Daphnis and Chloe

Chloe is the other protagonist of the novel and is an idealized, virginal young woman. Her name in Greek signifies fertility or blooming and reflects Chloe’s development from a child into a young woman over the course of the novel. Chloe is 13 at the outset of the novel. In ancient Greece, girls were often married by 14 and marriage was considered as marking the transition from girlhood into womanhood.

Chloe is strongly associated with the nymphs throughout the novel. First discovered as a baby in “a cave sacred to the Nymphs” (6), Chloe has a bucolic upbringing in which she becomes a child of nature. As Chloe reaches adolescence and falls in love with Daphnis, it is the nymphs with whom she shares her torment, telling them “Dear Nymphs! I’m going to die— / even you will not save the girl who grew up beneath your care” (12). Chloe, who grew up in rural spaces, feels a strong affiliation to the nymphs, crediting them with her care, despite being raised by Dryas and Nape. Chloe’s attachment to the nymphs as caregivers and parental figures relates to her sense of displacement, having not been raised by her birth family—although she does not know this yet.

Longus further develops the connection between Chloe and the Nymphs through depictions of Chloe’s body, which is described through nature imagery. In Book 1, Daphnis recounts his first kiss with Chloe: “Her lips were softer than rose-petals / her mouth was sweeter than honeycomb” (14). Here, Longus uses similes not only to compare Chloe to natural objects but also to suggest she surpasses nature, in a way that is more nymph-like than mortal. Indeed, when Daphnis catches sigh of Chloe later, he mistakes her for a nymph: “The sight of Chloe, wearing her pine-crown and her fawn-skin […] made Daphnis think that he was looking at one of the Nymphs” (18). The merging of regal and nature imagery through Chloe’s pine-crown further suggests Chloe is not an ordinary human.

However, the nymphs are not the only divine association with Chloe. Pan, who goes out of his way to rescue Chloe, describes her as “a girl whom Love desires to make into a myth” (38). This suggests that the gods have a shared understanding that Chloe has a special destiny and although her physical life is mortal, she will live a cultural life as long as any of the gods’ through the retelling of her and Daphnis’s story.

Longus also employs the literary trope of a pure virgin through Chloe, whose virginal status is displayed through her appearance and behavior. Longus describes Chloe’s body as “white and pure” (22), reflecting the virtue historically associated with virginity through her unblemished beauty. In ancient Greece, a person’s external appearance was also thought to mirror their internal thoughts and character. Therefore, Chloe is “pure” on multiple levels: She is a virgin, she has moral thoughts, and her body is physically beautiful and unmarked by age or disease. Chloe is a naïve girl, who “ha[s] faith in Daphnis because she [is] young and a virgin” (44). For example, Chloe has no suspicions about Daphnis’s relations with Lycaenion. Moreover, like Daphnis, Chloe also cannot comprehend how to consummate their relationship, further demonstrating her innocence.

However, Chloe does begin to show some skepticism about Daphnis when the two swear oaths of love and fidelity to each other. Chloe doubts that Daphnis’s oath is binding because he swore it to Pan, who is “a lustful and faithless god” (43). Moreover, although Chloe is a virgin, she is conscious of her own desire. After persuading Daphnis to take a bath, Chloe “watched him bathing, and passed from watching to touching” (11). Here, Longus introduces an erotic element by suggesting Chloe is participating in voyeurism, although it remains unclear whether she is touching Daphnis or herself.

Therefore, Longus does not simply present Chloe as a naïve, simpering virgin, but as a more complex character that also knows her own mind. In contrast to Daphnis, Chloe is often brave. It is Chloe who rescues Daphnis from the pit in Book 1 and who rescues him again from the pirates. This reversal of gender roles serves to put Chloe on an equal footing with Daphnis within their relationship.

Myrtale and Lamon are Daphnis’s adoptive mother and father. Lamon is a goatherd who discovers Daphnis abandoned as a baby, being suckled by a female goat. At first, Lamon is tempted to take only the finery that the baby has been left with, including a small dagger and an ornate broach, but the goatherd immediately feels remorse for these thoughts, recognizing that this would “show less mercy than a goat” (5), and takes the baby home to his wife. Myrtale and Lamon are stereotypical country dwellers. They lead simple, wholesome lives and work hard on the land.

Lamon has a more prominent role in the narrative than his wife and it is he who dreams that Daphnis is to be a goatherd. Moreover, when Daphnis is at risk of being taken as a slave and given to Gnathon, Lamon decides to reveal that Daphnis is not really his son to protect him, telling Myrtale that “from this day forth you and I will be without a son, and the goats and everything else will be forlorn” (75). Lamon prioritizes Daphnis’s safety over his own happiness, demonstrating a deep love and strong sense of parental duty.

Chloe’s adoptive mother and father. Nape and Dryas mirror Myrtale and Lamon, providing a similar function as Chloe’s guardians. However, unlike Lamon, when Dryas discovers Chloe abandoned as a baby, he immediately considers her “a gift from the Gods” (6). Nape is similarly taken with the child and is “instantly a mother” (7), loving Chloe just as much as a birth child.

Dorcon is a cowherd and minor character that helps rescue Daphnis from the pit in Book 1 but then falls in love with Chloe. Dorcon is “a young fellow whose beard was just beginning to grow, and he knew the name of love and also its deeds” (12). The cowherd is older than Daphnis and has more experience in romancing and lovemaking. However, when his feelings towards Chloe are unreciprocated, he plans to rape her. Dorcon is therefore a foil to Daphnis, who never considers forcing himself on Chloe, despite his overwhelming desire for her. The cowherd attempts to redeem himself by telling Chloe how to save Daphnis from the pirates with his dying breath, although his request for a kiss in return for the information still seeks to exploit Chloe.

