produced, a strong presumption remains, that Charis and Theogenes is nothing more than a partial change of Theagenes and Chariclea.

The imposture, indeed, is clearly detected by the description of manners and institutions unknown in the age of Athenagoras. Thus the author conducts a criminal trial in the heart of Greece, according to the form of process before the parliament of Paris. The priests and virgins introduced in the romance, as consecrated to Hammon, live according to the fashion of the monks and nuns of the fifteenth century, and not like those who existed in the early ages of Christianity.'

Huet has mentioned, as the principal defect of the romance, that it is loaded with descriptions of buildings, and that the palaces are not raised by the magic hand of fiction, but by a professional architect. From this blemish Huet has drawn his chief argument against the authenticity of the work. "It is universally known," says he, "that the Cardinal Armagnac was much addicted to the study of architecture: Philander, the commentator on Vitruvius, was one of his devoted retainers, was the most scientific architect of his age, and was, besides, well informed in every branch of polite literature. Now, since the description of this Athenagoras are closely squared to the principles of architecture inculcated by him in his annotations on Vitruvius, may it not reasonably be suspected, that Philander was the deviser of this literary imposture, in order to support his own opinions by the authority of antiquity? The fraud might have been detected, had the work issued from the hands of Philander, or the palace of the cardinal. That he might remove suspicion from himself, and conduct the reader as it were to other ground, he wrote an amatory romance. There, as if incidentally, he inserted the precepts of his art, and, concealing his own name, he ingeniously employed that of Lamané, for the possessor of the manuscript, and Fumée for the French translator. However it may be," he continues, the romance is ingeniously contrived, artfully conducted, enlightened with unparalleled sentiments and

66

66

1 Schöll, Hist. de la Lit. Gr., and Pauli, Real. Encyl. s. v. Athenagoras, reject the work as spurious.

precepts of morality, and adorned with a profusion of delightful images, most skilfully disposed. The incidents are probable, the episodes are deduced from the main subject, the language is perspicuous, and modesty is scrupulously observed. Here there is nothing mean, nothing unnatural or affected, nothing that has the appearance of childishness or sophistry." Huet, however, complains that the conclusion of the fable of this romance is far removed from the excellence of the introduction.

I have now taken a successive view of the Greek romances, and have attempted to furnish such an analysis of them as may enable the reader to form some notion of their nature and qualities.

One quality, it is obvious, pervades them all, and it is the characteristic not only of Greek romance, but of the first attempt at prose fiction in every country: The interest of each work almost wholly consists in a succession of strange, and often improbable adventures. Indeed, as the primary object of the narrator was to surprise by the incidents he rehearsed, the strangeness of these was the chief object to which he directed his attention. For the creation of these marvels sufficient scope was afforded him, because, as little intercourse took place in society, the limits of probability were not precisely ascertained. The seclusion, also, of females in these early times gave a certain uniformity to existence, and prevented the novelist from painting those minute and almost imperceptible traits of feeling and character, all those developments, which render a wellwritten modern novel so agreeable and interesting. Still, amid all their imperfections, the Greek romances are extremely pleasing, since they may be considered as almost the first productions in which woman is in any degree represented as assuming her proper station of the friend and the companion of man. Hitherto she had been considered almost in the light of a slave, ready to bestow her affections on whatever master might happen to obtain her; but, in Heliodorus and his followers, we see her an affectionate guide and adviser-we behold an union of hearts painted as a main-spring of our conduct in life-we are delighted with pictures of fidelity, constancy, and chastity, and are encouraged to persevere in a life of virtue by the happy

consequences to which it leads. The Greek romances are less valuable than they might have been, from giving too much to adventure, and too little to manners and character; but these have not been altogether neglected, and several pleasing pictures are delineated of ancient customs and feelings. In short, these early fictions are such as might have been expected at the first effort, and must be considered as not merely valuable in themselves, but as highly estimable in pointing out the method of awaking the most pleasing sympathies of our nature, and affecting most powerfully the fancy and the heart.'

1 Phlegon of Tralles in Lydia, one of Hadrian's freedmen, may further be mentioned before dismissing the present subject. Under his name the Emperor, as is supposed, wrote his own biography (Spartiani Vita Hadriani, c. 16). His work Tepi Javμaoiwv (printed in Jac. Gronovii Thes. Graec. Anth. viii. p. 2694) consists of a collection of marvellous tales and ghost stories, not altogether unlike those which have been so popular in the German literature of the present century. The first portion of the book is lost, and therewith the commencement of the story of Philinnion returned from the grave (borrowed by Phlegon from a letter of Hipparchus, Philipp's Commandant of Amphipolis, to Arrhidaeus, see Rohde, p. 391), which Goethe adapted in his Bride of Corinth. The tale of Phlegon is undoubtedly connected with the tales current in south-eastern Europe of vampyres, and dead who rise from their graves and suck the blood of the living, especially of their nearest relatives, and called in modern Greek Buthrolakkas, or Burkolassas [βουρκόλακκας].

Here, too, are found the stories of the Succubi (μπоvσα), or female sprites (Alp.). See Dobeneck, Des Deutschen Mittelatus Volksglaube, i. 32, who cites a pre-Christian example of this kind of being from Philostratus.

See, further, note on Morgant le Géant, Chassang, p. 400, the tables of Lamide, Gorgons, Ephialta, Mormolyce, Manducus.

