A big volume might be filled with the short love-stories in prose or verse scattered through a thousand years of Greek literature.  But, although some of them are quite romantic, I must emphatically reiterate what I said in my first book (76)—­that romantic love does not appear in the writings of any Greek author and that the passion of the desperately enamoured young people so often portrayed sprang entirely from sensuality.  One of the critics referred to at the beginning of this chapter held me up to the ridicule of the British public because I ignored such romantic love-stories as Orpheus and Eurydice, Alcyone and Ceyx, Atalanta and Meleager, Cephalus and Procris, and “a dozen others” which “any school girl” could tell me.  To begin with the one last named, the critic asks:  “What can be said against Cephalus and Procris?” A great deal, I am afraid.  As told by Antoninus Liberalis in No. 41 of his Metamorphoses ([Greek:  metamorphoseon synagogae]) it is one of the most abominable and obscene stories ever penned even by a Greek.  Some of the disgusting details are omitted in the versions of Ovid and Hyginus, but in the least offensive version that can be made the story runs thus: 

Cephalus, having had experience of woman’s unbridled passion, doubts his wife’s fidelity and, to test her, disguises himself and offers her a bag of gold.  At first she refuses, but when he doubles the sum, she submits, whereupon he throws away his disguise and confronts her with her guilt.  Covered with shame, she flies.  Afterward she cuts her hair like a man’s, changes her clothes so as to be unrecognizable, and joins him in the chase.  Being more successful than he, she promises to teach him on a certain condition; and on his assenting, she reveals her identity and accuses him of being just as bad as she was.  Another version reads that after their reconciliation she suspected his fidelity on hearing that he used to ascend a hill and cry out “Come, Nephela, come” ([Greek:  Nephelae] means cloud).  So she went and concealed herself on the hill in a thicket, where her husband accidentally killed her with his javelin.

Is this the kind of Greek “love-stories” that English school girls learn by the dozen?  Coarse as it is, the majority of these stories are no better, being absolutely unfit for literal translation, which is doubtless the reason why no publisher has ever brought out a collection of Greek “love-stories.”  Of those referred to above none is so objectionable as the tale of Cephalus and Procris, nor, on the other hand, is any one of them in any way related to what we call romantic love.  Atalanta was a sweet masculine maiden who could run faster than any athlete.  Her father was anxious to have her marry, and she finally agreed to wed any man who could reach a certain goal before her, the condition being, however, that she should be allowed to transfix with her spear every suitor who failed.  She had already ornamented the place of contest with the heads of many courageous young men, this tender-hearted, romantic maiden had, when her fun was rudely spoiled by Meleager, who threw before her three golden apples which she stopped to pick up, thus losing the race to that hero, who, no doubt, was extremely happy with such a wife ever after.  Even to this story an improper sequel was added.