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 in] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE 41 has some proportion. It seems to have been trans- lated from a Greek original.^ In the twelfth century the Tale of Troy received its grandiose mediaeval telling, in thirty thousand lines, by Benoit de Sainte-More. He gives the story as its threads exist in the extant "Dares" and "Dictys," and appears to observe the authority of the former to line 24301, and then the story of " Dictys " to the end. But probably Benoit followed a lengthier Latin ver- sion than the extant " Dares," possibly the very one of which that is the epitome. He may also have been acquainted with a lengthier " Dictys " version. Further illustration of the degeneracy of Greek literature is afforded by the Greek love-romances, as, for example, the Ethiopica of Heliodorus and the Leu- cippe and Clitiphon of Achilles Tatius, both of whom lived in the third or fourth century after Christ. Their delineation of character is poor, and there is scant relation of character and fortune. They elabo- rate themes which first became prominent literary motives in Alexandrian literature. They are stories of pairs of lovers, to whom all kinds of unexpected ill-chance happen. The man^s life and the girl's life and chastity are preserved through it all, and a happy marriage ends the tale. The gods often interpose to avert death or ruin; but their interpositions and all the ups and downs of fortune coming to the lovers show that the only real power in these romances is 1 See E. Patzig, " Dictys Cretensis," Byzantinische Zeitschri/t, 1892, pp. 131-152, also p. WO. The Greek versions of Trojan legends in the Heroicoa of Philostratus (author of the Life qf ApoUonixta of Tyand) of the second century may be compared with the Dares and Dictys narratives.