Chapter 73

It is to such vulgar persons that the poets of classical Greece and Alexandria addressed their verses. And herein they were followed by those of the Latins who may be regarded as imitators of the Alexandrians--Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, the principal erotic poets of Rome. They wrote all their love-poems to, for, or about, a class of women corresponding to the Greek hetairai. Of Ovid I have already spoken (189), and what I said of him practically applies to the others. Propertius not only writes with the hetairai in his mind, but, like his Alexandrian models, he appears as one who is forever writing love-poems without ever being really in love. With Catullus the sensual passion at least is sincere. Yet even Professor Sellar, who declares that he is, "with the exception perhaps of Sappho, the greatest and truest of all the ancient poets of love," is obliged to admit that he "has not the romance and purity of modern sentiment" (349, 22). Like the Greeks, he had a vague idea that there is something higher than sensual passion, but, like a Greek, in expressing it, he ignores women as a matter of course. "There was a time," he writes to his profligate Lesbia, "when I loved you not as a man loves his mistress, but _as a father loves his son or his son-in-law_"!

Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum, Lesbia, nee prae me velle tenere Iovem. Dilexi tum te non ut volgus amicam, Sed pater ut gnatos diligit et generos.

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 [Greek: paiderastia], 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 love-affairs.[325]

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_ ([Greek: metamorphoseon synagogae]) 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 himself 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" ([Greek: Nephelae] 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 sea-beach; 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 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.[326]

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[327] 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--[Greek: Kyrou paideia]--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 [Greek: erotika pathaemata] of Parthenius, who was a 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, [Greek: _paiderastia_], 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.[328]

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.[329] 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 Heliodorus's account of the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea does not come up to my standard. I am sorry to say it does not. Jowett perhaps dismisses this story somewhat too curtly as "silly and obscene"; but it certainly is far from being a love-story in the modern sense of the word, though its moral tone is doubtless superior to that of the other Greek romances. The notion that it indicates an advance in erotic literature may no doubt be traced to the legend that Heliodorus was a bishop, and that he introduced Christian ideas into his romance--a theory which Professor Rohde has scuttled and sent to the bottom of the sea.[330] The preservation of the heroine's virginity amid incredible perils and temptations is one of the tricks of the Greek novelists, the real object of which is made most apparent in _Daphnis and Chloe_. The extraordinary emphasis placed on it on every possible occasion is not only very indelicate, but it shows how novel and remarkable such an idea was considered at the time. It was one of the tricks of the Sophists (with whom Heliodorus must be classed), who were in the habit of treating a moral question like a mathematical problem. "Given a maiden's innocence, how can it be preserved to the end of the story?" is the artificial, silly, and vulgar leading motive of this Greek romance, as of others. Huet, Villemain, and many other critics have been duped by this sophistico-mathematical aspect of the story into descanting on the peculiar purity and delicacy of its moral tone; but one need only read a few of the heroine's speeches to see how absurd this judgment is. When she says to her lover,

"I resigned myself to you, not as to a paramour, but as to a legitimate husband, and I have preserved my chastity with you, resisting your urgent solicitations because I always had in mind the lawful marriage to which we pledged ourselves,"

she uses the language of a shrewd hetaira, not of an innocent girl; nor could the author have made her say the following had his subject been romantic love: [Greek: _Hormaen gar, hos oistha, kratousaes epithumias machae men antitupos epipeinei, logos d' eikon kai pros to boulaema syntrechon taen protaen kai zeousan phoran esteile kai to katoxu taes orezeos to haedei taes epaggelias kateunase.]

The story of Heliodorus is full of such coarse remarks, and his idea of love is plainly enough revealed when he moralizes that "a lover inclines to drink and one who is drunk is inclined to love."

It is not only on account of this coarseness that the story of Theagenes and Chariclea fails to come up to the standard of romantic love. When Arsace (VIII., 9) imprisons the lovers together, with the idea that the sight of their chains will increase the sufferings of each, we have an intimation of crude sympathy; but apart from that the symptoms of love referred to in the course of the romance are the same that I have previously enumerated, as peculiar to Alexandrian literature. The maxims, "dread the revenge that follows neglected love;" "love soon finds its end in satiety;" and "the greatest happiness is to be free from love," take us back to the oldest Greek times. Peculiarly Greek, too, is the scene in which the women, unable to restrain their feelings, fling fruits and flowers at a young man because he is so beautiful; although on the same page we are surprised by the admission that woman's beauty is even more alluring than man's, which is not a Greek sentiment.

In this last respect, as in some others, the romance of Heliodorus differs favorably from that of Achilles Tatius, which relates the adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon; but I need not dwell on this amazingly obscene and licentious narrative, as its author's whole philosophy of love, like that of Heliodorus, is summed up in this passage:

"As the wine produced its effect I cast lawless glances at Leucippe: for Love and Bacchus are violent gods, they invade the soul and so inflame it that they forget modesty, and while one kindles the flame the other supplies the fuel; for wine is the food of love."

Nor need I dwell on the stories of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, or the epic _Dionysiaca_ of Nonnus, as they yield us no new points of view. The romance of Longus, however, calls for some remarks, as it is the best known of the Greek novels and has often been pronounced a story of refined love worthy of a modern writer.