Another fictionist unmentioned by Dunlop is Damascius, recorded by Photius (cod. 130), but without any biographical information about him. He was probably a Christian at a time when Christianity had become generally diffused. Photius gives only the titles of his books which are:Of Incredible Stories, 352 chapters; Tales of Demons, 52 chapters; Wonderful Stories of Apparitions, 63 chapters, and of Incredible Natures, 105 chapters. Photius pronounces them to have been full of extravagances, and of gloomy Pagan superstition, but composed in a clear and elegant style.-LIEB.

A contemporary of Theodorus Prodromus, Constantine Manasses, composed the metrical romance of Aristander and Callithea in nine books. The only extracts from this work which have come down show it to have contained the usual accumulation of adventures and vicissitudes found in the Greek romances.

In general, remarks F. W. V. Schmidt (Wien. Jahrb. Bd. 26, p. 46), speaking of the later Greek romances, and especially the works of Eustathius, Theodorus Prodromus, and Nicetas Eugenianos, the perusal of these works, important as they are for the knowledge of philology and literature, leaves upon the reader the impression conveyed by seeing an old man in his dotage.

The contact with the western nations effected by the Crusades with the effete civilization of Byzantium, and French domination in the Morea, substituted Frankish romances for ancient models, or poor imitations thereof, and narrative literature received themes from both east and west, as the stories of the Pankyatranta and Sindibad had already been introduced into the popular Byzantine literature; separate French compositions were now translated, such as stories from the Round Table, of la Belle Maguelonne, Flores and Blanchefleur, etc. Many of these stories became in this way so popularized that they are still recognizable in the modern Greek folk tales. (See note to Apollonius, p. 83, and Nicolai, Gesch. des Neugriech, Literatur. p. 11.) An instance is the story of the good Florentia, or the history of the faithful wife vainly tempted by her brother-in-law during her husband's absence, then turned adrift, resisting the amorous proposals of divers men whom she meets, who subsequently come to be healed at a monastery whither she had retired, and where she had become celebrated for miraculous cures, and whom she heals from their ailments upon their confessing their guilt; whereupon she is reconciled to her husband. For an account of the variants of this story of the good Florentia of Rome, see Graesse, Literärgeschichte, iii. i. 286, 287. The same story is current with but little difference in Janina Hahn, Griech. Märchen, N. 16 (1, p. 140, etc.). The legend probably found its way in the popular mouth from some Greek version of a Frankish original. The ultimate source of the Saga (which is found in various forms, such as that of Genoveva, of Crescentia, see v. d. Hagen Gesammtabentener, vii. and i. 101; also Esterley, on Kirchof's Wendunnuth, 2, 23; G. Rom. 249, p. 747, of Hildegard; Grimm. Deutsche Sagen, N. 437) is to be found in the Indian cycle of the Papageienbuch in the oldest form of that collection which is accessible to us, Night 33, as well as in the Turkish Tooti Nameh : Rose, i. 89-108. See Rohde, p. 533, etc., and Gidel, Etudes. For further information on the perpetuation of popular fiction among the Greeks, the following works may be consulted: Berington's "Literary History of the Middle Ages," Appendix I. Bikelas, Die Griechen des Mittelalters und ihre Einflues auf die Europäische Cultur, Güttersloh, 1878. Nicolai, Geschichte der Neugriechischen Literatur, Leipzig, 1876. Gidel, Études-Nouvelles Etudes sur la Littérature grecque moderne, 1866, 1878. Schmidt, Bernhardt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das Hellenische Alterthum, Leipzig, 1871, and the same author's Griechische Märchen, etc., 1877. Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Märchen, 1864. Miss J. E. Harrison's "Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature," London, 1882. Gerland, Altgriechische Märchen in der Odyssee, Magdeburg, 1869. Geldart, Folklore of Modern Greece, London, 1882. W. Wagner, Shakespeare in Griechenland, Leipzig, and chaps. 21, 28-30, of Rev. H. F. Tozer's "Researches in the Highlands of Turkey."

CHAPTER II.

INTRODUCTION OF THE MILESIAN TALES INTO ITALY.-LATIN ROMANCES.-PETRONIUS ARBITER.—APULEIUS, ETC.

THE

HE Milesian Fables had found their way into Italy even before they flourished in Greece. They had been received with eagerness, and imitated by the Sybarites, the most voluptuous nation in the west of Europe; whose stories obtained the same celebrity in Rome, that the Milesian tales had acquired in Greece and Asia. It is not easy to specify the exact nature of the western imitations, but if we may judge from a solitary specimen transmitted by Elian in his Varia Historia (1. 14. c. 20), they were of a facetious description, and intended to promote merriment. A pedagogue of the Sybarite nation conducted his pupil through the streets of a town. The boy happened to get hold of a fig, which he was proceeding to eat, when his tutor interrupted him by a long declamation against luxury, and then snatching the dainty from his hand, devoured it with the utmost greed. This tale Elian says he had read in the Sybarite stories (sopiais ovßapitikais), and had been so much entertained that he got it by heart, and committed it to writing, as he did not grudge mankind a hearty laugh!

Many of the Romans, it would appear, were as easily amused as Elian, since the Sybarite stories for a long while enjoyed great popularity; and, at length, in the time of Sylla, the Milesian tales of Aristides were translated into Latin by Sisenna, who was prætor of Sicily, and author of a history of Rome. Plutarch informs us in his life of Crassus [c. 32], that when that general was defeated by the Parthians, the conquerors found copies of Milesian and Sybarite tales in the tents of the Roman soldiers; whence Surena expressed his contempt for the effeminacy and licentiousness of his enemies, who, even in time of war, could not refrain from the perusal of such compositions.