In Timaeus's account,' which we have supposed to be the simplest form of the myth, the nymph is named Echenais.2 In Sositheus's drama the nymph whom Daphnis married, after vanquishing Menalcas in song, was called Thalia, according to the argument of Theocritus's eighth idyll. Coming down to the Vergilian commentators we get still greater divergency. Ps.-Servius, among other stories, repeats the plot of Sositheus's drama, but gives the name of the heroine as Pimplea; according to Ps.-Servius she was stolen by freebooters, and Daphnis sought her out, finding her at last at the court of Lityerses. Ps.-Servius admits that the maiden was called by some Thalia. But on the same verse in Vergil he tells another story, to the effect that Nomia was the name of the nymph who loved Daphnis, but that he spurned her and preferred Chimaera, so that the neglected nymph in anger blinded him and finally turned him to stone. Philargyrius gives us still another name; he says the nymph to whom Daphnis was unfaithful was called Lyca.

In these accounts we see a reasonable amount of adherence to the essential form of the old myth, though the names and the circumstances of the first love and of the new mistress vary. And so I think if we assume the simple motif of the Daphnis-myth in Theocritus to be the rejection by the neatherd of one who loves him in favor of a new mistress, there will be no insurmountable difficulties to overcome; as a Sicilian, the poet would not be likely to depart from the form of the myth peculiar to his native land. This form

1 Parthenius, περὶ ἐρωτ. παθ. 29.

2 The Nais of Theocritus's eighth idyll need not be considered a corruption of this Echenais; cf. Ovid, Ars Amat. 1. 732.

3 On Vergil, Ecl. 8. 68.

4 On Vergil, Ecl. 5. 20.

5 For comparison I may summarize the views of other writers who have treated the subject.

Welcker (Kl. Schriften, I. pp. 193 ff.) says that Daphnis was once enthralled by Nais, but left her; that Nais pursued him constantly. Aphrodite used her influence to revive his love for Nais, but Daphnis boasted that he would never yield. In anger Aphrodite kindled love in his breast for Xenea.

Hermann (Disputatio de Daphnide, p. 15): Daphnis married first the nymph Nais, and she forbade him to associate with any other woman; consequently he repulsed the advances of the woman whom Theocritus refers to in 1. 82. Aphro

of the myth is presented most bluntly in the story in Ps.-Servius of Nomia, whom Daphnis rejected, and Chimaera, whom he loved. If we apply this to Theocritus's story, what do we get? In the first idyll Daphnis is pining away with love for his new mistress, who is pursuing him far and wide. But what is the meaning of the remarks of Priapus and Aphrodite? To interpret these I am inclined to bring over from the old form of the myth the story of the compact, and assume that Daphnis agreed with his first love never to associate with another, and that this promise of abstinence from love aroused the ire of Aphrodite and Eros, who kindled his passion for the maiden Xenea. The nymph Nais of the eighth idyll is the first love of Daphnis, and the Lyca of Philargyrius and the Nomia of Ps.-Servius are other names of the same person, just as Chimaera is substituted for Xenea. Such a story might well be known in pastoral song as τὰ Δάφνιδος ἄλγεα.

1

dite, in anger at his obstinacy, inspired his love for "the strange maiden” (râs ξενέας, 7. 73).

Jacobi (Handwörterbuch der griech. und röm. Myth., s.v. Daphnis): Daphnis was unfaithful to the nymph whom he loved first, and associated with a mortal. When the nymph reproached him he gave up love altogether. This action angered Aphrodite, who tried to kindle in him love for his old bride. She, however, avoided him, while the mortal with whom he associated, pursued him. Sought by the one, and evaded by the other, he died.

Hiller (note on Theocritus, 1. 64): Daphnis boasted that he would resist the power of love; he thereby excited the wrath of Aphrodite, who kindled his love for a maiden. Daphnis struggled to overcome his passion, but unsuccessfully. The story in 7.73 agrees with that in the first idyll. The story in 8. 93 is an entirely different version, and the version of the myth in the first idyll has nothing to do with the argument in Timaeus.

