Page:Romances of Chivalry on Greek Soil.djvu/19

14 to invent. And in other Greek poems of the same period, where there is no question of Western influence, we find castles of allegorical persons—the Castle of Misfortune, the Castle of Sophrosyne. I may add that the device of supernatural machinery for bringing lovers together probably goes back to Callimachus. It seems to have been through the deliberate intervention of the god Eros that Acontius and Cydippe met each other at the festival of Delos.

But what shall we say of the vision of Lybistros? Has it any obligation to the visions of the French dreamers? We need not think so. The revelation of two lovers to one another by means of dreams is an ancient Oriental motif, which was introduced into Greek literature by Chares in the days of Alexander the Great. And as to the other resemblance—the defiant sentiment which Lybistros and Rodamne, and the hero of the Romance of the Rose entertained towards Love—this furnishes no case for the assumption of borrowing. The subjugation of scorners of Love is an ancient motif, which the French derived from the old Latin poets, and which had never disappeared from Greek fiction. In another curious Greek romance of the same period, the love-story of Achilles, we also find the idea of defiance followed by submission. Like Lybistros, Achilles is at first an Hippolytus who scorns Love and is then subdued by him, but without the help of machinery. In this poem, also, the interest of the Greek poet in Western chivalry is undisguised. The cheeks of the son of Aphrodite and Peleus are shaven in the manner of the Franks; he unhorses a Frank cavalier whom none of the Greeks could