, is an opportunity for

pomposity. He uses in excess that fine writing for descriptive passages

which the schools taught and he scatters throughout his narrative pithy

truisms or _sententiae_ which were part of the capital of the

rhetorician.

But these lapses into over-refined phrases, laborious symmetry and

decorative rhetoric are less of a barrier to a modern reader than is his

syntax. His sentence structure in general is not paratactic as is so

much of Chariton and of Xenophon, but complex. Moreover these complex

sentences are often exceedingly long with a kind of agglutinative

accumulation of participial constructions that demands re-reading for

comprehension. Yet he can be simple and pellucid in rapid narrative and

emotional crises as the final Book shows. And it is just because much of

his narrative is so exciting that we fall into resentful criticism when

Homer nods in dull drowsiness.[133]

Although we cannot date the _Aethiopica_ more exactly than somewhere in

the third century (probably in the first half), the romance reflects in

general the life of the times in which Heliodorus lived. The east daubs

its brilliant colors upon the story as the power of oriental rulers

impinges on the life of the Greeks. The absolutism of the Great King of

Persia is the model for minor courts of viceroys and their queens who

demand of their subjects and captives the obeisance that they must

render to their Super-Ruler. Military officers and eunuchs are the

descending steps in this hierarchy of tyranny.

Adventures center in war and travel. Cities and tribes revolt. Heroes

must display military virtues. Merchants, priests and women travel

widely, braving the dangers of storms at sea and of attacks by pirates.

Women have found a new freedom and are leaders in courage and endurance

as the story of Chariclea shows. Women take part in banquets and

religious ceremonies as well as in adventures. Romantic friendship

between men and admiration of young men’s beauty are a counterpart of

the famous relation between Hadrian and Antinous. Slaves and captives

may become court favorites or be subjected to indignities, imprisonment,

torture.

The times are characterized too by an eager search for the new, the

unfamiliar, by scientific curiosity, by an interest in art. So

descriptions of strange countries and peoples, accounts of strange

adventures and sights are part of the novelist’s stock in trade. He

describes vividly the island city in the Nile’s delta, its water-ways

through the reeds, its cave refuge with its secret entrance; or he gives

a technical account of the engineering processes by which a city is

besieged by threat of inundation; or he pictures such a curiosity in the

animal world as a giraffe. Works of art are featured with admiring care:

Theagenes’ embroidered robe and its clasp, Chariclea’s robe and its

girdle, the amethyst ring with its carved scene, the painting of Perseus

and Andromeda, nude, shining, chained to the rock.

And part of the picture of the times centers in man’s quest for new

values for life itself. Ethical standards for conduct are weighed and

emphasized in contrasts between Greeks and barbarians. Aspiration

towards the higher life is portrayed in the worship of the gods and its

ceremonials and in the philosophical discussions in which the priests

take part. The Gymnosophists and Calasiris share a large humanity.

The primary interests of the romance, however, far outweighing its

philosophy and its adventures, is love. Once more two enchanting young

people meet at a festival of a god, fall in love at first sight, plight

their troth, accompany each other through world-wide adventures,

preserve their faith and their chastity and for their piety are at last

united in perfect happiness. Theagenes and Chariclea join Chaereas and

Callirhoe, Habrocomes and Anthia, Clitophon and Leucippe, Daphnis and

Chloe in the undying annals of true love. And the reader closes

Heliodorus’ novel with Cnemon’s comment:

“I am at feud with Homer, father, for saying that love, as well as

everything else, brings satiety in the end; for my part I am never

tired either of feeling it myself, or hearing of its influence on

others; and lives there the man of so iron and adamantine an heart, as

not to be enchanted with listening to the loves of Theagenes and

Chariclea, though the story were to last a year?”[134]

V

THE ADVENTURES OF LEUCIPPE AND CLITOPHON

_BY ACHILLES TATIUS_

“Every romance,” says Aristide Calderini in writing of the Greek novels,

“represents successively a new advance or a new type in its genre. Now

the closest affiliation is with history, now with pastoral poetry, now

with philosophy. While certain common elements persist, the general

pattern of the whole changes; often the content is varied; often the

limits.”[135]

The variation within this new form of literature is richly illustrated

by the novel we are now to study, the one which was probably written

last of the extant Greek Romances as Chariton’s was the first. This is

_The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon_ of Achilles Tatius.

We know little of the author. Suidas, the lexicographer of the tenth

century, wrote his brief biography:

“Achilles Statius” (note the incorrect form of the name ‘Tatius’) “of

Alexandria: the writer of the story of Leucippe and Clitophon, as well

as other episodes of love, in eight books. He finally became a

Christian and a bishop. He also wrote a treatise on the sphere, and

works on etymology, and a mixed narration telling of many great and

marvellous men. His novel is in all respects like that of the other

writers of love-romances.”[136]

Now though Suidas used earlier material and essayed accuracy, two

statements in this biography are manifestly incorrect. There is nothing

whatever in the romance to indicate that Tatius was ever a Christian and

the story about his conversion and bishopric probably duplicates the

similar tradition about his predecessor, Heliodorus, who was identified

with a bishop of Tricca who bore his name. Moreover Tatius’ novel is

very different in many particulars from all the romances which are now

known. And it is these contrasts rather than the similarities which make

him in our studies so excellent a foil for Chariton.

The date of about A.D. 300 is probably right for the novel because the

author seems to imitate the style of certain romancers of the third

century and because a recently discovered papyrus fragment[137] shows

that for palaeographical reasons this earliest manuscript could not have

been written later than the first half of the fourth century. This

evidence about the lateness of Achilles Tatius we shall find borne out

by a deterioration in style from Chariton’s simplicity to an

over-elaboration and exaggeration and a change in spirit from sincerity

to ironic parody.[138]

One important reason for knowing Achilles Tatius is “his contributions

to Elizabethan prose fiction and, through this, to the making of the

modern novel.”[139] The first Greek text was not published until 1601

but before this he was made known to the sixteenth century by

translations in Latin, Italian and French. And in 1597 the first English

translation, that of William Burton, appeared. Todd succinctly states

his resulting influence:

“With Heliodorus, though in less measure, he furnished structure and

material for Sidney’s Arcadia, and thus was among the influences that

formed the novels of Richardson and Walter Scott; of Greene, as Dr. S.

L. Wolff puts it, he was the ‘first and latest love’; in Lyly himself,

and not only in him, we recognize Tatius as one of the sources of

English Euphuism.”[140]

My plan in taking up Achilles Tatius is first to analyze briefly his

plot and then summarize its similarities to _Chaereas and Callirhoe_ and

the other Greek novels. Then I shall discuss more in detail the unique

features in Tatius and his special characteristics.

An epigram in the Palatine Anthology, attributed to Photius, patriarch

of Constantinople, but by some to Leon the philosopher gives a bird’s

eye view of the story.[141]

“The story of Clitophon reveals to the eyes, as it were, a bitter love

but a virtuous life. The very virtuous life of Leucippe puts all in

ecstasy, (for the story tells) how she was beaten and shorn of her

hair and clothed pitiably, and—the greatest point—having died three

times she endured to the end. And if you too wish to be virtuous,

friend, do not consider the side issues of the plot, but learn first

the outcome of the story, for it joins in marriage those who love

sanely.”

For the expansion of this epitome it is necessary to have before us a

list of the many characters in the romance.

Chief characters:

_Clitophon_, a Greek of Tyre, son of Hippias

_Leucippe_, daughter of Sostratus of Byzantium, the uncle of Clitophon

_Clinias_ of Sidon, cousin of Clitophon

_Chaereas_ of Pharos, a fisherman

_Melitte_, a woman of Ephesus

_Thersander_, the husband of Melitte

_Callisthenes_ of Byzantium

_Calligone_, the half-sister of Clitophon

Minor characters:

_Sostratus_, of Byzantium, father of Leucippe

_Panthea_, his wife

_Hippias_, a Tyrian, father of Clitophon and Calligone

_Charicles_, the _amicus_ of Clinias

_Menelaus_, an Egyptian

_Sosthenes_, the bailiff of Thersander

_Satyrus_, a slave of Clitophon

_Clio_, Leucippe’s chambermaid, in love with Satyrus

_Charmides_, an Egyptian general

_Gorgias_, an Egyptian soldier

For the plot I condense Phillimore’s well-written summary.[142] The

author begins with a description of Sidon. He has reached Sidon in his

travels and is touring the city, looking at the temples. He describes a

painting of Zeus and Europa, also a statue of Eros. He was reflecting on

the Eros: “Think of such a brat being lord of earth and sea!” When a

young man near testifies to Eros’ power which he has felt, the author

invites him to tell his story. In a Platonic scene under a plane-tree

near a stream they sit down.

The stranger, Clitophon, a Greek of Tyre, tells his story in the first

person. Clitophon has been unwillingly betrothed at nineteen to his

half-sister, Calligone. Now his uncle, Sostratus, writes that he is

sending his daughter Leucippe and her mother from their home in

Byzantium to Tyre for safety during a war. Clitophon at once falls in

love with Leucippe. He makes his cousin, Clinias, his confidant. Clinias

is sympathetic because he had a tragic love affair with a youth who was

killed by a fall from a horse which Clinias gave him. (Here is

introduced a purple patch on the driving accident.)

Encouraged by Clinias, Clitophon makes love constantly. Various scenes

of his wooing, for example a garden, are described in detail. Finally

the lovers elope, find a ship at Berytus, embark and start to

Alexandria. They meet an Egyptian fellow-passenger, Menelaus. There

comes a great storm. Hero and heroine are cast on shore at Pelusium near

the temple of Zeus Casius. Enter black brigands. Soldiers rescue

Clitophon, but Leucippe is kidnapped. Clitophon joins in an attempt to

save her, but it is baulked by a deep, impassable canal between the

rescuing party and the ten thousand brigands. Across it Clitophon

watches the bandits perform a human sacrifice by disembowelling the

victim before an altar. It is Leucippe. The body is put in a coffin.

