Page:Romances of Chivalry on Greek Soil.djvu/13

8 and received the rod. Summoned again to the presence of the master of the house to give an account of his judgement, he describes with rapture the charms of the lady to whom he awarded the prize. 'She fell,' he said, 'from the arms of the moon, robbing her of her radiance.' When he had finished, Love and his attendant train, and the forty women, vanished, and Belthandros made his way out of the castle and rode off with his servants.

This beauty-show was not borrowed, so far as we know, from any literary predecessor, nor need we suppose that the author was indebted to the ancient judgement of Mount Ida. He has simply translated into fiction the old Byzantine custom of the bride-show. At one period the young emperors used to marry not foreign princesses, who were regarded as barbarians, but Greek ladies; and for this purpose discreet messengers were sent into the provinces to discover maidens who were well educated and refined, and conformed to a certain canon of beauty. These agents were provided with measures—the measure, for instance, of the ideal foot. All the girls who were chosen assembled on a certain day in the palace at Constantinople, and the bride was selected by the young man, generally under the auspices of his mother. The judgement of beauty in the Castle of Love is a Byzantine bride-show in a Byzantine palace.

The sequel of the future of Belthandros can be briefly told. He reaches Antioch, and enters the service of the king. Here we have come into a dominion where the feudal system prevails. Belthandros has to become the king's lizios—the Greek form of 'liegeman'. The king is a, his wife is a ; for the title Basileus was strictly reserved for the emperor. It is clear that the poet conceives Antioch as a Frank dominion, but he does not say so; he leaves this vague, and the king's