John Bagnell Bury

“ There was a demand for fiction of the same class as the French romances, and Greek writers responded to it not only by versions, but also by original creations. These creations, however, are of Greek, not foreign parentage; they have a native, not a foreign tradition behind them—the mediaeval epic and the amorous fiction which originated in the Hellenistic age. They are inferior to the best compositions of the French poets; nothing was produced that could be compared remotely, for instance, with Aucassin et Nicolette. They have not the stamp of cosmopolitan literature. ”

“ In crossing a swollen river the servants and horses were drowned, and the hero and heroine were washed ashore on opposite banks. Each thinks that the other is dead. Wandering along the edge, Chrysantza comes on the body of one of the men; the features are defaced, but as the clothes and sword of Belthandros are near she believes that the corpse is his, and is about to kill herself when she hears his voice in the distance calling her by name. ”

“ There can indeed be hardly a doubt that the poet knew Belthandros and borrowed the device. But he has avoided the error of allowing it a disproportionate place in his story, and he has so sophisticated it that it has a different poetical value. Lybistros, too, visits the fortress and gardens of Love; but there is no magic; he visits them in dreams; and the mansion, which is called Erotokratia, is pervaded by an atmosphere of allegory. Love himself assumes three forms—of a child, a man in his prime, and an old man ”

“ The men and women of the better classes enjoyed a classical education, but it was more conventional than—shall I say?—classical education has been among ourselves; and while they did not succeed in penetrating into the spirit of pagan antiquity, they were unable to free themselves from the tyranny of their brilliant ancestors. Later Greek literature is the literature of men who were the slaves of tradition ”

“ And just on this account it is not surprising that, although the commingling of the two cultures, Western and Greek, afforded to the French literature of chivalry an unrivalled opportunity for exercising here the potency of charm which it wrought elsewhere, there was no result that can be compared, for instance, to the reception of French romances in Germany. The romantic literature of the West did not come as a new revelation to a people who possessed in their own literature motives, ideals, and a tradition of fantastic fiction which were in many respects homogeneous. ”

“ The subjugation of scorners of Love is an ancient motif, which the French derived from the old Latin poets, and which had never disappeared from Greek fiction. In another curious Greek romance of the same period, the love-story of Achilles, we also find the idea of defiance followed by submission. Like Lybistros, Achilles is at first an Hippolytus who scorns Love and is then subdued by him, but without the help of machinery. In this poem, also, the interest of the Greek poet in Western chivalry is undisguised. ”

“ An improbable dream is less interesting than make-believe reality, provided the illusion is well managed, and this poet has managed it with skill- The idea of the phlogopotamon, the mystery of the flame glancing on the water, which draws Belthandros to the abode of Love, gives his romance a certain poetical distinction. But the machinery is too large and impressive for the rest of the story; we feel that the plot, as it is worked out, is too slight to justify the elaboration of the machinery. ”

“ The king is a ῥῆγα, his wife is a ῥηγῖνα; for the title Basileus was strictly reserved for the emperor. It is clear that the poet conceives Antioch as a Frank dominion, but he does not say so; he leaves this vague, and the king's daughter, Chrysantza, has a Greek name. Belthandros recognizes her as the maiden to whom he had awarded the wand, and she, too, recognizes him; for the poet conceives that she was actually present on that night in the Castle of Love. For more than four years they woo each other by secret signs; at last they meet in a garden and declare their love. ”

“ An intercourse of many centuries, the commerce of war but also the commerce of peace, did not fail to lead to mutual influence of the Greek and Saracen civilizations. For generation after generation the tide of strife flowed backward and forward over the mountain barriers, and was the great imminent fact for the Christian population of Asia Minor. ”

“ The tone of their intercourse is significant. While Digenes formally professes himself a devoted servant, they meet far more as equals than as subject and servant. The warrior has a position of virtual independence, like that of a powerful Western baron.
Idyllic scenes—repose in pleasant shady meadows near waters—were a stereotyped feature in the Greek romances, and descriptions of such scenes were a conventional topic with Hellenistic rhetors. But they occur also in the epic. Digenes retired with his wife to a lovely meadow in which he pitched his tent. ”

“ Though the Greek romantic poets resorted to various devices, suggested by the Alexandrine novelists, to enhance the interest of their theme by mystery, though they made love more artificial, less naïve, yet, in the sentiment and the psychology, the epic exerted a supreme influence. ”

“ Moreover, while in Belthandros love is accepted simply as an irresistible power, here its claims are defended on philosophical grounds. Its cult is vindicated. The ideal hero must be trained in the school of love, ἐρωτοπαιδευμένος, and he who denies its claims is χωρικός—rustic or provincial.
The Erotokratia of this poem cannot fail to remind us of the close, surrounded by castled walls, in the Romance of the Rose. It, too, is a dream-castle, peopled with allegorical figures; the dreamer, like Lybistros, is a scorner of Love, and like him makes complete submission to the god. ”

“ In a society tenacious of tradition and dominated by these two authorities—the incompatibility of which caused no embarrassment—we might expect that the most likely, if not the only, chance for the birth of fresh and original works of imagination would be impact and influence from another world, sufficiently strong and persistent and exciting. ”

“ It was revealed to Lybistros in a dream that he is destined to wed Rhodamne, whose fate is revealed in like manner to her; he discovers and wins her; then they are separated by magical means, and in the end he finds her again. This is the groundwork; but the construction is intricate and the poem in every way more elaborate than the tale of Belthandros. The first thing to be noticed is that the poet is expressly sympathetic with the world of Latin chivalry. The hero is conceived as a Latin prince, and wears Latin costume. The heroine, daughter of an Indian king, admires Frank customs. ”

“ Western women were not very numerous in the Frank colonies, and there was much intermarrying between the foreigners and Greek ladies. In this mixed society there followed, in the course of time, a demand for romances of love and chivalrous adventure in the Greek tongue, and the demand was partly met by adaptations of French poems. ”

“ In the vocabulary and diction the influence of the epic is patent. But the romantic poets elaborated the style by devices. They cultivated the use of long epithets of seven or eight syllables which filled a whole verse, and they could appeal to classical literature for the propriety of this device. Such compounds occur occasionally in Digenes; they are a feature in the romances. ”

“ There was obviously an opportunity for influence of this kind in the last period of the history of the Byzantine Greeks, when they were overwhelmed, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, by the invasion of the Western knights, and Greece and the islands of the Aegean passed under the rule of Frenchmen and Italians. Throughout the three following centuries the two civilizations, Greek and Frank, were side by side. ”

“ And chief among these sources were tales which circulated in the Greek and Oriental worlds, and which reached France not in books but by transmission from mouth to mouth—some, it has been conjectured, through Greek channels. [4] Such floating matter was shaped independently by the Greeks. We have an example in the adventurous romance of Callimachus and Chrysorrhoe, written possibly by a member of the Palaeologus family towards the end of the thirteenth century; it can be shown that this poem was constructed out of various legends of enchantment which were current in Greece. ”

“ Transfer them to Provence, and they would be at home with the heroes of troubadour fiction. The Greeks had no word for knight-errant, but they coined a verb which expresses a similar notion, κοσμοαναγυρεύειν, to roam the world on a quest. ”