The next day the canal is diked and crossed. Clitophon resolves to die

on Leucippe’s body, but suddenly he meets his slave Satyrus and

Menelaus, both saved from the wreck, who assure him that Leucippe is

alive. On the coffin being opened, she comes out—“Gashed open and minus

all viscera.” But the murderers had been deceived by a sheepskin full of

animal entrails attached to her and by a stage sword which never

penetrated her body. Clinias too was saved from the wreck. Now a

punitive expedition under Charmides, the Egyptian, starts, but

unfortunately he falls in love with Leucippe and has a philtre given her

which drives her insane. On her recovery they go to Alexandria. There a

new rival, Chaereas, abducts Leucippe. Clitophon pursues on a ship of

war, but has to endure seeing Leucippe beheaded on the deck of the

enemy’s vessel. Clitophon recovers the head from the sea and gives it

burial.

Six months later Clitophon meets Clinias again. Clinias who had been

home in Sidon reports that “the cruel parent had actually betrothed the

loving cousins” so Clitophon and Leucippe might have married in peace.

Clitophon who naturally believes Leucippe dead is pursued by Melitte, a

lovely, wealthy and amorous widow of Ephesus. He finally yields to her;

they are betrothed in the temple of Isis and are to be married when they

reach Ephesus. On their arrival, Melitte drives Clitophon around her

great estates. There he has the overwhelming surprise of encountering

Leucippe who is working in the garden as a miserable slave. This

difficult situation is made more complicated by the sudden reappearance

of Melitte’s husband, Thersander, who had been falsely reported drowned

at sea. Thersander beats up Clitophon as an adulterer with his wife and

has him imprisoned.

Sosthenes, the bailiff of Thersander, interests his master in Leucippe,

so he tries to seduce her, but unsuccessfully. Clitophon in prison is

told a false story that both Leucippe and Melitte are faithless to him.

Clitophon resolves to denounce Melitte as an accomplice in a plot for

the murder of Leucippe and then to die. He is tried for adultery and

self-confessed murder, but Clinias foils his attempt by telling the

whole truth in court. Sosthenes departs, leaving Leucippe free.

Leucippe’s father, Sostratus, by good fortune arrives in Ephesus on a

sacred embassy just in time to assist his daughter. The trial of

Clitophon is resumed in a long court scene in which finally Thersander

challenges Leucippe and Melitte to tests of chastity by the magic pipes

of Pan and the magic spring of Rhodopis. Both pass the ordeals.

Thersander, since everything is going against him, for his slave,

Sosthenes, has been captured and will be forced to confess the truth,

flees. Sosthenes confesses. Clitophon is acquitted. Leucippe tells her

whole story: how the bandits beheaded another woman dressed in her

clothes to prevent Clitophon from following; how a quarrel over her

arose among them in which Chaereas was slain; then she was sold by the

other pirates to Sosthenes, who bought her for Thersander. Sostratus

then relates the secondary romance of Callisthenes and Calligone. The

novel ends with a happy reunion of all at Tyre where prayers and

sacrifices are offered in behalf of the lasting felicity of Clitophon

and Leucippe, of Callisthenes and Calligone.

Such is the story which Phillimore characterizes as “a breathless

succession of improbable incident.”[143] The settings move with the same

cinematic rapidity which Chariton employed: from Sidon to Berytus, to

the sea and shipwreck, to Pelusium and Alexandria, to Ephesus and the

great court scene, to Byzantium and back again to Tyre.

In one point particularly the structure of the plot differs from

Chariton’s and indeed from the plots of all the other Greek Romances.

The author in the beginning hands over the story to a narrator, the

hero, Clitophon, who then tells the events in the first person. Very

soon, however, the reader has forgotten this device: so many other

characters are given the floor to relate their own tales. And at the end

the author too has forgotten this beginning, for Clitophon does not

round up his narrative with a polite farewell. He does not even explain

how he happened to be at Sidon where he started the tale. And the author

does not express his appreciation of the entertainment Clitophon has

given him.[144]

The chief interests of the romance are again love, adventure and

religion. There are two love-stories of primary interest instead of one.

Yet the bulk of the plot turns on adventure rather than on sex or

worship. And delight in adventure adds to the typical travellers’ tales

a flaming curiosity which demands description of many strange novelties.

In general the technical devices common to all the romances are used.

There is much conversation. There are many soliloquies. Clitophon

upbraids himself for swerving from Calligone to Leucippe.[145] Later he

bemoans Leucippe’s fate when she has been kidnapped by the blacks.[146]

Leucippe, sold as a slave, laments her whole sad love-story while

lustful Thersander is eavesdropping outside the door.[147] Clitophon, on

hearing in prison the false story that Leucippe has been murdered by

Melitte, voices his horror over her death and over the fact that he had

kissed her slayer.[148] These soliloquies are employed to reveal the

intense feelings of hero and heroine at emotional crises.

Three letters are used. The first is a brief business letter which

serves to develop the plot, for in it Sostratus writes to his brother

Hippias that he is sending his daughter Leucippe and his wife Panthea to

him for safe-keeping until the war between the Byzantines and the

Thracians is over.[149] The other two are love-letters. One is

Leucippe’s to Clitophon telling him that she has been sold as a slave,

begging for ransom money, wishing him happiness in his coming nuptials

with Melitte, and assuring him she is still a virgin. The other is

Clitophon’s answer declaring that he has “imitated her virginity, if

there be any virginity in men,” begging her not to judge him until he

can explain all, but to pity him.[150] Leucippe’s letter is found by

Melitte and helps motivate the plot in its emotional aspects, for it

works Melitte up through jealousy and despair to such passionate ardor

that she persuades Clitophon to sleep one night with her.[151]

Oaths are not important in the structure of the plot. Once Leucippe

swears to her father by Artemis that she has told him a true story about

being still a maid.[152] Dreams are frequent and are significant. Four

are reported which are vital factors in the plot. Clitophon’s father

dreams that while he is conducting the wedding ceremonies of his son and

Calligone the torches are extinguished. This dream leads him to hasten

the marriage so distasteful to Clitophon and it would have been

consummated at once had not Calligone been kidnapped by Callisthenes

under the impression that she was Leucippe.[153] Then Clitophon had

persuaded Leucippe to let him spend the night with her and with the aid

of Satyrus was already in her bedroom. Leucippe’s mother who had just

had a dream that a robber with a naked sword was playing the part of

Jack the Ripper with her daughter, rushed in and interrupted the

amour.[154] Later on, Leucippe and Clitophon on the same night have

similar dreams. A goddess appears and warns each that their love must

not be consummated until the goddess decks the bride and opens her

temple to the bridegroom. This apparition makes them postpone the rites

of Aphrodite.[155] In Book VII Sostratus, Leucippe’s father, sees in a

dream an apparition of Artemis who tells him that he will find Leucippe

and Clitophon in Ephesus. He goes to Ephesus then on a sacred embassy

and finds that Artemis does not lie.[156]

This tendency to a repeated use of the same device for forwarding the

plot is seen in greater extravagance and exaggeration in the use of

apparent deaths. Leucippe is supposed to meet violent death three times,

twice before the eyes of her lover, once in vivid narrative told to him

in prison. First she is sacrificed by brigands by being disembowelled

before an altar. Second she is beheaded on the deck of a ship by black

pirates and her head tossed into the ocean. Third she is murdered by an

assassin hired by Melitte.[157] In the first two cases ghastly details

make the executions seem real, but Leucippe always survives and

reappears with a plausible but exotic story. Surely in this exaggeration

Achilles Tatius is using thinly veiled satire of the device of

improbable reappearances in the Greek romance.

The same exuberance appears in the use of the forensic speeches, of

long, mythological narratives and of wordy descriptions. All these will

be considered in the study of the style of the romance. Two more

technical devices of the plot must be mentioned here: the use of résumés

and the usual happy ending. Book VIII is crowded with résumés: Clitophon

tells all his adventures to Sostratus and the priest of Artemis.

Leucippe relates to Sostratus how the pirates decapitated another woman

in her place. Finally Sostratus relates to his daughter and to Clitophon

the romance of Callisthenes and Calligone.[158] The romances of both

pairs of lovers, Clitophon and Leucippe, Callisthenes and Calligone, are

concluded by happy weddings. And among the leading characters only

Melitte suffers final disappointment. Achilles Tatius ironically grants

her at least one memorable embrace on a prison floor!

The character drawing is much less elaborate than the plot. While plot

and counterplot of the two romances interplay, the young hero Clitophon

and the beautiful Leucippe are more or less conventional figures who

move glamorously, weeping, fainting, dreaming, voyaging, through

preposterous adventures. But Callisthenes, the secondary hero, is far

more interesting than Clitophon because his character shows startling

development. And Melitte, though she plays the part of temptress, is a

great human creation.

In Book II Callisthenes first appears as a wealthy orphan, who is

notoriously dissipated and extravagant. Wishing to marry beauty and

having a strange streak of romanticism he asked Sostratus for the hand

of the beautiful Leucippe although he had never seen her. Rejected by

Sostratus as a suitor because of his bad reputation he plotted vengeance

in his willful and violent way. He journeyed to Tyre, saw Calligone at a

festival, mistook her for Leucippe, fell in love at first sight, hired

some gangsters to kidnap her and sailed off with his prize.[159]

Callisthenes does not reappear until in the end of Book VIII Sostratus

tells the story of his reform.[160] On the voyage Callisthenes found

himself madly in love with Calligone, revealed to her that he was no

pirate but a wealthy Byzantine noble, offered her honorable marriage and

a large dowry, and promised to respect her chastity as long as she

desired. At Byzantium, love transformed him so that he appeared

courteous, virtuous, self-controlled. He showed great respect for his

elders. He was no longer extravagant, but became philanthropic. He gave

large contributions to the state. He trained for military service and

won distinction in actual warfare. In this changed guise he secured

Sostratus as an advocate to persuade Hippias to give him the hand of

Calligone, whose chastity he had scrupulously respected. Eros thus

salvaged Callisthenes and then rewarded him.

