The next work that invites our attention in point of time, the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus, is of a totally different character. It is a simple and picturesque prose-pastoral, with no poisonings, murders, magic, supernaturalism, and impossible exploits. Over the whole story rest a rural peace and a smile of cheerful sunshine; and, in spite of some singularly polluted passages, it was, for its time, a pure and wholesome fiction. Daphnis and Chloe is the only pastoral romance produced by any Byzantine author. Whether or not it exercised any influence on the development of the modern pastoral of Italy and France cannot be proved, but it has been noticed that there is no slight resem blance between it and the story of the Gentle Shepherd, which we know was suggested to Allan Ramsay by a classical friend, who may have borrowed from the Greek the sketch which he gave to the poet. It has also been very closely imitated by Gessner in his idyl of Daphnis.
After Lougus comes Chariton (for. some time between the 6th and 9th centuries), whose romance, in eight books, on the Loves of Clicereas and Callirricoe; is not quiki com plete, but nearly so. It contains, like the other erotic fictions, plenty of stirring and start ling adventures, but on the whole theca are less improbable than what we encounter in the writings of his predecessors. Of three Xenophon, also noted among the erotikoi, and of uncertain date, the best is Xenophon of Ephesus, whose .romance, entitled Liplce slam, or the Loves of Anthia and Abroeomas, is in ten books, and has all the sensational characteristics of the school to which it belongs. It is, however, perhaps worth men tioning that in the romance of Xenophon we meet for the first time with the story of the love-potion, the pretended death, and the mock-entombment of the heroine, which forms the leading incident in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and which, it is thought, reached the great English dramatist at second or third hand, through the Italian novelist Luigi da Porta.
Again a long interval elapses before we meet with another love-fiction of the old pagan sort. During this period, however, a work made its appearance which was essentially a romance, and was composed expressly for the purpose of recommending that form of Christian life which was the favorite in early times—the ascetic and recluse form. This was the Ballwin, and Josaphat (q.v.), the author of which is unknown, but whose popularity, during the middle ages, may be estimated from the fact that it was translated into every language of Christendom from Norway to Spain. In the 12th c. another erotic, Eustathius or Eumathius, who was properly the last of the series, pub lished his Jsmene and iunenias, in eleven books. This romance is, in truth, a feeble performance; the expiring flicker of a lamp whose oil is about done. It is puerile in its delineation of character, and full of plagiarisms; yet many of its details have been copied by later occidental Writers, such as D'Urfe and Montemayor.
In all the erotic romances the adventures, which in fact constitute the story, have certain common characteristics. The hero and heroine are generally carried off by robbers or pirates; or they flee from home, and are accidentally separated. They resolve to seek each other throughout the world, and in the course of their loving quest they visit the remotest regions, encounter the most frightful perils, make hairbreadth escapes from tragic ends, meet again in most unexpected and miraculous ways, and generally close their career in happiness and splendid prosperity—often turning out to be the off spring of far greater people than they fancied. Copious use is made of poisons, love potions, improbable tricks, magic instruments, etc.; and one can easily see that the stories were meant to tickle and stimulate a languid, corrupt, sensual, and credulous people, such a.s the Greeks of the lower empire undoubtedly were.
Before touching on tile medieval romance of western Europe we may in a few words notice such specimens of classical fiction as exist, or are known-to have existed in Latin. We have already stated that the Milesiau tales were translated into that tongue by Sisenna, who derived his knoWledge of them from the Sybarites, a Greek colony of lower Italy. The taste for similar stories increased (luring the empire, but the writers la general cannot have displayed much genius in their compositions if we may judge from the contempt uous language used by the emperor Severus against Clodius Albinus, whose fictions he designates ludicra literaria, and walla (old wives' tales). But higher praise must be assigned to the work commonly attributed to Petronius Arbiter (q.v,),.. who flourished in the time of Nerd, add 11,11080 novel or romance, and (although the dirtiest work even in pagan literature) is executed with skill, vigor, and at times, with beauty. In the 2d c. A.D., Appuleius (q.v.), wrote his Ass (called from its excellence the Golden Ass), which relates the adventures of a young man who had the misfortune to be accidentally metamorphosed into that animal while sojourning in Thes saly: retaining, however, his human consciousness. The miseries which he suffers at the hands of robbers, eunuchs, magistrates, and other persons into whose hands he falls, until the period when he is enabled to resume his former figure, are portrayed with a wit, ho. mor, and fancy, hardly inferior to Lucian. The work is also believed to have had, like ,the writings of his Greek contemporary, a moral and satirical aim. It was immensely popular in the middle ages; has supplied Boccaccio with some of his stories, and the author of Gil Ras with the picturesque incidents of the robbers' cave in the early part of his romance, and contains in the episode of Cupid and Psyche one of the loveliest alle gories of classical antiquity.