Two racy Greek romances.

In Longus’ ravishing Daphnis and Chloe (second or early third century AD), one of the great works of world literature, an innocent boy and girl gradually discover their sexuality in an idealized pastoral environment. In Xenophon’s Anthia and Habrocomes (first century AD), perhaps the earliest extant novel and a new addition to the Loeb Classical Library, a newlywed couple, separated by mischance, survive hair-raising adventures and desperate escapes as they traverse the Mediterranean and the Near East en route to a joyful reunion. The pairing of these two novels well illustrates both the basic conventions of the genre and its creative range.

This new edition offers fresh translations and texts by Jeffrey Henderson, based on the recent critical editions of Longus by M. D. Reeve and Xenophon by J. N. O’Sullivan.

Longus seems to have been a pagan sophist who lived about 200 CE; he is known to us only by his novel Daphnis and Chloe. This is the bucolic story of two foundlings, brought up by goatkeepers and shepherds on the island of Lesbos, who gradually fall in love. Notable among ancient romances for its perceptive characterizations, Daphnis and Chloe traces the development of the protagonists' love for each other from childlike innocence to full sexual maturity, the successive stages marked by adventures. The novel's picture of nature and rural life offers its own enchantments.

Parthenius of Nicaea in Bithynia, a Greek poet, was brought to Rome in 73 BCE as a prisoner of war. After his release he settled in Italy and worked as poet and teacher. Virgil was one of his students. Parthenius's poetry, mainly elegiac, is lost, and his only extant work is Erotica Pathemata, an anthology of prose summaries of love stories from Greek literature, collected apparently for the use of Roman poets.