Melitte the widow of Ephesus is the most elaborately drawn character in

the romance. There is even a long personal description of her: she is as

beautiful as a statue with skin like milk, cheeks roses, hair thick,

long, golden, and about her the radiance of Aphrodite. Clitophon admits

he saw her with pleasure. Indeed she is so magnetic that the kisses she

was pleased to bestow on him stirred him.[161] She knew what she wanted

and how to get it. During four months she had to woo Clitophon though

she was rich and young and her husband has been lost at sea. Finally

since Clitophon was convinced that Leucippe was really dead, he yielded

and agreed to marry her, though on condition that they should not be

united until they arrived at Ephesus. She was as passionate as Clitophon

was cold. On the ship she made ardent love to him while he begged her to

philosophize on love’s nature. After Clitophon secretly received

Leucippe’s letter, he had to pretend illness to postpone the fulfillment

of her desires. Then Melitte sent for her so-called Thessalian slave

Lacaena (really Leucippe) and begged her to concoct a philtre that would

arouse Clitophon’s feeling. She is very outspoken about the fact that

Clitophon seems made of iron or wood; that indeed she seemed to love a

statue.[162] And she had the ability to express to Clitophon every

feeling she had without inhibition and in most picturesque language. At

her wedding breakfast in Alexandria she punned merrily about the

postponement of their union. “I’ve heard of a cenotaph but never before

of a cenogam.”[163] The bellying sail on the ship she compared to a

pregnant woman’s body; indeed she converted the whole ship into symbols

of marriage.[164] She also compared herself to thirsty Tantalus standing

by a river but not allowed to drink. She could match Clitophon’s

arguments and his quibbles did not deceive her: “You are playing the

sophist, dearest!” she commented. When from the discovery of Leucippe’s

letter to Clitophon and her husband’s safe return she knew that she had

lost Clitophon, she visited him secretly in prison and poured out on him

all her wrath and all her passion. Her denunciation of him as eunuch,

hermaphrodite, senile nonentity shifted to adoration; and passion

finally concentrated into so ardent and well argued an appeal for one

embrace that she was victorious. Clitophon admitted ironically that love

had taught her rhetoric and that he was vanquished, so he gave the

remedy to a sick soul and even on the prison floor enjoyed her![165]

Melitte was no less subtle and plausible in the speech in which she made

her peace with her enraged husband Thersander: Clitophon was only one of

many refugees whom she aided in memory of her husband lost at sea;

indeed she had helped Clitophon to find his wife.[166] When Thersander

challenged her by the ordeal of the water of the Styx, Melitte at once

accepted the test on a quibble because her husband had demanded from her

an oath that she had not fulfilled the rites of Aphrodite with the

stranger _during the time while he himself was abroad_. And it was just

that unfortunate stipulation which makes her last appearance in the

romance unforgettable. She is led out of the water of the Styx by the

judge, proved by indisputable ordeal a chaste woman! Achilles Tatius has

won his readers by this time to rejoice in Melitte’s vindication. For

besides charm and cleverness he has given her humanity and generosity.

She was always merciful to her slaves and was kindness itself to

Lacaena-Leucippe.[167] After she had won her desire, she contrived the

escape of Clitophon from prison dressed in her clothes, and financed by

her. She did not even forget the jailer, but gave him money to go away

for a time to avoid punishment.[168] Clitophon omitted in his final

narrative of his adventures his succumbing to Melitte[169] but he had

the grace to admit to himself her charms.

It is clear that in the ethics of the romance there is a new point of

view. Achilles Tatius is definitely less idealistic than Chariton in his

treatment of the erotic theme. As Rattenbury has pointed out:

“Achilles Tatius seems to have felt that the fetish of chastity in the

average romance was absurd, and tries to humanize romance by creating

characters that are reasonably, not unreasonably, moral.... Leucippe

comes through safe and sound, it is true, but it was by good luck rather

than by good intention.” Clitophon is chaste as far as men can be and

succumbs to Melitte only once. “Achilles Tatius,” continues Rattenbury,

“did not exactly parody his predecessors, but it is suggested that by

attempting to humanize romance he not only showed up the absurdities of

the usual stories, but was also responsible for the overthrow of the

literary form.... Achilles Tatius seems to have been to Greek Romance

what Euripides was to Greek Tragedy. He broke down the conventions, and

drove the essential and permanent elements to seek refuge elsewhere. The

erotic element did not die, but found an outlet in ‘Love-Letters,’ a

contemporary literary form of which Aristaenetus was an exponent in the

fifth century, but the idealized love story of a superhumanly modest

hero and heroine vanished, and Greek Romance hibernated until it was

revived some centuries later by the Byzantine writers.”[170]

Not inconsistent with Tatius’ slightly ironic treatment of amours is his

emphasis on the virtue of pity and his tendency to introduce long

philosophical discussions of conduct or the nature of love. Clitophon’s

story moves an Egyptian general to pity, tears and aid, for

“When a man hears of another’s misfortune, he is inclined towards

pity, and pity is often the introduction to friendship; the heart is

softened by grief for what it hears, and gradually feeling the same

emotions at the mournful story converts its commiseration into

friendship and the grief into pity.”[171]

In the midst of Thersander’s attempt to rape the weeping Leucippe, there

is a long digression on tears and the pity they arouse.[172] Clinias

appeals to the court not to put to death “a man who deserves pity rather

than punishment.”[173] Leucippe, disguised as a slave, begs Melitte as a

woman to pity a woman and to pity one once free, now through Fortune’s

will a slave.[174]

Tatius has presented also in Callisthenes a picture of a noble young

hero who was converted from the wildness of youth to self-control,

respect, patriotism and service by chivalrous love.[175] And this

portrait of Callisthenes becomes an embodiment of an ideal latent in the

philosophical discussions of love which flavor the romance. “Love,” says

Clitophon, “inspired by beauty enters the heart through the eyes.”[176]

Later Clinias tells Clitophon that he is greatly fortunate in being able

to see his lady, for when eyes of lovers meet, the emanations of their

beauty wed in a spiritual union that transcends bodily embrace.[177]

Clitophon, wooing Leucippe in a fair garden, discourses to her on the

power of love over birds, creeping things, plants, even iron which

responds to the magnet, over water (for Arethusa and Alpheus wed).[178]

To cheer up Menelaus and Clinias on ship-board and divert them from

their sorrows, Clitophon starts a philosophic discussion on love of

women compared with love of men, untranslatable in its openness.[179]

Menelaus takes up the cudgels for the love of men, probably much to

Clinias’ satisfaction for he had previously denounced to his dear

Charicles the love of women who, if they love, kill and had arraigned

for his indictment Eriphyle, Philomela, Sthenoboea, Chryseis, Briseis,

Candaules’ wife, Helen, Penelope, Phaedra, Clytemnestra![180]

The worship of the kiss is featured in an enchanting story of a magic

charm breathed on the lover’s lips[181] and a fantastic assertion that

if a maiden’s kiss is stolen, the maid is raped.[182] Moreover a code of

love is presented, almost as detailed as Ovid’s _Ars Amatoria_, in

instructions given by Clinias to Clitophon,[183] by the slave Satyrus to

Clitophon,[184] by Clitophon in discussion with Menelaus.[185] A

delightful part of this Art of Love is telling the Lady love-stories,

for all womankind is fond of myths.[186] Magic too plays its part in the

technique of love, for incantation works a charm for a lover;[187]

philtres may bewitch the indifferent;[188] and ordeals test

chastity.[189]

Closely akin to the philosophical discussions of love, its power, its

art, its magic is the worship of Aphrodite, the mother of Eros. Yet

there are few references to her cult. Her dominance is hinted:

initiation into love makes Aphrodite the most powerful of gods.[190]

Melitte wishes to have her nuptials on the sea, for Aphrodite is the

sea’s daughter and she wishes to propitiate her as the goddess of

marriage by thus honoring the sea, her mother.[191] Clitophon at the end

of his separation from Leucippe prays to Lady Aphrodite to forgive the

long delay in their union, for it was due to no insult to her and he

begs her blessing on their marriage.[192] The story of the ordeal by the

water of the Styx[193] is a merry tale of rivalry between Artemis and

Aphrodite for a young girl’s worship in which Aphrodite made young

Rhodopis break her oath of chastity but Artemis changed her into a

spring in the very cave where she lost her virginity. Yet Achilles

Tatius presents no such deep-seated reverence for the goddess of Love as

that which permeates Chariton’s romance.

Artemis of Ephesus is rather the deity who dominates Tatius’ story. She

appears in dreams to the heroine and to Leucippe’s father.[194] In her

name Leucippe rebukes Thersander for insulting a virgin in the city of

the Virgin Goddess.[195] Sostratus arrives at Ephesus as the head of a

sacred embassy in honor of Artemis and so finds his daughter.[196]

Leucippe has taken refuge in the temple of Artemis and in that temple at

last she and Clitophon are reunited.[197] Here the villain of the piece

Thersander brutally attacks Clitophon.[198] Thersander’s lawyer in court

makes insulting slanders about the fact that Clitophon and Leucippe

probably defiled the temple by an amour there.[199] But Artemis is

proved to be no liar, and there is implicit recognition of her

protection of Leucippe though Achilles Tatius does not end with

thanksgiving to her. Her cult forms an objective background of religious

tradition for the action. No deep religious feeling for her is

manifested.

There is no more aspiration to god in the other cults which are

mentioned incidentally: of Apollo, Hercules of Tyre, the god of the

lower world, Pan. And the cruel goddess Fortune is berated only

occasionally. Superstition recognizes omens in the world of nature: the

eagle stealing the sacrifice, the hawk pursuing the swallow.[200]

Oracles are respected.[201] And the ordeals of Pan’s pipes and the

Styx’s water receive general credence. Festivals to the gods are

celebrated.[202] But religion seems rather a matter of scrupulous regard

for ritual than communion with god or relief to the soul.

As we compare the romances of Chariton and Achilles Tatius we find that

not only has the main interest shifted from love and worship to

incidents and adventures. An even greater change has come about in the

style. Homeric simplicity has given way to rhetorical elaboration.

Tatius may well have been a ῥήτωρ as the scholiast Thomas Magister

states, for his whole style is dyed in the rhetoric of the schools and

the speeches delivered in the various lawsuits in the plot are

masterpieces of rhetoric.

