The early editions and translations show why Longus was so influential in Elizabethan England and indeed in the modern European literatures. The first edition of the Greek text was published by the Junta Press in Florence in 1598, but before that the romance had received its first printing in Amyot’s French translation in 1559 and in the first English translation by Angell Daye in 1587. This “earliest English version” which was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth was more of an adaptation than a translation. Its title-page demands perusal:
“Daphnis and Chloe excellently describing the weight of affection, the simplicitie of love, the purport of honest meaning, the resolution of men, and disposition of Fate, finished in a Pastorall, and interlaced with the praises of a most peerlesse Princesse, wonderfull in Maiestie, and rare in perfection, celebrated within the same Pastorall, and therefore termed by the name of The Shepheards Holidaie. By Angell Daye. Altior fortuna virtus.”
The title-page of the 1657 translation by “Geo. Thornley, Gent.” was dubbed “Daphnis and Chloe a most sweet and pleasant pastoral romance for young ladies” and it too bore a Latin motto: “Humili casa nihil antiquius nihil nobilius.—Sen. Philos.”
It is this delightful old translation which J. M. Edmonds “revised and augmented” in his version for The Loeb Classical Library and in his introduction there Edmonds says that this seems to have been George Thornley’s only publication. He was a sizar in Christ’s College and received his Bachelor in Arts from the University of Cambridge. It is this translation of Edmonds-Thornley which I shall use in my quotations.
Longus wrote a Prooimion to his romance which reveals the occasion and the purpose of his writing. While hunting in Lesbos he saw in a fair grove of the Nymphs a painted picture which told a tale of ancient love.
“There were figured in it young women, in the posture, some of teeming, others of swaddling, little children; babes exposed, and ewes giving them suck; shepherds taking up foundlings, young persons plighting their troth; an incursion of thieves, an inroad of armed men.”
And on studying the painting Longus says:
“I had a mighty instigation to write something as to answer that picture. And therefore, when I had carefully sought and found an interpreter of the image, I drew up these four books, an oblation to Love and to Pan and to the Nymphs, and a delightful possession even for all men. For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right wits.”
With this delightful prayer, our humorous nympholept Longus begins his story. We must now outline briefly his four books of Pastorals.
The characters are: