[Footnote 186: [Greek: Polis Eurykomis kai talla men agathe, hoti kai thalatte stephanoutai kai poilmois katarreitai kai leimosi koma kai tryphais eutheneitai pantodapais, ta d' eis theous eusebes, kai hyper tas chrysas Athenas hole bomos, hole thyma, theois anathema.]] [Sidenote: _Its story._] Whether the book, either as an individual composition, or more probably as a member of an extinct class, is as important in matter and in tone as it is in style is more doubtful. The style itself, as to which there is no doubt, may perhaps colour the matter too much. All that can be safely said is that it reads with distinctly modern effect after Heliodorus and Achilles, Longus and Xenophon. The story is not much. Hysminias, a beautiful youth of the city of Eurycomis, is chosen for a religious embassy or _kerukeia_ to the neighbouring town of Aulicomis. The task of acting as host to him falls on one Sosthenes, whose daughter Hysmine strikes Hysminias with love at first sight. The progress of their passion is facilitated by the pretty old habit of girls acting as cupbearers, and favoured by accident to no small degree, the details of the courtship being sometimes luscious, but adjusted to less fearless old fashions than the wooings of Chloe or of Melitta. Adventures by land and sea follow; and, of course, a happy ending. [Sidenote: _Its handling._] But what is really important is the way in which these things are handled. It has as mere story-telling little merit: the question is whether the spirit, the conduct, the details, do not show a temper much more akin to mediaeval than to classical treatment. I think they do. Hysminias is rather a silly, and more than rather a chicken-hearted, fellow; his conduct on board ship when his beloved incurs the fate of Jonah is eminently despicable: but then he was countryman _ex hypothesi_ of Mourzoufle, not of Villehardouin. The "battailous" spirit of the West is not to be expected in a Byzantine sophist. Whether something of its artistic and literary spirit is not to be detected in him is a more doubtful question. For my part, I cannot read of Hysmine without being reminded of Nicolette, as I am never reminded in other parts of the _Scriptores Erotici_. [Sidenote: _Its "decadence."_]