tive of this Greek romance, as of others. Huet,
Villemain, and many other critics have been duped by this
sophistico-mathematical aspect of the story into descanting on the
peculiar purity and delicacy of its moral tone; but one need only read
a few of the heroine's speeches to see how absurd this judgment is.
When she says to her lover,

"I resigned myself to you, not as to a paramour, but as to a
legitimate husband, and I have preserved my chastity with
you, resisting your urgent solicitations because I always
had in mind the lawful marriage to which we pledged
ourselves,"

she uses the language of a shrewd hetaira, not of an innocent girl;
nor could the author have made her say the following had his subject
been romantic love: [Greek: _Hormaen gar, hos oistha, kratousaes
epithumias machae men antitupos epipeinei, logos d' eikon kai pros to
boulaema syntrechon taen protaen kai zeousan phoran esteile kai to
katoxu taes orezeos to haedei taes epaggelias kateunase.]

The story of Heliodorus is full of such coarse remarks, and his idea
of love is plainly enough revealed when he moralizes that "a lover
inclines to drink and one who is drunk is inclined to love."

It is not only on account of this coarseness that the story of
Theagenes and Chariclea fails to come up to the standard of romantic
love. When Arsace (VIII., 9) imprisons the lovers together, with the
idea that the sight of their chains will increase the sufferings of
each, we have an intimation of crude sympathy; but apart from that the
symptoms of love referred to in the course of the romance are the same
that I have previously enumerated, as peculiar to Alexandrian
literature. The maxims, "dread the revenge that follows neglected
love;" "love soon finds its end in satiety;" and "the greatest
happiness is to be free from love," take us back to the oldest Greek
times. Peculiarly Greek, too, is the scene in which the women, unable
to restrain their feelings, fling fruits and flowers at a young man
because he is so beautiful; although on the same page we are surprised
by the admission that woman's beauty is even more alluring than man's,
which is not a Greek sentiment.

In this last respect, as in some others, the romance of Heliodorus
differs favorably from that of Achilles Tatius, which relates the
adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon; but I need not dwell on this
amazingly obscene and licentious narrative, as its author's whole
ph