Philetas is an old man that performs an educational role, informing Daphnis and Chloe about the pain and pleasure of love. Presented as a man of the wild, Philetas is described as “wearing a hairy goatskin, his shoes were brogues made of untanned hide” (25). The old man dresses in raw materials, rather than processed fabrics, marking him out as belonging to the forest world. Philetas tends a bountiful garden that produces flowers and fruits in every season: “I have a garden that I tend with my own hands […] all things that the Seasons bring forth, this garden bears in each several season” (25). The flourishing and fertile garden Philetas cares for is symbolic of his function in the novel: He helps to facilitate the romance between Daphnis and Chloe and enables their love to flourish.

In Longus’s novel, Love is a representation of Eros, the Greek god of love, lust, desire, and sex. Philetas describes how Love steals from his garden whilst disguised as a boy: “His skin was as white as milk, his hair was as yellow as flame, and he was as radiant as though he had just come from his bath” (26). Love never appears in person in the narrative and Longus only reveals his exploits in accounts from other characters, such as Philetas and the Nymphs, who tell Daphnis that “all else concerning you and Chloe will be for Love to accomplish” (36), revealing that the nature deities are aware of Love’s bigger plan for the pair.

However, despite Love’s absence from present events, his power and influence are pervasive. Love binds people to each other for life, inspiring values such as loyalty and friendship, but he also instils desire in characters that drives them to distraction or even to attempt terrible crimes, such as Dorcon’s planned rape of Chloe and Gnathon’s attempted rape of Daphnis.

The young Methymnaeans are a group of wealthy pleasure-seeking youths, whose inexperience of the wild causes them to make mistakes which cost them their ship. The men are sailing “to pass the vintage-time in a pleasure tour” (30). Their lavish lifestyle and hedonistic behavior contrast with the simple pleasures and hard work of the country folk, which ties into the broader theme of Urban Life and Country Idylls. After they lose their ships, the Methymnaeans are forced to return home on foot: “they had been reduced from yachtsmen to tramps, from overfed playboys to walking wounded” (34). With their pride hurt, the Methymnaeans lie to their fellow citizens that the country folk stole their ship as an act of war. The men are afraid that if they tell the truth, they will be ridiculed for losing their possessions by negligence and for being humiliated by shepherds.

Methynmna (known today as Molivos) is a town on the north coast of Lesbos. A traditional rivalry exists between Methynmna and Mytilene—the city near to where Daphnis and Chloe is set.

In Greek mythology, Nymphs are minor female deities that are usually associated with nature and natural spaces, such as woodlands and water. Three Nymphs appear to Daphnis “in all their comeliness and lofty stature, bare-armed and sandal-less, with hair unbound” (35). In Longus’s novel, as in wider Greek culture, Nymphs also symbolize youth and beauty. Chloe, as a young and beautiful virgin who dwells in nature, shares a special connection with the Nymphs: Dryas discovers Chloe in a cave sacred to the nymphs, Chloe often pays homage and makes offerings to them, and the Nymphs reassure Daphnis that Pan will rescue Chloe from the Methymnaeans.

Pan is the Greek god of the wild and shepherds. Pan is also associated with sex and fertility because of his link to nature and specifically the season of spring. He often spends his time with the Nymphs. Pan has the legs and horns of a goat, but the face and body of a man. In Daphnis and Chloe, the country folk revere a statue in the image of Pan that is “goat-legged and horned, with pipes in one hand and a leaping billy-goat in the other” (36).

Pan rescues Chloe when she is abducted by the Methymnaeans, warning them: “You have filled with war the countryside that I love, you have stolen the herds of cattle and goats and sheep that are my care” (38). Pan demonstrates his power by playing panpipe music that sounds like trumpets, making it impossible for the Methymnaeans to raise anchor and visiting Bryaxis (the Methymnaean general) in his sleep and threatening to sink his fleet “to the bottom of the sea and make [them] food for the fishes” (38). Pan embodies the power of the natural world and its ability to resist the threatening incursions of the urban.

Lycaenion is the woman who teaches Daphnis about sex and lovemaking; she is “young and pretty and too delicate for her rustic surroundings” (52-53).

Lycaenion, whose name is diminutive Greek for “little she-wolf”—a reference to her sexual appetites—is experienced in lovemaking. She tells Daphnis that “another man taught me this lesson long ago” (55). Longus also emphasizes Lycaenion’s experience by describing how she initiates sex with Daphnis: “she slid her body expertly under his, and guided him into the road which had eluded him till then” (54). When Lycaenion talks about the arrangement she has with Daphnis, she uses educational language, such as “pupil”, “lesson”, and “teaching” (54). For Lycaenion, sex is a routine act that she performs without emotion, comparable to giving a lesson in any other subject.

However, Lycaenion’s motivations in teaching Daphnis about sex are not entirely selfless, as she desires him to be her own lover but realizes he is in love with Chloe. Lycaenion manipulates Daphnis into first thinking that he is helping her find her goose and then persuades him that she is doing him a favor by teaching him a skill he can practice with Chloe. Therefore, Lycaenion exploits Daphnis and takes advantage of his naivety and innocence for her own gratification.