by Longus
Longus
* * *
DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
Translated by
Phiroze Vasunia
Contents
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Follow Penguin
LONGUS
Usually dated between the mid-second and mid-third centuries AD
This translation by Phiroze Vasunia has been taken from Greek Fiction (2011), edited by Helen Morales.
LONGUS IN PENGUIN CLASSICS
Greek Fiction
Daphnis and Chloe
Book 1
When I was hunting in Lesbos, I saw in the grove of the Nymphs the most beautiful sight I have ever seen, a painting of an image, a love story. The grove was beautiful, full of trees and flowers and flowing water, and a single spring nourished everything, the flowers no less than the trees. The painting was even more delightful because it showed exceptional skill in presenting the love affair. Many people, even foreigners, were drawn there by its fame and they came to pray to the Nymphs or to see the picture. The painting showed women giving birth, other women dressing babies in clothes, children abandoned, animals nursing them, shepherds raising them, young people making a pledge, pirates rushing down, enemies invading, and all the many wonderful things that make up a romance. While I was looking on and admiring these scenes, I was so moved that the desire took me to repaint the painting and respond in words. So I sought out an interpreter of the picture, and then elaborated it in four rolls, as an offering to Love and to the Nymphs and to Pan, and as a possession from which all men may derive pleasure: it is intended to heal the sick and to console the afflicted, to bring back memories for those who have known love, and to give instruction to those who have not. Because absolutely no one has escaped Love, and no one will escape him as long as there is beauty and as long as there are eyes to see with. And may the god Love permit me to write about the passions of others and keep me moderate with regard to my own.
Mytilene is a city on Lesbos, a large and beautiful one. It is divided by canals that pour in from the sea and decorated by bridges made of polished white stone, and it looks almost like an island rather than a city. About two hundred stades from this city of Mytilene, there was a rich man’s estate, a beautiful property that had hills filled with wild animals for game, plains of golden wheat, sloping vineyards and pastures full of flocks. The sea here gently lapped the soft sand of the long, languishing shore.
One day, when grazing his flock on this estate, a goatherd named Lamon found a baby boy being suckled by one of his she-goats. There was a copse of oak trees thick with brambles and wandering ivy and soft grass on which the baby boy was lying. The goat used to run to this place and then often disappear from sight: she would leave her kid behind and stay with the baby. Lamon watched the goat running back and forth, and felt pity for her neglected kid. Then, at noon, following in the goat’s tracks, he saw her stepping about carefully next to the baby, so as not to harm the infant with her hooves, and saw the baby drawing a stream of milk from this nanny goat as if she were his mother. Lamon was amazed, naturally, and coming nearer, he found a baby boy who was healthy and beautiful and in better clothes than you would expect to find on an abandoned child. He was wearing a purple cloak and a golden brooch and a dagger with an ivory hilt.
His first thought was to carry off only the tokens and to ignore the baby. But then he was ashamed that the goat was showing greater compassion for a human being than he was, so he stayed there and watched over the child until nightfall, and then brought everything to his wife Myrtale, the tokens, the child and the goat itself. She was astonished to see that the goats were now giving birth to children, but he told her the whole story, how he found the baby abandoned, how he saw it nursing and how he was ashamed to leave it behind to die. And she agreed that he had made the right choice. They decided to hide the tokens that had been left out with the baby and pretend that he was their own son, and they decided as well to entrust the nursing to the goat. And so that he would have a pastoral name, they decided to call him Daphnis.
Two years went by. Then a shepherd named Dryas, who tended his flock in the neighbouring fields, had a similar experience: he made the same sort of discovery and saw the same kind of spectacle. There was a cave of the Nymphs, a great rock, hollow on the inside, rounded on the outside. The statues of these Nymphs were made of stone, each with feet uncovered, arms bare to her shoulders, hair loose down to the neck, girdles around the waist and a smile about the eyes. The whole scene was like a chorus of dancers. In the very middle of the cave in the great rock, water gushing out of a spring formed a flowing stream, which spilled over into the smooth, green meadow stretched out in front of the cave and nourished the thick, soft grass with its liquid. Hanging inside the cave were milk pails and flute pipes and pan pipes and reed pipes, offerings left behind by shepherds of old.
