Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 83

A still more amusing instance of Alexandrian "gallantry" is to be found in the case of the queen Stratonice, whose court-poets were called upon to compete with each other in singing of the beauty of her locks. The fact that she was bald, did not, as a matter of course, make the slightest difference in this kind of homage.

Unlike his colleagues, Rohde was not misled into accepting such _adulation of queens_ as evidence of _adoration of women in general_.

In several pages of admirable erudition (63-69), which I commend to all students of the subject, he exposes the hollowness and artificiality of this so-called Alexandrian chivalry. Fas.h.i.+on ordained that poems should be addressed to women of exalted rank:

"As the queens were, like the kings, enrolled among the G.o.ds, the court-poets, of course, were not allowed to neglect the praise of the queens, and they were called upon to celebrate the royal weddings;[316] nay, in the extravagance of their gallant homage they rose to a level of bad taste the pinnacle of which was reached by Callimachus in his elegy--so well-known through the imitation of Catullus--on the hair of queen Berenice placed among the constellations by the courtesy of the astronomer Conon."

He then proceeds to explain that we must be careful not to infer from such a courtly custom that other women enjoyed the freedom and influence of the queen or shared their compliments.

"In actual life a certain chivalrous att.i.tude toward women existed at most toward hetairai, in which case, as a matter of course, it was adulterated with a very unpleasant ingredient of frivolous sentimentality.... Of an essential change in the position of respectable girls and women there is no indication."

Though there were a number of learned viragoes, there is "absolutely no evidence" that women in general received the compliment and benefit of an education. The poems of Philetas and Callimachus, like those of Propertius and Ovid, so far as they referred to women, appealed only to the wanton hetairai. As late as our first century Plutarch felt called upon to write a treatise, oti kai gunaikas paideuteon--"that women too should be educated." Cornelius Nepos still speaks of the gynaikonitis as the place where women spend their time.

"In particular, the emanc.i.p.ation of virgins from the seclusion of their jealous confinement would have implied a revolution in all social arrangements of the Greeks of which we have no intimation anywhere,"

including Alexandria (69). In another chapter, Rohde comments (354-356) with doc.u.mentary proof, on the "extraordinary tenacity,"

with which the Greeks down to the latest periods of their literature, clung to their custom of regarding and treating women as inferiors and servants--a custom which precluded the possibility of true chivalry and adoration. That sympathy also--and consequently true, altruistic affection--continued to be wanting in their emotional life is indicated by the fact, also pointed out by Rohde, that "the most palpable mark of a higher respect," an education, was withheld from the women to the end of the h.e.l.lenic period.[317]

THE NEW COMEDY

Another current error regarding the Alexandrian period both in Egypt and in Greece (Menander and the New Comedy) is that a regard for purity enters as a new element into its literature. It does, in some instances, less, however, as a virtue than as a _bonne bouche_ for epicures,[318] as is made most patent in that offshoot of the Alexandrian manner, the abominably _raffine_ story of Daphnis and Chloe. There may also be traces of that "longing for an enn.o.bling of the pa.s.sion of love" of which Rohde speaks (though I have not found any in my own reading, and the professor, contrary to his favorite usage, gives no references); but apart from that, the later Greek literature differs from the older not in being purer, but by its coa.r.s.e and shameless eroticism, both unnatural and natural. The old epics and tragedies are models of purity in comparison, though Euripides set a bad example in his _Hippolytus_, and still more his _Aeolus_, the coa.r.s.e incestuous pa.s.sion of which was particularly admired and imitated by the later writers.[319] Aristophanes is proverbial for his unspeakable license and obscenity. Concerning the plays of Menander (more than a hundred, of which only fragments have come down to us and Latin versions of several by Terence and Plautus), Plutarch tells us, indeed, that they were all tied together by one bond--love; but it was love in the only sense known to the Greeks, and always involving a hetaira or at most a [Greek: pseudokorae] or _demie-vierge_, since respectable girls could not be involved in realistic Greek love-affairs.

