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10
Italian Romance Writers

Influence of "Æthiopica" and “Daphnis ond Chloe.” and imitated through the whole Byzantine period, but exerted an influence on the French romance writers of the seventeenth century. So too the Daphnis and Chloe of the Greek sophist, Longus, was the model of the Diana of Montemayor, of the Sireine of Honoré d’Urfé, and found its echo in the Paul et Virginie of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

Such stories and the Golden Ass of Lucian, or that other of Apuleius, and the Satiræ of Petronius, and such early Christian tales as Paul and Thekla, and Cyprian and Justina, and the ascetic novel, Euphrosyne, ail give in rude form that mixture of of truth and, fiction n which is one of the elements of romance; but the difference between these narratives and the modern novel is measureless.

The mediæval romance. Centuries nearer to our own time appeared the medieval romance. Here we have the Arthurian Cycle, with its wonderful Round Table stories, and affecting Quest of the Grail romances. And the Franco-Teutonic Charlemagne Cycle, with its Chanson de Roland, Fierabras, Reali di Francia, and Ogier le Danois. And the Spanish Cycle, where the deeds of the heroic Cid inspired the Amadis de Gaula, full of splendid adventures, and with many passages of beauty and tenderness, and the Palmerin de Oliva, written, perhaps, by a woman.

Yet between these tales and the modern novel