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:
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.