Work Text:
Everything I’ve Loved, I’ve Loved it Straight to Death.
There are days where I regret saving Daphnis. Him and his dark hair, and his smooth, tanned skin.[1] He is my opposite in that way. He does not know what he is doing; does not know how best to love Chloe, or how to love at all. I do.[2] When I found him in that pit, his face was flushed and wet with tears for he had wept when he had fallen and while he was calling out for help.[3]
Chloe, I think, is destined for me. At the sight of her my body goes hot and my blood pools low, near the base of my stomach. She is small and sweet and beautiful and far too good for a simple goatherd. He is too young, too inexperienced, and that is why I do not take him seriously or hang onto his words in the way that Chloe does. What does he know that I do not? What could he possibly give her that I could not?
I give her what I can, what I think she will like and appreciate. Soft cheeses, flowers, apples. Once my cows have calved, I give her the best one. Its hair is silver-gray, and it will grow into a fine cow.[4] At first, I brought presents for both Daphnis and Chloe so as to establish myself and turn their duo into a trio. I have this plan, in my head, of how things will go. Giving Chloe gifts is easy for me—I love the way her face lights up, how she accepts them so readily. And for the sake of it, I gave Daphnis fine gifts too. The reeds of his Pan-pipes are fastened with bronze instead of wax so they will hold strong while he plays them for his herd.[5] That is the biggest of his gifts, though, and over time I whittle them down until it is just Chloe receiving them, as simple but also as lovely as they have been since the beginning.
The beauty contest is of my construction.[6] This, surely, will win Chloe over. Once she hears just how much Daphnis and I differ, she will no doubt realize how much time she has wasted with that boy, and oh! How eager she will be for me. How silly she will feel for thinking she preferred Daphnis. But it will be okay, because she will be mine and I will be hers. I will forgive her and we will be happy together.
I stand, I make my case bravely, even though my hands are clammy and my heart throbs uncomfortably in my chest. I think I have this in the bag; I have outlined everything right with me and wrong with Daphnis. I barely listen as Daphnis rebukes my words, so sure in my own attributes I can’t find it in me to take him seriously.
Chloe jumps up. Time moves in slow motion. I watch as she makes her choice, and as her honeyed mouth[7]makes contact with Daphnis’ lips, my chest starts to burn. I can feel my face fall and the hurt start to creep in. I watch the way Daphnis’ lips press against Chloe’s until I cannot bear it anymore, and I make a hasty exit.
So, that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. How could I think simple words would be enough to win her over? I should have taken the direct approach from the beginning.[8] There are more than one route to love.
Her father will ultimately be the one to approve our marriage, so I devise my plan carefully.[9] I collect my gifts and my promises and I find him while he is planting a vine plant.[10]
“All I want in life is to marry Chloe. I can help keep you fed and wealthy if you agree to let her marry me,” I tell him before I lay out everything I have to offer.
I watch him turn it all over in his head. Surely this is enough. I’ve offered him the best of my resources! He looks pleased by all of my valuable gifts, and as time stretches on I become more and more sure that he will return tenfold and give me his gift of Chloe.[11]
“I must refuse the match,” Dryas says, and again, stones pile in my stomach. “Excuse me, I cannot accept these gifts,” he continues, handing me the cheeses and leaving. Again, my simple desires have been thwarted! My face burns with embarrassment at once again being cheated out of my desires.
Fine. This is fine. There’s still another way in which I can get Chloe—and again, as I prepare, I ask myself why I didn’t just do this in the first place. With haste, I make myself a beast. The hide of the wolf is heavy on my shoulders but so is my love for Chloe. And finally, everything will be worth it, as soon as I have her. When I have her, I can properly teach her the name of love and what it makes people do.[12] And through that she will love me, and I will love her even more for it.
I hide myself in the thicket and the wolf skin does a splendid job of protecting me from the prick and scratch of the thorns, brambles, and thistles.
I just need to frighten her enough that she freezes like a doe caught in the face of an archer. It’s then that I can get my hands on her.
In all of my years, I have never once called myself a master of stealth. (I am sure now, looking back, that the hide contributed to my clumsy sneaking that alerted the dogs). They are heavy when they pounce on me, barks making my ears rings, but at least the hide protects me from their bites. It protects me until it doesn’t, and I lay quietly underneath the hide until the dogs manage to drag it off and sink their teeth into my skin.
Never in my life have I experienced such pain![13] It courses through my body, making my limbs sing with it. I beg for help from Chloe and Daphnis. “Daphnis!” I cry out, knowing he should be loud enough to order them off, big enough to pull them off me if they don’t heed his call.
