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precepts of morality, and adorned with a profusion of delightful images, most skilfully disposed. The incidents. are probable, the episodes are deduced from the main subject, the language is perspicuous, and modesty is scrupulously observed. Here there is nothing mean, nothing unnatural or affected, nothing that has the appearance of childishness or sophistry." Huet, however, complains that the conclusion of the fable of this romance is far removed from the excellence of the introduction.

I have now taken a successive view of the Greek romances, and have attempted to furnish such an analysis of them as may enable the reader to form some notion of their nature and qualities.

One quality, it is obvious, pervades them all, and it is the characteristic not only of Greek romance, but of the first attempt at prose fiction in every country: The interest of each work almost wholly consists in a succession of strange, and often improbable adventures. Indeed, as the primary object of the narrator was to surprise by the incidents he rehearsed, the strangeness of these was the chief object to which he directed his attention. For the creation of these marvels sufficient scope was afforded him, because, as little intercourse took place in society, the limits of probability were not precisely ascertained. The seclusion, also, of females in these early times gave a certain uniformity to existence, and prevented the novelist from painting those minute and almost imperceptible traits of feeling and character, all those developments, which render a wellwritten modern novel so agreeable and interesting. Still, amid all their imperfections, the Greek romances are extremely pleasing, since they may be considered as almost the first productions in which woman is in any degree represented as assuming her proper station of the friend and the companion of man. Hitherto she had been considered almost in the light of a slave, ready to bestow her affections on whatever master might happen to obtain her; but, in Heliodorus and his followers, we see her an affectionate guide and adviser-we behold an union of hearts painted as a main-spring of our conduct in life-we are delighted with pictures of fidelity, constancy, and chastity, and are encouraged to persevere in a life of virtue by the happy

consequences to which it leads. The Greek romances are less valuable than they might have been, from giving too much to adventure, and too little to manners and character; but these have not been altogether neglected, and several pleasing pictures are delineated of ancient customs and feelings. In short, these early fictions are such as might have been expected at the first effort, and must be considered as not merely valuable in themselves, but as highly estimable in pointing out the method of awaking the most pleasing sympathies of our nature, and affecting most powerfully the fancy and the heart.1

1 Phlegon of Tralles in Lydia, one of Hadrian's freedmen, may further be mentioned before dismissing the present subject. Under his name the Emperor, as is supposed, wrote his own biography (Spartiani Vita Hadriani, c. 16). His work Tepi Javμaoiwv (printed in Jac. Gronovii Thes. Graec. Anth. viii. p. 2694) consists of a collection of marvellous tales and ghost stories, not altogether unlike those which have been so popular in the German literature of the present century. The first portion of the book is lost, and therewith the commencement of the story of Philinnion returned from the grave (borrowed by Phlegon from a letter of Hipparchus, Philipp's Commandant of Amphipolis, to Arrhidaeus, see Rohde, p. 391), which Goethe adapted in his Bride of Corinth. The tale of Phlegon is undoubtedly connected with the tales current in south-eastern Europe of vampyres, and dead who rise from their graves and suck the blood of the living, especially of their nearest relatives, and called in modern Greek Buthrolakkas, or Burkolassas [βουρκόλακκας].

Here, too, are found the stories of the Succubi (Eμπоvoα), or female sprites (Alp.). See Dobeneck, Des Deutschen Mittelatus Volksglaube, i. 32, who cites a pre-Christian example of this kind of being from Philostratus.

See, further, note on Morgant le Géant, Chassang, p. 400, the tables of Lamide, Gorgons, Ephialta, Mormolyce, Manducus.

Another fictionist unmentioned by Dunlop is Damascius, recorded by Photius (cod. 130), but without any biographical information about him. He was probably a Christian at a time when Christianity had become generally diffused. Photius gives only the titles of his books which are :— Of Incredible Stories, 352 chapters; Tales of Demons, 52 chapters; Wonderful Stories of Apparitions, 63 chapters, and of Incredible Natures, 105 chapters. Photius pronounces them to have been full of extravagances, and of gloomy Pagan superstition, but composed in a clear and elegant style.-LIEB.

A contemporary of Theodorus Prodromus, Constantine Manasses, composed the metrical romance of Aristander and Callithea in nine books. The only extracts from this work which have come down show it to have contained the usual accumulation of adventures and vicissitudes found in the Greek romances.

In general, remarks F. W. V. Schmidt (Wien. Jahrb. Bd. 26, p. 46), speaking of the later Greek romances, and especially the works of Eustathius, Theodorus Prodromus, and Nicetas Eugenianos, the perusal of these works, important as they are for the knowledge of philology and literature, leaves upon the reader the impression conveyed by seeing an old man in his dotage.

