Longus's romance tells the story of two teenagers, Daphnis and Chloe, who love each other but do not know how to make love. Around their predicament Longus weaves a fantasy which entertains and instructs, but never errs in taste. The hard toil and precariousness of peasant life are here, but so are its compensations—revelry, music, dance, and storytelling. Above the action brood divinities—Eros, Dionysus, Pan, the Nymphs—who collaborate to guide the adolescents into the mystery of Love, at once a sensual and a religious initiation. Daphnis and Chloe is the best known, and the best, of the early Greek romances, precursors to the modern novel. Admired by Goethe, it has been reinterpreted in music and art by Ravel and Chagall. This new translation is immensely readable, and does full justice to the humor and humanity of the story.
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