FROM EKPHRASIS TO TSUNAMI

Longus and his readers

Sean K. F. Rafique

Classical Studies | Senior Honors Thesis ABSTRACT

Over the centuries, scholars have been unable to reach a concrete conclusion as to the nature of Daphnis and Chloe. Believing it to be a nuanced and complicated work, I have examined four key episodes in order to support this belief. These episodes, interspersed from the beginning to the end of Book One, were chosen to show that Longus’ novel both plays with the conventions of second century romance and possesses vast intertexts that the other extant novels lack. After comprehensive analysis, I have concluded that Daphnis and Chloe is an original and entertaining work, parodically interweaving elements of the romance genre and the wider intellectual literary tradition.

Special thanks must go to my advisor, Professor William A. Johnson, without whom I would have been no more than a lost sheep, anxious for his shepherd.

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface – “The Pastoral Tale of Daphnis and Chloe”

3

Chapter One – A Unique Commencement

6

Chapter Two – Abandonment & Suckling

19

Chapter Three – Dorkon and the Wolfskin

33

Chapter Four – Pirates, Cows, and… a Tsunami?

49

Conclusion – Why Daphnis and Chloe Matters

60

Bibliography

64

2 PREFACE – “THE PASTORAL TALE OF DAPHNIS AND CHLOE”

“When you grow up surrounded by goats, you see what they’re up to from a fairly early age, certainly earlier than most kids learn about the birds and the bees. Come to think of it, it was actually very educational.”

This was the response of Ezra Mellinger, a young farmer and self-proclaimed “goat boy” from rural Pennsylvania, when asked how much a teenager can learn from goats about the physiology of lovemaking. This question is central to our understanding of Daphnis and Chloe because it helps us to understand the tone that Longus sets. The narrative’s foundations are built upon the quest of two teenage herdsmen to understand how to physically make love to one another. If we believe that knowledge of this should come naturally to those who have grown up surrounded by the frequent lovemaking of goats, then one might take Longus’ novel as mere entertainment – light, laughable, and absurd. Yet, Daphnis and Chloe has been acclaimed for its ability to fuse elements of bucolic poetry with those of romance1, two genres that are infrequently subjected to scrutiny over their seriousness. How, then, are we to understand Longus’ pastoral romance?

Modern perception of the ancient novel focuses on the protagonists falling deeply in love, being held apart by external forces, and overcoming all obstacles in order to be together

1 Bretzigheimer draws attention to Longus masterful ability to fuse elements of bucolic poetry with element of the romance novel. For more on this, see Bretzigheimer 1988, 515-520.

3 at last. From my reading of second century romance, this summary of the essentials holds true for all of the core novels bar one: Daphnis and Chloe. As we learn, Longus’ protagonists spend the entire novel at each other’s sides, instead of apart, and initially lacking any understanding that they lust after one another. What is more, upon learning this, they do not know how to fulfil the desires of their lust. This is merely one of many bizarre inclusions and, in this instance, the playful nature of Longus’ novel is highlighted by the simple fact that the act of love must be painstakingly learned in a process lasting over one and a half years.

The purpose of this thesis is to highlight several original features that are characteristic of Daphnis and Chloe’s absurd adventure. One such feature concerns why Daphnis and Chloe is so different from the other romance novels of the time. “Everything that the genre of the novel emphasized up to this point … remains present in the background, but is radically and ostensibly transformed on the surface,”2 Bierl comments, suggesting that the focus of this novel is different from those that came before it. Another concerns Longus’ pronounced allusions to more famous literature. It is almost as if Longus challenges his most educated audience to establish how well-read they are, and to evaluate the effect of such inclusions in his pastoral narrative. We know that scholarly evaluations of Daphnis and Chloe vary widely, ranging from

“an ironic, evil, and cynical power work of pornography and rhetoric” to “an ideal work of art of noble innocence and silent magnitude.”3 The fact that scholars come to such different interpretation on the nature of the novel is itself telling; this is clearly a work that challenges

2 Taken from Bierl’s introductory remarks about Daphnis and Chloe. For Bierl’s introduction and commentary on myth and adolescence, see Bierl 2014, 441-455. 3 Bierl cites various scholars’ poignant analyses of Daphnis and Chloe. For more on this, see Bierl 2014, 441-455.

4 readers on essential matters like tone and purpose. I myself do not intend to prove what type of novel Daphnis and Chloe is. Rather, the purpose of undertaking this research is to demonstrate some of the ways in which Daphnis and Chloe can be seen as a more nuanced and complicated work than it is usually given credit for.

My research focuses on four key episodes from Book One of Daphnis and Chloe, each of which substantially contributes to our understanding of Longus’ authorial program. Some of these episodes are commonly found in the ancient novel, while others are not. All of these, however, showcase how very different Longus’ novel is from extant novels. They do so in two ways: (1) by pushing the literary conventions of second century romance to absurd and bizarre extremes, and (2) by intertextually alluding to the wider literary tradition. By examining these four episodes, I hope to show that Longus authors a work that is original, provocative, and indeed very entertaining.

5 CHAPTER ONE – A UNIQUE COMMENCEMENT

“On Lesbos, while hunting, in a grove of the Nymphs, I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen, a depiction of an image, a history of love. The grove was beautiful too, thick with trees, brilliant with flowers, irrigated by running water; a single spring sustained everything, flowers and trees alike. But the picture was more delightful still, combining outstanding technique with amorous adventure, so that many people, including visitors, drawn by its renown, came to pray to the Nymphs and look at the image. It showed women giving birth and others dressing babies in swaddling-clothes, babes abandoned and beasts of the flock feeding them, shepherds taking them up and young people making pledges, a pirate raid and an enemy invasion, and much else, all of it amorous. I looked and I wondered, and a desire seized me to respond to the painting in writing. I found someone to interpret the picture, and have laboured hard to create four books, an offering to Love, to the Nymphs and Pan, a possession to delight all mankind, which will heal the sick and comfort the distressed, stir the memory of those who have been in love, and give preparatory instruction to those who have not. For certainly no one has ever escaped Love, nor ever shall, so long as beauty exists and eyes can see. For ourselves, may the god grant us to remain chaste in writing the story of others.”

- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, Prologue4

4 Translation by J. R Morgan (Morgan 2004).

6 Among the Greek romance novels, Longus’ stands apart from the rest at the very outset of its narrative. The mere existence of a prologue, a preface pertaining to the narrator’s authorial intentions, makes Daphnis and Chloe unconventional. Based on the opening lines of the extant novels, we can assume that avid readers of second century romance would have expected neither this foreword nor the ekphrastic remarks made therein. To what end does

Longus commence his only known work so uniquely? Why might he labour to specify that his novel is an interpretation of a work of art, a painting that cannot possibly contain such details as are described? Through careful analysis of Longus’ prologue and other literary examples of ekphrasis, perhaps we can suggest some answers to these questions.

To begin, let us lay out some illustrative examples of ekphrasis, first from epic, where the tradition of ekphrasis begins, and then from pastoral and romance, in order to understand some of the major topoi of this phenomenon in the genres most allied with Daphnis and Chloe.

Summaries of these episodes will be followed by analysis of the core functional features.

Homer was first to deploy the device of ekphrasis, in his elaborate description of the Achilles’ shield in Book 18 of the Iliad, and this led to a tradition of ekphrasis in antiquity, conventionally found in epic and offshoots of epic.5 The characteristics of the Iliadic ekphrasis are informing to the tradition: the narrative action is suspended while the poet devotes a hefty one hundred and thirty lines to bring vividly before the audience’s eyes the artistry of the metal work. The scenes depicted on the shield are described concentrically, beginning at the shield’s centre with the earth, sky, sea, sun, moon, and stars, and ending at the shield’s outermost layer with the great

5 For more on the beginnings of the ekphrastic tradition and Homer’s role in this, see Elsner 2002, 1-3.

7 stream of Oceanus. Depictions of the other layers include two magnificent cities full of people, a field being ploughed for the third time, a king’s estate where the harvest is being reaped, a vineyard with grape pickers at work, a herd of cattle under attack by lions, a sheep farm, and the dancing of young men and women. The Homeric ekphrasis inspired the depiction of the similarly extravagant shield of Aeneas found in Book Eight of Virgil’s Aeneid, which is likewise decorated with images and actions far beyond what any but a miraculous shield could possibly contain. Virgil mirrors Homer not only in providing his protagonist with a miraculously decorated shield, but also in its divine craftsmanship and the means through which the hero receives the shield (Thetis, the mother of Achilles, enlists Hephaestus to craft her son’s shield, and Venus, the mother of Aeneas, receives aid from Vulcan for the very same purpose). On the face of Aeneas’ shield is depicted the story of Rome’s foundation and future glory in Italy, as well as Romulus and Remus nursed by the she-wolf, the defeat of the Gauls, and Augustus

Caesar defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium. Earlier, in Book One of

Virgil’s Aeneid, another ekphrasis is rendered with somewhat different characteristics. When

Aeneas arrives at Carthage, he marvels at the depictions of the Trojan War that are inscribed on the outer walls of the city. Among these depictions are unfortunate scenes of Greek and Trojan heroes alike, including the wrath of Achilles at both the sons of Atreus and the sons of Priam,

Achilles in his chariot chasing down the Trojans, Diomedes, covered in blood, slaughtering men who camped in Rhesus’ white-canvassed tents and driving that man’s horses back to the Greek encampment, Troilus still clutching the reigns of his chariot as his horses drag him through the dust, and finally the Trojan women, their hair dishevelled, arriving at the temple of Athena after

Achilles had dragged Hector’s body around the city walls; they mourned aloud and beat their

8 chests, but the goddess was turned away, her eyes fixed on the ground. A final example of ekphrasis comes amid Catullus’ Carmen 64, an epyllion where, at the wedding of Thetis and

Peleus, the tapestries woven into a marriage couch portray portions of the tale of Theseus,

Ariadne, and Dionysus. The depicted scenes, the descriptions of which take up more of the poem than those of the wedding itself, include Ariadne, abandoned on Naxos, watching

Theseus’ ship sail away, Theseus defeating the minotaur and retracing his steps out of the labyrinth, Ariadne leaving behind Minos, Pasiphae, and Phaedra to journey away with Theseus, her lamentations after being abandoned, the death of Aegeus, and the arrival of Dionysus and his troop on Naxos.

Not only did Homer’s example inspire the ekphrases of other epics, but the examples of these other epics came to inspire the deployment of ekphrasis in other fictional narratives.6

Such narratives include pastoral and romance, which we shall now turn to. The most notable among the pastoral ekphrases occurs in Theocritus’ Idyll 1, in which a goatherd describes a deep cup from which his guest might drink. Inside the cup lies an artwork depicting two men competing in a verbal contest for the affection of a woman (a scene that thoroughly resembles the contest of words between Dorkon and Daphnis in Longus, as we shall see), while the woman glances back and forth between them, an old fisherman casting his net from a jagged rock, and a vineyard in which a young boy, who is supposed to be on guard duty, uses rushes to plait a trap to catch grasshoppers, while two foxes steal grapes from under his nose. Also

6 “The paradigm of a leisurely descriptive intervention about a work of art within a long narrative is clearly the Shield of Achilles in Iliad 18.478-608, a work that was to have fundamental influence not only on other epic uses of ekphrasis but also on the place of ekphrasis in other kinds of fictional narratives” (Elsner 2002, 3).

9 worthy of mention is an ekphrasis that occurs towards the beginning of Leukippe and

Kleitophon, the romance novel by Achilles Tatius. In Book One of the novel, the narrator encounters a painting that depicts the rape of Europa, with a meadow and a chorus of maidens on one side, and on the other a bull swimming towards Crete, ferrying Europa on its back. The narrator follows this introduction to the painting with a detailed portrayal of the meadow’s flowers, trees, and shrubs, as well as a stream running through the meadow, the edge of the meadow where the land juts out into the sea, where two maidens are about to scream in response to the crimes of the bull, the sea filled with foam and rocks, tinged red near the land and a dark blue towards the deep, and Zeus as a muscular bull carrying the fearful Europa, surrounded by dolphins, all the while led by Eros, looking back at him with a wry smile. These last figures are so artfully depicted that they are described as seeming to move.