A sheep that had recently given birth used to wander often into this shrine of the Nymphs and give the impression of being lost. Wanting to discipline her and to restore her to her earlier habits, Dryas made a leash out of a green shoot, as a snare, and went to the rock to catch her there. This is what he planned to do: what he saw there was nothing that he expected. He saw the ewe giving suck, just like a human mother, to an infant tugging for milk, and the baby greedily, but without crying, holding both teats to its face. The baby’s face was clean and bright because each time the baby would drink its fill of milk, the ewe would lick its face clean with her tongue. Unlike the other foundling, this child was a girl, but like the other, this one also had fine tokens among the swaddling clothes: a belt embroidered with gold, gilded slippers and golden anklets.
Thinking he had found a gift from the gods, Dryas followed the sheep’s example and decided to take pity on the child and give it his affection. He picked up the child in his arms, put away the tokens in his bag, and then prayed to the Nymphs for their blessings in caring for their little suppliant. And when it was time to drive his flock back home, he went to his cottage, and told his wife what he saw, showing her what he found. He told her to think of the baby as their daughter and to bring up the forgotten child as they would their own, without telling anyone. Nape (this was her name) straightaway became a mother and loved the child, as if she were afraid of being outdone by the sheep, and to inspire trust in her story, she also gave the girl a pastoral name, Chloe.
As the years passed, the two children grew up very quickly, and they looked much more beautiful than the children of country folk usually do. One night, when Daphnis was fifteen and Chloe two years younger, Dryas and Lamon each had the same dream. They dreamed that the Nymphs from the cave which had the spring in it, where Dryas discovered his baby, were handing over Daphnis and Chloe to a very haughty but beautiful boy who had wings coming out of his shoulders and was carrying tiny arrows that fit his little bow. He shot a single arrow at both of them, and ordered them, from that moment on, to go out into the fields, Daphnis as a goatherd and Chloe as a shepherd.
When they saw this dream, the two fathers were annoyed that their children would become shepherds and goatherds, since the swaddling clothes had seemed to augur a much brighter future for the two foundlings. For this reason, they had raised them with greater care and refinement than usual, and had taught them reading and writing and all the things that seem so fine to the rustic mind. But they decided to listen to the gods since, after all, the children had been saved by divine providence. They told each other their dreams, and sacrificed to the winged boy, whose name these simple people did not know, in the cave of the Nymphs. Afterward, they sent out Daphnis and Chloe to become keepers of their flocks, though first they taught them all the skills that a good herdsman needs to have: how to pasture the
flocks before midday, how to graze them when the heat has died down, when to lead them to drink, when to drive them to their beds, which animals responded best to sticks and which to their voices only. These two were thrilled to take up positions of such importance, with the result that they loved their goats and sheep more than is usual among herdsmen: Chloe because she credited her survival to the sheep, and Daphnis because he remembered that a goat had nourished him when he was abandoned.
It was now the beginning of spring, and the flowers were in bloom everywhere, on the trees, in the meadows and in the hills. The countryside was filled with the buzzing of the bees, the twittering of song-birds and the frolicking of newborn lambs: the lambs were frolicking in the hills, the bees buzzing in the meadows and the birds singing in the groves. So overwhelming was the beauty of the season and so innocent and impressionable were Daphnis and Chloe that they imitated everything they happened to hear and see. When they heard the birds singing, they sang along; they saw the lambs scampering, and they hopped about nimbly too. In imitation of the bees, they gathered together the most fragrant blossoms, throwing some of the flowers into their laps, and weaving others into garlands that they offered to the Nymphs.