Legrand, L'Étude sur Théocrite, p. 147, seems to agree with Hiller, but finds it necessary to emend the MSS.

I am not disposed to lay much weight on the scholia in elucidating the myth in Theocritus; the scholiasts seem to have been as incapable of settling the question as we are. Cf., for instance, the varying accounts given on I. 85 and 8. 93.

1 Cf. Schol. Theocritus, 8. 93 (k). I cannot believe that Daphnis's connection with Artemis has anything to do with his chastity, as Reitzenstein (Ep. und Skol.) and even Helm (Neue Jahrb. CLIII. p. 459) seem to think; Legrand (L'Étude sur Théocrite, pp. 144 ff.) refutes the theories of Reitzenstein. Artemis occupies too unimportant a position in the myth.

2 Theocritus, 5. 20; 1. 19; Epig. 4. 14.

There remain a few other references to Daphnis in Theocritus; in his song in the eighth idyll,' Daphnis tells of a maiden with meeting eyebrows who passed him, as he drove along his calves, and cried : "How handsome he is!" "But I," says Daphnis, "answered no word of railing, but cast down my eyes and went on my way." In the twenty-seventh idyll, the over-modest youth of the eighth has become more expert in the ways of the world; the idyll describes with delightful simplicity the meeting of Daphnis and a maiden. In the course of the idyll Daphnis gives his father's name as Lycidas, his mother's as Nomaea,2 and there is nothing to remind us of the heroic neatherd. This is not the place to discuss the genuineness of this idyll; it is generally considered spurious. The eighth idyll, also, is not above suspicion. Aside from the genealogy offered us in the twenty-seventh idyll, however, there is nothing in these two incidents especially inconsistent with the form of the Daphnis-myth in Theocritus and other writers; we may regard them as the poet's fanciful descriptions of the first meeting of Daphnis and one of his two friends. And in this addition of fanciful details to the myth, as well as in the combination of Daphnis with other heroes, we may see the first traces of that conventionalization to which, eventually, the heroic Daphnis succumbed.

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It remains briefly to discuss the death of Daphnis. According to Nymphodorus, a contemporary of Theocritus, who wrote about the marvellous phenomena of Sicily, the dogs of Daphnis attended his burial, and themselves died on the spot; one memorial was set up over them with their names inscribed upon it. The names of the faithful animals, slightly corrupted in our scholia to Theocritus, are better preserved in Aelian; a comparison of both our sources makes it probable that they were called Samus, Podargus, Lampas, Alcimus, and Theas. Aelian and Tzetzes differ from Nymphodorus only in mentioning the wailings and lamentations of the devoted animals prior to their master's death.

4

6

5 Thoas? (Ahrens).

6 Tzetzes, Chil. 4. 261.

8 As quoted by the scholiast on Theocritus, 1. 65 (k).

4 Aelian, Hist. Animal. 11. 13.

The punishment of Daphnis, according to the older prose authorities, was loss of sight; so Timaeus, Diodorus, Aelian. It is very strange that no trace of his blindness appears in Theocritus; in the poet we have the hero's death mourned by all his friends, gods, herdsmen, the beasts of the fields, the fowl of the air, - but the end is simply described in the words1: "So speaking, Daphnis ceased; and Aphrodite would fain have restored him to life. But all the threads of life that the Fates had allotted him were gone, and Daphnis passed on to the stream; 2 the eddying waters swept in waves over the man loved of the Muses, the man whom the nymphs did not hate.” The scholiast on Theocritus, 8. 93 (k), adds to the blinding the fatality of falling from a precipice. Ps.-Servius, in one of his stories, has Daphnis turned to stone after his blinding; and the rock near Cephaloedium, on the northern coast of Sicily, is said to