Among his acknowledged literary debts, however, he credits most to epic,

for he quotes Homer once[203] and alludes to him five times[204] and he

refers to Hesiod twice.[205] The messenger speeches in tragedy

undoubtedly suggested the slave’s dramatic narrative of the death of

Charicles in a riding accident.[206] Both the New and the Old Attic

Comedy contributed much to his humor: the New in the comic literary

contest of the slaves Conops and Satyrus who deride each other under

cover of fables;[207] and the Old in the Aristophanic priest of Artemis

who “was no poor hand at speaking, and as good at quip and gibe as the

plays of Aristophanes.”[208] But the training of the rhetorical schools

outweighs all other influences. About half of Books VII and VIII is

devoted to the trial of Clitophon for adultery and self-confessed

murder. The court sits in Ephesus with a jury and a presiding judge, but

their functions are vague. The prosecution speaks first, Thersander and

his ten lawyers, whose speeches fortunately are not reported. Clitophon

answers them by a false narrative accusing himself of the murder of

Leucippe and involving Melitte. Clinias gets the floor and tells the

true story: that Clitophon desires only to die, that he deserves pity

rather than condemnation and must be regarded as insane.

In the wild confusion that follows, Thersander’s counsel shouts for a

sentence of murder, Melitte offers her slaves to be questioned on her

innocence and demands that her husband produce Sosthenes who is probably

the murderer. Thersander in a long speech answers Melitte’s challenge

about Sosthenes with the result that the presiding officer pronounces

sentence of death on Clitophon but postpones Melitte’s case. Clitophon

is just on the point of being tortured for evidence when the arrival of

a sacred embassy to Artemis postpones the case of Melitte and the

execution of Clitophon.

Only after the work of the embassy is finished is the case resumed. Then

Thersander speaks first, demanding the execution of the sentence. He

condemns the priest who has released Clitophon and says he has usurped

the function of giving refuge to criminals which belongs to Artemis. He

adds foul personal abuse. He presents a second charge against Melitte

for adultery and a third against his slave girl Leucippe and her father.

The priest in his reply deserves the epithet “Aristophanic” which he has

won, for he pays Thersander back in his own coin of abuse only clothing

it in the wit of Aristophanes with all his double-meaning of words, his

biting attack. And his own arguments point the irony of the situation:

Thersander clapped Clitophon in jail before he was allowed to defend

himself. He charged him with murdering Leucippe but the young lady is

alive!

Sopater, counsel for Thersander, next hurls insulting invective at the

priest and whitewashes his noble client who has been betrayed by a

faithless wife. Thersander then presents a formal challenge to Melitte

and Leucippe to prove their chastity and on their acceptance of it, the

court adjourns. Next day all reassemble at the cave of Pan and the

spring of the Styx. The ladies are proved innocent. Thersander flees and

then is sentenced to banishment. Clitophon—and Melitte—are acquitted.

This summary of the procedure of the court in Ephesus shows what

opportunity Achilles Tatius made for presenting the rhetorical speeches

which he cherished. They are many. They are full of specious argument,

personal attack, appeal to the emotions, attempted pathos which becomes

bathos and genuine ἦθος. The speakers are true to type: the impassioned

lover, the leal friend, the haughty, imperious, lustful noble, his

sophistical lawyer, the Aristophanic priest. Such agonistic scenes must

have entertained the reader of the time as much as they did the author.

Actually this same favorite rhetorical style is also assigned to the

characters in private life: Melitte in her impassioned speech to

Clitophon in prison talks like a sophist, for Eros teaches even

arguments![209]

Long mythological narratives are another feature of Tatius’ style. The

sight of a painting makes it necessary for him to relate the whole story

of Procne and Philomela to Leucippe.[210] The stories of the origins of

the two ordeals to prove chastity are told with equal detail. The

discovery of wine is elaborately related in the Tyrian version on the

occasion of the festival of Dionysus.[211] These are a few out of many

illustrations.

Descriptive writing is employed as much as, perhaps more than, forensic

or narrative. Indeed the purple patches almost overbalance plot,

conversation and oratory. Works of art, setting for scenes, natural

phenomena, the wonders of the world are introduced in highly colored

digressions which are clearly the ekphraseis which the students of

rhetoric were taught to compose and deliver.

Achilles Tatius apparently was enamored of wall-paintings. He describes

with gusto five and alludes to another. The subjects of all are myths.

Two are familiar types in the frescoes found at Pompeii: Perseus and

Andromeda, Achilles in women’s clothes among the daughters of King

Lycomedes. One description of a painting opens the romance, a votive

painting of Europa in the temple of Astarte at Sidon.[212] Sidon is the

first word of the novel and this story is introduced as a tribute to the

city where the first scene was laid, for the stemma on the coins of

Sidon is Europa on the bull, pictured almost as Tatius presents her. The

picture is described in vivid detail even to the flowers in the meadow

and the shifting colors of the sea. Posture and garb of Europa are

vividly sketched in words for he sees her “seated on the bull like a

vessel under way, using the veil as a sail.” The keynote of the picture

and the point of its application for Tatius is the little flying Eros

who leads the bull and laughs back at the transformed Zeus. “Look,” said

Clitophon, “how that imp dominates over land and sea.” A young man

standing by exclaims that he too has suffered much from love. These

exclamations are the point of departure for the recounting of love

adventures.

In Book III there is an equally long description of a painting by

Evanthes in the temple of Zeus Casius.[213] The subjects are Andromeda

and Prometheus and they seem to have been paired because both were

chained to rocks, menaced by beasts and rescued by Argive heroes,

Perseus and Hercules. Design, color, emotion are all described vividly

and charmingly, but there is no point in the introduction of the

paintings. The description of them is simply a purple patch of fine

writing.

In Book V the description of a painting in a studio depicting the rape

of Philomela had “a hidden significance.”[214] The whole story was

represented: “the rape of Philomela, the violence employed by Tereus,

and the cutting out of her tongue ... the tapestry, Tereus himself, and

the fatal table.” Ugly realism, terror, insane laughter characterize the

treatment. The hidden meaning is that the sudden sight of the picture is

a bad omen threatening disaster which makes Clitophon postpone his

journey to Pharos. The delay gives him a chance to tell the whole story

of Philomela to Leucippe, for all women love myths.

Small works of art also are described lovingly and minutely: a

rock-crystal goblet carved in a grape-vine,[215] a jewelled

necklace.[216] These enrich the setting as scattered flowers enrich the

backgrounds of Renaissance tapestries. It is as though Achilles Tatius

like Corinthian potters or Renaissance artists had such an _horror

vacui_ that empty spaces in design were intolerable and interstices had

to be crowded with beautiful small objects. This is due in part to an

observant eye that saw and recorded detail. The specific and the graphic

are his tools for clarity. The story of the attempted amour of Clitophon

and Leucippe is vivified by a plan of the house as clear as the drawn

plans in many modern detective stories.[217] The garden in which

Clitophon’s love-making is once set is described elaborately with its

porticoes, trees, vines, flowers, spring and birds.[218] The storm at

sea in its violence and coloring is as lurid as a Turner, and its

effects on the shipwrecked passengers are described with a true

psychology of terror and panic.[219]

The long description of the storm is justified by the vital significance

of the shipwreck for the plot, but what of the write-ups of the wonders

of the world which are constantly introduced? The beautiful description

of Alexandria with its pharos is brief and pardonable as this was the

birthplace of the author. But only the love of novelty of the times and

bad taste seem to explain the perpetrations of wordy descriptions of the

Nile, the phoenix, the hippopotamus, the elephant and the

crocodile![220] The romance at times tends to become a natural history.

Wolff becomes so out of patience with “the damnable iteration” of

irrelevancies in _Clitophon and Leucippe_ that he can hardly calm

himself to analyze them in suggestive groups: irrelevancies of plot, of

characterization, of setting, of science and pseudo-science. The only

justification for such irrelevancies Wolff finds in “a common basis with

paradox. Both defeat expectation.... In both its phases,—irrelevancy and

paradox—this element of _the unexpected_, prominent in the form as in

the matter of the Greek Romances, deserves attention. To turn aside to

the irrelevant; to strain suspense by retarding the expected outcome; to

introduce by the way—all unlooked for—as many bizarre, ironical,

paradoxical situations and dazzling phrases as possible; and finally to

‘spring’ an issue which is itself a surprising combination of

opposites—all these would seem to be consistent results of adopting the

unexpected as the principle of the genre.”[221]

After all this is said in criticism of Achilles Tatius’ exuberant style

and unlimited digressions, we go back to his fundamentals: a clear plot,

living human beings, vivid settings for them, and exciting adventures.

Achilles Tatius knew his age and for its disillusions he wrote with

ironic tolerance of human frailty and for its weariness he emphasized

the excitement of adventure and the stimulus of the unexpected. To me

his successes chalk up to a longer list than his failures and I end with

Phillimore:

“What a strange thought—that an Alexandrian with the names of Achilles

Tatius (what a pair!), atticizing _con furore_ in the reign of

Diocletian, should write a story which delighted the Byzantine Middle

Ages and can still be read with interest and amusement!”[222]

VI

THE LESBIAN PASTORALS OF DAPHNIS AND CHLOE

_BY LONGUS_

The very title of Longus’ romance shows a new departure. These Lesbian

Pastorals in four books form the only pastoral romance in Greek that is

extant. Compared with the other romances that of Longus is unique in

type, characters, setting and structure. Theocritus is the pervading

influence. Most of the leading characters are not nobles but serfs. Even

the young hero and heroine are brought up as shepherds until at the end

they are recognized as children of the great. City life plays little

part in the plot. The changing seasons make the set. Only a few

adventures disturb the serenity of the hills and pasturelands: an onset

of pirates, a local war and (of course!) the usual kidnappings. Country

gods are worshipped. The music of Pan’s pipes is the accompaniment of

the story.

Of the author we know nothing. Longus “is not mentioned by any other

writer before the Byzantine age, and himself mentions no historical name

or event.”[223] From internal evidence of his novel we see that he knew

Mytilene well; he was familiar with Greek and Roman literature and with

works of art; he had received a sophist’s training in the rhetorical

schools. He wrote probably in the second century A.D., before Achilles

Tatius.

The early editions and translations show why Longus was so influential

in Elizabethan England and indeed in the modern European literatures.

