Daphnis and Chloe - Long

Literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages - Summary - 2019

Daphnis and Chloe - Long

The action takes place on the well-known Greeks island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, and not even on the whole island, but in only one village on its outskirts.

There lived two shepherds, one goat's head, another she-wolf, one slave, another free. Once, a goat saw: his goat feeds the dropped child - a boy, and with him a purple diaper, a golden clasp and a knife with an ivory handle. He adopted him and called Daphneis. It took a little time, and the shepherd also saw: his sheep feeds the abandoned child - a girl, and with her a bandage, sewn with gold, gilded shoes and gold bracelets. He took her and called Chloe. They grew up, he was beautiful, she was a beauty, he was fifteen, she was thirteen, he fed her goats, she flocked with her sheep, they were together, they were friends, "and one could soon see that sheep and goats are more like grains than to meet separately from Daphne with Chloe".

It was summer, and Daphnis was in trouble: he stumbled, fell into a wolf hole and almost died. Chloe cried a neighbor, a young shepherd, a Voropas, and together they pulled Daphne out of the pit. He was not distracted, but he was all in the ground and dirt. Chloe led him to the handle and, while he was swimming, he saw what he was beautiful, and felt a strange thing in himself: "I am sick and what I do not know; Not injured, but the heart hurts; I'm in the shade, and I'm all flaming. " She did not know the word "love", but when the neighboring volopoise argued with Daphneis, who was beautiful, and they decided that Chloe would kiss the one who loved her more than the other, then Chloe immediately kissed Daphne. And after this kiss, Daphne also felt something strange in himself: "I have captured the spirit, my heart desires, my soul melts, and yet again I want to kiss her: is not there any potion on Chloe's lips?" The words "love" "He did not know either.

Autumn came, grape holidays came, Daphne and Chloe were having fun with everyone, and an old shepherd approached them. "I had a vision," he said, "I came to Eroth-baby with quiver and bow and said," Do you remember how I bite you with your bride? and now I'm Daphne and Chloe! " "And who is Eroth?" - adolescents ask. "Eroth is the god of love, stronger than Zeus himself; he reigns over the world, over gods, people and beast; there is no Erota medication in drink, neither in food, nor in conspiracies, only means - to kiss, hug and naked, squeezing on the ground. " Daphne and Chloe thought, and realized that their strangeness strange was from Eroth. Having overcome their shyness, they began kissing each other, and then hugging themselves, and then naked on the ground, but the languor did not pass, and what to do next they did not know.

There was a trouble here with Chloe: the young rich loafers from the neighboring city, plagued with the villagers, attacked them, drove a herd and kidnapped a beautiful shepherdess with him. Daphneus desperately prayed to the rural gods-nymphs and Pan, and Pan threw his "panic horror" at the kidnappers: the loot was plundered with an ivy, ordered the goats to roll out in the wolf, set fire on the ground, and the sound of the sea. The frightened villains immediately returned the prey, the reunited lovers swore allegiance to each other - "I swear by this goat and goat that made me angry: I will never leave Chloe!" - and the old shepherd played them on the whirlwind and told how once Pan was God in love with the nymph, and she ran away from him and turned into a reed, and then he made such a flute with unequal trunks from the reeds, because their love was unequal.

Autumn passed, winter passed, ice and snow, a new spring came, and the love of Daphne and Chloe continued - all the same innocent and tormenting. Here the wife of a neighboring landowner, young and cunning, looked over them. She liked Daphnis, and she led him into a secluded clearing and said to him: "I know what is missing from Chloe; if you want to know it - become my student and do whatever I say. " And when they fell together, she and nature itself taught Daphne to everything that was needed. "Just remember," she said at a farewell, "it's a joy to me, and Chloe will be ashamed for the first time, and it's terrible and painful, but you're not afraid, because that's what nature is supposed to be." Still, Daphneus was afraid to make Chloe hurt, and so their love stretched as before - in kisses, caresses, embraces, gentle chatter, but only.

The second summer came, and the grooms began to marry Chloe. Daphnis in the grief: he is a slave, and they are free and prosperous. But good rural nymphs came to his aid: in a dream, they pointed out a young man where to find a rich treasure. Chloe adoptive parents are happy, Daphnisovs too. And they decided: when in the autumn the landowner will go around his estate, ask him to agree to the wedding.

The fall came in the summer, the landowner appeared, and with him he was depraved and tricky. The beautiful Daphnis liked him, and he asked him from the master: "Everyone is subdued, falling in love even in the tree, in the river and in the wild beast! Here I also love the body of a slave, but the beauty is free! "Really do not have a wedding? Here, the old man, the adoptive father of Daphneus, rushed to the master in his legs and told how he had once found this baby in rich clothes: maybe, in fact, he is freely born and can not sell it and give it? The landlord looks at: "Oh gods, are not these things that once we left my wife and my son with a son who was thrown in order not to break the legacy? And now our children have died, we bitterly repent, we ask forgiveness, Daphnis, and call again to the father's house. " And he took the young man with him.

Now Daphnis is rich and knowledgeable, and Chloe is poor, as was: is not the wedding aroused, does the landowner deny such a daughter-in-law? Outbreaks all the same came alive: he was afraid that the owner would not be angry at him because of Daphnis, and therefore he persuaded him not to interfere with the union of lovers. The girl was taken to a bar-house, there was a feast, a feast, neighborhood rich, one of them saw Chloe, saw her child's bandage in her arms and recognized her daughter in her: once he was ruined and threw it out of poverty, and now got rich and regained his child. They handle the wedding, on it - all guests, and further rejected by Chloe's groomsmen, and even the beauty that once taught Daphne of love. The newlyweds are taken to the bedchamber, "and then Chloe recognized that everything they did in the oak brood was only a shepherd's jokes."

They live long and happily, their children are fed goats and sheep, and the nymphs, Eroth and Pan rejoice, admiring their love and consent.