The dogs obey. I gasp as I lay on the ground, my heart beating so hard against my chest I fear it may break my bones. My ears are still ringing with the barks, and I flinch at the first contact of Daphnis’ hands. He and Chloe take me to the stream. I lean heavily onto Daphnis, who is shorter than me but (and I begrudgingly admit this) no less strong for it, my hand clutching his shirt to keep myself steady as the lingering fear makes my muscles weak. He doesn’t seem to mind, clasping his hand onto my waist underneath my arm that is slung across his shoulders. I am glad they do not know why I was hiding in the thicket—that would only embarrass me further, not to mention make me fall out of their favour. They think I was playing some sort of game. Perhaps I was. In any case, I failed to impart the lesson I was taught onto Chloe and extend my knowledge to her.[14]
They wash my bites in the stream. I find myself placed between the pair of them: Chloe behind me, wiping over my shoulders with soothing motions, and Daphnis in front of me, washing the bites on my thighs with tender strokes.[15]He chews green elm bark and smears it onto my skin, warm and wet from the inside of his mouth.[16] The expression on his face is calm and concentrated.
Afterwards, I tend to my wounds carefully until they heal. I keep a little bit of distance between myself and those two, focus a little more on my own herd, and watch as the days slowly heat up as spring comes to an end.
I also watch Daphnis in the water, how it makes his tanned skin shine in the bright sunlight.[17] I know that he feels things for Chloe; how could I not see it? The sun and the weather are inflamed in the same manner that both his and my feelings are; burning in the chest and face and even down further.
As summer grows hotter and then cooler, I slowly spend more time around Chloe and Daphnis.[18] At the peak of the heat, I leave the cowherd under the trusting watch of my own dogs for just a little while and join Daphnis in the water. It is blissfully cool, and I watch carefully as Daphnis dunks his head under a few feet away from me. If I held his hair, grasped it in my fist, and held his face down, who would know? I lose the opportunity and instead watch water drip off the ends of his dark hair and down the tanned muscles of his back. My fingers twitch. I don’t join him in the water again.
Summer comes to a close. Autumn ushers in quickly. In the peak of it, when the leaves have changed and are falling and the grapes are turning dark, pirates come. They come to my fields, and they try to drive off my cows right in front of me.
It infuriates me, truly. I have already have so many things denied to me. Chloe, Dryas’ approval, and now they try to deny me the safety of my herd.
I fight. I lose. I lay on the ground, beaten and slashed and wheezing. My blood is wet on my skin, or perhaps it is the tears that have fallen from my eyes.
Chloe finds me. Something in my chest was praying for Daphnis—but I can’t think about that, now. I can’t think of him chewing more green elm bark to press onto my wounds. So I look at Chloe and I think about what I wanted since the beginning: her love.
I ask for a kiss; I think it is a humble request because I know I am dying.[19] I ask her to remember me. In my head I ask her to ask Daphnis to remember me, too, but the words are caught in my throat and don’t make it out.
She kisses me.
Bibliography
Ancient Sources
Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” trans. Christopher Gill in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B. P. Reardon (California: University of California Press, 2008).
Secondary Sources
Gillespie, Caitlin C. “Creating Chloe: Education in Eros through Aesthetics in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.” In Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity, 350:421–46, 2012.
Ian Repath. “Longus: The Education of Dorcon.” In Some Organic Readings in Narrative, Ancient and Modern, edited by Ian Repath and Fritz-Gregor Herrmann, Barkhuis, 2019.
Lisiecki, Bartosz. “Marriage, Birth and Death in the Beliefs and Religious Customs of Ancient Greeks.” Forum Teologiczne 19, no. 19 (2018): 177–89.
McInerney, Jeremy. The Cattle of the Sun : Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks. Core Textbook. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
[1] This description of Daphnis comes from Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe”, trans. Christopher Gill in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B. P. Reardon (California: University of Californis Press, 2008), p. 293. Specifically, the smooth (beardless) skin comes from p. 295-6, during the beauty competition.
[2] Dorcon knows both the name and the deeds of love, although how he knows that is not explicitly stated. Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe.” 1.15
[3] This weeping is mentioned in 1.12. It’s not explicitly stated that he was calling out for help, rather that he was waiting in the hope that someone would find him, but one can assume he had the thought to try making his presence known to any passers-by, or even Chloe, who had actually managed to witness his fall. If she didn’t see it, I’m not sure what might have become of him if he didn’t call for help.