The first edition of the Greek text was published by the Junta Press in

Florence in 1598, but before that the romance had received its first

printing in Amyot’s French translation in 1559 and in the first English

translation by Angell Daye in 1587. This “earliest English version”

which was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth was more of an adaptation than a

translation. Its title-page demands perusal:

“Daphnis and Chloe excellently describing the weight of affection, the

simplicitie of love, the purport of honest meaning, the resolution of

men, and disposition of Fate, finished in a Pastorall, and interlaced

with the praises of a most peerlesse Princesse, wonderfull in

Maiestie, and rare in perfection, celebrated within the same

Pastorall, and therefore termed by the name of The Shepheards

Holidaie. By Angell Daye. Altior fortuna virtus.”

The title-page of the 1657 translation by “Geo. Thornley, Gent.” was

dubbed “Daphnis and Chloe a most sweet and pleasant pastoral romance for

young ladies” and it too bore a Latin motto: “Humili casa nihil

antiquius nihil nobilius.—Sen. Philos.”

It is this delightful old translation which J. M. Edmonds “revised and

augmented” in his version for _The Loeb Classical Library_ and in his

introduction there Edmonds says that this seems to have been George

Thornley’s only publication. He was a sizar in Christ’s College and

received his Bachelor in Arts from the University of Cambridge. It is

this translation of Edmonds-Thornley which I shall use in my quotations.

Longus wrote a Prooimion to his romance which reveals the occasion and

the purpose of his writing. While hunting in Lesbos he saw in a fair

grove of the Nymphs a painted picture which told a tale of ancient love.

“There were figured in it young women, in the posture, some of

teeming, others of swaddling, little children; babes exposed, and ewes

giving them suck; shepherds taking up foundlings, young persons

plighting their troth; an incursion of thieves, an inroad of armed

men.”

And on studying the painting Longus says:

“I had a mighty instigation to write something as to answer that

picture. And therefore, when I had carefully sought and found an

interpreter of the image, I drew up these four books, an oblation to

Love and to Pan and to the Nymphs, and a delightful possession even

for all men. For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that

is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has

not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could

escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty

shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write

the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right

wits.”

With this delightful prayer, our humorous nympholept Longus begins his

story. We must now outline briefly his four books of Pastorals.

The characters are:

_Daphnis_, a young goatherd

_Lamo_, foster-father of Daphnis

_Myrtale_, foster-mother of Daphnis

_Chloe_, a young shepherdess

_Dryas_, foster-father of Chloe

_Nape_, foster-mother of Chloe

_Dorco_, an oxherd

_Philetas_, an aged shepherd and a famous piper

_Lycaenium_, a city chit married to a swain

_Dionysophanes_, lord of the manor

_Clearista_, his wife

_Astylus_, his son

_Gnatho_, a parasite of Astylus

_Lampis_, a herdsman

Tyrian pirates

Young nobles of Methymna

In Lesbos near Mytilene there was a great estate of a great noble. On it

once strange things happened for a goatherd Lamo found a fine baby boy

being nursed by a she-goat. Purple was his cloak and near him was a

little golden sword with an ivory handle. Lamo and his wife Myrtale

reared the child and named him Daphnis. Two years later another shepherd

Dryas found in a cave sacred to the nymphs and carved with pictures of

them a baby girl being nursed by a sheep. And beside her were little

possessions, a girdle embroidered in gold, gilded shoes, golden anklets.

Dryas and his wife reared the child and named her Chloe. These are our

hero and heroine.

Now when Daphnis was fifteen and Chloe thirteen, one night both Lamo and

Dryas had the same dream. The nymphs of the cave appeared and gave

Daphnis and Chloe to a certain little winged boy with bow and arrow who

touched them with an arrow and ordered that Daphnis tend a flock of

goats and Chloe a flock of sheep. Their parents were disappointed that

they too were to become herdsmen, for they had given the children a good

education, but they offered sacrifice in the cave to the Boy and obeyed.

The year was at the spring. Birds were singing, lambs gamboling, flowers

blooming. The children too sang and danced together and made garlands of

flowers for the Nymphs. All their joy and work they shared. But into

this paradise came danger. Trap-ditches had been set to catch a

marauding wolf and into one, as he pursued a he-goat, fell Daphnis. He

was drawn up all bloody and must needs wash in the cave of the Nymphs.

Chloe as she washed his back thought she had never seen any-one so fair

or touched anything so soft. Love began here though she knew it not.

Another danger menaced. Dorco an oxherd who had helped draw Daphnis from

the pit fell in love with Chloe (he was a full-grown lad) and when he

could not get her by gifts, he and Daphnis held a contest of words for

beauty and Chloe was umpire. When their speeches were finished, Chloe at

once gave to Daphnis her prize—a kiss—and that kiss made Daphnis fall in

love though he did not know what love was.

Defeated Dorco next appealed to Dryas for Chloe as a wife, but Dryas

rejected him. Then he tried a base trick. He dressed up in a wolf-skin

and hid near the spring where the beasts watered, hoping to meet Chloe

alone there. This he did, but the sheep-dogs caught him first and would

have killed him had not Chloe and Daphnis saved him. They thought

Dorco’s disguise was only a game, for they never dreamed of rape in

their innocence.

So through spring and summer Daphnis and Chloe tended their flocks and

played the pipes together. But in the autumn Tyrian pirates descended on

the shore to raven. They wounded Dorco and stole his cows and kidnapped

Daphnis. Dorco dying gave his pipe to Chloe for one kiss at last and

bade her pipe his cows off the ship. And the cows on hearing the call of

the pipe jumped overboard and swam ashore with Daphnis charioted between

two holding to their horns. The boat was upset and the pirates who were

all in armor drowned. Daphnis and Chloe went to poor Dorco’s funeral.

They dedicated his pipe to the Nymphs. They cheered their flocks who lay

mourning for Daphnis on the hills. And all went on as before except that

Daphnis’ heart ached,—why he did not know.

Now (in Book II) came the time of vintage. These charming children

helped pick the grapes, tread the wine-press, fill the vats with the new

wine. That work done, back to their flocks went Daphnis and Chloe. There

old Philetas met them and sitting down told them a bright story of how

Eros had appeared to him in his garden, a little winged boy flitting

birdlike from tree to tree. And Philetas tried to teach the children who

Eros was and what was his power, for Philetas had loved Amaryllis in his

youth. But though Philetas as a wise _praeceptor amoris_ instructed them

thus: “There is no medicine for love, neither meat, nor drink, nor any

charm, but only kissing and embracing and lying side by side,” the

children did not understand his teaching and played this game of love

without fulfillment. And as they exchanged childish kisses, disaster

again broke upon them.

Some young nobles of Methymna put in at the shore in a gallant boat to

make holiday, fishing and hunting with their dogs. When a country fellow

stole the rope that tied up their ship, they carelessly made another of

green withes. Then their dogs while hunting frightened Daphnis’ goats

and drove them down to the shore and some finding no other fodder ate up

the green cable. At that a strong wind off shore blew the boat out to

sea to the great rage of the young Methymnaean owners. They beat up

Daphnis in a fight with the peasants in which they too were wounded and

prosecuted him in court, but Philetas was the presiding judge and

acquitted the goatherd of any wrong. The incensed young nobles made

their way home by land and persuaded Methymna to avenge their injuries

by sending a fleet to the land of Mytilene in an unannounced war. The

army plundered and devastated and right from the sacred cave of the

Nymphs kidnapped Chloe. But such sacrilege was not to be unavenged by

the gods and the Nymphs appearing in a vision to distraught Daphnis

assured him that Pan would protect their votary. And indeed Pan sent

awful omens to the Methymnaeans: the sound of the clashing of unseen

weapons; the sight of ivy sprouting on the horns of Daphnis’ stolen

goats and of a crown of pine placed on Chloe’s head while all her stolen

sheep howled like wolves. And the sea had its marvels: anchors stuck,

oars broke, while a strange military piping filled the air. Finally Pan

appeared to the admiral and demanded the return of the maid stolen from

the altar of the Nymphs and the return of her herds and flocks. So the

terrified commandant put about and restored Chloe to the land. What a

story she had to tell Daphnis! What sacrifices and libations the rustics

offered to Pan and the Nymphs! Philetas too arrived to help them. Lamo

told them the story of the invention of Pan’s pipes which a Sicilian

goatherd had sung to him. And on his own great pipes Philetas played the

different calls for the herds and the song of Dionysus. Daphnis and

Chloe acted out Lamo’s story of Pan and Syrinx. The next day back to

their flocks went the children and they talked now of their love for

each other and took mighty oaths of faithfulness for life and death,

Chloe swearing by the Nymphs, Daphnis by Pan. But since Chloe knew Pan

for an amorous and faithless god, she made Daphnis take a second oath by

the trusty goats that he would match her faithfulness with his.

Now (in the beginning of Book III) war enters the story, for the

Mytilenaeans were incensed at the actions of the Methymnaean fleet and

sent a land expedition under Hippasus for reparations. But this war was

conducted in a manner worthy of the golden age without ravaging of

country, with speedy offer of satisfaction, with cordial adjustment of

terms.

Winter now arrived, more bitter than war to Daphnis and Chloe. Their

flocks were shut in folds; they were secluded in their separate

farm-houses. But while Chloe learned to spin and found no comfort,

Daphnis built a plan on hope. Braving the snow he struggled to a bird

center near Chloe’s home, as if he went fowling. Yet when he had reached

his goal and snared many birds, he dared not approach the farm-house for

lack of excuse. But Dryas chasing a dog who had stolen some meat rushed

out-doors, met Daphnis and brought him home.

Chloe in her glad surprise gave him a kiss; and all made him welcome.

Daphnis was persuaded to spend the night to celebrate with them on the

next day their sacrifice to Dionysus. In the morning the lovers found a

few moments alone in which to renew their troth, and after that Daphnis

came often thither through the winter months.

Then spring came; the flocks were once more sent to pasture. Daphnis and

Chloe crowned their gods with flowers and honored them with piping. They

watched the goats mate and wished to mate too, but knew not how. A city

woman, Lycaenium, married to a swain, heard their childish talk and

being half enamored of Daphnis undertook to complete Philetas’

instruction in the art of love and having had experience she taught him

all. But he put off using his new knowledge. Instead he told Chloe the

story of Echo.