The examples of these five authors contribute to the formation of an audience’s expectations in regard to ekphrasis. To begin with, the images described during these ekphrases are extremely lengthy and contain much detail that cannot have actually been depicted on the objects in question. Joseph Kestner remarks on this core feature of ekphrasis, drawing our attention to the restrictions of an image’s spatial form upon its temporal movement.7 In simpler words, a single image cannot depict events that are bound by time, such as a lengthy dialogue, or a continuous action. A series of images, such as are found in a comic strip, are required to create this effect. The shields of Achilles and Aeneas break this rule. Not

7 This point draws on a trivial portion of a lengthy dive by Kestner into the formal and moral bounds of Longus’ ekphrasis on the dynamics of his narrative. For more information, see Kestner 1973, 169-171.

10 only are they unlikely to have been large enough to showcase all of the scenes described by

Homer and Virgil respectively, but they also cannot have depicted action over time. It is doubtful whether even the divine craftsmanship of Hephaestus/Vulcan would be capable of such a feat, but if we must take it at face value the extraordinary weaponry described are then clearly miraculous. Aeneas’ shield stretches these limits even so as to depict scenes from the future, a history that has not yet come to pass at the time of Aeneas’ invasion of Italy. While it is true that the portion of the walls of Carthage that Aeneas sees is large enough to have portrayed the exploits of so many prominent figures from the Trojan War, it also portrays scenes that contain motion and sound. The wedding couch described in Catullus could not possibly have depicted such narratological details as the narrator claims, such as Ariadne’s lamentation. Likewise, the cup that Theocritus describes is unlikely to have been large enough to convey so many scenes, let alone an ongoing contest of words, or the woman’s glancing back and forth between the two men. Similarly, the main figures in Achilles Tatius’ painting are described by the narrator as seeming to move. These all break the laws of static art that Kestner points to. Moreover, these ekphrases occur as offshoots to the main narrative. Elsner highlights the fact that the shield of Achilles, which prefigures the ekphrastic tradition to come, brings a pause to Homer’s narrative, allowing other kinds of narratives to be rendered both in the main text and aside from it.8 Additionally, Elsner explains how the shield, although only constituting a comparatively small episode, serves as a reflection upon the narrative as a whole, while also

8 “In narratological terms, Homer's Shield – a pause in the narrative that allows other kinds of narratives to figure both within the main text and bracketed apart from it, an implicit meditation on the totality of the text within which it constitutes but a small episode, and yet a material item with its own significant part to play in the Iliad's main story – fundamentally prefigures the role of ekphrasis in the later tradition” (Elsner 2002, 4-5).

11 maintaining its significance as a material item with a role to play within the major storyline.9 In five of the six cases in question, the ekphrasis creates this very pause that Elsner has described, bringing other narratives along with it. Virgil brings descriptions of the Trojan War and of

Rome’s future into his ekphrases, Catullus recounts the tale of Theseus, Ariadne, and Dionysus,

Theocritus portrays various scenes of pastoral life, and Homer we have already discussed. In

Achilles Tatius alone the ekphrasis does not bring a pause to the narratological flow, but rather initiates it. Even so, it fulfils the same function of introducing another narrative, the tale of Zeus and Europa, as an adjunct to the main one. Moreover, as Elsner also attributed to the shield of

Achilles, all six of these narrative-producing materialistic items are themselves of at least some significance to the main narrative. Finally, and simply put, each of these examples of ekphrasis serves the purpose of showing the audience, by use of words, that which they cannot see, bringing the thing shown vividly before the eyes.10

Now that we have explored several examples of ekphrasis, some more famous and others more closely tied to that which I am about to discuss, let us turn to Longus and his prologue. In the very first sentence of Daphnis and Chloe, the narrator states that he saw “a painting of an image” (εἰκόνος γραφήν) in the grove of the Nymphs. He describes this image very much in the mode of an ekphrasis, telling us that it showed “women giving birth by themselves and other women dressing the babies with swaddling clothes, infants abandoned,

9 See footnote 8. 10 At the beginning of Elsner’s publication, Elsner highlights the fact that the ancient handbook on rhetoric (the Progymnasmata) defines ekphrasis as “a descriptive speech which brings the thing shown vividly before the eyes.” For further reading on this, see Elsner 2002, 1-2.

12 flocks suckling them, herdsmen taking them up, youths making vows, a raid of pirates, an invasion of enemies, and many other things” (Γυναῖκες ἐπ αὐτῆς τίκτουσαι καὶ ἄλλαι

σπαργάνοις κοσμοῦσαι, παιδία ἐκκείμενα, ποίμνια τρέφοντα, ποιμένες ἀναιρούμενοι, νέοι

συντιθέμενοι, λῃστῶν καταδρομή, πολεμίων ἐμβολή, πολλὰ ἄλλα). At a first glance, this verbal depiction seems out of line with what we have come to expect from an ekphrasis. While the narrator’s description shares with the earlier examples the simple purpose of showing the readers that which they cannot see, it neither presents imagery, besides the youths making vows, that breaks the spatial or temporal constraints of the object, nor does it occur at a tangent to the narrative. On the contrary, the scenes described might be believed to fit into the confines of a single painting, and the ekphrasis commences the novel’s entire narrative, in a manner not unlike that of Achilles Tatius. However, Achilles Tatius imposes no formal break between his introduction and his protagonist’s narration, while Longus separates his prologue from his main narrative by shifting from “documentary 1st-person to omniscient 3rd-person narration,” as Morgan points out.11 Moreover, the narrator goes on to explain that a desire seized him “to write in response to the painting” (ἀντιγράψαι τῇ γραφῇ). This leads him to seek out one capable of interpreting the image, thereby giving him the knowledge with which to write four books that describe the story within the painting. Suddenly, the ekphrasis becomes atypical, spilling over into the narrative and blurring the lines between the two. The novel becomes bound by the ekphrasis just as a modern codex is bound by sewing, and so the ekphrasis becomes far longer than any others we have seen. Confusion takes hold of the

11 Taken from Morgan’s commentary on Longus’ prologue. For this full segment of commentary, see Morgan 2004, 145-150.

13 reader, not knowing whether the novel is encased by the ekphrasis or whether the novel is the ekphrasis.

As just discussed, Longus’ ekphrasis is unique in its immensely great length, its importance to the storytelling, and its ability to initiate and bind the narrative. In fulfilling the last of these roles, this binding encloses a series of frames that are as critical as the existence of the ekphrasis itself, a point that is brought to light by Kestner in his article “Ekphrasis as Frame in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.”12 None of the earlier examples of ekphrasis serves the additional function of framing the narrative: Homer and Virgil’s ekphrases are merely inset within specific sections of their respective narratives, and the inverse of Longus’s structure holds true in Catullus, with his ekphrasis being framed by the narrative. Furthermore, as

Kestner also points out, each of the books within this frame set by Longus becomes its own frame as well, since within its individual frame each book contains another subsection of narrative.13 In Book One the narration pauses to describe Phatta’s metamorphosis into a dove, in Book Two we learn about Syrinx’s metamorphosis into the musical syrinx, in Book Three we find the etiological tale of Echo’s metamorphosis into the natural phenomenon that shares her name, and in Book Four we hear both Lamon’s account of finding Daphnis abandoned as an infant and Dryas’ account of finding Chloe in the same predicament. In many ways similar to the architectural framework that encloses a dream within a dream within a dream in the 2010

12 A full inquiry into the structure and framework of Longus’ narrative (including a diagrammatic representation of this) can be found in Kestner 1973, 166-168. 13 “With the prologue/painting serving as the outer structure, it is apparent that each book becomes its own frame as well, and within its individual frame contains an additional "inlaid" narrative, in Book 4 no less than two: in Book 1, the tale of the dove; in Book 2, the story of the pipe; in Book 3, the tale of Echo; and in Book 4, Lamon's account of Daphnis and Dryas' account of Chloe” (Kestner 1973, 167).

14 blockbuster Inception, Longus’ narrative is purposefully crafted to showcase its triple-layered construction. The outermost layer, the painting in the grove of the nymphs and the short description thereof, initiates his work and sets it among the ekphrases of Homer, Virgil, and

Catullus. The middle layer, the written response to the painting that makes up the bulk of

Longus’ composition, goes beyond the first by describing the artwork and its content in far greater length and detail than any ekphrasis has done before. Finally, the innermost layer, the stories told within each individual book, briefly take us out of the pastoral narrative and into the world of myth. In constructing his novel so intricately, Longus authors an entirely new kind of ekphrasis, impressive enough to stand among those found within the epics. However, by crafting his ekphrasis to frame the narrative, rather than to fit within the narrative, Longus goes to great lengths to stand apart from the very works he now stands among. Such purposeful craftsmanship is indicative of the author’s intent to write a playful novel that tinkers with the entire idea of an ekphrasis, yet simultaneously demands respect for its artistry and ingenuity.

In their reading of this prologue, Longus’ most educated readers would likely also have called to mind select excerpts from Thucydides’ History. To examine this claim, we can rely on the excellent analysis of Robert D. Luginbill. In his article A Delightful Possession: Longus’

Prologue and Thucydides, Luginbill asserts that, regardless of how well or poorly acquainted

Longus’ original audience was with Thucydides’ writing, the similarities between the language of Longus’ prologue and the methodological remarks made by Thucydides are so intertwined that it would be difficult to imagine that they went unnoticed by the educated among the

15 audience.14 Luginbill highlights several points of comparison, beginning with Longus’ choice to describe the painting (and by extension his novel) as “a history of love” (ἱστορίαν ἔρωτος), which, he argues, stands in direct parallel to Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War.15

Although Thucydides does not directly use the word “history” (ἱστορία), Longus leaves the phrase hanging in the air for his readers to pick up on and put together with other histories, in particular that of Thucydides. Moreover, Luginbill draws attention to the link between Longus’ description of his novel as “a delightful possession” (κτῆμα τερπνὸν) and perhaps the most famous line of Thucydides’ entire work, the description of his History as “a possession for all time” (κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ) at 1.22.4.16 If Thucydides believes his work will be remembered for all time on account of its subject matter, namely the accuracy of its portrayal of human behaviour, then Longus makes a comparable (albeit more light-hearted) claim: by mirroring Thucydides’ language here, Longus asserts his faith in the longevity of his novel for its utility in the realm of love. Further, Luginbill argues that Longus undoubtedly had Thucydides in mind when writing his prologue because of the pointed opposition between Longus’ use of “more delightful”

(τερπνοτέρα) and Thucydides’ use of “more displeasing” (ἀτερπέστερον), also found at History

1.22.4.17 In his phrase “the painting was more delightful since it both contained extraordinary handiwork and the luck of love” (ἡ γραφὴ τερπνοτέρα καὶ τέχνην ἔχουσα περιττὴν καὶ τύχην

ἐρωτικήν), Longus makes special efforts to withdraw from the pointed disdain for delight shown by Thucydides when he writes “perhaps the lack of the fabulous in my history will seem

14 Luginbill introduces his publication with this very point, asserting that Longus not only invites a comparison to Thucydides but also counts on the comparison. For more on this point, see Luginbill 2002, 233-234. 15 On ἱστορίαν ἔρωτος, see Luginbill 2002, 235-236. 16 On κτῆμα τερπνὸν and its connection to κτῆμά ἐς αἰεὶ, see Luginbill 2002, 242. 17 On τερπνοτέρα and its connection to ἀτερπέστερον, see Luginbill 2002, 236-237.

