If all the world loves a lover, as the old proverb says, then this my book should win wide fame. For these Greek Romances of the first to the fourth century of our era seem still to be singing the immemorial refrain from the old spring-time song of “The Vigil of Venus”:

At a time when fiction is the most popular form of literature, these wonderful old Greek stories of love, adventure and worship are half forgotten and rarely read except by the scholar. Yet here, as in epic, lyric, elegy, drama, oratory and history, the Greeks were pioneers. In the second and third centuries they had created four different types of romance (of love, of adventure, the pastoral, the satiric) which were to have great influence on French, Italian and English fiction. The student of comparative literature, the student of the history of fiction cannot afford to neglect these pioneer Greek novels.

Their appeal, however, should be just as great for the general reader as for the scholar. For here are stories that mirror the life of the Mediterranean world in the Roman Empire with all its new excitements of travel, piracy, kidnapping, the new feminism, the new religious cults. And through all the different types of romance except the satiric the Love-God holds supreme sway over the hearts of men. So human, so vivacious are the love-stories that I offer to my readers Longus’ assurance of profit in his introduction to his Pastoral Romance:

“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.”[1]

My hope in writing on the Greek Romances is that I may lure readers back to them. My essays aim to be guideposts pointing the way. I venture to suggest that along with my book readers should peruse at least four novels of different types for which good translations are available. These are Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe by Warren E. Blake (beautiful in English and format) and three volumes of The Loeb Classical Library: Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, Lucian’s True History (in Lucian vol. I) and the Latin novel which combines the different Greek types into one great synthesis, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. If I can win new readers for these my favorites, my writing will be as successful as it has been happy!

It is a pleasure once again to express grateful thanks to publishers and authors who have allowed me to quote material. I am indebted to the Harvard University Press for its courtesy in allowing me to quote freely from volumes in The Loeb Classical Library; to the Clarendon Press, Oxford for the use of material from R. M. Rattenbury, “Romance: the Greek Novel,” in New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, Third Series, from F. A. Todd, Some Ancient Novels, from J. S. Phillimore, “Greek Romances” in English Literature and the Classics, and from The Works of Lucian of Samosata translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler; to Longmans, Green and Co., for the use of a quotation from F. G. Allinson, Lucian Satirist and Artist; to the University of Michigan Press for the use of Warren E. Blake’s translation of Chariton; to the Columbia University Press for permission to quote from S. L. Wolff’s The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction; and for generous permissions for quotations from Professor M. Rostovtzeff and Professor B. E. Perry.

My writing has been greatly facilitated by the cooperation of the staff of the Vassar Library, especially of Miss Fanny Borden, Librarian, who has provided me with a study in the Library, patiently borrowed many books from other libraries for me and shown unfailing interest in my work. A constant stimulus to my writing has been the appreciation of my colleagues and students expressed in invitations to read different chapters of this volume to the Classical Journal Club and to the Classical Society. Finally my profound gratitude is due to the donors of the funds which made possible the publication of these Essays.