Many suitors now wooed Chloe, and Daphnis in despair told Myrtale, his

foster-mother, how he too longed to wed the girl, but his suit seemed

hopeless until to desperate Daphnis once more the Nymphs appeared and

told him where to find a purse of money that had been cast ashore from

the Methymnaean ship. With the three thousand drachmae in it he won over

Dryas and Nape, who in turn persuaded his father and mother to accept

the match. But Lamo wished the marriage postponed until the lord of the

manor arrived in the autumn to give his consent. Now that they were

affianced Daphnis and Chloe waited happily. Daphnis plucked for Chloe a

golden apple that hung unplucked on top of a tree, the best of all, a

symbol of the victory of love. And in return he received a kiss more

precious even than an apple of gold.

Now (in Book IV) with the autumn and the vintage the lord Dionysophanes

was coming with his wife Clearista to inspect his estate. Lamo’s pride

was the beautiful garden he had made, so it was a major disaster when a

rejected suitor of Chloe, churlish Lampis, devastated it for spite. Lamo

besought Astylus, son of Dionysophanes, to appease his father’s wrath

and this he did.

Astylus had a rascally parasite Gnatho with him who tried to corrupt

Daphnis, but in vain; so hoping for the future he persuaded Astylus to

induce his father to take Daphnis back to the city as his son’s servant.

At this menace Lamo decided he must reveal Daphnis’ origin so he brought

out the tokens he had found with the child. They proved that he was the

son of Dionysophanes and Clearista, exposed by them when they were young

and thoughtless and had too many children. So the young shepherd was

transformed into a prince and almost forgot Chloe. Indeed while he was

celebrating she was carried off by Lampis, the herdsman. Gnatho, seeing

Daphnis’ despair, to reinstate himself, dashed off and rescued Chloe

just in time. Now her foster-parents produced her tokens and her

nobility too was assured. All went to Mytilene to find Chloe’s parents.

The Nymphs and Eros appeared to Dionysophanes in a dream and Eros bade

him to make a great marriage feast and there to display Chloe’s tokens.

This he did and by them Chloe too found noble parents. But Daphnis and

Chloe chose to have a country wedding and went back to the fields to

their rustic friends.

Indeed most of their lives they lived there in the simple way of

shepherds, worshipping the Nymphs, Pan and Eros, possessing great herds

of sheep and goats, and for food liking best of all apples and milk.

There they had a son and daughter whom a goat and a sheep nursed;

Philopoemen and Agelaea were their names. They made the cave into a fair

shrine, set up statues there, raised an altar to Eros the shepherd and

gave to Pan the soldier a temple to dwell in instead of a pine. All this

was long afterwards. Now they had a rustic wedding. The shepherds played

their rude pipes for their Hymenaeus. Daphnis and Chloe slept no more

than the birds that night and Chloe then first learned that all their

love-making in the wood was only the play of children.

This brief epitome of the plot shows its simplicity and its coloring.

The scene is pastoral and a unity of place is observed which

distinguishes the romance. All the action takes place in the country

near Mytilene. Only for the episode of the search for Chloe’s parents do

the characters move to the city and their sojourn there is short.[224]

The main events of the plot are the double exposures, the adoption and

the recognitions of Daphnis and Chloe and their common life as

shepherds. The plot contains the usual features of a romance but

virtually all are adapted to the pastoral tone and there is a change in

their relative importance. The chief interests are the same as in the

other romances: love, adventure, religion. But love is in its

springtime: it buds and blossoms in the lives of two innocent children

as the eternal miracle of nature.[225] The adventures are for the most

part simple country disasters: Daphnis falling into a trap-ditch set for

a wolf; a fair garden wantonly destroyed by a jealous rival. There are

to be sure two kidnappings, but the rescues are speedy and magical.

Daphnis is saved from the Tyrian pirates by the music of a shepherd’s

pipe. Chloe’s return by the Methymnaeans is compelled by Pan himself.

Even war is conducted with noble generosity and given a peaceful

solution as if in a golden age.

Adventure indeed plays a far smaller part in the romance than does

religion. Worship is heartfelt and a part of life. The gods honored are

deities naturally worshipped in the country: the Nymphs, Pan, Dionysus

and Eros. They are ever-present.

Longus in his Preface says that he made these four books as a votive to

Eros, the Nymphs and Pan. The baby girl was exposed, nursed by a sheep

and found by a shepherd in the cave of the Nymphs.[226] At critical

moments in the lives of the hero and heroine the Nymphs appear in

visions to guide or save. In Book I Lamo and Dryas, the foster-fathers,

had the same dream the same night: they saw the Nymphs consign Daphnis

and Chloe to the care of a young winged boy who touched both with the

same arrow and bade each tend the flocks.[227] After Chloe was kidnapped

by the Methymnaeans from the very cave of the Nymphs, the three

goddesses appeared to Daphnis in a vision by night and told him not to

fear, for Pan of the pine-tree would rescue the maid.[228] Again when

for his poverty Daphnis saw that Chloe was to be betrothed to some

richer suitor, the Nymphs appeared and told him where to find a purse of

silver.[229] Finally Chloe’s noble parentage was discovered by the

direction of the Nymphs and Eros who appeared to Dionysophanes in his

sleep and bade him make a wedding feast in Mytilene and at it pass

Chloe’s tokens about to all the guests.[230]

Such solicitous and tender care had been won by Daphnis and Chloe

through devotion. Out on the hills in the morning first of all they

saluted their gods. They gathered flowers to crown their statues. They

made them gifts of grapes and apples or of pipe. They sacrificed to them

kids and lambs, and to the Nymphs and Pan they offered constantly their

prayers and vows. In the cave of the Nymphs Chloe swore to share life

and death with Daphnis. Under the pine Daphnis swore by Pan that he

would not live a single day without Chloe.[231]

Eros is a less familiar god to the children, but through Philetas’

instruction about the merry flying boy they come to be his

votaries.[232] Dionysophanes gives all praise for the care of the

children to the united protection of Pan, the Nymphs and Eros.[233] The

betrothal takes place before the statues of the Nymphs.[234] And all

their lives Daphnis and Chloe worshipped the Nymphs, Pan and Eros for

their very present help in time of trouble.[235] This was no formal

ritual: it was a vital faith offered with clean hands and a pure heart.

The worship of Dionysus also entered into the life of the whole

countryside. The song of the God of Wine is played by Philetas and

danced by Dryas. The festival of Dionysus is celebrated by the sacrifice

of a ram, a feast, libations poured by ivy-crowned worshippers. In the

garden of the great estate of Dionysophanes there are an altar and a

shrine to the god, and the temple had paintings about the life of

Dionysus: Semele his mother, the sleeping Ariadne, the binding of

Lycurgus, the rending of Pentheus, the conquered Indians, the

transformed Tyrians, Pan piping to those treading the wine-press and to

those dancing.[236] On the first day after he arrived at his estate

Dionysophanes made sacrifice to this god for whom he was named along

with the other rural deities, Demeter, Pan, the Nymphs.[237] And Daphnis

for his happiness dedicated his bag and cloak to Dionysus, to Pan his

whistle and his pipe, to the Nymphs his crook and milk-pails.[238] The

god of the vintage must always have his share of honor in the country.

So because the gods are omnipresent in country life, religion is as much

a part of the set of the romance as is locality. For the monotony which

might result from the single background of the great estate near

Mytilene in Lesbos is varied not only by descriptions of fair garden,

pastures, trees, hills, seashore, but by the mystic vicinity of the cave

of the Nymphs, the pine-tree of Pan, the grapevine of Dionysus and over

all the unseen flying Eros shooting his darts.

With such a setting, naturally the order of events follows the seasons.

In spring the story begins when the lad of fifteen and the girl of

thirteen are sent out to tend the flocks in meadows and on hills. Summer

brings the adventures of the trap-ditch and the Tyrian pirates. Autumn

has its vintage and the menace of the Methymnaean roisterers. Winter

houses and separates the lovers until Daphnis makes bold to go fowling.

Spring returning, Daphnis finds a purse and wins his shepherdess’ hand.

Summer passes in tending the flocks and making love. Then as autumn

again brings the vintage the lord of the manor comes to his estate.

There follows the recognition of Daphnis as his son and soon Chloe is

found to be as noble. The weather is still fair, so after a royal feast

in the city, the wedding is celebrated in the country for their hearts

were rural.

Indeed the characters are for the most part country wights: the worthy

foster-parents, Chloe’s suitors, Philetas the wise old herdsman. They

are all serfs and Daphnis and Chloe were given pastoral names by their

foster-parents to make them seem truly theirs. They are noble slaves

full of hospitality and kindness. When corruption menaces and brings

temptation, it comes from the city. Lycaenium is a young bride from the

city. Gnatho is a city parasite. Astylus, the son of Dionysophanes,

although he is a great-hearted youth who pities Lamo for the destruction

of his garden and welcomes his newly found brother Daphnis with open

arms, shows the effects of city life by making his boon companion the

worthless parasite Gnatho whose only thoughts were of eating, drinking

and lechery. Dionysophanes is nobler than his son: though gray-haired,

he is still tall, handsome, able to wrestle with young men, and though

wealthy he is good. Indeed some virtue must be attributed in this

fairy-story even to the villains. Dorco who tried to rape Chloe makes a

beautiful end by giving her his pipe and teaching her how to call the

cattle and Daphnis back from the raiders’ ship. Gnatho redeems himself

by rescuing Chloe from her second kidnapping. And even Lampis, the rough

herdsman, was deemed worthy of forgiveness and invited to the wedding.

Daphnis and Chloe are brave, beautiful and virginal. Chloe keeps her

chastity to the end. Daphnis sins but once, to learn what love is that

he may teach his maid.

