[326] The best-known ancient story of “love-suicide” is that of Pyramus and Thisbe.  Pyramus, having reason to think that Thisbe, with whom he had arranged a secret interview at the tomb of Ninus, has been devoured by a lion, stabs himself in despair, and Thisbe, on finding his body, plunges on to the same sword, still warm with his blood.  This tale, which is probably of Babylonian origin, is related by Ovid (Metamorph., IV., 55-166), and was much admired and imitated in the Middle Ages.  Comment on it would be superfluous after what I have written on pages 605-610.

[327] See Rohde, 130; Christ, 349.

[328] No more like stories of romantic love than these are the five “love-stories” written in the second century after Christ by Plutarch.  This is the more remarkable as Plutarch was one of the few ancient writers to whom at any rate the idea occurred that women might be able to feel and inspire a love rising above the senses.  This suggestion is what distinguishes his Dialogue on Love most favorably from Plato’s Symposium, which it otherwise, however, resembles strikingly in the peculiar notions regarding the relation of the sexes; showing how tenacious the unnatural Greek ideas were in Greek life.  Plutarch’s various writings show that though he had advanced notions compared with other Greeks, he was nearly as far from appreciating true femininity, chivalry, and romantic love as Lucian, who also wrote a dialogue on love in the old-fashioned manner.

[329] Hirschig’s Scriptores Erotici begins with Parthenius and includes Achilles Tatius, Longus, Xenophon, Heliodorus, Chariton, etc.  The right-hand column gives a literal translation into Latin.

[330] Der Griechische Roman, 432-67.  An excrescence of this theory is the foolish story that “Bishop” Heliodorus, being called upon by a provincial synod either to destroy his erotic books or to abdicate his position, preferred the latter alternative.  The date of the real Heliodorus is perhaps the end of the third or the first half of the fourth century after Christ.

[331] He refers in a footnote to such scenes as are painted in I., 32, 4; II., 9, 11; III., 14, 24, 3; IV., 6, 3—­scones and hypocritically naive experiments which he justly considers much more offensive than the notorious scene between Daphnis and Lykainion (III., 18).

[332] Rohde (516) tries to excuse Goethe for his ridiculous praise of this romance (Eckermann, II., 305, 318-321, 322) because he knew the story only in the French version of Amyot-Courier.  But I find that this version retains most of the coarseness of the original, and I see no reason for seeking any other explanation of Goethe’s attitude than his own indelicacy and obtuseness which, as I noted on page 208, made him go into ecstacies of admiration over a servant whom lust prompted to attempt rape and commit murder.  As for Professor Murray, his remarks are explicable