Page:Romances of Chivalry on Greek Soil.djvu/10

Rh the fair Maguelonne, the Arthurian tale of Gyron le Courtois, were worked up in Greek. This fact entitles us to speak of a literary reception. Such versions and adaptations, however, do not constitute alone a reception of much value. But original poems of chivalrous adventure were also produced, and the character of these must decide in what measure the imagination of the Greeks was affected by the foreign literature which had come their way. If we take as a sort of standard the intellectual conquest of Rome by Greece, the greatest perhaps of all literary receptions, did their acquaintance with Western romances move the Greeks to produce works impregnated with Western ideas in the same way as the Odes of Horace or the Eclogues and Aeneid of Virgil are charged with the influence of their Hellenic masters? Or to take a lesser example, did French romance inspire Greek poets as it inspired Teutonic singers like Wolfram and Gottfried?

Let me take a romance of adventure and love, composed by a nameless Greek in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the story of Belthandros and Chrysantza. The poem is short, about as long as two books of Homer, and the plot is slight enough. The Emperor Rhodophilus has two purple-born sons, Philarmos and Belthandros, who are devoted to each other. The younger, Belthandros, is remarkable for his beauty and bravery, his prowess in hunting, and his skill in archery. But his father has taken a dislike to him, and treats him with intolerable rigour. The slights which are put upon him furnish the motive for his decision to leave his country and seek adventures in foreign lands. In spite of his brother's tearful dissuasions he rides forth with three attendants, and on the first night he pitches his tent in a meadow lit by a full moon, and, taking his lute, utters in song his sadness, and a vague foreboding that