THE PASTORAL NOVEL AND THE BUCOLIC TRADITION

Massimo Di Marco

1. Daphnis and Chloe: a synthesis unique

When Longus the Sophist composed Daphnis and Chloe, most likely in the second half of the 2nd century AD, the novel evidently par- ticipated in a genre whose essential characteristics appeared to be clearly defined, despite the absence of any explicit theoretical codi- fication: two young people, having fallen in love with each other at first sight, are separated by destiny and become the protagonists of a nearly interminable series of adventures (journeys over land and sea, ambushes, pirates’ attacks, kidnappings, shipwrecks, apparent death, etc.); they overcome every temptation and survive every attack, succeed in remaining chaste and faithful to each other and at last, after many wanderings, they are reunited and live happily ever after. Following this outline, the story develops through remarkable vicissitudes and varia- tions of fortune; these transport the two lovers to exotic, faraway lands, bringing them into contact with an enormous number of characters, in a continuous series of coups de théâtre.Itisdifficult to imagine anything further removed from the limited, peaceful, and, on the whole, serene rural world of bucolic poetry, a world apparently separated from the town, above all in Theocritus, where the only real element of distur- bance and tension is the passion of love; in the eyes of Longus’ con- temporaries, therefore, the genres of the novel and of bucolic poetry must have appeared strikingly divergent, if not incompatible. And yet, what Longus has attempted to do is blend these two genres that on the surface seem so different, thus giving rise, in Daphnis and Chloe,tothe so-called “pastoral novel”.1

1 Cf. Effe(1982) 65: “Resultat eines kühnen generischen Experiments”. Similarly Zeitlin (1990) 419: “a bold and provocative experiment (both psychological and artis- tic)”. 480 massimo di marco

It is difficult to find, in the literature of preceding periods, any models which might have inspired this operation of ‘contamination’,2 even if only in part. In the 3rd century BC, Sositheus had composed a satyric drama, Daphnis or Lityerses, in which Daphnis went in search of his beloved Thaleia, who had been kidnapped by pirates, and learned that she was being held prisoner at the court of Lityerses, the King of Phrygia. This king was lamentably famous for forcing his guests to accept his challenge to a corn-cutting competition and then, after he had beaten them, lopping off their heads; it was only the intervention of Heracles that secured the girl’s freedom. By means of a Kreuzung der Gattungen wholly in tune with the literary practice of his period, Sositheus included the most emblematic character of the bucolic world in a plot dealing with love and adventure; all this, however, took place within a burlesque framework, one in which the chorus of satyrs must have played a significant role. During the reign of Trajan, Dio of Prusa exalted in his Euboicus the frugal temperance of rustic life, in harmony with the ideals of the Cynics, and narrated the development of a chaste love story between a boy and a girl. This is a work which undoubtedly shares the sympathy for humble country folk displayed in the novel by Longus,3 though the two compositions would appear to be substantially different in structure, tone and purpose. In fact, the synthesis created by Longus is unique in its kind. Of the two components—the bucolic aspect and that of the intrigue and adventure—it is clearly the former that prevails.4 The only elements of the novel that Longus exploits are certain details of the pattern of composition: the presentation of the two young people, their vicissi- tudes (which are limited here to a few brief episodes) and the final

2 On Longus’ novel as the result of the contamination of different literary genres, cf. Pattoni (2004). 3 The town-country dialectic is one of the most important themes of Daphnis and Chloe. On the social reasons for idealisation of the countryside (seen by Longus, how- ever, through the eyes of a town-dweller), cf. Longo (1978)andEffe(1982). 4 Bucolic elements in other novels are very scarse. An interesting case is the story of the Pan and Syrinx in Achilles Tat. 8.6, found also in Long. 2.34. But the tale about the origins of the pipe, which Achilles supplies with many details, is little more than an insert in the frame of his work and belongs to its peculiar “encyclopedic tendency”: see Fusillo (1989) 17–109. Noteworthy is also the fable of Rhodopis and Euthynicus (Achilles Tat. 8.12), which in many ways recalls the Theocritean story of Daphnis. A papyrus fragment of the 3rd century AD (PSI 1220 = AGNF pp. 429–437)preservesafictional narrative in which characters are given bucolic names “of Dionysiac colouring” (so Hunter (1983a) 17): Staphylus, “grape”; Ampeloi, “vines”; Dryas, “oak”, like Chloe’s adopted father. It looks like a short story, however, rather than a full-length novel.