They were inseparable and did everything together, tending their flocks side by side. If Daphnis rounded up Chloe’s stray sheep for her, just as often Chloe drove down the more intrepid of Daphnis’ goats from the high cliffs for him, and if one was distracted by some game or toy, the other would watch over the flocks for both of them. Their toys were simple, designed to amuse children or childlike shepherds. She would spend hours picking stalks of asphodel and weaving a trap for grasshoppers, and concentrate so hard on this that she would forget her flock. He would cut slender reeds, make holes in the joints of these plants, join them to each other with soft wax and play the pipes until nightfall. They shared their milk and wine, and whatever food they brought to the fields from home, that also they shared with each other. A passer-by would have been more likely to see the sheep and the goats parted from each other than Chloe and Daphnis.
While they were playing with these toys, Love devised a way to make things more earnest. A she-wolf was feeding her cubs by stealing sheep from the other flocks in the nearby countryside because she needed large amounts of food to feed her young. So the villagers came together by night and dug some pits, each of which was six feet wide and four times as many feet deep. The earth that they carried out they spread all over, placed wooden sticks over the opening, and the remaining soil over them, so that the earth looked just like it was before it was dug up. Even a hare running across would have broken the wooden sticks, which were weaker than dry stalks, and then have discovered that this was not land but an imitation of it. They dug many such pits, in the mountains and plains, but they were not able to catch the wolf, since she had seen them and knew that the soil was treacherous. But they did destroy many goats and sheep – and they nearly did the same to Daphnis. This is what happened.
Two he-goats got into an excited state and fell into a fight. One of the two violently shattered the other one’s horn; snorting and leaping in pain, he turned and started to escape. The victorious goat followed in his steps, and made sure the other’s flight was prolonged. Daphnis was upset at the harm done to the horn of the one goat and the audacity of the other, so he took up a wooden stick and a crook, and he pursued the pursuer. Quite naturally, neither the fugitive goat nor his angry pursuer were very careful about where they were stepping, and they both fell into the pit, the goat first and Daphnis second. In fact, this was what saved Daphnis, for he used the goat to cushion himself against the fall. He waited tearfully for some passer-by to come and pull him out. But Chloe saw the accident, and came running to the hole, and when she discovered that he was alive, she called one of the cowherds from the neighbouring fields for help. He came there, and began to look for a rope that Daphnis might hold on to and be pulled out by. But there was no rope, so Chloe undid her breastband and gave it to the cowherd to let down. And in this way, standing at the edges of the pit, they pulled him out, and he climbed out with his hands as they pulled up the breastband. They also pulled up the poor goat, which had broken both his horns: this was his reward for triumphing over the other goat. They gave this goat as a thank-offering to the cowherd, and planned to lie and say to the people at home that there was an attack of wolves if there were any questions about the missing goat. They went back to check the sheep and goats, and when they were sure that the goats and the sheep were pasturing in peace, they sat down at the foot of an oak tree to see if any part of Daphnis’ body was bleeding from the fall. Nothing was broken and nothing bleeding, but his hair and the rest of his body were plastered with soil and mud, and so they decided to wash him before Lamon and Myrtale might see what had happened.
Daphnis went with Chloe to the Nymphs’ shrine, and gave her his tunic and his bag to look after, and he went and stood in the spring, and washed his hair and the rest of his body. His hair was black and full, and his body was tanned by the sun; it looked as though his body had taken its colour from the dark hues of his hair. Chloe was looking at Daphnis, and he seemed beautiful to her. And because that moment was the first time he looked beautiful to her, she thought that the bath was the cause of his beauty. As she washed his back, his soft flesh yielded to her hands, so she secretly touched herself many times to see if her own body was more delicate when she pressed it. Then, they drove the flocks home since the sun was already at the point of setting, and Chloe desired in her heart only to see Daphnis bathing again. When the sun rose the next morning, they went out to the pasture. Daphnis sat under his usual oak tree and played his pipes, and at the same time was keeping an eye on the goats, which were lying down and appeared to be listening to his music. Chloe sat nearby, and cast an eye