Professor Gercke has well remarked (141) that the charm of elegance with which Menander covers up his moral rottenness, and which made him the favorite of the _jeunesse doree_ of his time, exerted a bad influence on the stage through many centuries. There are a few quasi-altruistic expressions in the plays of Terence and Plautus, but they are not supported by actions and do not reach beyond the sphere of sentimentality into that of sentiment. Here again I may adduce Rohde as an unbia.s.sed witness. While declaring that there is "a longing for the enn.o.bling of the pa.s.sion in actual life" he admits that

"really _sentimental effusions_ of love are strikingly rare in Plautus and Terence.[320] One might think the authors of the Latin versions had omitted the sentimental pa.s.sages, were it not that in the remnants of the Newer Comedy of the Attic writers themselves there are, apart from general references to Eros, no traces whatever of sentimental allusions."[321]

THEOCRITUS AND CALLIMACHUS

Let us now return from Athens and Rome to Alexandria, to see whether we can find a purer and more genuinely romantic atmosphere in the works of her leading poets. Of these the first in time and fame is Theocritus. He, like Sappho, has been lauded as a poet of love; and he does resemble Sappho in two respects. Like her, he often glorifies unnatural pa.s.sion in a way which, as in the twelfth and twenty-third Idyls, for example, tempts every normal person who can read the original to throw the whole book away in disgust. Like Sappho and the Hindoos (and some modern Critics) he also seems to imagine that the chief symptoms of love are emaciation, perspiration, and paralysis, as we see in the absurdly overrated second Idyl, of which I have already spoken (116). Lines 87-88 of Idyl I., lines 139-142 of Idyl II., and the whole of Idyl XXVII., practically sum up the conception of love prevailing in the bucolic school of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, except that Theocritus has an idea of the value of coyness and jealousy as stimulants of pa.s.sion, as Idyl VI. shows. Crude coyness and rude jealousy no doubt were known also to the rustic folk he sings about; but when he makes that ugly, clumsy, one-eyed monster, the Cyclops Polyphemus, fall in love with the sea-nymph Galatea (Idyl XI.) and lament that he was not born with fins that he might dive and kiss her hand if his lips she refused, he applies Alexandrian pseudo-gallantry to pastoral conditions where they are ludicrously out of place. The kind of "gallantry" really to be expected under these conditions is realistically indicated in Idyl XIV., where Aeschines, after declaring that he shall go mad some day because the beautiful Cyniska flouted him, tells his friend how, in a fit of jealousy, he had struck the girl on the cheek twice with clenched fist, while she was sitting at his own table. Thereupon she left him, and now he laments: "If I could only find a cure for my love!"

Another quaintly realistic touch occurs in the line (Idyl II.) in which Battis declares that Amaryllis, when she died, was as dear to him as his goats. In this line, no doubt, we have the supreme ideal of Sicilian pastoral love; nor is there a line which indicates that Theocritus himself knew any higher phases of love than those which he embodies in his shepherds. In a writer who has so many poetic charms[322] this may seem strange, but it simply bears out my theory that romantic love is one of the latest products of civilization--as late as the love of romantic scenery, which we do not find in Theocritus, though he writes charmingly of other kinds of scenery--of cool fountains, shady groves, pastures with cattle, apple trees, and other things that please the senses of man--as women do while they are young and pretty.

Callimachus, the younger contemporary of Theocritus, is another Alexandrian whose importance in the history of love has been exaggerated. His fame rests chiefly on the story of Acontius and Cydippe which occurred in the collection of legends and tales he had brought together in his [Greek: Aitia]. His own version is now lost, like most of his other works; and such fragments of the story as remain would not suffice for the purpose of reconstruction were we not aided by the two epistles which the lovers exchange with each other in the _Heroides_ of Ovid, and more still by the prose version of Aristaenetus, which appears to be quite literal, judging by the correspondence of the text with some of the extant fragments of the original.[323] The story can be related in a few lines. Acontius and Cydippe are both very beautiful and have both been coy to others of the opposite s.e.x. As a punishment they are made to fall in love with each other at first sight in the Temple of Diana. It is a law of this temple that any vow made in it must be kept. To secure the girl, Acontius therefore takes an apple, writes on it a vow that she will be his bride and throws it at her feet. She picks it up, reads the vow aloud and thus pledges herself. Her parents, some time after, want to marry her to another man; three times the wedding arrangements are made, but each time she falls ill. Finally the oracle at Delphi is consulted, which declares that the girl's illness is due to her not keeping her vow; whereupon explanations follow and the lovers are united.