The contact with the western nations effected by the Crusades with the effete civilization of Byzantium, and French domination in the Morea, substituted Frankish romances for ancient models, or poor imitations thereof, and narrative literature received themes from both east and west, as the stories of the Pankyatranta and Sindibad had already been introduced into the popular Byzantine literature; separate French compositions were now translated, such as stories from the Round Table, of la Belle Maguelonne, Flores and Blanchefleur, etc. Many of these stories became in this way so popularized that they are still recognizable in the modern Greek folk tales. (See note to Apollonius, p. 83, and Nicolai, Gesch. des Neugriech, Literatur. p. 11.) An instance is the story of the good Florentia, or the history of the faithful wife vainly tempted by her brother-in-law during her husband's absence, then turned adrift, resisting the amorous proposals of divers men whom she meets, who subsequently come to be healed at a monastery whither she had retired, and where she had become celebrated for miraculous cures, and whom she heals from their ailments upon their confessing their guilt; whereupon she is reconciled to her husband. For an account of the variants of this story of the good Florentia of Rome, see Graesse, Literärgeschichte, iii. i. 286, 287. The same story is current with but little difference in Janina Hahn, Griech. Märchen, N. 16 (1, p. 140, etc.). The legend probably found its way in the popular mouth from some Greek version of a Frankish original. The ultimate source of the Saga (which is found in various forms, such as that of Genoveva, of Crescentia, see v. d. Hagen Gesammtabentener, vii. and i. 101; also Esterley, on Kirchof's Wendunnuth, 2, 23; G. Rom. 249, p. 747, of Hildegard; Grimm. Deutsche Sagen, N. 437) is to be found in the Indian cycle of the Papageienbuch in the oldest form of that collection which is accessible to us, Night 33, as well as in the Turkish Tooti Nameh: Rose, i. 89-108. See Rohde, p. 533, etc., and Gidel, Etudes. For further information on the perpetuation of popular fiction among the Greeks, the following works may be consulted: Berington's "Literary History of the Middle Ages," Appendix I. Bikelas, Die Griechen des Mittelalters und ihre Einflues auf die Europäische Cultur, Güttersloh, 1878. Nicolai, Geschichte der Neugriechischen Literatur, Leipzig, 1876. Gidel, Etudes-Nouvelles Etudes sur la Littérature grecque moderne, 1866, 1878. Schmidt, Bernhardt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das Hellenische Alterthum, Leipzig, 1871, and the same author's Griechische Märchen, etc., 1877. Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Märchen, 1864. Miss J. E. Harrison's "Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature," London, 1882. Gerland, Altgriechische Märchen in der Odyssee, Magdeburg, 1869. Geldart, Folklore of Modern Greece, London, 1882. W. Wagner, Shakespeare in Griechenland, Leipzig, and chaps. 21, 28-30, of Rev. H. F. Tozer's "Researches in the Highlands of Turkey."

CHAPTER II.

INTRODUCTION OF THE MILESIAN TALES INTO ITALY.-LATIN ROMANCES.-PETRONIUS ARBITER.-APULEIUS, ETC.

THE

HE Milesian Fables had found their way into Italy even before they flourished in Greece. They had been received with eagerness, and imitated by the Sybarites, the most voluptuous nation in the west of Europe; whose stories obtained the same celebrity in Rome, that the Milesian tales had acquired in Greece and Asia. It is not easy to specify the exact nature of the western imitations, but if we may judge from a solitary specimen transmitted by Elian in his Varia Historiæ (1. 14. c. 20), they were of a facetious description, and intended to promote merriment. A pedagogue of the Sybarite nation conducted his pupil through the streets of a town. The boy happened to get hold of a fig, which he was proceeding to eat, when his tutor interrupted him by a long declamation against luxury, and then snatching the dainty from his hand, devoured it with the utmost greed. This tale Ælian says he had read in the Sybarite stories (sopias ovẞapirikais), and had been so much entertained that he got it by heart, and committed it to writing, as he did not grudge mankind a hearty laugh!

Many of the Romans, it would appear, were as easily amused as Elian, since the Sybarite stories for a long while enjoyed great popularity; and, at length, in the time of Sylla, the Milesian tales of Aristides were translated into Latin by Sisenna, who was prætor of Sicily, and author of a history of Rome. Plutarch informs us in his life of Crassus [c. 32], that when that general was defeated by the Parthians, the conquerors found copies of Milesian and Sybarite tales in the tents of the Roman soldiers; whence Surena expressed his contempt for the effeminacy and licentiousness of his enemies, who, even in time of war, could not refrain from the perusal of such compositions.

The taste for the Sybarite and Milesian fables increased during the reign of the emperors. Many imitators of Aristides appeared, particularly Clodius Albinus, the competitor of the Emperor Severus, whose stories have not reached posterity, but are said to have obtained a celebrity to which their merit hardly entitled them.' It is strange that Severus, in a letter to the senate, in which he upbraids its members for the honours they had heaped on his rival, and the support they had given to his pretensions, should, amid accusations that concerned him more nearly, have expressed his chief mortification to arise from their having distinguished that person as learned, who had grown hoary in the study of old wives' tales, such as the Milesian-Punic fables.-Major fuit dolor, quod illum pro literato laudandum plerique duxistis, cum ille neniis quibusdam anilibus occupatus, inter Milesias Punicas Apuleii suit, et ludicra literaria consenesceret.2

But the most celebrated fable of ancient Rome is the work of Petronius Arbiter, perhaps the most remarkable fiction which has dishonoured the literary history of any nation. It is the only fable of that period now extant, but is a strong proof of the monstrous corruption of the times in which such a production could be tolerated, though, no doubt, writings of bad moral tendency might be circulated before the invention of printing, without arguing the depravity they would have evinced, if presented to the world subsequent to that period.

The work of Petronius is in the form of a satire, and, according to some commentators, is directed against the vices of the court of Nero, who is thought to be delineated under the names of Trimalchio and Agamemnon; an opinion

1 Milesias nonnulli ejusdem esse dicunt, quarum fama non ignobilis. habetur, quamvis mediocriter scriptæ sunt.-Capitolinus vit. Clod.. Albini., c. 11.

2 Ibid. c. 12.

3 And extant only in a fragmentary form. Being employed for excerpts in anthologies, the work itself was all the sooner lost, which it appears to have been as early as the seventh century. The MSS. known have on the whole the same gaps and corruptions, and must therefore be derived from, and the same original MSS., which contained only excerpts from the complete works of Petronius.-Teuffel. His. Rom. Lit. ii. p. 88.

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