on her flock of sheep, but was looking mostly at Daphnis. He again seemed to her to look beautiful playing the pipes, and this time she supposed the music was the cause of his beauty. So, after he played, she too took up the pipes to see if she might not also become beautiful. She persuaded him to take another bath, and saw him bathing, and as she watched, she touched him. As she walked off, she was moved to praise him inwardly and think how beautiful he was – and this thought was the beginning of love. What she was feeling she didn’t know, since she was a girl and was raised in the country, and, because no one had told her, she had not even heard about love. But her heart was vexed, she was not able to keep her eyes open and she chattered at length about Daphnis. She cared not for her food, lay awake at night and disregarded her flock; she laughed, then she cried; she sat down, then she leaped up; her face was pale, and then again it was fired red. An ox stung by an insect was never so tormented! When she was all alone one day, she said these words to herself:
‘I’m sick now, but what my sickness is I don’t understand; I’m in pain, but haven’t been injured; I feel sad, but none of my sheep is lost; I’m burning hot, yet here I am sitting in the dark shade. The bramble’s scratched me so many times, still I never cried; so many bees have pricked me, and I never shouted out. But this prick in my heart is more pointed and bitter than all of those. Daphnis is beautiful, but the flowers are too; the sound his pipes make is beautiful, but so is the song of the nightingales; yet none of these other things matters to me. I wish I were his pipes and he’d blow me; I wish I were his goat and he’d graze me. You wretched water, how is it you made Daphnis alone beautiful, and when I bathed in you, you did nothing to me! I’ll soon be dead and gone, dear Nymphs: you’re not doing anything to save this young woman whom you brought up. Who will garland you after I go? Who will take care of my poor lambs? Who will look after the chattering grasshopper? I worked hard to hunt it down, so that it might lull me to sleep in front of the cave. Now it’s sleep that I’m hunting down, because of Daphnis, and the grasshopper is prattling on in vain.’
These were things she felt and said in her uncertainty – but the word she was searching for was love. The cowherd who had pulled out Daphnis and the
goat from the pit was called Dorcon, and he was a young man whose beard had just started to grow and who knew about love in word and action; he had been struck by a desire for Chloe as soon as he saw her that day, and with each passing moment burned more and more in his soul for the girl. He dismissed Daphnis as a young boy, and decided to accomplish his task through gifts or by force as necessary. To start with, he brought them gifts, for him a set of pipes, the nine reeds bound together with brass instead of wax, and for her a bacchant’s fawnskin, the colour of which was like the colours in a picture. As he came to be considered a friend by them, he gradually stopped giving attention to Daphnis, but to Chloe every day used to bring a soft cheese or a garland of flowers or a ripe apple. One day he brought her a newborn calf and the chicks of some mountain birds and a wooden cup inlaid with gold and with ivy wreaths carved on it. She was inexperienced in lovers’ techniques, and was happy to take the gifts, and happier still because she was herself able to make Daphnis happy. Since Daphnis also now had to get to know love in action, one day a beauty contest took place between Dorcon and him. Chloe was the judge, and the prize for the winner was to kiss Chloe. Dorcon spoke first:
‘I, dear girl, am taller than Daphnis, and I am a cowherd, while he’s a goatherd; so I am superior to him just as cows are superior to goats. I am as white as milk, and my hair is a fire that sparkles like the red summer corn, and my mother brought me up, not a wild beast. That man is small, he doesn’t have a beard, just like a woman, and is as black as a wolf; he looks after goats and smells terrible because of them. He is so impoverished that he can’t afford to keep a dog. And if, as they say, he was nursed directly on goat’s milk, there’s no difference between him and the kids.’ These words, and others like them, Dorcon spoke. Then Daphnis replied: ‘I was raised by a goat, and so was Zeus. I look after goats that are bigger than his cows. I don’t stink because Pan doesn’t either, and you know he is more goat than not. I have enough cheese and bread rolls and white wine, and as many possessions as rich country folk need. I don’t have a beard, and Dionysus doesn’t either, and if I’m dark, so is the hyacinth; but Dionysus is better than the Satyrs and the hyacinth better than the lilies. Dorcon is red-haired like a fox and bearded like a goat and white like some woman from the city. If you have to kiss me, you’ll kiss my mouth, but with him, you’ll get the bristles of his beard. And remember, dear girl, that a sheep suckled you, but you are quite beautiful.’