16 more displeasing” (ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται). Longus thus utilises this sentence to further seal his initial nod to the historiographical tradition, namely his use of the phrase “a history of love” (ἱστορίαν ἔρωτος). Luginbill also draws our attention to the words

“to write in response [to the painting]” (ἀντιγράψαι), “having sought out [an interpreter of the painting]” (ἀναζητησάμενος), and “I have laboured at [composing the four books of the novel]”

(ἐξεπονησάμην); these words correspond to Thucydides’ use of “he has composed in writing”

(ξυνέγραψε), “a seeking for” (ζήτησις), and “laborious” (ἐπιπόνως) in the programmatic statements at History 1.1.1, 1.20.3, and 1.22.3 respectively.18 Just as in Longus, these words all make an important contribution to the description of Thucydides’ own method of research. By referencing Thucydides’ methodology in respect to composing a written work, Longus wishes to posit that, in contrast to the stance of Thucydides and his successors, a work can be both delightful and useful. Through this, Longus places in amusing parallel his supposedly accurate rendition of young love with Thucydides’ account of how humans behave under the deep pressures of war.19

How then might we address the questions with which we began, namely why Longus begins his work in such novel fashion? Instead of beginning his tale of love conventionally, he labours both to create a prologue that stands apart from the narrative and to brand his entire narrative as an ekphrasis. In doing so, Longus makes it clear that his novel, although still part of

18 On ἀντιγράψαι, ἀναζητησάμενος, and ἐξεπονησάμην, see Luginbill 2002, 240-242. 19 “In the same way that Thucydides scrupulously dug out "the facts" in order to get at the truth that lay behind them, so Longus has taken care to research and present an accurate picture of love, not a training manual or advice to the lovelorn, but a true representation of "love in action" similar to the History's revelation of human behavior under the pressures of war” (Luginbill 2002, 240).

17 the romance genre, is a work that must be understood differently from the likes of Achilles

Tatius, Chariton, Heliodorus, and Xenophon of Ephesus. This is made clear by the ekphrasis’ immensely great length, importance to the storytelling, and ability to initiate and bind the narrative. Moreover, Longus likely does not believe that his pastoral romance will be grouped among the epics of Homer, Virgil, or Catullus, nor does he intend for his work to be elevated to such a high standard of literature. Despite this, Longus goes to great lengths to ensure that these works are subtly brought to mind while reading the prologue to his literature. By alluding to these more serious works, Longus imbues his prologue with a hint of ambition that is then exchanged for a playful reception by his readership. The same holds true for his references to

Thucydides. Longus’ most educated audience will call to mind Thucydides’ more austere tones, with their claim to be intentionally unentertaining, and will compare Longus’ depiction of love to Thucydides’ depiction of war. Of course, they will then read on to the delightfully absurd happenings of Book One and understand that this was all part of Longus’ careful crafting of an original, sophisticated, light-hearted novel.

18 CHAPTER TWO – ABANDONMENT & SUCKLING

“…a goatherd, Lamon by name, was pasturing his flock when he found a baby being suckled by a nanny-goat. There was an oak-spinney and a bramble-thicket, ivy creeping over it, and soft grass in which the baby lay. The goat kept running off in this direction, and frequently disappeared, deserting her kid to stay with the child. Lamon observed her comings and goings, as he felt sorry for the neglected kid, , and at the very height of noon he followed her tracks and saw the goat carefully standing astride a child so as not to harm it by treading on it with her hoofs, while it suckled her flowing milk as if from a mother’s breast. Astonished, as was only natural, he drew closer and discovered a bonny baby boy, in swaddling clothes too fine for its fate of abandonment. There was a little purple cloak with a gold clasp, and a little sword with an ivory hilt… Two years later, a shepherd grazing from an adjoining farm, Dryas by name, also happened upon similar discoveries and sights. There was a cave of the Nymphs, a huge rock hollow inside a dome-shaped outside… By continually wandering off to this shrine of the

Nymphs, a newly-lambed ewe kept making it seem that she had disappeared. Intending to punish her and bring her back to her former good behaviour, he twisted a green stick into a loop like a noose and approached the rock to trap her there. But when he reached it, the sight he saw was not at all what he had expected, but the ewe offering her dugs just like a human mother for the child to suck all the milk it wanted, and the baby, without a whimper, hungrily putting its mouth to one teat and then the other, clean and bright, as the ewe licked its face clean with her tongue when it had drunk its fill. This baby was a girl, and there were recognition-tokens beside

19 this one as well: a bonnet woven with gold thread, sandals overlaid with gold, and anklets of solid gold…”

- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, 1.1.2 – 1.5.320

Abandonment is, of course, a common theme in Classical literature and mythology. The routes of such stories trace their way all the way back to Zeus himself. In Hesiod’s Theogony,

Zeus was abandoned in a cave in order to avoid being swallowed by his father, Kronos, and was nursed by a she-goat until he was old enough to overthrow his tyrannical father. In contrast to this mighty mythological tale, abandonment stories later came to take on a role in the more light-hearted genre of Athenian New Comedy, featuring frequently as a means of instigating the humorous mix-ups of identity characteristic to this type of drama. Both mythology and New

Comedy therefore make it relatively easy to understand what an ancient audience likely anticipated when presented with a scene of abandonment. Avid readers of second century romance, however, would likely have been surprised to find the inclusion of abandonment stories due to the general lack thereof in the ancient novels. The fact that Heliodorus and

Longus are the only two novelists to employ such scenes makes our understanding of mythology and New Comedy all the more important as background for our analysis of why

Longus’ novel is so unique.

Four famous examples will help us isolate typical characteristics of abandonment stories that we find in ancient legend and mythology. One of the most famous examples comes from

20 Translation by J. R Morgan (Morgan 2004).

20 Herodotus’ Histories 1.107ff, where Herodotus relates his account of the abandonment of Cyrus the Great. Cyrus’ grandfather, Astyages, experiences two dreams that suggest his daughter’s offspring will replace him as king. Once the child is born, Mitradates, a cowherd, is instructed to abandon him. His wife, however, who has just experienced a miscarriage, begs Mitradates not to do so and convinces him to let them raise Cyrus as their son. At the age of ten, Cyrus’ true identity is revealed through a childhood game in which he displays innate traits of kingship. A similarly famous case is that of Oedipus, recorded in Sophocles’ Oidipous Tyrannos. Oedipus was abandoned by his own father, Laius, because he feared a prophesy that his child would destroy Thebes. Laius sends a shepherd to abandon Oedipus on a mountainside, but this man ends up entrusting the baby to a fellow herdsman. The herdsman brings Oedipus to the childless Polybus and Merope, king and queen of Corinth, who raise him as their own. It is only when Oedipus has grown up and returned to Thebes that he realises he has killed his father and married his mother in a shocking anagnorisis. Less well known is the story of the abandonment of Paris of Troy, which is however described in various works, including Hyginus’ Fabulae 91.

Just before Paris’ birth, Hecuba dreams that she has given birth to a glowing firebrand, from which many snakes emerge. Seers advise that the child must die in order to avert the downfall of Troy. The royal herdsmen are instructed to kill the baby, but they abandon him out of pity.

Local shepherds find and rescue him, raising him in the ways of the shepherd as one of their own. Paris’ identity is revealed to Priam by Cassandra when he, as a youthful man, returns to

Troy to compete in the games celebrated in his very honour. A final illustrative example is the tale of Romulus and Remus, most famously recounted in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita Libri 1.4ff.

Amulius saw his sister’s offspring as potential rivals to his rule, and so ordered that they be

21 abandoned in baskets to die in the River Tiber. However, the Tiber’s banks were overflowing at the time, and the twins happened to be exposed in standing water. After the water had receded, the babies’ cries attracted a she-wolf, who suckled them until the time when

Faustulus, a shepherd, came upon them. Faustulus took the boys home to raise as his own, teaching them to shepherd. Romulus and Remus were identified when Remus was captured and brought before Numitor, Amulius’ brother, who compared Remus’ age and twin-birth to that of his supposedly deceased grandchildren.

All of these famous tales and others like them set up an ancient audience’s expectations when a scene of abandonment is introduced, and the structure of these seems to repeat itself from story to story. In each case, in an attempt to prohibit the outcome of a prophesy or a dream, or as result of a general fear of a rival to the kingship, a regent instructs a herdsman to either abandon or kill the baby, who is also of royal birth. The baby always survives, however, either because the royal herdsman takes pity on the child or because an unrelated pastoral figure happens upon the abandoned baby while it is still alive, or even both of these instances sequentially. Later, when the child has grown older, a scene of recognition occurs where the reality of the abandoned person’s status becomes known, usually through their innate kingly qualities. Additionally, Cyrus, Oedipus, Paris (to an extent), and Romulus and Remus are all part of a tradition of overthrowing the wicked, older generation that traces its origins all the way back to stories of Zeus.

22 With this in mind, let us turn to Heliodorus, who presents us with the only case of abandonment (aside from those of Longus) that we encounter in second century romance.

Heliodorus follows a pattern similar to that which we have just examined. In his novel, An

Ethiopian Story, Charikleia, the daughter of the Hydaspes and Persinna, the king and queen of

Ethiopia, is abandoned along with some tokens of recognition. She is abandoned by her mother because she is born with pale skin and blonde hair, completely unlike her Ethiopian parents, and Persinna believes Hydaspes will suspect her of adultery. A servant of Persinna takes the baby to Egypt to abandon, but instead ends up handing her over to Charikles, a Pythian priest and nobleman of Delphi, to raise as his daughter.

This mirrors the elements isolated in our earlier analysis in four key respects. To begin with, Charikleia is of a noble birth, the daughter of a king and queen. Just as in other famous stories, Charikleia is abandoned out of fear of what will come to pass if she remains. Charikleia is also entrusted to someone beneath the royal hierarchy to do away with her. Finally,

Charikleia is taken in by another man to be brought up as his child. There are, however, several divergent features in Heliodorus’ account. The most obvious of these is that Charikleia is a woman. While there exist tales of abandonment where the relinquished child is female, most notably that of Atalanta, these are far less common than the accounts of abandoned males.

Beyond the question of gender, no herdsman features in the story of Charikleia’s abandonment at any point. In the cases of Cyrus, Oedipus, and Paris, the babies are given to shepherds to abandon and, in these three along with the case of Romulus and Remus, the babies are

23 rescued, taken in, and raised by shepherds.21 Finally, Charikleia is not abandoned by her mother out of fear for oneself and one’s station, as we clearly see with Astyages, Laius, and Amulius, but rather out of love. Charikleia is not a threat, and her abandonment’s primary purpose is to keep her safe, rather than to see her killed. This point is proven by the recognition tokens left with her. These tokens relate Charikleia’s true identity and the reason for her abandonment, which would suggest that Persinna had hoped for her to survive.

The recognition tokens seem in fact to connect us less with the worlds of Cyrus and

Oedipus and more with the world of Greek New Comedy. Let us take Menander’s Epitrepontes, for example, which tells the story of Charisios and Pamphile. Only a few months after their wedding, Pamphile gives birth to a child and, thinking Charisios will assume that she has been unfaithful to him, Pamphile entrusts the baby to an old serving woman to abandon along with special jewels as recognition tokens. However, this deed is seen by Charisios’ loyal servant, who informs him upon his return, and thus arises the set of awkward comic interchanges between husband and wife that drives the plot of drama. Abandonment and recognition tokens are frequently found in Roman Comedy and its New Comedy antecedents, such as in Terence’s

Adelphoe, Plautus’ Bacchides, and Menander’s Sikyonioi. These authors show us the influence of New Comedy on Heliodorus; Charikleia’s abandonment occurs out of love for the child and fear of the father’s reception of the child, just as we see in Epitrepontes. In fact, An Ethiopian

Story mirrors Epitrepontes down to the concept of an adultery that never took place and the

21 The slight anomaly to this formula is Oedipus, who is given over to King Polybus and Queen Merope shortly after being found.

24 exposing of the new-born with tokens of recognition. Moreover, the typical anagnorisis that occurs in New Comedy involves a reversal of fortune that is followed by a marriage.22 At the end of Sikyonioi, for example, Stratophanes is discovered to be of Athenian birth, which allows him to marry the woman he loves. Similarly, Charikleia is proven to be the daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia, and the story concludes with her marriage to Theagenes.

