women corresponding to the Greek hetairai. Of Ovid I have Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum, In Tibullus there is a note of tenderness which, however, is a mark of effeminacy rather than of an improved manliness. His passion is fickle, his adoration little more than adulation, and the expressions of unselfish devotion here and there do not mean more than the altiloquent words of Achilles about Briseis or of Admetus about Alcestis, for they are not backed up by altruistic actions. In a word, his poems belong to the region of sentimentality, not sentiment. Morally he is as rotten as any of his colleagues. He began his poetic career with a glorification of raidepaσría, and continued it as an admirer of the most abandoned women. A French author who wrote a history of prostitution in three volumes quite properly devoted a chapter to Tibullus and his loveaffairs.1 1 Space permitting, it would be interesting to examine these poets in detail, as well as the other Romans-Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, etc., who came less under Greek influence. But in truth such examination would be superfluous. Any one may pursue the investigation by himself, and if he will bear in mind and apply as tests, the last seven of my ingredients of love-the altruistic-supersen SHORT STORIES 803 SHORT STORIES A big volume might be filled with the short love-stories in prose or verse scattered through a thousand years of Greek literature. But, although some of them are quite romantic, I must emphatically reiterate what I said in my first book (76)—that romantic love does not appear in the writings of any Greek author and that the passion of the desperately enamoured young people so often portrayed sprang entirely from sensuality. One of the critics referred to at the beginning of this chapter held me up to the ridicule of the British public because I ignored such romantic love-stories as Orpheus and Eurydice, Alcyone and Ceyx, Atalanta and Meleager, Cephalus and Procris, and "a dozen others" which "any school girl" could tell me. To begin with the one last named, the critic asks: "What can be said against Cephalus and Procris?" A great deal, I am afraid. As told by Antoninus Liberalis in No. 41 of his Metamorphoses (μεταμορφώσεων συναγωγή) it is one of the most abominable and obscene stories ever penned even by a Greek. Some of the disgusting details are omitted in the versions of Ovid and Hyginus, but in the least offensive version that can be made the story runs thus: Cephalus, having had experience of woman's unbridled passion, doubts his wife's fidelity and, to test her, disguises him sual group-he cannot fail to become convinced that there are no instances of what I have described as romantic love in Latin literature any more than in Greek. And since it is the province of poets to idealize, we may feel doubly sure that the emotions which they did not even imagine cannot have existed in the actual life of their more prosaic conteinporaries. It would, indeed, be strange if a people so much more coarse-fibred and practical, and so much less emotional and esthetic, than the Greeks, should have excelled them in the capacity for what is one of the most esthetic and the most imaginative of all sentiments. Before leaving the poets, I may add that the Greek Anthology, the basis of which was laid by Meleager, a contemporary of the Roman poets just referred to, contains a collection of short poems by many Greek writers, in which, of course, some of my critics have discovered romantic love. One of them wrote that "the poems of Meleager alone in the Greek Anthology would suffice to refute the notion that Greece ignored romantic passion." If this critic will take the trouble to read these poems of Meleager in the original he will find that a disgustingly large number relate to mapagria, which in No. III. is expressly declared to be superior to the love for women; that most of the others relate to hetaira; and that not one of them-or one in the whole Anthology-comes up to my standard of romantic love. self and offers her a bag of gold. At first she refuses, but when he doubles the sum, she submits, whereupon he throws away his disguise and confronts her with her guilt. Covered with shame, she flies. Afterward she cuts her hair like a man's, changes her clothes so as to be unrecognizable, and joins him in the chase. Being more successful than he, she promises to teach him on a certain condition; and on his assenting, she reveals her identity and accuses him of being just as bad as she was. Another version reads that after their reconciliation she suspected his fidelity on hearing that he used to ascend a hill and cry out "Come, Nephela, come (Νεφέλη means cloud). So she went and concealed herself on the hill in a thicket, where her husband accidentally killed her with his javelin. Is this the kind of Greek "love-stories" that English school girls learn by the dozen? Coarse as it is, the majority of these stories are no better, being absolutely unfit for literal translation, which is doubtless the reason why no publisher has ever brought out a collection of Greek "love-stories." Of those referred to above none is so objectionable as the tale of Cephalus and Procris, nor, on the other hand, is any one of them in any way related to what we call romantic love. Atalanta was a sweet masculine maiden who could run faster than any athlete. Her father was anxious to have her marry, and she finally agreed to wed any man who could reach a certain goal before her, the condition being, however, that she should be allowed to transfix with her spear every suitor who failed. She