ESSAYS ON THE GREEK ROMANCES BY ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT _Professor Emeritus of Latin, Vassar College_ _NEW YORK_ LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. M D CCCC XLIII HAIGHT ESSAYS ON THE GREEK ROMANCES COPYRIGHT · 1943 BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO FIRST EDITION PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA _To_ BLANCHE FERRY HOOKER IN HONOR AND FRIENDSHIP The Publication of this book was made possible by the J. LEVERETT MOORE RESEARCH FUND IN CLASSICS and the LUCY MAYNARD SALMON FUND FOR RESEARCH established at Vassar College in 1926 _PREFACE_ If all the world loves a lover, as the old proverb says, then this my book should win wide fame. For these Greek Romances of the first to the fourth century of our era seem still to be singing the immemorial refrain from the old spring-time song of “The Vigil of Venus”: Cras amet qui numquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet. “Let those love now, who never lov’d before; Let those who always lov’d, now love the more.” At a time when fiction is the most popular form of literature, these wonderful old Greek stories of love, adventure and worship are half forgotten and rarely read except by the scholar. Yet here, as in epic, lyric, elegy, drama, oratory and history, the Greeks were pioneers. In the second and third centuries they had created four different types of romance (of love, of adventure, the pastoral, the satiric) which were to have great influence on French, Italian and English fiction. The student of comparative literature, the student of the history of fiction cannot afford to neglect these pioneer Greek novels.