Let us now turn to the cases of Daphnis and Chloe, from which we will come to appreciate the fascinatingly original and provocative way that Longus intermingles motifs from mythology and New Comedy. The descriptions of Daphnis and Chloe’s abandonments are the first events to occur within book one of Longus’ pastoral romance. Foremost to be presented is the abandonment of Daphnis. At 1.2.1, he is discovered in the woods by Lamon, a goatherd, being suckled by one of his goats, which continually goes back and forth between the baby and its own kid. He is abandoned along with various recognition tokens, including a purple cloak, a golden clasp, and a sword with an ivory hilt. Lamon, amazed by the humanity of the goat, takes him in and raises him as his own son. The reason for Daphnis’ abandonment is not revealed until the final book of the novel, however. Dionysophanes, Daphnis’ biological father and the owner of the estate, only comes to learn that Daphnis is his son because, at 4.21.2, Lamon produces the recognition tokens in an effort to stop Gnathon, a companion of Dionysophanes’ other son, from taking Daphnis away as his lover. Upon discovering his son’s identity,

Dionysophanes relates, beginning at 4.24.1, that he abandoned Daphnis because he already

22 The common plots of love and intrigue find their point of reference in Athenian New Comedy. For more on the influence of New Comedy on second century romance, see Harrison 2008, 218-136.

25 had three children and thought his family large enough. He also reveals that, shortly afterwards, his eldest two children died from the same disease, leaving him even more guilt- ridden than he already was. Chloe’s case is in many ways identical to that of Daphnis. Two years after Lamon discovers Daphnis, Dryas, a shepherd on the same estate, finds one of his ewes going back and forth in and out of the shrine of the Nymphs. When he enters the shrine, at

1.5.2, he discovers the ewe suckling a baby, namely Chloe, abandoned along with a gold bonnet, gold sandals, and gold anklets, her recognition tokens. Dryas decides to bring Chloe home to raise as his daughter. In the same fashion as Daphnis, the story of Chloe’s abandonment is only revealed towards the end of the novel. At 4.31.1, Daphnis reveals his love for Chloe to Dionysophanes, and Dryas produces her recognition tokens at 4.30.4 to prove that she is of noble birth. Dionysophanes agrees to take Chloe to the city in an attempt to find her parents. He succeeds in finding them by showing the recognition tokens to various noblemen.

Beginning at 4.35.3, Chloe’s true father, Megacles, a wealthy man of high social standing, reveals that he abandoned his only child because his means were little at the time, and he did not have any way of supporting her. Much like Dionysophanes, Megacles expresses his guilt at abandoning his daughter because, shortly afterwards, he started to become wealthy, and no children were ever born to him again.

Longus does something that is in many ways different than what we might expect from a story of abandonment. Most obviously, Longus presents us with not one, but two scenes of abandonment, which occur on the same estate within two years of one another. The very fact that two separate babies were abandoned in almost the exact same geographical location in so

26 short a space of time will strike most readers as improbable, or even laughable. Beyond this,

Longus introduces other features that do not fit the mythological pattern that we have seen thus far, but instead align themselves with New Comedy. For example, Daphnis and Chloe are not at all of royal birth. Their true parents are noblemen, but the parents of Cyrus, Oedipus,

Paris, and Romulus and Remus are in some way connected to the regency of their location.

Heliodorus, too, follows the topos of royalty. Moreover, the reasons behind Daphnis and

Chloe’s abandonments are not revealed until very late in the novel. In the stories of Cyrus,

Oedipus, Paris, and Romulus and Remus, the audience is aware of who is responsible for the abandonment and what their reasons are for abandoning the baby from the outset. Finally, the reasons Longus’ characters give for abandoning their respective children do not match those given in any of the permutations of abandonment scenes we have discussed. In those accounts, there is some explicit condition, either a prophesy or an otherwise impending danger or threat, that leads to the abandonment of the infant. In most cases, the threat is to the power of the current regent, and in the case of Charikleia, the threat is to the child herself. Neither

Dionysophanes nor Megacles’ position is threatened by their child, and they do not abandon

Daphnis and Chloe in order to protect them from some other danger. They do so as a matter of livelihood; Dionysophanes feels that his family is large enough already and worries about the costs associated with feeding another mouth, and Megacles does not want to raise his daughter in poverty. These choices mirror those that many Greeks and Romans made in the real world when faced with the same stresses and difficulties.23

23 Boswell comments on abandonment primarily serving as the means that ancient and medieval families possessed for regulating family size, as well as serving to resolve other domestic difficulties. For more on the abandonment of children in the ancient and medieval world, see Boswell 1984, 12-16.

27

With respect to New Comedy, the reversal of fortune that Dionysophanes and Megacles experience shortly after abandoning their respective children highlights the quasi-comedic nature of the whole situation. Each man is led to be filled with even deeper regret at his decision to abandon his child, something that is more or less in keeping with New Comedy recognition configurations, rather than those of mythological tales. Somewhat humorously, when we consider it in context, the recognition tokens that Megacles leaves are all either made of gold or overlaid with gold. These surely are expensive tokens for a man who lacks the means to raise a child, which begs the question of why he abandons Chloe at all when he possesses such wealth. Other motifs, too, are borrowed from New Comedy and embedded in Longus’ bucolic setting, closely tying Daphnis and Chloe to this genre of playwriting.24 While the first three books of the novel are dominated by pastoral descriptions and lack a visible connection to New Comedy, aside from the abandonments and recognition tokens, of course, the final book has more in common. To begin with, the last book features common characters such as the “feckless young man-about-town,” the “potentially obstructive parents,” and characters with speaking-names, drawn from the comic stage, such as Astylus (city boy), Gnathon (jaws), and Eudromus (good at running).25 Furthermore, as Stephen Harrison points out, Gnathon’s threat of sexual misconduct, which begins at 4.16.1, serves as a “proleptic guarantee of a happy ending, as in any other comedy.”26 These examples from Book Four serve to confirm our

24 Bretzigheimer briefly touches upon how certain motifs are borrowed from New Comedy, yet embedded in a bucolic setting. For more on this, see Bretzigheimer 1988, 515-520. 25 Harrison draws our attention to Longus’ deployment of narratological elements commonly found in New Comedy in Book Four of his novel. For more on Longus and New Comedy, see Harrison 2008, 218-236. 26 Due to the closing of Duke libraries amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I am no longer able to access this source and provide an exact page reference. Nonetheless, on Longus and New Comedy, see Harrison 2008, 218-236.

28 suspicions that Longus’ employment of abandonment and recognition tokens in Book One alludes to New Comedy.

Thus far, we have seen that Longus’ account differs greatly from the mythological tales of abandonment and aligns itself much more closely with the renditions found in New Comedy.

To complicate matters, however, there are several factors we must consider, beginning with a near exact parallel between the verbal descriptions of Cyrus and Daphnis. In Herodotus’

Histories, at 1.112.1, the newly born Cyrus is described as “big and beautiful” (μέγα τε καὶ

εὐειδὲς); in Book One of Daphnis and Chloe, at 1.2.3, the narrator describes the baby boy that

Lamon happens upon as “big and beautiful” (μέγα καὶ καλὸν). This nearly identical wording, which presents an identical meaning, in the context of the abandonment stories of two baby boys, prompts the educated reader to draw this notable parallel. Longus’ particular choice of word for “beautiful” (καλὸν) also bears connotations of nobility, leading us to believe that

Longus wishes his reader to view this baby among the likes of the innately noble Cyrus. While

Cyrus does not possess any tokens of recognition (because Astyages did not want him to survive the intended abandonment), Daphnis is abandoned with a little purple cloak with a gold clasp and a little sword with an ivory hilt, as we discover at 1.2.3. The very nature of these tokens implies a sense of nobility, or perhaps even regency, given the historical associations of purple and royalty, and the detail of the precious ivory-hilted toy sword. Moreover, Longus introduces Book One by describing Mitylene, in the countryside of which the novel is set, as

“big and beautiful” (μεγάλη καὶ καλή) at 1.1.1. Even without knowledge of Herodotus or Cyrus, it would not be a stretch to deduce that Longus, through a parallel of his own phraseology and

29 the depiction of the recognition tokens, wants his readership to believe that this child is descended from Mytilenean royalty. Reading Daphnis and Chloe for the first time, any audience, with their knowledge of mythology, would be fooled into believing that Daphnis possesses innate qualities of kingship at this point in the novel. It is not until the end of the novel that we discover Daphnis’ true heritage, and so we can only rely on the evidence presented before our eyes. At this point, one might be forgiven for concluding that Longus’ narrative takes its main inspiration from mythology.

This initial conclusion, however, is somewhat confounded when we are presented with our second scene of abandonment. At 1.5.3, Chloe is said to have been abandoned with a bonnet woven with gold thread, sandals overlaid with gold, and anklets of solid gold. This description causes the reader to recall the sorts of tokens of recognition that are found in New

Comedy. In Menander, for example, the tokens are almost exclusively miniature items of clothing or jewellery.27 Chloe’s tokens of recognition are all items of clothing that might well be cross listed as jewellery, given their golden composition. This in itself is enough to throw the reader off, since the heavy allusions to Cyrus and kingship found in the Daphnis abandonment come head to head with a direct comparison to Greek New Comedy in the case of Chloe. One abandonment seeks to land us in the realm of mythology, while the other suggests New

Comedy. Longus likely does this in the hope that his readership will draw one of two interpretations. On the one hand, the reader may embrace both of these literary styles at once,

27 Witzke discusses at length the nature of Menander’s recognition comedies and the types of tokens used therein. For more on tokens in Menander’s recognition comedies, see Witzke 2016, 43-47.

30 believing that Daphnis is royalty, in keeping with mythological tales of abandonment, and that

Chloe is marriageable, in the spirit of New Comedy. In this case, the reader’s understanding of this tale is simpler, since the reader will anticipate Daphnis’ display of innate kingship, and

Chloe’s contribution to the novel’s comic endeavours. On the other hand, the reader, unable to reconcile these two conflicting literary styles, may struggle to decide what type of narrative

Longus presents. In this case, the reader will likely search for more evidence as the novel progresses, hoping that the narrative will support one reading over another.

Given their near nonexistence in second century romance, we must consider why

Longus chooses to write these stories of abandonment into his narrative. Setting aside the cases we find in New Comedy (for the time being), abandonment is reserved for royalty; innate leadership and kingship qualities reflect the biological nobility of Cyrus, Oedipus, Paris, and

Romulus and Remus, leading these men to supersede those around them in almost all the cherished attributes of humanity. Heliodorus, too, gives Charikleia the qualities of a royal lineage, courage that common folk only dream of, and beauty that is supposed to rival the gods themselves. Longus, on the other hand, employs this motif while purposefully leaving out most of the qualities attributed to those that are exposed. It is true that Daphnis and Chloe outshine their peers in beauty and skill at shepherding, but they lack the courage, regency, and leadership that is fundamental to tales of abandonment. However, little about the innate character of Daphnis or Chloe would make us call to mind Cyrus, Oedipus, Paris, or Romulus and Remus. And yet, the inclusion of animal-to-human suckling does call to mind Romulus and

31 Remus, as well as Zeus28, and Daphnis’ abandonment alone possesses the verbal parallels that make his link to the realm of mythology practically irrefutable. Because of this, many an ancient reader might have gone the entire novel believing Daphnis was of royal blood, even if Chloe’s abandonment may suggest that Longus draws his inspiration from New Comedy. Through this, we can see that Longus calls to mind these great stories of abandonment, yet through the lens of New Comedy. He does this in order to create a purposeful confusion in the reader at the outset of the novel, toying with us as we try to try to decipher the tone and seriousness (or lack thereof) of his work, prior to various events, discussed in the coming chapters, that make the reader more at home with his light-hearted tone and his tangential diving into parody. At this stage of the novel, however, confoundment plagues the reader’s mind as to whether this rather obviously fairy-tale commencement, that of two parallel abandonment stories, draws from traditional mythological treatments or from more fanciful and comedic New Comedy influences.

28 Adduced parallels to the infants Daphnis and Chloe being nursed by animals are purely mythological. The most notable parallels are Romulus, Remus, and Zeus. For more on mythological animal-to-human nursing, see Calder 1983, 50-51.

