A GREEK LOVE-STORY

If we imagine the situation reversed—­a man delivering his “beloved” into the clutches of a tiger rather than to the legitimate caresses of a rival—­our horror at his loveless selfishness would be doubled.  Yet this is the policy habitually followed by savages and barbarians.  In later chapters instances will be given of such wooers killing coveted girls with their own spears as soon as they find that the rival is the winner.  After what has been said about the absence of unselfish gallantry among the lower races it would, of course, be useless to look for instances of altruistic self-sacrifice for a woman’s sake, since such sacrifice implies so much more than gallantry.  As for the Greeks, in all my extensive reading I have come across only one author who seemingly appreciates the significance of self-sacrifice for a woman loved.  Pausanias, in his Description of Greece (Bk.  VII., chap. 21), relates this love-story: 

“When Calydon still existed there was among the priests of Dionysus one named Coresus, whom love made, without any fault of his own, the most wretched of mortals.  He loved a girl Callirrhoe, but as great as his love for her was her hatred of him.  When all his pleadings and offerings of presents failed to change the girl’s attitude, he at last prostrated himself before the image of Dionysus, imploring his help.  The god granted the prayers of his priest, for suddenly the Calydonians began to lose their senses, like drunkards, and to die in fits of madness.  They appealed to the oracle of Dodona ... which declared that the calamity was due to the wrath of the god Dionysus, and that it would not cease until Coresus had sacrificed to Dionysus either Callirrhoe or anyone else willing to die for her.  Now when the girl saw no way of escaping, she sought refuge with her former educators, but when they too refused to receive her, nothing remained for her but death.  When all the preparations for the sacrifice had been made in accordance with the precepts of the oracle of Dodona, she was brought to the altar, adorned like an animal that is to be sacrificed; Coresus, however, whose duty it was to offer the sacrifice, let love prevail in place of hate, and slew himself instead of Callirrhoe, thus proving by his deed that he had been animated by the purest love.  But when Callirrhoe saw Coresus as a corpse, overcome by pity and repentance for her treatment of him, she went and drowned herself in the fountain not far from the Calydonian harbor, which since that time is known as the fountain of Callirrhoe.”

If a modern lover, desiring to possess a girl, got her into a predicament which culminated in the necessity of his either slaying her with his own hands or killing himself, and did not choose the latter alternative, we should regard him as more contemptible than the vilest assassin.  To us self-sacrifice in such a case would seem not a test of love, nor even of honor so much as of common decency, and we should expect a man to submit to it even if his love of the poor girl had been a mere infatuation of the senses.  However, in view of the contempt for women, and for love for women, prevalent among the Greeks in general, we may perhaps discover at least a gleam of better things in this legend of masculine self-sacrifice.