Daphnis and Chloe

Daphnis and Chloe, work by Longus, written in the 2nd or 3rd century CE and considered the first pastoral prose romance. The work tells the story of two foundlings who are brought up by shepherds and who fall in love at an early age. They are soon kidnapped and separated, but after several adventures they are reunited. The novel was the inspiration for several later literary works, including such Elizabethan pastoral romances as Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1590) and Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde (1590), the source book for William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Daphnis and Chloe is set on the Greek isle of Lesbos, where scholars assume the author to have lived. Its style is rhetorical and resembles a modern novel more than does its chief rival among Greek erotic romances, the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, which is remarkable more for its plot than for its characterization.