32 CHAPTER THREE – DORKON AND THE WOLFSKIN

“…he decided to make a direct assault on Chloe when she was alone. Observing that they took turns to take the flocks to drink, Daphnis and the girl on alternate days, he devised an apt trick for a shepherd. Taking the skin of a big wolf that had once been gored to death by a bull defending his cows, he put it over his back and wrapped it round his body from head to toe, so that the front paws fitted over his hands, the back ones over his legs down to the ankles, and the gaping jaws covered his head like an infantryman’s helmet. Having thus bestified himself to the best of his ability, he made his way to the spring which the goats and sheep drank from after grazing. The spring was in a deep hollow, and the whole area around it was covered with fierce thorns, brambles, stunted juniper, and thistles; even a real wolf could easily have lurked there unseen. Here Dorkon concealed himself and waited for drinking-time; he was confident that he could scare Chloe with his disguise and grab her. A short time passed, and here was Chloe driving the flocks down to the spring, having left Daphnis cutting green foliage as food for the kids to pasture. The dogs that accompanied her to protect the sheep and goats, with typical canine keenness to pick up a scent, got wind of Dorkon as he moved to attack the girl. Taking him for a wolf, they pounced on him, barking furiously; he was so terrified that before he could get to his feet they were all over him and sinking their teeth in as hard as they could. At first, wanting to avoid the embarrassment of detection and being protected by the skin that cloaked him, he lay quiet in his bush; but when Chloe, who had been thoroughly flustered by her first glimpse of him, started calling Daphnis to come and help, and the dogs started ripping of the skin and making contact with his body, he gave a mighty wail and appealed to the girl and

33 Daphnis, who was by now on the scene, for help… Having no experience of amorous misdemeanours, they thought he was wearing the skin as a pastoral prank; so they were not at all cross and even consoled him and helped him on his way for a short distance before taking their leave…”

- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, 1.20.1 – 1.21.529

When presented with a scene of overwhelming sexual desire within an ancient novel, contemporary readers would have imported a set of expectations relating to the outcome of such a scene based on their experiences with other novels. Accordingly, when we encounter

Dorkon towards the middle of Book One of Daphnis and Chloe and the narrator relates that the cowherd “had decided to make an attempt on Chloe by means of his hands when she was alone” (ἔγνω διὰ χειρῶν ἐπιθέσθαι τῇ Χλόῃ μόνῃ γενομένῃ), we must, before all else, consider what a second century audience might have already experienced with regards to scenes of intense sexual misconduct within romance narratives.

Unfortunately, the sample size of ancient novels to examine is slim, and thus difficulty arises while attempting to understand what the audience would have anticipated. Despite this limitation, we can construct something of the contemporary audience’s horizon of expectations from the romance novels that existed at the time of Longus’ writing.30 To exemplify typical

29 Translation by J. R. Morgan (Morgan 2004). 30 Ruiz-Montero draws attention to the limited number of surviving ancient romance novels, yet highlights the fact that “a series of actions and characters recur not only within each romance but also in the corpus formed by the five erotic romances that have survived intact” (Ruiz-Montero 1981, 228).

34 scenes of this nature, let us consider the works of Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles Tatius. In both of these cases, a man feels an overwhelming desire for the female protagonist – in one instance the man wishes to use other men’s overwhelming desires to his advantage – which results in the man using force in an attempt to achieve sexual fulfilment. In each of these cases, the female protagonist evades the man’s passion for the time being, either through some variation of resourceful behaviour or on account of factors beyond her control.

Readers of Xenophon of Ephesus would have been familiar with scenes of illicit sexual desire and the taking of action in relation to that very desire. On four separate occasions within

An Ephesian Tale, Xenophon of Ephesus presents his audience with characters who experience such overpowering lust for Anthia, the novel’s beautiful female protagonist, that they physically attempt to force themselves upon her. On all four of these occasions, however, Anthia escapes the impending danger of sexual mistreatment through her own ingenuity. In the first of these instances, Anthia is sold to Psammis, an Indian ruler, who immediately tries to have his way with her. However, Anthia creates a fictitious story, telling Psammis that at her birth her father dedicated her to Isis until she was of the appropriate age to marry, still a year away, and that the goddess will seek vengeance upon him if he so much as touches her. Although evidently fuelled by lust, Psammis is a pious man and fears the wrath of the goddess, and so Anthia evades this first misfortune. Quite differently, Anthia’s second encounter with a promiscuously intentioned man occurs while she is amid a band of robbers. One of these men, Anchialus, falls in love with Anthia and attempts to rape her. In self-defence, Anthia grabs a nearby sword, stabbing and killing him. Polyidus, a kinsman of the prefect of Egypt, is next to fall in love with

35 Anthia and try to force himself upon her. She escapes to the temple of Isis and prays for the goddess’ protection. Revering the goddess, Polyidus swears to respect Anthia’s chastity. Not long after this, Anthia is taken to Italy and sold to a brothelkeeper, who tries to prostitute her.

Anthia pretends to be afflicted by a divine disease and contrives an elaborate story about her condition, leading her to no longer be useful to the brothelkeeper, and thus she escapes one final potentially sexually abusive fate.

Let us now consider Achilles Tatius. Readers of the ancient novel would have been familiar with scenes of illicit sexual desire from their reading of Leucippe and Clitophon, which includes the threat of the rape of Leucippe. Achilles Tatius employs a similar structure of events to that of Xenophon of Ephesus. However, the parallels between these two authors are less obvious because their narratives differ in the means they provide for escaping impending danger. As an example of this, Leucippe’s captor, Thersandros, lusts for her and attempts to have his way with her. Leucippe escapes the threat of rape by scorning him to such an extent that he grows too angry to be amorous any longer, and so he departs. Quite clearly, Leucippe’s escape from danger relies more on Thersandros’ anger against her than her own ingenuity, since she could not have known his anger would bring about her deliverance. From this very first example, we see that Achilles Tatius employs a different method for escaping sexual maltreatment than Xenophon of Ephesus. To examine this further, let us turn to another case from Leucippe and Clitophon. Charmides, an Egyptian general, begins to desire Leucippe through his proximity to her person, resolving to win her over or seize her by force. However, while Charmides is on his way to discover her mindset towards him, Leucippe (who is

36 developing a plan to evade Charmides incoming advances) goes mad on account of being drugged by another man. She must be restrained and, as a result, no sexual attempts are made against her. Although Charmides does not reach the point of assaulting Leucippe, his intentions were clear and, if not for external factors, he would have done so. Once again, Leucippe is saved from violation not through her own actions and choices but through that which is beyond her control. Although dissimilar to Anthia and her resourcefulness, this pattern still contributes to the formation of a reader’s horizon of expectations regarding such type scenes. In summary: when presented with a beautiful female protagonist, the reader expects an attack of a sexual nature to occur, the attack to be perceived, and the woman to escape the impending danger either (1) by means of her own ingenuity (as in Xenophon of Ephesus) or (2) by the grace of that which is beyond her control (as in Achilles Tatius).

By contrast, Longus does something quite different. Longus’ assailant, Dorkon, frustrated that Chloe has shown no appreciation for his advances and that Chloe’s father has denied his request to marry her, resolves to force himself upon her. At 1.20.2, Dorkon devises a plan to dress himself in a wolfskin and to assault Chloe while Daphnis is absent. However,

Chloe’s dogs sniff him out and attack him while he lies in wait, up to the point where he cries out for help. Chloe suspects no ill intentions from Dorkon, and she even calls Daphnis to help bathe his wounds.

What then is so different about Longus? On the most basic level, Dorkon does not even reach the point where he might force his desires upon Chloe, despite having devised a plan for

37 this very purpose. At 1.20.1, he spies on Daphnis and Chloe to learn that they take turns taking the flocks to drink, each of them fulfilling this duty on alternating days, and thus knows exactly when Chloe will be alone. He puts in far more forethought than the previously discussed assailants. Yet, despite this, his elaborate scheme only results in him being humiliatingly set upon by Chloe’s dogs, before he has even attempted to assault her. By composing his type scene in such a way, Longus adds a comedic and absurd twist to his romance. Not only does

Dorkon’s plan fail, but he also ends up degraded, crying out for help in the way that Chloe may have cried out if Dorkon had been successful in his illicit endeavour. No such male humiliation occurs in Xenophon of Ephesus or Achilles Tatius’ equivalent scenes. Perhaps more profound is the reason for Dorkon being snuffed out in advance, namely his wolfskin outfit. The fact that

Dorkon steps away from his role as cowherd, abandons all social norms, and dresses up as a wild animal places him at a distance from the characters of Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles

Tatius’ assailants.31 Psammis, Anchialus, Polyidus, the brothelkeeper, Thersandros, and

Charmides all approach their intense human sexual desires head on, making no attempt to conceal their illicit masculine intentions. Dorkon, however, undergoes something of a metamorphosis, becoming inhuman, though with the same ends in mind. As J. R. Morgan puts it, “Every inch of his body is covered, emphasising the totality of his dehumanisation.”32 This critique highlights the extent of Dorkon’s uncivilised actions. Yet Longus presents us with an absurd entry into beastdom; he creates tension by priming our expectations of animalistic

31 In a section of commentary dedicated to Dorkon’s attempts on Chloe, Morgan focuses heavily on the dehumanisation that Dorkon yields to in pursuit of his sexual impulses. However, Morgan does not contrast Dorkon with the assailants of Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles Tatius. For more on Dorkon’s attempts on Chloe, see Morgan 2004, 167-169. 32 Taken from a section of Morgan’s commentary dedicated to discussion of the wolfskin (Morgan 2004, 168).

38 savagery, only to thwart this danger in a comedic manner. The very wolf that gave rise to

Dorkon’s demeanour represents the same violation he intended against Chloe, since, as we learn at 1.20.2, “previously a bull had killed it with its horns while fighting for its cows” (ταῦρός

ποτε πρὸ τῶν βοῶν μαχόμενος τοῖς κέρασι διέφθειρε), an act of protecting one’s lovers. The irony of Dorkon, a cowherd, taking on the guise of the very being that once threatened his own herd only adds to our sense that Longus makes light of the conventions of this romance type scene.

Even when we reverse our approach and compare Chloe to Anthia and Leukippe, instead of merely comparing Dorkon to the assailants in Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles

Tatius, we find that Longus presents us with a very different type of female protagonist. The extant novels require the female protagonists to repeatedly devise plans to defend themselves from the sexual advances of a more powerful man, yet Chloe remains entirely free from this need.33 This becomes self-evident when we consider Dorkon’s attempt upon Chloe. Her dogs attack Dorkon before he can launch his attack upon her, resulting in him crying out for help and her not having even the slightest inkling that she was in any form of danger whatsoever. Chloe’s lack of understanding that the danger was thwarted, or that there was even any danger to begin with, is the key to understanding how Longus inverts the norm. An attack is made, but not perceived. This lack of perception contributes to our ever-growing impression that Longus’

33 For more on the conventional self-defence attributed to female protagonists and Chloe’s lack thereof, see Bretzigheimer 1988, 523-524.

39 narrative is performed in “the ludic spirit of a comedy of innocence,” as J. Alvares puts it.34 To examine this claim outside the bounds of the humorous reversal that befalls Dorkon, let us pause to consider several from the multiple of instances where, in keeping with the other novels, one might expect an attack to occur and the female protagonist to be acutely aware of the danger at hand. In Book Two, for example, he presents neither an attack nor any such female agency. When, at 2.12.1, the boisterous youths of Methymna arrive at Lesbos on holiday and become responsible for all types of mischief, including the beating of Daphnis at

2.14.3, these youths fail to notice Chloe’s outstanding beauty, a common characteristic of female protagonists and one readily remarked upon in the other novels.35 Avid readers of second century romance would likely have anticipated some form of attempt to befall Chloe at the hands of the Methymneans, in perhaps a similar fashion to Anthia when she is among the robbers. Instead, we are left surprised to discover that no such attempt nor even consideration of an attempt takes place, nor does Chloe perceive that these men might pose a threat. A further illustrative example can be found in Book Four. In something of a parallel to the tale of

Ariadne and Dionysus, Chloe, believing Daphnis to have completely forgotten her, mourns her departed lover and prepares to kill herself, until a “saviour,” Lampis, appears at 4.28.1 and carries her away, thinking Daphnis was no longer going to marry her and seeing himself as a fitting husband.36 Once again, members of Longus’ contemporary audience expect Chloe to perceive the danger and at least ponder a means of escape, just as Leukippe does when she

34 Due to the closing of Duke libraries amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I am no longer able to access this source and provide an exact page reference. Nonetheless, on Longus’ “comedy of innocence,” see Alvares 2014, 26-42. 35 Bretzigheimer deems this absence of action anomalous. For more on this anomaly, see Bretzigheimer 1988, 523- 524. 36 An example drawn by Bretzigheimer to demonstrate Chloe’s absence of action. For more information, see Bretzigheimer 1988, 523-524.

