Daphnis and Chloe
Daphnis and Chloe (, "Daphnis kai Chloē") is an ancient Greek novel written in the Roman Empire, the only known work of the second-century AD Greek novelist and romance writer Longus. Setting and style. It is set on the Greek isle of Lesbos, where scholars assume the author to have lived. Its style is rhetorical and pastoral; its shepherds and shepherdesses are wholly conventional, but the author imparts human interest to this idealized world. "Daphnis and Chloe" resembles a modern novel more than does its chief rival among Greek erotic romances, the "Aethiopica" of Heliodorus, which is  remarkable more for its plot than for its characterization. Plot summary. "Daphnis and Chloe" is the story of a boy (Daphnis) and a girl (Chloe), each of whom is abandoned at birth along with some identifying tokens. A goatherd named Lamon discovers Daphnis, and a shepherd called Dryas finds Chloe. Each decides to raise the child he finds as his own. Daphnis and Chloe grow up together, herding the flocks for their foster parents. They fall in love but, being naive, do not understand what is happening to them. Philetas, a wise old cowherd, explains to them what love is  and tells them that the only cure is kissing. They do this. Eventually, Lycaenion, a woman from the city, educates Daphnis in love-making. Daphnis, however, decides not to test his newly acquired skill on Chloe, because Lycaenion tells Daphnis that Chloe "will scream and cry and lie bleeding heavily [as if murdered]." Throughout the book, Chloe is courted by suitors, two of whom (Dorcon and Lampis) attempt with varying degrees of success to abduct her. She is also carried off by raiders from a nearby city and saved by the intervention of the god Pan. Meanwhile, Daphnis falls into  a pit, gets beaten up, is abducted by pirates, and is very nearly raped by a drunkard. In the end, after being recognised by their birth parents, Daphnis and Chloe get married and live out their bucolic lives in the country. Characters. The characters in the novel include: Text tradition. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, about a page of text was missing; when Paul Louis Courier went to Italy, he found the missing part in one of the "plutei" (an ancient Roman reading desk or place for storing manuscripts) of the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence. However, as soon  as he had copied the text, he upset the ink-stand and spilled ink all over the manuscript. The Italian philologists were incensed, especially those who had studied the pluteus giving "a most exact description" ("") of it. Influences and adaptations. The first vernacular edition of "Daphnis and Chloe" was the French version of Jacques Amyot, published in 1559. Along with the "Diana" of Jorge de Montemayor (published in the same year), "Daphnis and Chloe" helped inaugurate a European vogue for pastoral fiction in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. "Daphnis and Chloe" was the model of "La Sireine" of Honoré d'Urfé , the "Aminta" of Torquato Tasso, and "The Gentle Shepherd" of Allan Ramsay. The novel "Paul et Virginie" by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre echoes the same story. Jacques Amyot's French translation is perhaps better known than the original. The story has been presented in numerous illustrated editions, including a 1937 limited edition with woodcuts by Aristide Maillol, and a 1977 edition illustrated by Marc Chagall. Another translation that rivals the original is that of Annibale Caro, one of those writers dearest to lovers of the Tuscan elegances. The 1952 work "Shiosai" ("The Sound of Waves"), written by the  Japanese writer Yukio Mishima following a visit to Greece, is considered to have been inspired by the Daphnis and Chloe myth. Another work based on it is the 1923 novel "Le Blé en herbe" by Colette. The 1987 film "The Princess Bride" contains similarities to "Daphnis and Chloe" (for example, in both stories the male romantic lead is captured by pirates). Lawrence Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, attributes the inspiration for the film to Longus. Radio. The work was adapted into a 45-minute radio play in 2006 by Hattie Naylor. See also. Other  ancient Greek novelists: External links. Editions of the Greek text Synopses, analyses, and other studies