The very title of Longus’ romance shows a new departure. These Lesbian Pastorals in four books form the only pastoral romance in Greek that is extant. Compared with the other romances that of Longus is unique in type, characters, setting and structure. Theocritus is the pervading influence. Most of the leading characters are not nobles but serfs. Even the young hero and heroine are brought up as shepherds until at the end they are recognized as children of the great. City life plays little part in the plot. The changing seasons make the set. Only a few adventures disturb the serenity of the hills and pasturelands: an onset of pirates, a local war and (of course!) the usual kidnappings. Country gods are worshipped. The music of Pan’s pipes is the accompaniment of the story. Of the author we know nothing. Longus “is not mentioned by any other writer before the Byzantine age, and himself mentions no historical name or event.”[223] From internal evidence of his novel we see that he knew Mytilene well; he was familiar with Greek and Roman literature and with works of art; he had received a sophist’s training in the rhetorical schools. He wrote probably in the second century A.D., before Achilles Tatius. The early editions and translations show why Longus was so influential in Elizabethan England and indeed in the modern European literatures. The first edition of the Greek text was published by the Junta Press in Florence in 1598, but before that the romance had received its first printing in Amyot’s French translation in 1559 and in the first English translation by Angell Daye in 1587. This “earliest English version” which was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth was more of an adaptation than a translation. Its title-page demands perusal: “Daphnis and Chloe excellently describing the weight of affection, the simplicitie of love, the purport of honest meaning, the resolution of men, and disposition of Fate, finished in a Pastorall, and interlaced with the praises of a most peerlesse Princesse, wonderfull in Maiestie, and rare in perfection, celebrated within the same Pastorall, and therefore termed by the name of The Shepheards Holidaie. By Angell Daye. Altior fortuna virtus.” The title-page of the 1657 translation by “Geo. Thornley, Gent.” was dubbed “Daphnis and Chloe a most sweet and pleasant pastoral romance for young ladies” and it too bore a Latin motto: “Humili casa nihil antiquius nihil nobilius.—Sen. Philos.” It is this delightful old translation which J. M. Edmonds “revised and augmented” in his version for _The Loeb Classical Library_ and in his introduction there Edmonds says that this seems to have been George Thornley’s only publication. He was a sizar in Christ’s College and received his Bachelor in Arts from the University of Cambridge. It is this translation of Edmonds-Thornley which I shall use in my quotations.