In the literary history of love this story may be allowed a conspicuous place for the reason that, as Mahaffy remarks (_G.L. & T._, 230), it is the first literary original of that sort of tale which makes falling in love and happy marriage the beginning and the end, while the obstacles to this union form the details of the plot.

Moreover, as Couat points out (145), the later Greek romances are mere imitations of this Alexandrian elegy--Hero and Leander, Leucippe and c.l.i.tophon, and other stories all recall it. But from my point of view--the evolutionary and psychological--I cannot see that the story told by Callimachus marks any advance. The lovers see each other only a moment in the temple; they do not meet afterward, there is no real courts.h.i.+p, they have no chance to get acquainted with each other's mind and character, and there is no indication whatever of supersensual, altruistic affection. Nor was Callimachus the man from whom one would have expected a new gospel of love. He was a dry old librarian, without originality, a compiler of catalogues and legends, etc.--eight hundred works all told--in which even the stories were marred by details of pedantic erudition. Moreover, there is ample evidence in the extant epigrams that he did not differ from his contemporaries and predecessors in the theory and practice of love.

Instead of having the modern feeling of abhorrence toward any suggestion of [Greek: paiderastia], he glorified it in the usual Greek style. The fame he enjoyed as an erotic poet among the coa.r.s.e and unprincipled Roman bards does not redound to his credit, and he himself tells us unmistakably what he means by love when he calls it a [Greek: philopaida noson] and declares that fasting is a sure remedy for it (_Epigr._, 47).

MEDEA AND JASON

Another writer of this period who has been unduly extolled for his insight into the mysteries of love, is Apollonius Rhodius, concerning whom Professor Murray goes so far as to say (382), that "for romantic love on the higher side he is without a peer even in the age of Theocritus."(!) He owes this fame to the story of Medea and Jason, introduced in the third book of his version of the Argonautic expedition (275 _seq_.). It begins in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way with Cupid shooting his arrow at Medea's heart, in which forthwith the destructive pa.s.sion glows. Blushes and pallor alternate in her face, and her breast heaves fast and deep as she incessantly stares at Jason with flaming eyes. She remembers afterwards every detail about his looks and dress, and how he sat and walked. Unlike all other men he seemed to her. Tears run down her cheeks at the thought that he might succ.u.mb in his combat with the two terrible bulls he will have to tame before he can recover the Golden Fleece. Even in her dreams she suffers tortures, if she is able to sleep at all. She is distracted by conflicting desires. Should she give him the magic salve which would protect his body from harm, or let him die, and die with him? Should she give up her home, her family, her honor, for his sake and become the topic of scandalous gossip? or should she end it all by committing suicide? She is on the point of doing so when the thought of all the joys of life makes her hesitate and change her mind. She resolves to see Jason alone and give him the ointment. A secret meeting is arranged in the temple of Hecate. She gets there first, and while waiting every sound of footsteps makes her bosom heave. At last he comes and at sight of him her cheek flames red, her eyes grow dim, consciousness seems to leave her, and she is fixed to the ground unable to move forward or backward. After Jason has spoken to her, a.s.suring her that the G.o.ds themselves would reward her for saving the lives of so many brave men, she takes the salve from her bosom, and she would have plucked her heart from it to give him had he asked for it. The eyes of both are modestly turned to the ground, but when they meet longing speaks from them. Then, after explaining to him the use of the salve, she seizes his hand and begs him after he shall have reached his home again, to remember her, as she will bear him in mind, even against her parents' wishes. Should he forget her, she hopes messengers will bring news of him, or that she herself may be able to cross the seas and appear an unexpected guest to remind him how she had saved him.