40 learns of Charmides’ intentions. Instead Chloe weeps, but otherwise does nothing, accepting her new fate. It is Gnathon, a previous suitor of Daphnis, who decides that this union may not proceed. At 4.29.2, he enters as something of an unholy deus ex machina to rescue Chloe from her impending marriage and chase Lampis away.37 Regardless of whether we focus on Dorkon’s contrivance or Chloe’s absence of agency, Longus provides us with an outlandish approach to a typical scene.

Returning our focus to Dorkon and his wolfskin outfit, let us examine the role played by wolves and characters depicted as wolves, since these characters are far more significant in

Longus’ novel than in the pastoral works that came before.38 As S. J. Epstein points out, wolves serve as important motivators of plot development in Daphnis and Chloe, bringing the narrative into contact with typically novelistic motifs, such as the attempts on the female protagonist’s chastity that we find in Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, and Longus.39 Two major events within the novel will exemplify the extent of these wolves’ influence on the progression of the story. The first of these is the building of pit-traps in response to the she-wolf, who has been terrorising local flocks. While pursuing a goat, at 1.12.2, Daphnis and the goat fall into one such trap. A rather humorous rescue occurs, where Chloe unties her breast-band and gives it to

Dorkon to let down in order to hoist Daphnis up. After being rescued, Daphnis has his wounds

37 See footnote 36. 38 “Nonetheless wolves, and characters depicted as human wolves, play a much larger role in Longus’ novel than in previous pastorally tinged works” (Epstein 1995, 58). Epstein goes on to make various comparisons to Theocritus, his poetic heirs, and the extant romance novels. For more information, see Epstein 1995, 58-59. 39 “By bringing the narrative into contact with such typically novelistic motifs as marauding intruders or attempts on the protagonists’ chastity, wolves, both two- and four-footed, serve as important motivators of plot development” (Epstein 1995, 58).

41 bathed by Chloe, and at this moment a passion overcomes Chloe that incites her love for

Daphnis.40 This is also Dorkon’s first encounter with Chloe, an encounter that results in him desiring to marry her. Our second example occurs when Lycaenion (“little wolf”), an adult woman from the neighbouring field, begins to desire Daphnis. She sees Daphnis and Chloe’s frustration at not understanding the physiology of lovemaking and decides to both educate

Daphnis and fulfil her own desires. Leading him into the woods, she declares at 3.17.2 that the

Nymphs have sent her to teach him the art of lovemaking, and there they lie together, completing the erotic education that is needed to drive the plot onwards.41 Amusingly,

Lycaenion preys on Daphnis to fulfil her own desires, even while teaching him what he needs to know to fulfil his desires with Chloe. These scenes contribute to our understanding of the complexity of the role of wolves and characters dressed as wolves in Daphnis and Chloe. Not only do they provide tangential entertainment and drama, but they also spur on and motivate

Longus’ main attraction, the story of love that unfolds between the two protagonists.

With this in mind, let us turn to some wolf-facilitated events that precede Dorkon’s attempt upon Chloe. In the context of Longus, the concept of having a wolf as predator is not in any way out of place, nor having a character depicted as a wolf, nor having a character depicted as a wolf acting as a sexual predator against an entirely human and innocent character. But the focus on wolves in Longus is idiosyncratic: wolves are not conventionally found in second century romance, let alone compounded with humans or inserted as plot motivators. Longus’

40 For Epstein’s further analysis of the she-wolf as a plot motivator, see Epstein 1995, 58-59. 41 For Epstein’s further analysis of Lycaenion as a plot motivator, see Epstein 1995, 60-61.

42 contemporary audience would likely have found the presence of both wolves and characters aligned with wolfish motifs unusual and therefore worthy of particular attention. Moreover, attentive readers would find several practical flaws in Longus’ narrative. Following the digging of pit-traps in response to attacks on the herd by the she-wolf and Daphnis’ descent into one of these traps, the means by which Chloe and Dorkon rescue Daphnis are somewhat mind- boggling; at 1.11.2, we learn that the pit-trap measures “one orguia in width and four in depth”

(τὸ εὖρος ὀργυιᾶς τὸ βάθος τεττάρων), approximately six feet by twenty-four feet.42

Overlooking the fact that many such pits are dug in a single night without a trace of the discarded soil, this would require Chloe’s breast-band to unravel some twenty-four feet, minus whatever Daphnis’ reach is from the base of the pit-trap. Morgan notes that, by his metric conversion, “If she needs a breast-band seven metres long, Chloe is obviously already a well- developed young lady for her thirteen years.”43 Although Morgan’s tone tends to sarcasm, surely it is humorous that, at 1.15.1, Dorkon “immediately after that day had been erotically inclined towards Chloe” (εὐθὺς μὲν ἐπ ἐκείνης τῆς ἡμέρας ἐρωτικῶς τῆς Χλόης διετέθη) upon discovering her “big swangin’ titties,” as the modern expression goes.44 To summarise, by deploying a series of comic elements concerning wolfly features, Longus turns the lupine itself into a comic motif and, in doing so, imbues his tale with a tone of light-heartedness. The very events that lead into Daphnis’ infatuation with Chloe can be seen as comic, themselves the by-

42 Morgan draws attention to the trap’s total disregard for verisimilitude, himself citing Vieillefond’s calculation that a single pit of these dimension would produce about twenty-six metric tonnes of soil, which is disposed of without trace. Morgan also ponders what the depth of topsoil on a Greek island might be, and whether it would be possible to excavate so deep a hole without using dynamite to blast the rock away. For more on this, See Morgan 2003, 182-184. 43 From Morgan’s discussion of notable neighbours in Daphnis and Chloe and their influence on the narrative. For more on this, see Morgan 2003, 182-184. 44 See Broad City 2014 – Season 3, Episode 3.

43 product of a counter-directional sub-narrative that spans the entire first book.45 As a result of our protagonists’ encounter with the wolf trap, Dorkon falls in love with Chloe, Chloe grows to love Daphnis, and Daphnis remains in complete ignorance – another example of comic lack of awareness and agency, this time on the part of Daphnis. Following this, beginning at 1.16.1, a contest of words is arranged so that Dorkon may attempt to win Chloe over, and in this very contest Dorkon achieves the exact opposite of what he intends – he wishes to remove Daphnis as a potential rival – and instead creates one who desires Chloe. The contest, judged by one who is already inflamed by Daphnis’ beauty, can be seen as predetermined, since both the reader and Chloe already know that Daphnis will be the victor. These particular comic elements are, of course, the direct result of the actions the she-wolf, who inspired the digging of pit-traps in the first place. In turn, these elements drive Dorkon to the point where his only hope to fulfil his desires for Chloe is by force.

In their reading of Dorkon’s attempt upon Chloe, Longus’ more educated audience would likely have recalled the myth of Acteon and Artemis, described in Kallimachos’ Hymn 5 among other works. As punishment for beholding the goddess in the nude, Artemis transforms

Acteon into a stag, no longer recognised by his hunting party and eventually assailed by his own dogs. In a similar turn of events, Longus turns his hunter into the hunted, albeit not nearly in so grim a fashion. Dorkon’s sexual endeavour matches Acteon’s intrusion on the grandeur of

Artemis’ unclothed beauty, and for such crimes both trade their predatory advances for prey-

45 Bretzigheimer argues the case for these events to be informally deemed funny on the grounds that they produce something of a comedy of errors. For more information, see Bretzigheimer 1988, 533-534.

44 like pleading. The narrator relates that, at 1.21.3, as the dogs began to tear the wolfskin from

Dorkon’s body and make contact with his flesh, the cowherd “begged the girl and Daphnis to help after wailing loudly” (μέγα οἰμώξας ἱκέτευε βοηθεῖν τὴν κόρην καὶ τὸν Δάφνιν). The notable difference between the two men is that Dorkon still possesses a human voice to cry out with and gains human sympathy in return. Acteon, on the other hand, has no means of conveying his identity to his companions. This results in a far grislier conclusion than that of

Longus; Acteon is torn to pieces by his once faithful dogs, leaving readers of Kallimachos with a sense of dread. Conversely, Dorkon survives his attack and is assisted by the very person he sought to attack, leaving those familiar with the story of Acteon amused by this contrasting outcome. In their reading of this scene, Longus’s most educated readers may well also call to mind Plato’s Phaedrus in addition to the well-known myth of Acteon. Within Plato’s dialogue,

Socrates makes a speech to Phaedrus examining the nature of love, in which he argues that the fondness of one’s lover is not a matter of goodwill, but rather of the sexual appetite which the lover wishes to satisfy. This is a surprisingly accurate representation of the immediate intentions of the assailants we have examined in Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, and

Longus. Tellingly, Socrates concludes his speech in section 241d by analogising that “just as wolves desire lambs, so lovers adore their beloved” (ὡς λύκοι ἄρνας ἀγαπῶσιν, ὣς παῖδα

φιλοῦσιν ἐρασταί); this mirrors his line of argument that lovers act in accordance with their own appetites, even if their actions harm the objects of their love. In Longus, Dorkon serves as both the wolf and the lover, metaphorically and literally; he seeks to assail Chloe on account of his own desire, following Socrates’ metaphor, while, absurdly, in the physical guise of a wolf.

Chloe represents the lamb only within the metaphor, although she is accompanied by the

45 lambs she tends to at the time of this event. By making the Platonic metaphor literal, Longus intensifies the absurd nature of his already strange narrative.

Furthermore, Longus is not alone in his depiction of a character championing a wolfskin.

An educated reader of the ancient novel might well call to mind Euripides and Virgil while reading Daphnis and Chloe. Set during the Trojan War, Euripides’ Rhesus portrays a warrior,

Dolon, who at length relates how he concealed himself in a wolfskin in order to spy on the

Greeks. In his dialogue beginning at line 208, Dolon tells us the following: “I will set the gaping jaws of the beast around my head having fitted its front paws to my hands and its legs to my legs” (χάσμα θηρὸς ἀμφ᾽ ἐμῷ θήσω κάρᾳ βάσιν τε χερσὶ προσθίαν καθαρμόσας καὶ κῶλα

κώλοις). Longus’ description of Dorkon bears a striking resemblance to Euripides’ portrayal of

Dolon in this scene; the narrator tells us that “its front paws were spread over his hands and its back ones over his legs as far as his heels and the gaping jaws of its mouth covered his head”

(τούς τε προσθίους πόδας ἐφηπλῶσθαι ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ τοὺς κατόπιν τοῖς σκέλεσιν ἄχρι πτέρνης

καὶ τοῦ στόματος τὸ χάσμα σκέπειν τὴν κεφαλήν). The specificity of this description, down to the identical portrayal of the jaws around the head, adds to our sense that Euripides’ work is purposefully brought to mind in this scene. In addition to the wolfskin, Longus emulates the events of Euripides in one further regard: the spying. Just as Dolon sets out to gain insight into the Greeks and their future actions, Dorkon spies on Daphnis and Chloe in an attempt to discover their routine. Also, although we have no way of knowing whether Longus was familiar with Virgil’s writing, we find out more about how an ancient reader might have taken the wolfskin costume from a passage of his. Book Eleven of Virgil’s Aeneid brings Ornytus into play,

46 a warrior bearing the symbolism of a hunter. Virgil teaches us that the wolf outfit is the costume of a hunter, since he refers to Ornytus at line 678 as a “ hunter” (venator) right before telling us that “his head was the huge gaping of a wolf’s mouth and its jaws covered him with white teeth” (caput ingens oris hiatus et malae texere lupi cum dentibus albis). This depiction links to Longus’ portrayal of Dorkon not only because of the mention of a wolf, but also because of the specificity of it covering Ornytus’ head, presumably serving as his helmet. While Virgil depicts his warrior as a hunter, Longus portrays his hunter as a warrior, comparing the wolf’s jaws around Dorkon’s head to “the helmet of an infantryman” (ἀνδρὸς ὁπλίτου κράνος). Our attention is particularly drawn to Virgil and Longus’ references to the helmet because of the inversions that occur; Ornytus is a hunter-like warrior, and Dorkon is a warrior-like hunter, and thus Dorkon becomes a reflection of Ornytus. Most worthy of mention is the unobvious, yet clear, emphasis placed on the hunting motif in Longus. The parallels between Acteon and

Dorkon, which we examined earlier, coupled with the similar outfits of Ornytus and Dorkon, serve to highlight the act of hunting. Acteon himself is a hunter, and the wolf costume, as we see in Virgil, is the guise of a hunter. The fact that Longus mirrors these two particular stories adds to the sense that, like Acteon and Ornytus, Dorkon is, comically, on the hunt.

