Thoughts on Novel Writing in Antiquity

Daphnis and Chloe is a novel written in Greek in the second or third century C.E., by an otherwise unknown author called Longos, at a time when the eastern, Greek-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire experienced a renaissance of the literary arts inspired by classical Hellenism. Longos was probably a native of Lesbos given the setting of this charming tale, and the obvious knowledge of and feeling for the environment and beauty of the island displayed in the novel. The novel follows the romance of the eponymous characters as they slowly discover eros amid changing seasons and the rhythms of the agricultural calendar in a blooming countryside on the border between the territories of the poleis of Mytilene and Methymna.

The tale opens as the narrator, while on a hunting trip, encounters a painted depiction of the novel’s story on the walls of a sanctuary of the Nymphs. Local villagers interpret the story for him as he records their account in writing. Their story begins many centuries earlier, in an ill-defined pre-Roman past, with the discovery, two years apart, of an abandoned infant boy and an infant girl in the vicinity of a village belonging to an absentee landlord from Mytilene. Each child is richly adorned with tokens indicated aristocratic origins. What is more both are suckled by a domestic animal (a she-goat in Daphnis’ case, an ewe in Chloe’s) and each is taken in by kindly peasant couples who raise them as their own. Upon reaching adolescence, having grown up tending their flocks together in the lush landscape, they begin to develop strong romantic feelings for each other, though, being inexperienced in such matters, they only discover the nature of sex and love gradually, by trial and error. Here they are assisted by sympathetic,humorous characters such as the old man Philetas who dispenses sage advice. There is also Lykainion, the lusty, city-bred, young wife of a wealthy-farmer, to whom Daphnis loses his virginity. Not all is easy though. Hardships and obstacles intrude into this pastoral idyll. The demands of seasonal labor, the pain of extended separation from each other during a harsh winter, various jealous romantic rivals, and attempted abductions by pirates and other seaborne marauders drive the storyline. At one point, an unfortunate misunderstanding involving a party of Methymnian youths on a pleasure cruise nearly leads to Daphnis’ enslavement and war between the two principal cities of the island. The story itself of pleasure cruises by Methymnians in the Gulf of Kaloni tells us a lot about the boundaries of Methymna’s one time authority on the island.In any case , helpful friends and the beneficent protection of the nymphs and the gods of the wild ensure a happy ending, in which Daphnis and Chloe are reunited with their birth-families in Mytilene, marry, return to the countryside, and have children which are themselves suckled partly by their extensive herds domestic animals. They also use some of their newfound wealth to adorn the aforementioned sanctuary of the nymphs with numerous dedications as memorials to their love and to the numinous power of the rustic divinities who aided them.