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...

This book contains two Greek romantic novels: 'Daphnis and Chloe', written by Longus, and 'Anthia and Habrocomes', written by Xenophon, of Ephesus.