1 Theocritus, 1. 138 ff.

2 The phrase ßa póov is troublesome, and possibly corrupt. Three interpretations seem to be favored by different scholars. Some have made the words mean, "threw himself into the river," and have compared the version of the myth that represents Daphnis as hurling himself from a rock; the words eßa póov are certainly too mild a form of expression for such a violent suicide. Others make the words refer to an actual dissolution of Daphnis; those who adopt this view point to 7. 76 to justify their idea. But a comparison of this verse with the use of тáкομαι and kataтákoμaι elsewhere in Theocritus shows that this verb is simply a common expression for the wasting away supposed to be caused by love; and, moreover, the burden rests, with the supporters of this view, of discovering any similar fate among the catastrophes of Greek mythology; and, finally, certainly no one can maintain that the words eßa póov, as they stand, can express such a dissolution. It remains only to take the words in the only possible, though still somewhat dubious, way which I have chosen : "He went to the stream," i.e. of Death. The accusative after Baivw is paralleled, as commentators have already shown, by two passages in Greek tragedy: opos Bâoa in Euripides, Hipp. 223, and Tò Koîλov "Apyos Bás in Sophocles, O. C. 378; and also, perhaps, by the Homeric construction after the equivalents of ἱκνέομαι - - cf. Theocritus, 25, 258. An objection to this interpretation is that we do not find any Greck parallels for submersion in Acheron, such as is expressed by ěkλvσe díva; but the idea seems to occur in the Latin poets, in connection with the Styx, — his pressis Stygias vultum demisit in undas (Propertius, 3. 18. 9) and submergere Stygia aqua several times in Ovid (Amores, 3. 9. 27; Tristia, 4. 5. 22), — all of which have been previously quoted by the commentators.

8 On Vergil, Ecl. 8. 68.

be the petrified neatherd. These two stories of the scholiast and Ps.-Servius are, of course, simply different versions of the same idea. Vergil1 has Daphnis raised to heaven, and Ps.-Servius 2 tells us that Daphnis, after being blinded, called on his father Mercury for help, and was by him snatched up to heaven; on the spot where he had stood Mercury started a fountain, which was called "Daphnis," and to which the Sicilians yearly brought sacrifice. But it is a common view that in this eclogue Daphnis typifies Caesar, so that we must beware of granting Daphnis the deification and heavenly rest which he so richly deserved after his trials and tribulations with the other sex. With regard to this part of the myth it can be said, with considerable certainty, that the blinding was the feature of the old myth ; the turning to stone, although it appears in the later authorities, may be also an incident of the earliest form of the myth, as it is a feature of early folk-tales.

Finally, I may summarize the conclusions suggested to me by this study. The Daphnis-myth uses the simple formula, a mortal man, loved by an immortal woman, pledges himself to resist the attractions of mortal women, breaks his promise, and pays the penalty. In the application of this formula to the Daphnis-myth in its simple form,' the mortal man is a Sicilian neatherd, Daphnis; the immortal woman, a nymph; the temptress, a Sicilian princess, who uses wine to overpower the neatherd; and the penalty is the blinding, and perhaps the petrification, of Daphnis. This simple form of the myth is undoubtedly old, and well established at the time of our earliest sources; but the introduction of it into literature cannot safely be ascribed to Stesichorus. Even in our oldest authorities to some extent, and more extensively in later sources, certain appropriate details already appear as additions to the simple myth; as a neatherd, Daphnis is associated in various ways with pastoral gods, Hermes, Priapus, Pan, Artemis; with other pastoral heroes, as Menalcas; and pastoral poetry is eventually ascribed to him as his peculiar property. The description of the original mistress changes; she is Echenais, Nais, Thalia, Pimplea, Nomia, Lyca; similarly, the new love, at first a nameless Sicilian princess, becomes in time Xenea, Chimaera. The simple motif of

1 Vergil, Ecl. 5. 56 ff.

2 On Vergil, Ecl. 5. 20.