Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/660

Rh 636 ROMANCE the latter half of the 5th or beginning of the 6th century, wrote The Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon, upon the model of Heliodorus; though an ingenious story, it does not reach the standard of the work it imitates. Like his predecessor, Achilles uses the marvellous with discre- tion, but the accumulation of difficulties is very tedious. Leucippe and Cleitophon fall in love and fly to escape parental anger. They suffer shipwreck, are seized by brigands, and separated. Cleitophon first believes that Leucippe is dead, then finds her, to lose her once more, and again to meet her, a slave, at the very time he is going to marry her mistress, Melitta, a rich Ephesian widow. It so happens that the husband of the latter is not dead but returns to persecute with his love and jealousy both Leucippe and Cleitophon. The descriptions are the best part, the incidents being either tiresome or repulsive and the character of the hero pitiable. Most of the book is written with taste and judgment, but the digressions are too frequent. Achiljes Tatius is the last of these authors who can be said to have the slightest merit. Of the romances which followed his one of the least bad is perhaps Chxreas and Callirhoe, by one who called himself Chariton of Aphro- disias, placed by various authorities between the 5th and the 9th century. Here the two lovers are already married, and as usual are of superhuman beauty. Unfortunately Chaereas possesses a somewhat irritable temper, and on a jealous suspicion gives his lovely wife a terrible kick in the stomach. She is considered dead and is carried to her grave. But during the night brigands carry her away to Ionia, where her purchaser, Dionysius, falls in love with her. The wife remains faithful to her husband, but, as she is enceinte, consents to marry Dionysius in order that her child may have a father. Meanwhile Chaereas, having learned the ravishment of the supposed corpse, starts in pursuit of his wife. He also is captured by pirates and taken to Caria. The two finally come together, when Callirhoe forsakes Dionysius and her son and returns to Sicily with her first husband. Equally frigid was The Loves of Hysmine and Hysminias by Eustathius or Eumathius, probably a Byzantine, who is placed by Wolf as late as the 12th century, but who may have lived six hundred years earlier. Only a few more remain to be mentioned. Philip of Amphipolis wrote 'PoSiaKa (specially referred to by Suidas for its obscenity), GacriaKa, and other works, all lost. Severus of Alexandria, a man of fortune with a large library, living in the latter part of the 5th century, has left a few short stories after the style of Parthenius. Photius (cod. 130) also preserves the titles of some works by a certain Damascius, such as Incredible Fictions, Tales of Demons, Marvellous Stories of Appearances from the Dead, <kc. The same authority tells us (cod. 188) of a writer of the name of Alexander who compiled a book of marvels. The credit of having written the worst of the Greek romances may be claimed either by Theodoras Prodromus, a monk of the early part of the 12th century, for his metrical history, in nine books, of Rhod- anthe and Dosicles, or by Nicetas Eugenianus, who lived somewhat later, for his iambic poem History of the Lives of Drusilla and Charicles, imitated from the former work. Constantinus Manasses (also 12th century) composed a poetical romance on the loves of Aristander and Callisthia, fragments of which were first printed by Villoison (Anecdota Grxca, 1781). Early Under BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT (vol. iii. p. 375) will be ?"** found the origin and development of the story by St John mances. ^ Damascus, which belongs rather to religious apologues than to romances. Its origin is entirely Eastern, from India. The early Christians eagerly seized upon fiction as affording them a vehicle for spreading their views. Their contributions to our subject have a strong family likeness, and usually either close with a martyrdom or are written in praise of a monastic life. To the former class belong the Clementine Recognitions (2d century), Paul and Tliekla (3d century), and Cyprian and Justina, which con- tains the germs of the episode of Faust and Gretchen. The ascetic novels include Xenophon and his Sons, Euphrosyne, Zosimus and Mary, T/iais, <fec. Christian imaginary travels are represented by the Voyage of Macarius to Paradise and comic tales by Aaape, Irene, and Chionia. Besides the forged letters attributed to men of mark, Fictiti< we have from the Greek sophists collections of fictitious letters, letters serving the same purpose as the epistolary novels of Rousseau and Richardson. The best known of those writers were Alciphron, Aristaenetus, and Theophylactus Simocatta. Alciphron, the most eminent, of whom we possess 116 Letters in three books, lived in the 3d or 4th century. Many of the letters are written by courtezans and supply curious information on contemporary life and manners. The fifty Erotic Epistles of Aristaenetus form a much less entertaining series than those of Alciphron. Theophylactus Simocatta, an Egyptian by birth, died at Constantinople about the year 640. He wrote eighty-five Letters, divided into moral, rustic, and amatory. They are little else than brief moral treatises mingled with stories. The review of the origines of the Greek novel shows that Revie- it arose with the decay of old Greek literature and carried of Gr( on a feeble existence down to the 12th century. Two ro facts make themselves apparent. First, the romance (or novel) proper came late into the field, where it remained in a secondary place ; and secondly, it invariably turned upon a hackneyed circle of incidents and never attained anything of the highly artistic development reached by modern examples. The sameness observable in Greek romance arises from the fact that it was the product of literary decrepitude and impotence. The writers were in- capable of rivalling the glories of the old Hellenic litera- ture, and they endeavoured to supply originality with reminiscences more or less disguised. The literary and social surroundings in which these authors passed their lives gave them few fresh subjects for investigation, and the characters they describe are mere names. Human nature and the human heart have little meaning for them ; but, as with the Western writers of fiction who closely follow them in point of date, incident is crowded upon incident to the verge of satiety, in order that the attention of the reader may never flag. The contributions of Roman literature are limited to Romi productions by two writers, Petronius and Apuleius and roma ""' one story by Martianus Capella, of more recent date and less typical nature. In the comic romance of PETRONIUS ARBITER (q.v.}, the tale of the matron of Ephesus first appears among Western popular fictions. This was un- doubtedly one of the Ephesian tales already referred to. We find it reproduced in the Seven Wise Masters, in the French fabliaux, and in Brantome. It is also to be found in the Chinese. The opening words of the Golden Ass of Apuleius indicate that his romance and the Ass of Lucian were both inspired from the same source, per- haps through the medium of Lucius of Patrae mentioned by Photius. Lucian seems to have reproduced the story in a condensed form ; the Latin writer paraphrased and embellished it with other tales, among which the best known is that of Cupid and Psyche, an antique gem in an unworthy setting. The hero, punished for his curiosity by being turned into an ass, passes through adventures similar in kind to those depicted in the Greek romance. The story ends with a fine description of the mysteries of Isis, into which the hero is initiated and through