Such was the love of Medea, which historians have proclaimed such a new thing in literature--"romantic love on the higher side." For my part I cannot see in this description--in which no essential trait is omitted--anything different from what we have found in Homer, in Sappho, and in Euripides. The unwomanly lack of coyness which Medea displays when she practically proposes to Jason, expecting him to marry her out of grat.i.tude, is copied after the Nausicaa of the _Odyssey_. The flaming cheeks, dim eyes, loss of consciousness, and paralysis are copied from Sappho; while the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides furnished the model for the dwelling on the subjective symptoms of the "pernicious pa.s.sion of love." The stale trick too, of making this love originate in a wound inflicted by Cupid's arrows is everlastingly Greek; and so is the device of representing the woman alone as being consumed by the flames of love. For Jason is about as unlike a modern lover as a caricaturist could make him. His one idea is to save his life and get the Fleece. "Necessity compels me to clasp your knees and ask your aid," he exclaims when he meets her; and when she gives him that broad hint "do not forget me; I shall never forget you," his reply is a long story about his home. Not till after she has threatened to visit him does he declare "But _should you_ come to my home, you would be honored by all ... _in that case_ I hope you may grace my bridal couch." And again in the fourth book he relates that he is taking Medea home to be his wife "in accordance with her wishes!" Without persiflage, his att.i.tude may be summed up in these words: "I come to you because I am in danger of my precious life. Help me to get back the Golden Fleece and I promise you that, on condition that I get home safe and sound, I will condescend to marry you." Is this, perhaps, the "romantic love on the higher side" which Professor Murray found in this story? But there is more to come.

Of the symptoms of love in Medea's heart described in the foregoing paragraph not one rises above that egotistic gloating over the pangs and joys of sensual infatuation which const.i.tute one phase of sentimentality; while the further progress of the story shows that Medea had no idea whatever of sacrificing herself for Jason, but that the one motive of her actions was the eager desire to possess him.

When the fugitives are being pursued closely, and the chivalrous Argonauts, afraid to battle with a superior number, propose to retain the Golden Fleece, but to give up Medea and let some other king decide whether she is to be returned to her parents, it never occurs to her that she might save her beloved by going back home. She wants to have him at any cost, or to perish with him; so she reproaches him bitterly for his ingrat.i.tude, and meditates the plan of setting fire to the s.h.i.+ps and burning him up with all the crew, as well as herself. He tries to pacify her by protesting that he had not quite liked the plan proposed himself, but had indorsed it only to gain time; whereupon she suggests a way out of the dilemma pleasanter to herself, by advising the Argonauts to inveigle her brother, who leads the pursuers, into their power and a.s.sa.s.sinate him; which they promptly proceed to do, while she stands by with averted eyes. It is with unconscious sarcasm that Apollonius exclaims on the same page where all these details of "romantic love on the higher side" are being unfolded: "Accursed Eros, the world's most direful plague."

POETS AND HETAIRAI.

The one commendable feature which the stories of Acontius and Cydippe and of Medea and Jason have in common is that the heroine in each case is a respectable and pure maiden (see _Argon._, IV., 1018-1025). But, although the later romance writers followed this example, it would be a great mistake to suppose, with Mahaffy (272), that this touch of virgin purity was felt by the Alexandrians to be "the necessary starting-point of the love-romance in a refined society." Alexandrian society was anything but refined in matters of love, and the trait referred to stands out by reason of its novelty and isolation in a literature devoted chiefly to the hetairai. We see this especially also in the epigrams of the period. It is astonis.h.i.+ng, writes Couat (173), how many of these are erotic; and "almost all," he adds, "are addressed to courtesans or young boys." "Dans toutes l'auteur ne chante que la beaute plastique et les plaisirs faciles; leur Cypris est la Cypris [Greek: pandaemos], celle qui se vend a tout le monde."