A key to understanding what type of work Longus intends to write lies in the contrasts he creates. Kallimachos’ account of Acteon and Artemis is gruesome and chilling, highlighting the unrestrained wrath of the goddess; Longus, on the other hand, creates a humorous parody of this, focusing on the silly, bathetic outcome that befalls this man. Plato concludes his dialogue with a metaphor; Longus makes this literal, turning it into the premise of his scene.

47 Euripides and Virgil employ the wolfskin to turn their warriors into hunters, pursuing prey on the battlefield; Longus uses the wolfskin to change his cowherd from a hunter into prey for dogs, describing him as a warrior, only to have him cry out like a victim. By creating such comic contrasts even while invoking a larger intellectual literary tradition, Longus adds a playful seriousness to his rendition of this type scene, going far beyond the boundaries of the existing convention within the ancient novel. In fact, Longus does all of this even without these allusions. Dorkon carefully plans out his attack, disguising himself with a wolfskin, and still fails in a humiliating fashion that befalls no character in the extant novels. Chloe, too, who should be aware of the threats that men pose, suspects nothing of Dorkon or any other assailant.

Daphnis, who is destined to be Chloe’s lover, remains clueless. These factors combine to build a very original and entertaining scene of attempted misconduct.

48 CHAPTER FOUR – PIRATES, COWS, AND… A TSUNAMI?

“…Chloe took the pipes, put them to her lips and started playing as loudly as she could.

The cows heard and recognised the tune, and with one accord, they mooed and leaped into the sea. Because a violent movement on one side of the ship had occurred and, as a result of the cows’ plunge, the sea had parted to form a depression, the ship capsized and sank as the waves closed over her [the ship], while its occupants were flung overboard, with very different prospects of survival. The pirates had their cutlasses hanging at their sides, and were wearing mail cuirasses and leg-armour that came halfway up their calves. Daphnis, on the other hand, was barefoot as he had been grazing his flock on the plain, and half-naked as the weather was still baking hot. So they could only swim a few strokes before their gear carried them to the bottom, while Daphnis had no trouble slipping out of his clothes, though he found swimming difficult, seeing that previously he had only swum in rivers. But eventually necessity taught him what he had to do: he plunged into the midst of the cows, and holding two horns of two cows with his two hands he rode along between them, as comfortably and effortlessly as if he were driving a cart. In fact, a cow swims even better than a human being, and comes second only to water-fowl and, of course, fish. A cow would never drown while swimming, were it not for the fact that the ends of its hoofs drop off if saturated with water. Evidence to this effect is provided by the existence to this day of a large number of places by the sea named “Oxford”46… Chloe took Daphnis to the Nymphs, took him into the cave and bathed him. And, for the first time in

46 The common place name “Βόσπορος” was commonly but wrongly explained as “cattle crossing” (βοὸς πόρος), as in the passage here. For more on this, see LSJ s. v. Βόσπορος.

49 view of Daphnis, she washed her own body, white and flawlessly beautiful, and with no need of a bath to perfect its beauty… Daphnis could not convince his heart to feel happy, now that he had seen Chloe naked and her hitherto secret beauty revealed. His heart ached as though gnawed by poison… The bathing-pool held more fears for him than the sea, and he though his heart was still in the pirates’ hands, being as he was so young and rustic and innocent of the piracy of Love…”

- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, 1.30.1 – 1.32.447

Towards the end of Book One of Daphnis and Chloe, Longus challenges the literary convention of the romance novel by presenting us with a conventional scene, namely the pirate scene, yet imbuing it with a somewhat miraculous and magical aura. Readers of Longus and other romance authors would not only be familiar with the structure of such an event, but would also anticipate and eagerly await the drama that comes with the pirates and their actions. The fact that Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus all employ one or more pirate scenes in their respective romance novels shows that this type of scene was an important topos to the genre of the time. The fact that they all appear to follow a set convention, however, will help us to better understand what is so absurd about Longus’ version of equivalent events.

In all the cases we find in the works of the aforementioned authors, the pirates are in the business of kidnapping a beautiful prisoner. From a review of extant novels, we can glean

47 Translation by J. R. Morgan (Morgan 2004).

50 something of the ways such a scene is expected to work for the contemporary audience.

Readers anticipate that the pirates will show up suddenly and make off with at least one of our two beautiful protagonists; the threat of sexual mistreatment will be present, but it will never come to fruition. In the extant novels, we find three variations of this pirate narrative. First is the raiding of the tomb, which we find in Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus.48 In this instance, the pirates plunder the tomb of the thought-to-be-deceased bride, only to discover that she is alive. Noting her beauty, the pirates kidnap her, sail to faraway lands, and sell her for a handsome profit. The second conventional pirate scene, found in Xenophon of Ephesus and

Heliodorus,49 involves the pirates boarding the vessel of the novel’s protagonists. In a close analogue to Pirates of the Caribbean, the pirates sail their ship next to their target vessel and begin their assault, killing the sailors and plundering the cargo onboard. The bloodshed is ended by one of the protagonists, Habrocomes in Xenophon of Ephesus and Charikleia in Heliodorus, begging the pirate captain to spare them. The final permutation of such an encounter is found in Achilles Tatius50 and, arguably, in our passage in Longus, since the run-in with pirates in

Daphnis and Chloe is most similar to this. In this version of events, the pirates seize one of the protagonists on land and drag them away to their ship. In Achilles Tatius, the pirates sail away, decapitating another woman in order to convince those in pursuit that they have killed

Leucippe. The scene in Achilles Tatius functions in a core respect as an inversion of the first permutation of pirate scene described; in Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus, the bride is thought to be dead, yet is taken away alive; in Achilles Tatius, the bride is taken away alive, yet

48 See Chaereas and Callirhoe 1.9ff and An Ephesian Tale 3.8ff, which can be found in Reardon 2008. 49 See An Ephesian Tale 1.13ff and An Ethiopian Story 5.24ff, which can be found in Reardon 2008. 50 See Leucippe and Clitophon 5.7ff, which can be found in Reardon 2008.

51 is thought to be dead thereafter. What is clear from the combined accounts of the extant novels is that the pirates stand as a “clear incarnation of evil”51 that present the threat of sexual violence against one or both of the protagonists.

Longus, by contrast, presents us with a unique and noticeably fanciful take on this otherwise conventional scene. His description of events mirrors that of Achilles Tatius only in that the pirates arrive in Lesbos and take Daphnis aboard their ship, in the same way that the pirates arrive in Pharos and take Leucippe aboard their ship; he shares with Xenophon of

Ephesus only that fact that both of their bands of pirates originate from Phoenicia.52 From this point onwards, however, Longus challenges the convention at hand, setting himself apart from the traditional romance novelists by employing elements that would likely have been deemed miraculous, dare I say absurd, by his contemporary audience. What follows on from Daphnis’ capture is something quite remarkable. At 1.30.1, at the behest of the dying cowherd, Dorkon,

Chloe takes up his pipes and plays them to his herd. Hearing the sound, the cows “mooed and leapt into the sea” (μυκησάμεναι πηδῶσιν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν), the impact of which causes a giant wave to arise and capsize the pirates’ ship. The aftermath of this leads to the drowning of the pirates, and Daphnis only survives by grasping the horns of two cows and gliding across the water as they return to shore.

51 “In a fundamentally Manichean genre, with a constant contrast between good and evil and between barbarian and civilized habits, the pirates are generally a clear incarnation of evil” (Boulic 2014, 130). For more on the topos of pirates in the ancient novels, see Boulic 2014, 128-130. 52 Boulic draws attention to Xenophon of Ephesus’ Phoenician pirates and, in association with this, points out that “the pirates attacking the pacific, and maybe somehow utopian, island of Lesbos in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe are Tyrians, which means that they are also Phoenicians” (Boulic 2014, 129). He does so in order to highlight some minor racism displayed by these novels “against Oriental people, especially Phoenicians” (Boulic 2014, 129).

52

Aside from the obviously unconventional inclusion of bovines, Longus’ pirate scene differs from its equivalent episodes in several key regards. To begin with, Daphnis and Chloe is the only of these novels that ends its immediate encounter with pirates with the protagonists triumphant, rather than dejected by their capture and involuntary travels at sea. The pirates themselves die almost as soon as they have departed, whereas conventionally they do not pay for their crimes until much later in the novel, if at all. Moreover, in all the instances where only one protagonist is captured in the other novels, that protagonist is female. In fact, the times that we witness the male protagonist being captured by pirates only occur when our heroes are aboard a vessel of their own and are captured together, a typical element which does not feature at all in Daphnis and Chloe. The biggest discrepancy between Longus’ presentation of events and those of the other novelists comes through the source of deliverance. Chariton,

Xenophon of Ephesus, and Achilles Tatius release their captured protagonist or protagonists by having the pirates sell them on to a wealthy buyer, creating something of a horizon of expectations regarding how the pirates’ role in the novel should conclude. Heliodorus uses the pirates’ lust for Charikleia to turn them against each other, which only results in the protagonists exchanging pirates for brigands as their captors. Longus, on the other hand, intermingles his pastoral storyline with this more treacherous event by utilising the cows as the means of Daphnis’ salvation. Longus’ description of the cows’ actions is also so unexpected and surreal that a modern audience might equate Daphnis and Chloe’s pirate scene to the

Sharknado movies. After all, sharks and tornadoes go together about as well as cows and

53 tsunamis. Perhaps someday a twenty-first century big-screen adaptation of Daphnis and Chloe will bear the name Cownami!53

Most worthy of our attention is the complete and utter trivialisation of these troubling events that takes place immediately after Daphnis’ escape from the pirates. Once Dorkon’s body has been buried, at 1.32.1, Chloe leads Daphnis to the grove of the Nymphs to bathe his wounds and there, for the first time, she bathes naked in front of Daphnis. Given that Daphnis has just undergone perhaps the most traumatic experience of his life, facing the threats of slavery, sexual mistreatment, and death, his emotional response is illogical; the narrator tells us that “It seemed to him that the bathing pool was to be feared more than the sea: he thought his heart yet remained with the pirates, he being young and rustic and still unaware of the piracy of Love” (ἐδόκει τὸ λουτρὸν εἶναι τῆς θαλάττης φοβερώτερον: ἐνόμιζε τὴν ψυχὴν ἔτι

παρὰ τοῖς λῃσταῖς μένειν οἷα νέος καὶ ἄγροικος καὶ ἔτι ἀγνοῶν τὸ Ἔρωτος λῃστήριον). While the metaphorical linking of piracy and love is common in the extant novels54, what we see here is atypical. Although Daphnis does not understand what is happening, he experiences such severe pain from his lovesickness that he is now more terrified than he had been at any point during his kidnapping and shipwreck. This is, of course, only believable within the context of a nonserious fiction, where the boundaries of love are expanded to facilitate the progression of the romance. In real life, one might expect the psychological trauma to outweigh the pain of

53 This was once revealed to me in a dream. 54 Boulic asserts that there are numerous examples to be found of piracy as a metaphor for love in the Greek novels, but that the more surprising examples appear in Longus. For more on piracy as a metaphor for love in the ancient novel, see Boulic 2014, 130-138.