DAPHNIS AND CHLOE

Goethe found in _Daphnis and Chloe_ "a delicacy of feeling which cannot be excelled." Professor Murray backs up the morals of Longus: "It needs an unintelligent reader or a morbid translator," he writes (403), "to find harm in the _History of Daphnis and Chloe_;" and an editorial writer in the New York _Mail and Express_ accused me, as before intimated, of unexampled ignorance for not knowing that _Daphnis and Chloe_ is "as sweet and beautiful a love-story as ever skipped in prose." This, indeed, is the prevalent opinion. How it ever arose is a mystery to me. Fiction has always been the sphere of the most unrestrained license, yet Dunlop wrote in his _History of Fiction_ that there are in this story "particular passages so extremely reprehensible that I know nothing like them in almost any work whatever." In collecting the material for the present volume I have been obliged to examine thousands of books referring to the relations of men and women, but I declare that of all the books I have seen only the Hindoo _K[=a]masutr[=a]m_, the literal version of the _Arabian Nights_, and the American Indian stories collected by Dr. Boas, can compare with this "sweet and beautiful" romance of Longus in downright obscenity or deliberate laciviousness. I have been able, without going beyond the latitude permissible to anthropologists, to give a fairly accurate idea of the love-affairs of savages and barbarians; but I find it impossible, after several trials, to sum up the story of Daphnis and Chloe without going beyond the limits of propriety. Among all the deliberate pictures of _moral depravity_ painted by Greek and Roman authors not one is so objectionable as this "idyllic" picture of the _innocent_ shepherd boy and girl. Pastoral love is coarse enough, in all truth: but this story is infinitely more immoral than, for instance, the frank and natural sensualism of the twenty-seventh Idyl of Theocritus. Professor Anthon (755) described the story of _Daphnis and Chloe_ as

"the romance, _par excellence_, of physical love. It is a history of the senses rather than of the mind, a picture of the development of the instincts rather than of the sentiments.... _Paul and Virginia_ is nothing more than _Daphnis and Chloe_ delineated by a refined and cultivated mind, and spiritualized and purified by the influence of Christianity."

This is true; but Anthon erred decidedly in saying that in the Greek story "vice is advocated by no sophistry." On the contrary, what makes this romance so peculiarly objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil from his sly sophistry:

"The way in which Longus excites the sensual desires of the lovers by means of licentious experiments going always only to the verge of gratification, betrays an abominably hypocritical _raffinement_[331] which reveals in the most disagreeable manner that the naïveté of this idyllist is a premeditated artifice and he himself nothing but a sophist. It is difficult to understand how anyone could have ever been deceived so far as to overlook the sophistical character of this pastoral romance of Longus, or could have discovered genuine naïveté in this most artificial of all rhetorical productions. No attentive reader who has some acquaintance with the ways of the Sophistic writers will have any difficulty in apprehending the true inwardness of the story... As this sophist, in those offensively licentious love-scenes, suddenly shows the cloven foot under the cloak of innocence, so, on the other hand, his eager desire to appear as simple and childlike as possible often enough makes him cold, finical, trifling, or utterly silly in his affectation."[332]

HERO AND LEANDER

Our survey of Greek erotic literature may be brought to a close with two famous stories which are closely allied to the Greek romances, although one of them--_Hero and Leander_--was written in verse, and the other--_Cupid and Psyche_--in Latin prose. While Apuleius was an African and wrote his story in Latin, he evidently derived it from a Greek source.[333] He lived in the second century of our era, and Musaeus, the author of _Hero and Leander_, in the fifth. It is more than probable that Musaeus did not invent the story, but found it as a local legend and simply adorned it with his pen.

On the shores of the Hellespont, near the narrowest part of the strait, lay the cities of Sestos and Abydos. It was at Sestos that Xerxes undertook to cross with his vast armies, while Abydos claimed to be the true burial place of Osiris; yet these circumstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed to live at the time. Why she lived there is not stated by any of the poets who elaborated the legend, but it may be surmised that she did so in order to give them a chance to invent a romantic story. To the present day the Turks point out what they claim to be her tower, and it is well-known that in 1810, Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, in order to test the possibility of Leander's feat, swam from Europe to Asia at this place; it took them an hour and five and an hour and ten minutes respectively, and on account of the strong current the distance actually traversed was estimated at more than four miles, while in a straight line it was only a mile from shore to shore.

I have already pointed out (202, 204) that the action of Leander in swimming across this strait for the sake of enjoying the favor of Hero, and her suicide when she finds him dead on the rocks, have nothing so do with the altruistic self-sacrifice that indicates _soul_-love. Here I merely wish to remark that apart from that there is not a line or word in the whole poem to prove that this story "completely upsets" my theory, as one critic wrote. The story is not merely frivolous and cold, as W. von Humboldt called it; it is as unmitigatedly sensual as _Daphnis and Chloe_, though less offensively so because it does not add the vice of hypocrisy to its immodesty. From beginning to end there is but one thought in Leanders mind, as there is in Hero's, whose words and actions are even more indelicate than those of Leander; they are the words and actions of a priestess of Venus true to her function--a girl to whom the higher feminine virtues, which alone can inspire romantic love, are unknown. On the impulse of the moment, in response to coarse flattery, she makes an assignation in a lonely tower with a perfect stranger, regardless of her parents, her honor, her future. Details need not be cited, as the poem is accessible to everybody. It is a romantic story, in Ovid's version even more so than in that of Musaeus; but of romantic love--soul-love--there is no trace in either version. There are touches of sentimentality in Ovid, but not of sentiment; a distinction on which I should have dwelt in my first book (91).

CUPID AND PSYCHE

To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries (and of which _Lohengrin_ is a familiar instance), that were originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who may seem monsters, but in reality are gods and should be accepted as such. If most persons, nevertheless, fancy that _Cupid and Psyche_ is a story of "modern" romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact that most persons have never read it. It is not too much to say that had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love--or conjugal affection either--it would have required great ingenuity on his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously excluded. Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not only on physical charms but on soul-beauty. The time when alone it flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship. Now from the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated. Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love violently (_amore flagrantissimo_) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother's orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing again before dawn (_jamque aderat ignobilis maritus et torem inscenderat et uxorem sibi Psychen fecerat et ante lucis exortum propere discesserat_).