Essays on the Greek RomancesHaight, Elizabeth Hazelton
History
Essays on the Greek Romances
Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton
Apuleius. Metamorphoses; Greek fiction -- History and criticism
Now (in Book IV) with the autumn and the vintage the lord Dionysophanes
was coming with his wife Clearista to inspect his estate. Lamo’s pride
was the beautiful garden he had made, so it was a major disaster when a
rejected suitor of Chloe, churlish Lampis, devastated it for spite. Lamo
besought Astylus, son of Dionysophanes, to appease his father’s wrath
and this he did.
Astylus had a rascally parasite Gnatho with him who tried to corrupt
Daphnis, but in vain; so hoping for the future he persuaded Astylus to
induce his father to take Daphnis back to the city as his son’s servant.
At this menace Lamo decided he must reveal Daphnis’ origin so he brought
out the tokens he had found with the child. They proved that he was the
son of Dionysophanes and Clearista, exposed by them when they were young
and thoughtless and had too many children. So the young shepherd was
transformed into a prince and almost forgot Chloe. Indeed while he was
celebrating she was carried off by Lampis, the herdsman. Gnatho, seeing
Daphnis’ despair, to reinstate himself, dashed off and rescued Chloe
just in time. Now her foster-parents produced her tokens and her
nobility too was assured. All went to Mytilene to find Chloe’s parents.
The Nymphs and Eros appeared to Dionysophanes in a dream and Eros bade
him to make a great marriage feast and there to display Chloe’s tokens.
This he did and by them Chloe too found noble parents. But Daphnis and
Chloe chose to have a country wedding and went back to the fields to
their rustic friends.
Indeed most of their lives they lived there in the simple way of
shepherds, worshipping the Nymphs, Pan and Eros, possessing great herds
of sheep and goats, and for food liking best of all apples and milk.
There they had a son and daughter whom a goat and a sheep nursed;
Philopoemen and Agelaea were their names. They made the cave into a fair
shrine, set up statues there, raised an altar to Eros the shepherd and
gave to Pan the soldier a temple to dwell in instead of a pine. All this
was long afterwards. Now they had a rustic wedding. The shepherds played
their rude pipes for their Hymenaeus. Daphnis and Chloe slept no more
than the birds that night and Chloe then first learned that all their
love-making in the wood was only the play of children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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