54 lovesickness to the point where that pain is not felt again for quite some time. Longus’ rather cheeky play on words regarding “the piracy of Love” (τὸ Ἔρωτος λῃστήριον) only adds to our ever-growing sense that there is more than a bit of the absurd creeping into his romantic fiction.

Longus crowns his strikingly unconventional depiction of the pirate scene with what J. R.

Morgan refers to as “a sentence so bizarrely irrelevant that scholars since Castiglioni 1906 have been tempted to remove it.”55 At 1.30.6, Longus attempts to justify the cows’ nautical prowess within the novel by stating that cows swim better than humans and are second only to aquatic birds and fish in their ability to swim. He then asserts, completely needlessly, that “a cow would not perish while swimming unless the ends of its hoofs, having become sodden, should fall off”

(οὐδ’ ἂν ἀπόλοιτο βοῦς νηχόμενος εἰ μὴ τῶν χηλῶν οἱ ὄνυχες περιπέσοιεν διάβροχοι

γενόμενοι). These inclusions are baffling, yet purposeful, it would seem. Morgan notes that

“The grudging concession that fish swim better than cows, who are handicapped by a propensity to lose their feet, verges intentionally on the surreal.”56 The incorporation of these wildly unexpected statements about the nautical ability and anatomy of bovines draws surprise out of the reader, as well as imbuing this scene with a degree of absurd playfulness that seems in a different register from the other romance novels of the time.

55 From a section of Morgan’s commentary on the pirate scene, here focusing on the strangeness of its ending. For more on Longus’ pirate scene, see Morgan 2004, 172-175. 56 See footnote 55.

55 In spite of this flirtatious play regarding the conventionally unhumorous pirate scene, surely many an ancient reader, hearing a tale of a herd delivering a man out of danger, would call to mind Book Nine of Homer’s Odyssey. In Homer, Odysseus and his men arrive from sea, just like Longus’ pirates, but are the ones who find themselves in grave danger. In Homer, it is the sheep of the cyclops Polyphemus that carry Odysseus and his men to safety, rather than the cows of Dorkon. Despite the differences in the means of deliverance and the type of danger being escaped, Longus and Homer’s scenes share several key elements. Both events occur within a distinctly pastoral setting. Polyphemus possesses sheep because he is himself a shepherd, and Odysseus only escapes because it is Polyphemus’ duty to graze his flock daily.

Likewise, Dorkon’s cows are at hand to save Daphnis because Dorkon’s duty, prior to his death, was to herd and tend to his cows within the pastoral world of Lesbos. Moreover, both Odysseus and Daphnis are saved by another man’s flock or herd, rather than their own. It is Polyphemus’ flock that rescues Odysseus from the danger Polyphemus presents, and Dorkon’s cows are the ones who rescue Daphnis from the threat of drowning, despite Dorkon previously being a source of danger to Daphnis and Chloe. These similarities draw a parallel between the two narratives, although their tones continue to stand in contrast to one another. The danger presented in Homer is gruesome and barbaric, and Odysseus’ escape is tense, coming about thanks to his brilliant cleverness. While the dangers of Longus’ pirates are very real – Dorkon dies in this episode, for instance – the means of deliverance borders on the surreal, and again lacks particular agency by Daphnis.

56 Educated readers of the time might also find a prominent allusion to the wider literary tradition by comparing Longus’s pirate scene to well-known mythology. Daphnis’ riding back to shore by laying hold of the horns of two cows closely mirrors the story of Zeus and Europa, described in several works, including Hesiod’s Ehoiai. Yet, Longus’ narrative works as an inversion of the original mythological tale. In Ehoiai, the god, metamorphosed into a beautiful white bull, carries Europa out to sea in order to rape her. The degree of difference between the myth and the pastoral novel is twofold. Firstly, Zeus carries Europa from the safety of the land to the dangers of the sea, while Dorkon’s cows rescue Daphnis from his impending death at sea and lead him to the sanctity of dry land. Secondly, Zeus presents an additional danger to

Europa, that of being overpowered and subjected to the sexual desire of the king of the gods, and the form of the bull plays a critical role in instigating that rape. Daphnis, by contrast, is saved from impending sexual violation. It is true that he was seized by the pirates on account of his beauty and would likely have been subjected to sexual mistreatment while in their custody, but Dorkon’s herd plays a critical role in prohibiting this potential rape, instead of instigating it.

These perfect inversions of a famous mythological tale create a light-hearted and humorous parody of more serious subject matter, a superpositioning of contradictions between seriousness and parodic nonsense, as Alvares points out.57 We anticipate that Daphnis will be taken to sea and that the threat of illicit sexual desire will be present, only for the cows to arrive as saviours instead of captors, carrying Daphnis back to shore instead of out to sea. The tale of Zeus and Europa will undoubtedly sit in the mind of an educated reader throughout this

57 For more on Longus’ superpositioning of contradictions, see Alvares 2014, 26-42.

57 episode, yet the expectations associated with this myth are re-enacted not to compose a genuine retelling, but to amuse the audience with its pointed inversions.

Furthermore, an educated reader of the ancient novel would likely compare the magical properties of Chloe’s pipe-playing to those of Orpheus. In several of his works, Euripides gives us an insight into the miracles that Orpheus was capable of. At line 561 of Bacchae, the chorus cites how his music was able to tame wild beasts and make trees move, and at line 1211 of

Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia wishes to have possessed the tongue of Orpheus to charm the stones to leap and follow her. Both of these examples showcase Orpheus’ ability to control nature itself. Similarly, the music that Chloe plays to Dorkon’s cows incites them to do exactly what she desires, and it is not long before Daphnis is safely returned to shore. The most important outcome of Chloe’s newfound power is that she is able to accomplish that which

Orpheus could not: to bring back a loved one. In Euripides’ Alcestis, Admetus laments, beginning at line 357, that he does not possess Orpheus’ talents, which allowed him to descend to the Underworld and earn an opportunity to bring his wife, Eurydice, back from the dead.

Orpheus famously squanders this opportunity by breaching Hades’ terms and looking back at

Eurydice before they had reached the upper air, causing her to return to the shadows permanently. Chloe, on the other hand, is bound by no such terms, sending the pirates to a watery grave and bringing Daphnis back from the brink of an uncertain fate. In the face of adversity, Orpheus’ tale ends in tragedy, whereas Longus’ episode, under similar circumstances, ends in amusement and satisfaction.

58 How then are we to take Longus’ unconventional pirate scene? The implicit references and sly inversions of stories in Homer, Hesiod, and Euripides imbue this type scene with a degree of sophistication that the other ancient novels lack. The educated reader would note that the episodes being referenced are somewhat eerie and austere in tone, making them difficult to parody, and that, by drawing on such texts and playing with them in this way, Longus shows off his authorial skill by producing a tasteful and comic trivialisation of more famous tales. Moreover, the mere content of his rendition of this commonly occurring scene is enough to entertain the reader. The cows leap with such force that the sea parts to form a depression large enough to capsize a vessel full of experienced seafarers, and Daphnis, with limited swimming experience, emerges from the waters with the assistance of the cows who have somehow covered the distance to him instantaneously. This magically absurd event is in no way in line with the frightening pirate episodes encountered in the extant novels. By tinkering with the more serious tones of those novels and of the wider literary tradition, Longus authors a humorous parody of this famous type scene with details that perhaps only his most educated readers will fully appreciate.

59 CONCLUSION – WHY DAPHNIS AND CHLOE MATTERS

Based on our examination of four key episodes, can we say that Daphnis and Chloe is a nuanced and complicated work? Does Longus truly accomplish something that is original? My conclusion is to answer these questions with a firm and assertive “yes.”

From the outset of the novel, Longus’ story behaves differently than the works of

Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus. The prologue in itself does not belong in second century romance as traditionally construed. The manner in which Longus uses his prologue to bind the narrative is a novelty, not found in any comparable literature. The employment of ekphrasis, while not uncommon, is uniquely powerful on account of its distinct differences from other examples of ekphrasis. Longus’ purposeful parallels of Thucydides, too, display a level of narratological depth that the other romance novels lack. The high literary style of ekphrasis in itself presupposes ambition of purpose in one’s composition, as does his assertion that his is a “a delightful possession” (κτῆμα τερπνὸν) which, unlike Thucydides’

History, will both endure and entertain; and yet this very ambition is coloured by Longus’ light- hearted and playful tone. Longus goes to great lengths to call to mind Homer, Virgil, Catullus, and Thucydides, yet he does not intend for his work to be elevated to such a high standard of literature. Instead, he intends to produce sophisticated, yet novel entertainment.

Upon commencing our reading of Book One, we continue to find elements that are rarely found in second century romance. Heliodorus is the only other romance novelist to

60 include a tale of abandonment in his narrative, and he does so in keeping with the strict mythological ruling that abandonment is reserved for regents-to-be. Longus, by contrast, fools his audience into thinking that Daphnis is Mytilenean royalty through his direct allusion to the tale of Cyrus, only later to reveal that Daphnis is merely the child of a fairly prominent and noble merchant. Moreover, the poignant links to Greek New Comedy are found nowhere else in the ancient novels, and the very inclusion of not one, but two tales of abandonment is a true novelty to that very topos, both in mythology and New Comedy. Such inclusions facilitate the conception of a purposeful confusion that Longus desires within his reader’s mind. The reader is forced to grapple with the austere tones of mythology and the lighter tones of New Comedy, pondering whether the fairy-tale beginning attaches itself to the mythical tradition or the comic world. The tone in this introductory narrative of the abandonments remains in some ways serious, and in others comic, leaving the reader full of unanswered questions as the work gets underway.

As we progress to the later stages of Book One, Longus begins to take very conventional events, such as scenes of attempted rape, and place a somewhat absurdist twist on them.

Dorkon is the only character in second century romance to disguise himself as an animal in order to facilitate his sexual desires, the only character whose assault goes unnoticed, and the only character who is humiliated as a result of his attempt. This scene of attempted rape also draws attention to the prominent and unusual role of wolves in Longus’ narrative. Furthermore, the description of Dorkon’s transformation into a human wolf mirrors the descriptions found in

Euripides and Virgil, and his pitiful outcome very greatly resembles the fate of Acteon, albeit a

61 far less harsh fate. Through these allusions to intellectual literary traditions, Longus creates a humorous parody of this conventional romance type scene. The silly, bathetic outcome that befalls Dorkon parodies not only equivalent scenes in extant novels, but also the mythic tale of

Acteon. Through the parodic contrasts that Longus creates, this scene shows itself to be distinctly and unambiguously comic.

Finally, at the end of Book One, Longus presents us with another scene commonly found in second century romance, the pirate scene, yet mixes in the bucolic to such an extent that we almost forget that pirates are central to this episode. The cows themselves outshine the pirates, instigating a brief chain of events so miraculous as to become laughable. His allusions to

Homer, Hesiod, and Euripides, too, contribute to a reader’s appreciation of the nuances of this episode, imbuing it with a degree of sophistication that the extant novels lack. Such heavy allusiveness, rendered in parody, shows off Longus’ skill at producing something both unique and entertaining. The task of parodying these austere tones is incredibly difficult, and yet

Longus manages to do so in a tasteful fashion, trivialising these famous works through his humorous and miraculous inversion of the type scene.

The combination of his playfully original takes on conventional scenes, his repeated employment of unconventional, absurdist elements, and his well-integrated allusions to a wider literary tradition makes Longus’ novel more than just a “most sweet and pleasant pastoral

62 romance for young ladies,”58 as Thornley and scholars of old have long deemed Daphnis and

Chloe. Longus does so much more than this, entertaining all different kinds of readers with his humorous and original parodies. While, on the surface, the novel possesses comic light- heartedness and an ability to charm any reader, much of its playfulness is buried deep within, saved for only the most educated of readers, who will discover vast intertexts to unravel, often with humorous or absurd consequences to their allusiveness. By imbuing his work with a degree of literary texture that the other second century romances lack, Longus authors a novel that becomes ever more comically allusive the deeper you dive into it. Most importantly,

Longus authors a novel that is refreshingly original and does not fail to entertain.

58 Thornley describes Daphnis and Chloe thus in his commentary. For Thornley’s full commentary, see Thornley 1916.

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