Dalmeyda has pointed out another striking feature of the plot beside the

unity of place and the strictly pastoral coloring. This is its two-part

division of which the first might be entitled “the search for love” and

the second “the marriage of Chloe.” The first part ends with the lesson

of Lycaenium, the second with the country wedding.[239]

Within this two-part division and the unified pastoral scene, the usual

devices are employed for the pattern of the romance, conversation,

soliloquies, oaths, court-room speeches, happy ending, but all are

simplified to a country standard. Typical of what I mean is the

breath-taking conversation that the lovers secure alone after their

winter separation, λόγων ὁµιλία τερπνή.[240]

“Chloe, I came for thy sake.” “I know it, Daphnis.” “’Tis long of thee

that I destroy the poor birds.” “What wilt thou with me?” “Remember me.”

“I remember thee, by the Nymphs by whom heretofore I have sworn in

yonder cave, whither we will go as soon as ever the snow melts.” “But it

lies very deep, Chloe, and I fear I shall melt before the snow.”

“Courage, man; the Sun burns hot.” “I would it burnt like that fire

which now burns my very heart.” “You do but gibe and cozen me!” “I do

not, by the goats by which thou didst once bid me to swear to thee.”

The soliloquies too are as artless and simple as this talk. At some

emotional crisis the youngsters bemoan to themselves their lot. Chloe,

falling in love with Daphnis when she sees him bathe in the cave of the

Nymphs, laments the pain in her heart that is worse than a

bee-sting.[241] After Daphnis has been recognized as the son of the

great Dionysophanes, Chloe weeps at being forgotten, is sure Daphnis is

breaking his oath of faithfulness and bids him farewell since she will

surely die.[242] Daphnis makes moan more often. When the kiss of Chloe

has set him on fire, he complains that his heart leaps up; his soul is

weakened; he will waste away with his strange malady.[243] Over the

sleeping Chloe he murmurs a soft rhapsody.[244] Shut in alone by winter

he takes counsel with himself on what excuse to end their

separation.[245] And when he hears that Lampis has carried Chloe off, he

seeks solitude in the garden and rails at his bitter loss.[246] Even the

court-room speeches in the prosecution of Daphnis by the Methymnaeans

for the loss of their ship are reduced to short and simple arguments

since a herdsman sat as judge.[247] The trial of course ends happily for

Daphnis as must inevitably the whole story. Of all the love romances

this springtime love in the country is the most joyous.

As we read this pastoral romance, the unknown author becomes to us a

real personality. His delight in the country is spontaneous and real. He

is a cultured person with genuine appreciation of art, music and

literature. Their influence enriches his story. Longus in his preface

tells how a painting which he chanced to see in the grove of the Nymphs

gave the inspiration for the writing of his novel, for the painting

pictured a history of love and he longed to write something that would

correspond to the picture. Paintings again he mentions in his

description of a shrine of Dionysus, paintings telling all the myths of

the god.[248] The images of the Nymphs in the cave are described

carefully by him: cut out of the rock they were, feet unshod, arms bare

to the shoulders, hair falling on their necks, their garments belted, a

smile in their eyes.[249] A statue of Pan stood under his sacred pine

until at the end Daphnis and Chloe built him a shrine.[250] Over and

over these representations are referred to as symbols of very present

gods.

The music that fills the romance is the sound of the shepherds’ pipes

and the voice of song. Daphnis makes a pipe of reeds and teaches Chloe

how to play on it.[251] So well did she learn that on Dorco’s pipe she

could call the cattle back from the raiders’ ship.[252] When spring

brought them out-doors, both Daphnis and Chloe challenged the

nightingales with their piping and the birds answered.[253] Philetas the

old herdsman outdid all in playing on the great organ-pipe of his

father. He played special strains for cows and oxen, for goats, for

sheep. He played too the melody of Dionysus and to it Dryas footed the

dance of the vintage. Daphnis too played on Philetas’ pipe a love-song

and danced with Chloe the story of the origin of the pipe, Pan’s wooing

of the maid Syrinx.[254]

Daphnis displayed his art for his own father and mother, before he was

recognized as their son, to do them pleasure. He blew the call of the

goats; he blew their soft lullaby; he blew their grazing tune; he blew

the alarm for a wolf; he blew the recall. And the goats responded to all

his different strains.[255] After the wedding the shepherds piped the

bride and groom to bed and sang outside their door a rude, harsh song,

no Hymenaeus, but such as they were wont to sing when with their picks

they broke the earth.[256] For country people sang at all their tasks:

the boatman on the river,[257] the herdsman in the pastureland.

More pervasive than all other influences in the romance is the literary.

Theocritus colors the whole story. There are a few reminiscences of

Bion[258] and Moschus,[259] but it was the Sicilian goatherd par

excellence who instructed Longus as he did Lamo in his story.[260]

Calderini shows the various traces of the inspiration which Longus

received from the Alexandrian idyl. There is a continuous alternation of

descriptions of nature with descriptions of emotion all composed with a

certain serenity and restraint. The pain is not too violent; the

descriptions of nature are not too detailed or pedantic. There are many

special similar motives: the descriptions of paintings and statues; the

fear and the protection of Pan and the Nymphs; the vengeance of Eros on

those who scorn him; the young lovers who frequent the gymnasia and the

palestra; love which is born on the day of a festival; the woe of love;

the violent, brutal love of a scorned shepherd; the patron who lives at

a distance.[261] The pastoral name Daphnis is taken from the ideal

shepherd of Theocritus and Vergil. Pastoral setting and pastoral

narrative have the flavor of Theocritus. Episodes are identical: Chloe

plaits a tiny cage for a grasshopper as did the young lad carved on the

bowl of ivy-wood.[262] Daphnis and Chloe as they sit kissing each other

on the hill see a fisherman’s boat passing on the sea and listen to his

song.[263] So in Theocritus lovers on the land embracing look out at the

far distant sea.[264] But above all, Longus saw as Theocritus did that

in the lives of herdsmen lay true romance, and while Theocritus sang his

short lays, closely affiliated with the mimes in their use of the comic,

Longus lifted the love of goatherd and shepherd to the realm of pure

fiction by idealization and tenderness. His originality was in making

young love grow with the seasons to maturity. The name of his heroine,

Chloe, a young green shoot, is symbolic of this growing life.[265] His

awareness of his unique contribution to romance perhaps appears in his

title: _The Lesbian Pastorals of Daphnis and Chloe_.

Sappho too was known and cherished by Longus. There is a possible

reminiscence in the description of Daphnis turning paler than grass in

its season.[266] There is a sure reminiscence of Sappho’s hyacinth on

the mountains crushed by the feet of the passing shepherds in Lamo’s

pity for his flowers trodden down by a marauder.[267] And to Sappho

Longus owes the climax of Daphnis’ wooing at the end of Book III when he

pulls “the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,” saved by

Fortune for a shepherd in love, and putting it in Chloe’s bosom makes it

a symbol of her beauty and his prize.[268]

Drama too had a definite influence on Longus, indeed the word δρᾶµα or

δραµατικόν is applied to these romances by Photius.[269] The two

recognition scenes in which Daphnis and Chloe find parents through the

tokens placed with them when they were exposed as babies are copied from

tragedy. New Comedy furnished at least three characters to the romance,

Gnatho the parasite, Sophrone the nurse who exposed the baby

Daphnis[270] and the city wench, Lycaenium. Elegiac poetry furnished

Philetas, the father perhaps of erotic elegiacs. Echo repeating the name

of Amaryllis suggests Vergil.[271] And Ovid perhaps contributed three

names: Astylus, Dryas and Nape.[272] The influence of the rhetorical

schools is slighter than in the other romances, but appears in the

court-room scene with its speeches and in the use of parallelism and

contrast. Parallelism, as Calderini says,[273] includes all the plot of

the romance and proceeds from the number and selection of the characters

to the variety of the secondary episodes and to the description of the

smallest details. Daphnis and Chloe are both exposed, both rescued by

shepherds. Both are kidnapped. An attack on Chloe is made by Dorco, on

Daphnis by Gnatho. Chloe touches Daphnis when he is bathing and falls in

love. Daphnis kisses Chloe and his heart rises to his lips. Astylus, the

city son of Dionysophanes, is sophisticated, Daphnis is virginal. The

oath of Daphnis is matched by the oath of Chloe. On and on proceeds this

balancing. And the parallelism appears not only in plot, but in details

of phrase and sentence structure: balanced rhythmical phrases set off by

rhymes or alliterations; bipartite or tripartite periods, elaborate in

their rhetorical structure. Sometimes indeed Longus’ Pastorals seem

written in modern verse, indeed they are written in poetic prose.[274]

Out of all these interests in art, music and literature and beyond them

Longus has created a style peculiarly his own and suited to his pastoral

romance. His sentence structure is simple and paratactic. His

comparisons are drawn from the life of shepherds. Chloe is as restive as

a heifer.[275] Dorco claims he is as white as milk but Daphnis says

Dorco is as red as a fox.[276] Daphnis and Chloe run about like dogs

freed from their leashes.[277] Chloe plunders from Daphnis’ mouth a bit

of cake as though she were a young bird being fed.[278]

Description and narration are as vivid as these little similes. We are

made to see Daphnis at his bath: his hair black and thick, his body

sun-burned dark as though colored by the shadow of his hair;[279] the

coming of spring with flowers covering the valleys and the mountains,

bees humming, birds warbling, lambs gamboling; the vintage scene with

the peasants all busy in the vineyard with the wine-presses, the

hogsheads, the baskets, and the grapes;[280] the winter landscape with

the deep snow, the rushing torrents, the ice, the laden trees;[281] the

country wedding with the feast on beds of green boughs before the cave

of the Nymphs, the songs of the reapers and the vintners, the dancing to

the pipes, the goats sharing the feast, the bridal procession with its

piping and singing.[282]

Longus’ art of narration is employed as skillfully as are his

descriptions. This art appears not only in the pattern of the whole

romance, but in the skillful use of stories within the story to

diversify and enliven the longer narrative. After the feast of Dionysus,

the old men, their tongues loosed with wine, fell into reminiscence and

told tales to each other:

“how bravely in their youth they had administered the pasturing of

their flocks and herds, how in their time they had escaped very many

invasions and inroads of pirates and thieves. Here one bragged that he

had killed a wolf, here another that he had bin second to Pan alone in

the skill and art of piping.”[283]

That last was Philetas, the wise old shepherd who told Daphnis and Chloe

the story of the gay little Eros whom he had found playing in his garden

flying like a nightingale from bough to bough of the myrtles, a lovely

story with a point for Philetas’ _ars amatoria_.[284] The other inset

stories are mostly short myths. So Daphnis tells Chloe how the mourning

dove was once a maid, very proud of her singing and by her song alone

she kept the cows she tended near her in the wood. But a shepherd lad

rivalled her music and piped off eight of her finest cows to his own

herd. And the girl in despair prayed to become a bird. The gods

consented and left her that sweet voice so still she calls the cattle

home.[285]

At the feast of Dionysus Lamo tells a myth which a Sicilian goatherd had

sung to him, a tiny tale of how the girl Syrinx fleeing Pan’s embraces

was changed into a reed and then made by Pan into his pipe, with reeds

of unequal lengths to symbolize their ill-matched love.[286] All these

stories are very short and simple, bits of folk-lore such as peasants

might relate at their feasts or in the open.