In these verses of Callimachus, Asclepiades, Poseidippus and others, he finds sentimentality but no sentiment; and on page 62 he sums up Alexandria with French patness as a place "ou l'on faisait a.s.sidument des vers sur l'amour sans etre amoureux"--"where they were ever writing love-poems without ever being in love." But what repels modern taste still more than this artificiality and lack of inspiration is the effeminate degradation of the masculine type most admired. Helbig, who, in his book on _Campanische Wandmalerei_, enforces the testimony of literature with the inferences that can be drawn from mural paintings and vases, remarks (258) that the favorite poetic ideals of the time are tender youths with milk-white complexion, rosy cheeks and long, soft tresses. Thus is Apollo represented by Callimachus, thus even Achilles by the bucolic poets. In later representations indicating Alexandrian influences we actually see Polyphemus no longer as a rude giant, but as a handsome man, or even as a beardless youth.[324]

That the Alexandrian period, far from marking the advent of purity and refinement in literature and life, really represents the climax of degradation, is made most obvious when we regard the role which the hetairai played in social life. In Alexandria and at Athens they were the centre of attraction at all the entertainments of the young men, and to some of them great honors were paid. In the time of Polybius the most beautiful houses in Alexandria were named after flute girls; portrait statues of such were placed in temples and other public places, by the side of those of generals and statesmen, and there were few prominent men whose names were not a.s.sociated with these creatures.

The opinion has been promulgated countless times that these [Greek: hetairai] were a mentally superior cla.s.s of women, and on the strength of this information I a.s.sumed, in _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_ (79), that, notwithstanding their frailty, they may have been able, in some cases, to inspire a more refined, spiritual sort of love than the uneducated domestic women. A study of the original sources has now convinced me that this was a mistake. Aspasia no doubt was a remarkable woman, but she stands entirely by herself, Theodota is visited once by Socrates, but he excuses himself from calling again, and as for Diotima, she is a seeress rather than a hetaira. Athenaeus informs us that some of these women

"had a great opinion of themselves, paying attention to education and spending a part of their time on literature; so that they were very ready with their rejoinders and replies;"

but the specimens he gives of these rejoinders and replies consist chiefly of obscene jokes, cheap puns on names or pointless witticisms.

Here are two specimens of the better kind, relating to Gnathaena, who was famed for her repartee:

"Once, when a man came to see her and saw some eggs on a dish, and said, 'Are these raw, Gnathaena, or boiled?' she replied, 'They are made of bra.s.s, my boy.'" "On one occasion, when some poor lovers of the daughter of Gnathaena came to feast at her house, and threatened to throw it down, saying that they had brought spades and mattocks on purpose; 'But,' said Gnathaena, 'if you had these implements, you should have p.a.w.ned them and brought some money with you.'"

The pictures of the utter degradation of the most famous of the hetairai--Leontium, Lais, Phryne, and others, drawn by Athenaeus, need not be transferred to these pages. Combined with the revelations made in Lucian's [Greek: Etairikoi dialogoi], they demonstrate absolutely that these degraded, mercenary, mawkish creatures could not have inspired romantic sentiment in the hearts of the men, even if the latter had been capable of it.

It is to such vulgar persons that the poets of cla.s.sical Greece and Alexandria addressed their verses. And herein they were followed by those of the Latins who may be regarded as imitators of the Alexandrians--Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, the princ.i.p.al erotic poets of Rome. They wrote all their love-poems to, for, or about, a cla.s.s of women corresponding to the Greek hetairai. Of Ovid I have already spoken (189), and what I said of him practically applies to the others. Propertius not only writes with the hetairai in his mind, but, like his Alexandrian models, he appears as one who is forever writing love-poems without ever being really in love. With Catullus the sensual pa.s.sion at least is sincere. Yet even Professor Sellar, who declares that he is, "with the exception perhaps of Sappho, the greatest and truest of all the ancient poets of love," is obliged to admit that he "has not the romance and purity of modern sentiment" (349, 22). Like the Greeks, he had a vague idea that there is something higher than sensual pa.s.sion, but, like a Greek, in expressing it, he ignores women as a matter of course. "There was a time," he writes to his profligate Lesbia, "when I loved you not as a man loves his mistress, but _as a father loves his son or his son-in-law_"!

Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum, Lesbia, nee prae me velle tenere Iovem.

Dilexi tum te non ut volgus amicam, Sed pater ut gnatos diligit et generos.

In Tibullus there is a note of tenderness which, however, is a mark of effeminacy rather than of an improved manliness. His pa.s.sion is fickle, his adoration little more than adulation, and the expressions of unselfish devotion here and there do not mean more than the altiloquent words of Achilles about Briseis or of Admetus about Alcestis, for they are not backed up by altruistic actions. In a word, his poems belong to the region of sentimentality, not sentiment.

Morally he is as rotten as any of his colleagues. He began his poetic career with a glorification of [Greek: paiderastia], and continued it as an admirer of the most abandoned women. A French author who wrote a history of prost.i.tution in three volumes quite properly devoted a chapter to Tibullus and his love-affairs.[325]

SHORT STORIES

A big volume might be filled with the short love-stories in prose or verse scattered through a thousand years of Greek literature. But, although some of them are quite romantic, I must emphatically reiterate what I said in my first book (76)--that romantic love does not appear in the writings of any Greek author and that the pa.s.sion of the desperately enamoured young people so often portrayed sprang entirely from sensuality. One of the critics referred to at the beginning of this chapter held me up to the ridicule of the British public because I ignored such romantic love-stories as Orpheus and Eurydice, Alcyone and Ceyx, Atalanta and Meleager, Cephalus and Procris, and "a dozen others" which "any school girl" could tell me.

To begin with the one last named, the critic asks: "What can be said against Cephalus and Procris?" A great deal, I am afraid. As told by Antoninus Liberalis in No. 41 of his _Metamorphoses_ ([Greek: metamorphoseon synagogae]) it is one of the most abominable and obscene stories ever penned even by a Greek. Some of the disgusting details are omitted in the versions of Ovid and Hyginus, but in the least offensive version that can be made the story runs thus:

Cephalus, having had experience of woman's unbridled pa.s.sion, doubts his wife's fidelity and, to test her, disguises himself and offers her a bag of gold. At first she refuses, but when he doubles the sum, she submits, whereupon he throws away his disguise and confronts her with her guilt. Covered with shame, she flies. Afterward she cuts her hair like a man's, changes her clothes so as to be unrecognizable, and joins him in the chase. Being more successful than he, she promises to teach him on a certain condition; and on his a.s.senting, she reveals her ident.i.ty and accuses him of being just as bad as she was. Another version reads that after their reconciliation she suspected his fidelity on hearing that he used to ascend a hill and cry out "Come, Nephela, come" ([Greek: Nephelae] means cloud). So she went and concealed herself on the hill in a thicket, where her husband accidentally killed her with his javelin.

Is this the kind of Greek "love-stories" that English school girls learn by the dozen? Coa.r.s.e as it is, the majority of these stories are no better, being absolutely unfit for literal translation, which is doubtless the reason why no publisher has ever brought out a collection of Greek "love-stories." Of those referred to above none is so objectionable as the tale of Cephalus and Procris, nor, on the other hand, is any one of them in any way related to what we call romantic love. Atalanta was a sweet masculine maiden who could run faster than any athlete. Her father was anxious to have her marry, and she finally agreed to wed any man who could reach a certain goal before her, the condition being, however, that she should be allowed to transfix with her spear every suitor who failed. She had already ornamented the place of contest with the heads of many courageous young men, this tender-hearted, romantic maiden had, when her fun was rudely spoiled by Meleager, who threw before her three golden apples which she stopped to pick up, thus losing the race to that hero, who, no doubt, was extremely happy with such a wife ever after. Even to this story an improper sequel was added.

