50 pages • 1 hour read
LongusDaphnis and Chloe
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1 Summary
Lamon, a simple goatherd, is grazing his goats on pastures near the city of Mytilene, when he discovers one of his female goats suckling an abandoned baby boy. The baby is wrapped in a quality cloak and accompanied by a fine dagger and broach, indicating he is from a wealthy background. Lamon takes the baby home to his wife, Myrtale, and they name him Daphnis. Lamon and Myrtale begin raising him as their own—although the she-goat continues to function as a stand-in wet nurse.
Two years later, a neighboring shepherd named Dryas makes a similar discovery. One of Dryas’s ewes repeatedly escapes and when he follows the animal to a sacred grove, he finds the ewe suckling an abandoned baby girl. This child has also been left with tokens of finery, including gold anklets and gilded shoes. Dryas believes the baby is a gift from the gods and takes her home to his wife, Nape, and the couple name her Chloe.
Daphnis and Chloe, the two foundling children, grow up with their adoptive families. When Daphnis is 15 and Chloe 13, their respective adoptive fathers have the same dream: A messenger from the gods commands that Daphnis should be a goatherd and Chloe should be a shepherdess. Both Lamon and Dryas are disappointed by this revelation, as they believed that their children’s mysterious start and expensive possessions anticipated a more illustrious destiny. However, both men obey the gods and begin to teach their children how to care for the animals. Daphnis and Chloe help and entertain each other with childish games as they graze their animals.
One day, Daphnis falls into a pit. Luckily, Chloe sees the accident and calls to Dorcon, a cowherd, to help her rescue Daphnis. Unable to find a rope, Chloe uses part of her clothing to pull Daphnis from the pit. Following his narrow escape, Daphnis goes to the sacred cave (where Dryas found Chloe) to wash in its spring. As Chloe watches Daphnis bathe, she begins to feel the first stirrings of desire and takes pleasure in touching his body as she washes his back. The young woman does not understand her feelings and fears she is ill.
Meanwhile, Dorcon falls in love with Chloe and brings her and Daphnis gifts to befriend them. One day, Dorcon and Daphnis have a competition to determine which of them is the most handsome, with Chloe as the judge. Chloe chooses Daphnis as the winner and rewards him with a kiss, leaving Dorcon mortified. The kiss awakens Daphnis’s desire for Chloe, although he is also too naïve to understand his feelings. Daphnis laments that his “soul is melting away” (14), but he desperately wants to kiss Chloe again. Dorcon pursues Chloe but Dryas refuses to give permission for the cowherd to marry his adoptive daughter. Possessed by passion, Dorcon resolves to “catch Chloe alone and ravish [rape] her" (15). Dorcon disguises himself in the skin of a wolf and lies in wait for Chloe, planning to terrify the young woman and then rape her. However, Chloe’s dogs believe Dorcon is a real wolf and attack him, causing the would-be assailant to scream for help. Chloe and Daphnis assume that Dorcon is playing a prank and rescue him.
With Dorcon thwarted, Daphnis and Chloe continue to fall in love, finding excuses to make physical contact with each other. When autumn arrives, events take a more sinister turn with the arrival of pirates. The pirates raid the land where Chloe and Daphnis graze their animals, capturing Daphnis and stealing Dorcon’s cattle. Chloe runs to Dorcon for help, only to find the pirates have mortally wounded him. Dorcon tells Chloe to play his pipes and call his cattle back from the pirate ship, before asking for a kiss. Chloe kisses Dorcon as he dies and then plays his pipes, as instructed. Hearing the pipes, Dorcon’s cattle charge overboard and the violent movement causes the pirate ship to overturn. Daphnis escapes and Chloe is delighted to see him alive. Chloe recounts the death of Dorcon and how she came to play the pipes, but she omits her kiss with the cowherd because she is too embarrassed to think about it. Chloe and Daphnis help bury Dorcon and then return to the sacred cave to bathe, where Daphnis sees Chloe naked for the first time and is tormented by desire.
Book 1 Analysis
Book 1 opens with an idyllic description of Mytilene, establishing a setting that is the perfect backdrop for a romantic tale: “Mytilene is a city in Lesbos, a big city and a handsome one; for it is divided by canals, along which the sea comes stealing into its heart” (5). The image of the sea “stealing” into the heart of the city foreshadows Daphnis and Chloe’s feelings of unbidden love that begin to emerge in the first part of the novel. Moreover, Longus establishes the theme of Urban Life and Country Idylls by comparing Mytilene to the countryside where Lamon and Dryas graze their animals. The countryside is a utopian space with “mountains abounding in game, plains fertile in wheat, gentle slopes with vineyards, pastures with flocks, and a long stretch of shore where the sea broke on the softest of sand” (5). This abundant landscape is a space in which both animals and plants prosper and reproduce. Daphnis and Chloe spend their early years in this fertile setting, where it is only “natural that these two young impressionable people should begin to imitate what they heard and saw” (8). Longus thereby introduces the theme of Navigating Love and Lust, depicting how Daphnis and Chloe cultivate their relationship from childhood friendship into adolescent infatuation.
However, besides the idyllic setting, further factors fan the flames of Daphnis and Chloe’s desire, including the intervention of a god. Referring to the young couple, Longus writes that “Love hatched a scheme that turned their sport to earnest” (9). Here, “Love” is a personification of the emotion and identified with Eros, the god of love, sex, and desire. In line with Greek mythology, the gods influence and interfere with the characters’ lives, often coming to their aid.
Longus also sets up the concept of innocence in Book 1, a theme centered upon Growing Up and the Loss of Innocence that the author develops further in the later books. Chloe’s initial naivety is evidenced by how she struggles to describe her emotions when she first begins to have romantic feelings for Daphnis:
No I am sick,
but don’t know what with;
I am in pain,
yet have no wound upon me. (11)
Chloe is so confused by her feelings for Daphnis, whom she previously considered a brother, that she fears she is ill. Her conflicting emotions are so difficult to comprehend that they manifest as a physical pain. Chloe’s entrapment between love and despair corresponds with the traditional literary paradox of pain and pleasure and the intrinsic relationship between the two states.
Similarly, after Chloe kisses Daphnis for the first time, Daphnis starts to act “as though he had been bitten not kissed” (14). Here, Daphnis behaves as though the kiss is something more akin to pain (a bite) instead of pleasure, and feels as though he has little control over his emotions. Longus builds on the motif of pain and pleasure through Chloe’s kiss with Dorcon as well. Although the cowherd has persistently pursued Chloe, the only time he is able to kiss her is with his dying breath: “So Dorcon spoke his last words and kissed his last kiss and gave up the ghost, even while he spoke and kissed” (21). The connection between sexual pleasure and death is a long-established literary motif, with writers often drawing a connection between orgasm and the moment of death. Longus similarly allows Dorcon a bitter-sweet moment where Chloe grants him the kiss he has craved for so long, only for him to expire in the same moment.
The opening book also contains more sinister undertones, with Dorcon’s planned rape of Chloe. However, Longus infers that Chloe is never in true danger by juxtaposing Dorcon’s evil intentions with moments of humor. For example, Dorcon’s resolve to rape Chloe follows straight on from his complaint that his pursuit of her had lost him “good cheeses to no avail” (15). Longus presents Dorcon as a witless man who thinks he can buy love with cheese, alleviating any potential threat by portraying him as a fool.