Much of the whole narrative is colored by a humor that is as playful and

tender as the spirit of Philetas’ merry child Eros. In the vintage scene

both Daphnis and Chloe are beset with childish jealousy at the

attentions that each other receives.[287] The author’s humor plays

around them from the time when they first herded their flocks together

to the day of their rural wedding. And the plot is set with humor, which

as Wolff observes, turns on “the incongruity between the children’s

innocence and the piquancy of their experiments.”[288]

It is not strange that Longus’ Pastorals with all their charm of plot,

setting and style were the forerunners of much later literature. Todd

has a paragraph which is a sign-post to the line of his successors.[289]

“Longus invented the pastoral romance, and his influence is found

throughout the pastorals of the modern European literatures: already,

perhaps, at the end of the fifteenth century, in the _Arcadia_ of the

‘Neapolitan Virgil’ Jacopo Sannazaro; in the _Aminta_ of Tasso, in the

_Astrée_ of D’Urfé, in the _Gentle Shepherd_ of Ramsay, in the _Paul

et Virginie_ of Saint-Pierre, and in other writings almost countless.”

S. L. Wolff’s elaborate study of _The Greek Romances in Elizabethan

Prose Fiction_ analyzes in detail Longus’ influence on Robert Greene in

_Manaphon_ and _Pandost_ and Shakespeare’s use of Longus in the pastoral

setting, the hunt scene, the exposure motif in _The Winter’s Tale_.

There is rich material still left in the study of the Greek Romances for

the young scholar working in Comparative Literature. By them, by all

students of literature _Daphnis and Chloe_ deserves to be read and

reread. For Longus, just as Theocritus did in the Idyl, immortalized in

the realm of fiction the loves and woes of shepherds.

It is strange that a pastoral romance of such honest and simple charm

should have played a dramatic part in a melodrama of the early

nineteenth century. Yet it did, for it almost caused an international

literary warfare; it almost had a French officer shot for desertion; and

it created serious political complications for him with the Bonaparte

family.

Paul Louis Courier (1773-1825) led a bizarre life as a vine-grower, an

officer in the artillery, a liberal pamphleteer, a member of the Legion

of Honor, a prisoner in Sainte-Pélagie, a traveller, a poet, a

Hellenist. Throughout his checkered career, he anticipated Byron in his

romantic passion for the antiquities, the ruins, the beauty of Greece.

In 1811 he wrote from Rome: “The fact is that I wish before I die to see

the lantern of Demosthenes and drink the water of the Ilissus.”

It was this passion combined with his disgust at the butcheries of

Wagram that made him forget that he was a soldier so that in 1809,

though he was the head of a squadron of artillery, he slipped out of

military life and in Italy devoted all his time to those literary

studies to which before he had given his leisure.

Reared in the country (at Méré in Touraine), he had early become

fascinated with the pastoral romance _Daphnis and Chloe_ and now he was

determined to work on a Thirteenth Century Greek manuscript of it which

was in the Laurentian Library. After some difficulty he obtained

permission from the librarian, Francesco Furia, and his work started

happily. It was to meet with the greatest success and the greatest

disaster. Courier, amateur that he was, discovered that the Laurentian

manuscript contained the text of the great lacuna in Book I (cc. 12-17).

These chapters were lacking in all other manuscripts. Furia who had

worked for years on the manuscript, which was in parts nearly illegible,

had never noticed these hitherto unknown chapters. They contain the

episode of Daphnis tumbling into the trap-ditch, Chloe’s falling in love

with him thereafter, and the contest of Daphnis and Dorco for Chloe’s

kiss.

Close on Courier’s great discovery followed a most unfortunate episode,

for after carefully copying the new chapters Courier obliterated them by

a black ink stain. It was natural that the jealous Furia should believe

that Courier had intentionally upset his ink-pot over them. Courier

himself in a letter to Renouard declared that inadvertently he had used

as a marker some paper which was soaked in ink on the under side, and

that made the blot.

The rage of Furia might itself have hindered the publication of

Courier’s discovery and now a political complication arose as a new

obstacle. Since the fame of his work was spreading, Elisa Bonaparte, the

sister of Napoleon, wished to have Courier’s publication dedicated to

her and the prefect of Florence, the Baron Fauchet, announced her

gracious wish at a formal dinner-party! Courier, who by now hated all

Bonapartes, cut his Gordian knot by rushing out at Florence a Greek

edition in fifty-two copies before the French edition which he was

publishing at Paris appeared in 1810. The deed was done and neither

Furia nor la Bonaparte could undo it.

The fame and scandal of Courier’s work of course came to the ears of the

Ministry of War and orders were sent to General Sorbier, commandant of

the artillery in Italy, to demand from Courier explanations of his

absence from his squadron. Fortunately the general accepted Courier’s

affirmation that he had never thought of deserting so that the Hellenist

escaped being shot then, but fate pursued him.

On April 11, 1825, the body of Paul Louis Courier was found in a wood

near his country home at Véretz. He had been assassinated. It was long

believed that this was a political crime, “a kind of epilogue of secret

vengeance in party politics” as Edmond Pilon puts it.[290] It might also

have been the revenge of a philologist. Actually the shooting was the

result of an embroglio with certain servants on his estate. Courier in

1814 had married Mlle Herminie Clavier, who managed his estate in his

absence. She seems to have betrayed him both in business matters and

affairs of the heart so that Courier separated from her and made new

plans for the management of the estate. Five years after the murder the

Department of Justice found that the assassins were certain servitors of

Courier who had been dismissed because of their connivance with Madame

Courier in her iniquities. Courier, whose dearest dream had been the

pastoral life of Daphnis and Chloe, escaped the dangers of war and of

prison only to be shot in the country he loved for petty personal spite.

Paul Louis Courier would, I am sure, have been happy to have part of his

fame rest on his precious new chapters of the Pastorals, and to know

that his beautiful translation of their four books lives on in one new

edition after another.

VII

_LUCIAN AND HIS SATIRIC ROMANCES: THE_ TRUE HISTORY _AND_ LUCIUS OR ASS

“Lucian of Samosata [was] surnamed ‘The blasphemer,’ because in his

dialogues he alleges that the things told of the gods are absurd....

He was at first an advocate in Antioch, but, having ill success in

that, he turned to the composition of discourses, and his writings are

innumerable. He is said to have been killed by dogs, he having been

rabid against the truth. For in his ‘Life of Peregrinus’ he attacks

Christianity and, wicked man, blasphemes against Christ himself.

Wherefore for his madness he suffered meet punishment in this life,

and hereafter with Satan he will be inheritor of the everlasting

fire.”[291]

This is the meagre biography by Suidas of the great satirist who through

nearly all of the second century held up the mirror of his frankness to

reflect images of the Greek and Roman world. Suidas’ misrepresentation

of Lucian’s allusions to the Christians and his fanciful picture of the

sophist’s end vilify much of this traditional vita. From Lucian’s own

writings more facts may be assembled.

Syrian by birth, he wrote in Greek and became a master of an Attic prose

style. As a boy he was apprenticed to a sculptor uncle, but quickly left

work with his hands for work with his tongue, studied rhetoric and

oratory, practiced as an advocate at Antioch, became a professional

sophist and travelled in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Gaul;

about A.D. 165 settled at Athens where he lived twenty years, then near

the end of his life took an official post in Egypt under the Emperor and

wrote an Apology for so doing. Suidas’ description of his writings as

“innumerable” seems justified by the eighty-two prose works extant to

say nothing of two mock tragedies and fifty-three epigrams, now

considered spurious.

Though the great bulk of Lucian’s writings consists of Platonic and

satiric dialogues, he enters into the scope of this book as a writer of

the satiric or parody romance. For two of his writings, the _True

History_ and _Lucius or Ass_, establish for us this new type of Greek

romance. His _True History_ is a parody of all travellers’ tales from

Odysseus’ to such as those of Antonius Diogenes in _The Wonderful Things

beyond Thule_. Probably this work of Lucian had more literary influence

than any of his other writings. His other romance, of which we have only

an epitome, _Lucius or Ass_, is, I believe, a parody of the romance

motivated mainly by religion. Its greatest value in its present

syncopated form is that it outlines a contemporary Greek counterpart of

the famous Latin novel, Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_, and furnishes us with

a touchstone for testing the pure gold of Apuleius’ originality.

Before, however, we can discuss Lucian’s art of narration in his two

romances, we must reconstruct from his own writings his literary

autobiography and his conceptions of his literary art. Only then when we

have met the critic self-criticized will we be competent to appreciate

his brilliant imaginative flights in his novels.

A dangerous temptation at once assails any one who starts to write on

any subject connected with Lucian. That is to attempt to cover the whole

field of his life and works because of the brilliancy of the many-sided

facets of his genius. A forcible deterrent is the fact that a masterly

appreciation of _La vie et les œuvres de Lucien_ has already been

written by Maurice Croiset in his _Essai_[292] which in richness and

style alike is worthy of its great theme. All subsequent studies of

Lucian are inevitably founded on M. Croiset’s appreciation.

Gildersleeve, following Croiset, pointed out that Lucian’s life must be

reconstructed from his own writings. And this within the scope of a

brief essay Gildersleeve did brilliantly for English readers fifty years

ago.[293] From another angle I am attempting to do this same thing now

in order to make us acquainted before we read his stories with Lucian

the story-teller.[294]