had already ornamented the place of contest with the heads of many courageous young men, this tender-hearted, romantic maiden had, when her fun was rudely spoiled by Meleager, who threw before her three golden apples which she stopped to pick up, thus losing the race to that hero, who, no doubt, was extremely happy with such a wife ever after. Even to this story an improper sequel was added. Alcyone and Ceyx is the story of a wife who committed suicide on discovering the body of her husband on the seabeach; and the story of Orpheus, who grieved so over the death of his wife Eurydice that he went to the lower world to bring her up again, but lost her again because, contrary to SHORT STORIES 805 his agreement with Pluto and Proserpina, he looked back to see if she was following, is known to everybody. The conjugal attachment and grief at the loss of a spouse which these two legends tell of, are things the existence of which in Greece no one has ever denied. They are simple phenomena quite apart from the complex state of mind we call romantic love, and are shared by man with many of the lower animals. In such attachment and grief there is no evidence of altruistic affection. Orpheus tried to bring back Eurydice to please himself, not her, and Alcyone's suicide was of no possible use to Ceyx.1 The story of Panthea and Abradates, to which Professor Ebers refers so triumphantly, is equally inconclusive as to the existence of altruistic affection. Abradates, having been urged by his wife Panthea to show himself worthy of the friendship of Cyrus by doing valorous deeds, falls in a battle, whereat Panthea is so grieved at the result of her advice that she commits suicide. From the modern Christian point of view this was not a rational proof of affection, but a foolish and criminal act. But it harmonized finely with the Greek ideal the notion that patriotism is even a woman's first duty, and her life not worth living except in subservience to her husband. There is good reason to believe that this story was a pure invention of Xenophon and deliberately intended to be an object lesson to women regarding the ideal they ought to live up to. The whole of the book in which it appears-Kupov Taideia-is what the Germans call a Tendenzroman—a historic romance with a moral, illustrating the importance of a correct education and glorifying a certain form of government. To a student of Greek love one of the most instructive documents is the pwriкà аpara of Parthenius, who was a The best-known ancient story of love-suicide" is that of Pyramus and Thisbe. Pyramus, having reason to think that Thisbe, with whom he had arranged a secret interview at the tomb of Ninus, has been devoured by a lion, stabs himself in despair, and Thisbe, on finding his body, plunges on to the same sword, still warm with his blood. This tale, which is probably of Babylonian origin, is related by Ovid (Metamorph., IV., 55-166), and was much admired and imitated in the Middle Ages. Comment on it would be superfluous after what I have written on pages 605–610. 2 See Rohde, 130; Christ, 349. contemporary of the most famous Roman poets (first century before Christ), and the teacher of Virgil. It is a collection of thirty-six short love-stories in prose, made for him by his friend Cornelius Gallus, who was in quest of subjects which he might turn into elegies. It has been remarked that these poems are peculiarly sad, but a better word for them is coarse. Unbridled lust, incest, Taidepaoría, and adultery are the favorite motives in them, and few rise above the mephitic atmosphere which breathes from Cephalus and Procris or other stories of crime, like that of Philomela and Procne, which were so popular among Greek and Roman poets, and presumably suited their readers. With amusing naïveté Eckstein pleads for these "specimens of antique romance on the ground that there is more lubricity in Bandello and Boccaccio-which is like declaring that a man who assassinates another by simply hitting him on the head is virtuous because there are others who make murder a fine art. I commend the stories of Parthenius to the special attention of any one who may have any lingering doubts as to the difference between Greek ideas of love and modern ideals.1 GREEK ROMANCES Parthenius is regarded as a connecting link of the Alexandrian school with the Roman poets on one side, and on the other with the romances which constitute the last phase of Greek erotic literature. In these romances too, a number of my critics professed to discover romantic love. The reviewer of my book in Nature (London) asked me to see whether No more like stories of romantic love than these are the five "love-stories " written in the second century after Christ by Plutarch. This is the more remarkable as Plutarch was one of the few ancient writers to whom at any rate the idea occurred that women might be able to feel and inspire a love rising above the senses. This suggestion is what distinguishes his Dialogue on Love most favorably from Plato's Symposium, which it otherwise, however, resembles strikingly in the peculiar notions regarding the relation of the sexes; showing how tenacious the unnatural Greek ideas were in Greek life. Plutarch's various writings show that though he had advanced notions compared with other Greeks, he was nearly as far from appreciating true femininity, chivalry, and romantic love as Lucian, who also wrote a dialogue on love in the old-fashioned manner. Hirschig's Scriptores Erotici begins with Parthenius and includes Achilles Tatius, Longus, Xenophon, Heliodorus, Chariton, etc. The right-hand column gives a literal translation into Latin. |