Alcyone and Ceyx is the story of a wife who committed suicide on discovering the body of her husband on the sea-beach; and the story of Orpheus, who grieved so over the death of his wife Eurydice that he went to the lower world to bring her up again, but lost her again because, contrary to his agreement with Pluto and Proserpina, he looked back to see if she was following, is known to everybody. The conjugal attachment and grief at the loss of a spouse which these two legends tell of, are things the existence of which in Greece no one has ever denied. They are simple phenomena quite apart from the complex state of mind we call romantic love, and are shared by man with many of the lower animals. In such attachment and grief there is no evidence of altruistic affection. Orpheus tried to bring back Eurydice to please himself, not her, and Alcyone's suicide was of no possible use to Ceyx.[326]

The story of Panthea and Abradates, to which Professor Ebers refers so triumphantly, is equally inconclusive as to the existence of altruistic affection. Abradates, having been urged by his wife Panthea to show himself worthy of the friends.h.i.+p of Cyrus by doing valorous deeds, falls in a battle, whereat Panthea is so grieved at the result of her advice that she commits suicide. From the modern Christian point of view this was not a rational proof of affection, but a foolish and criminal act. But it harmonized finely with the Greek ideal--the notion that patriotism is even a woman's first duty, and her life not worth living except in subservience to her husband. There is good reason to believe[327] that this story was a pure invention of Xenophon and deliberately intended to be an object lesson to women regarding the ideal they ought to live up to. The whole of the book in which it appears--[Greek: Kyrou paideia]--is what the Germans call a _Tendenzroman_--a historic romance with a moral, ill.u.s.trating the importance of a correct education and glorifying a certain form of government.

To a student of Greek love one of the most instructive doc.u.ments is the [Greek: erotika pathaemata] of Parthenius, who was a contemporary of the most famous Roman poets (first century before Christ), and the teacher of Virgil. It is a collection of thirty-six short love-stories in prose, made for him by his friend Cornelius Gallus, who was in quest of subjects which he might turn into elegies. It has been remarked that these poems are peculiarly sad, but a better word for them is coa.r.s.e. Unbridled l.u.s.t, incest, [Greek: _paiderastia_], and adultery are the favorite motives in them, and few rise above the mephitic atmosphere which breathes from Cephalus and Procris or other stories of crime, like that of Philomela and Procne, which were so popular among Greek and Roman poets, and presumably suited their readers. With amusing navete Eckstein pleads for these "specimens of antique romance" on the ground that there is more lubricity in Bandello and Boccaccio!--which is like declaring that a man who a.s.sa.s.sinates another by simply hitting him on the head is virtuous because there are others who make murder a fine art. I commend the stories of Parthenius to the special attention of any one who may have any lingering doubts as to the difference between Greek ideas of love and modern ideals.[328]

GREEK ROMANCES

Parthenius is regarded as a connecting link of the Alexandrian school with the Roman poets on one side, and on the other with the romances which const.i.tute the last phase of Greek erotic literature.[329] In these romances too, a number of my critics professed to discover romantic love. The reviewer of my book in _Nature_ (London) asked me to see whether Heliodorus's account of the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea does not come up to my standard. I am sorry to say it does not. Jowett perhaps dismisses this story somewhat too curtly as "silly and obscene"; but it certainly is far from being a love-story in the modern sense of the word, though its moral tone is doubtless superior to that of the other Greek romances. The notion that it indicates an advance in erotic literature may no doubt be traced to the legend that Heliodorus was a bishop, and that he introduced Christian ideas into his romance--a theory which Professor Rohde has scuttled and sent to the bottom of the sea.[330] The preservation of the heroine's virginity amid incredible perils and temptations is one of the tricks of the Greek novelists, the real object of which is made most apparent in _Daphnis and Chloe_. The extraordinary emphasis placed on it on every possible occasion is not only very indelicate, but it shows how novel and remarkable such an idea was considered at the time. It was one of the tricks of the Sophists (with whom Heliodorus must be cla.s.sed), who were in the habit of treating a moral question like a mathematical problem. "Given a maiden's innocence, how can it be preserved to the end of the story?" is the artificial, silly, and vulgar leading motive of this Greek romance, as of others. Huet, Villemain, and many other critics have been duped by this sophistico-mathematical aspect of the story into descanting on the peculiar purity and delicacy of its moral tone; but one need only read a few of the heroine's speeches to see how absurd this judgment is.

When she says to her lover,