[4] There is no description of the calf beyond it being a newborn. There are two indigenous breeds of cattle surviving in northern Greece, and they are the Greek steppe and the shorthorn. Both breeds’ likeness are depicted in Minoan art and likely existed even before that time. It’s unimportant but I chose the Greek steppe, whose colours are variant-gray, silver-gray, and gray-black. McInerney, Jeremy. The Cattle of the Sun: Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks. Core Textbook. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. The description of the other things he brings her is in Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.15.
[5] Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.15
[6] This is not explicitly stated, but it seems most likely to be Dorcon’s attempt to prove himself better than Daphnis and get a kiss from Chloe—which is one of the deeds of love that he claims to know so much about. The beauty contest takes place from 1.15 to 1.17 in Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe.”
[7] Daphnis also describes Chloe’s mouth as being sweeter than honeycombs in Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.17.
[8] The direct approach being by force.
[9] Lisiecki, Bartosz. “Marriage, Birth and Death in the Beliefs and Religious Customs of Ancient Greeks.” Forum Teologiczne, 2018, p. 180. Meetings happened between the groom and the girl’s father (or, such as the case with Chloe, her legal guardian). The girl’s presence wasn’t even required for the proposal to be accepted, nor was her consent
[10] Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.19 describes everything Dorcon offers Dryas for Chloe: he gives him some small cheeses, and then offers “a pair of oxen for ploughing, four hives of bees, fifty apple trees, a bull’s hide for cutting up into sandals, and, every year, a weaned calf” (Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.19).
[11] In Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.6, Dryas considers Chloe a gift from the gods. This is sort of a reference to that. A common theme in Greek romance seems to be the consideration of girls and women as objects to be passed around, and calling Chloe a gift equates her to something that can just be given, which is how Dorcon perceives her—as something he can enact the physical side of love on.
[12] If he had succeeded, Chloe would have learned the deeds of love before the name. One of the main themes of this story, as Caitlin C. Gillespie argues, is the desire of marriage and a complete understanding of the works of Eros. This anticipation of the pleasure of Eros drives their actions. And while Dorcon knows both the name and the deeds of love, and maybe even how it makes you feel, it doesn’t seem like he knows what love is, really. This ‘lesson’ (similar to the one given to Daphnis by Lycaenion, except violent) would have warped Chloe’s perception of love and would have likely pulled the story onto a different path. Gillespie, Caitlin C. “Creating Chloe: Education in Eros through Aesthetics in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.” In Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity, 2012, p. 421
[13] This is foreshadowing how he is very unfortunately beaten to death by the pirates and, by all accounts, experiences even greater pain.
[14] Very interestingly, Ian Repath (as the first person to do so) argued that Lycaenion was the one to teach Dorcon in a similar way to how she taught Daphnis. As Repath described it, it can be inferred that what happened to Lycaenion (as in, sex for the first time), took place outside of marriage, and was painful for her (as she describes to Daphnis that Chloe may cry out and bleed). At some point, she passed the lesson on to Dorcon, but her own lack of comprehension made it so that her lesson only covered the physical side of love—and was therefore incomplete. And so when Dorcon was rejected two times over by Chloe and Dryas, he tries to put this lesson he was taught into effect by force. This is something I found incredibly intriguing, and so I included it—though only in vague mentions of Dorcon’s ‘lesson’ without including Lycaenion’s name. For more about this proposition by Repath, see Repath, Ian, “Longus: The Education of Dorcon.” In Some Organic Readings in Narrative, Ancient and Modern, edited by Ian Repath and Fritz-Gregor Herrmann, Barkhuis, 2019.
[15] I chose the descriptions of how Chloe and Daphnis washed him deliberately because I decided to give this story (one-sided) homoerotic undertones. The relationship between Dorcon and Daphnis would border on pederasty because Dorcon is considered a ‘man’ (has a beard and is described to be older though an indeterminate amount), and Daphnis still a boy (no beard, and Dorcon says he views him as a child in 1.15—however viewing him as a child would not matter in a pederastic relationship)
[16] This happens in Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.21
[17] Daphnis goes swimming in Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.23
[18] At this point, because it’s not described what he does during this time, I imagine he’s either given up on Chloe or is reassessing how he wants to go about it. Anyway, I took this gap as an opportunity to insert my own summer events and also sort of flip the switch on Dorcon’s feelings regarding Daphnis. It’s more so attraction/lust than love—again, not sure Dorcon knows what love is. Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.29 describes Chloe as Dorcon’s “former love.”
[19] He says he knows he is going to die soon in Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 1.29.