THE

EROTOKRITOS
BY
:0~

JOHN MAVROGOR:OA TO, J\.1.A.

With an Introduction by

STEPHEN GASELEE, M.A.

Fel/uw of Magdalene College, Cambridge

...~.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
1929

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THE

EROTOKRITOS
OF VINCENZO KORNAROS
A GREEK ROMANTIC EPIC
t645

THE

EROTOKRITOS
BY

JOHN MAVROGORDATO, M .A.

With an Introduction by

STEPHEN GASELEE, M.A.

Fello-w of Magdaletze College, Cambridge

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON : HUM PHREY MILFORD
19 29

INTRODUCTION
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
LEIP ZIG NEWYORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMDA Y
CALCUTTA MADRAS S HANGHAI

HUMPHREY MILFORD
FUBLJSHRR TO THE

UNlVlii!SITY

HAT excuse has a classical scholar~ with little

more than a bowing acquaintance with medieval
Greek, to write a foreword to his friend's study of
Erotokritos ? Only that his interests in Greek literature
(and its Latin derivatives) have always been more in its
fiction than in any other form of its literary art, and
that Greek fiction cannot be studied without pursuing
it well into the Middle Ages. If the series known as
'the Greek novelists' ended with Achilles Tatius in the
third century A.D., another, depending closely on the
first, begins nearly a thousand years later, consisting of
Eustathius, Nicetas Eugenianus, Theodorus Prodromus,
and Constantine Manasses: the Aristander and Callithea
of the last-named, written in 'political' verse ( unr hymed ),
would appeal to very much the same audience on the
mainland as Erotokritos in Crete.
But the line did not end either with Constantine
Manasses or the author of Erotokritos: it continues
indeed to this day. I have never been to Crete, and I
don't know Greece well enough to have met with these
poems or poets in the flesh; but in another Greek island
I have found such poetry still a living art. I venture to
quote a little account of an episode in Cyprus at Easter
1928, which I wrote down very shortly after the eventa call upon me by one of the most notable local poets,
named Stelios: I

The arrival of this interesting person at Government House

was announced to me with smiles by the Kavass (a Turk always
clothed in a most picturesque scarlet and gold livery) and the
Greek police orderlies, and I went to the door to see him. He
produced three or four tracts, saying that he had more at home.
I asked him to fetch them, and he came back after luncheon
with a handsome bundle, of which there is some account below.
Printed in Great Britain

Cambridge Review, 25 May I9z8.

Vl

Introduction

I gave him a little present of money; it was excessive, I suppose,

for as I turned to go away he asked me to stop a moment while
he improvised in my honour; and after a moment's pause he
recited eight 'political' lines, rhyming in fours. I fear that I
did not catch them all, but they were certainly highly complimentary, and raised delighted smiles on the faces of the Greek
orderlies. He was a wild-looking young man, clad in wool and
sheep-skins; he goes from town to town, they told me, reciting
poems at the fairs and then selling the texts, mostly printed at
the newspaper presses, for a few paras.
The prints which he handed over to me have been placed in
the University Library. They include several poems by two
brothers, Christopher and John Palaises, mostly on the subject
of unhappy love-the 'New Aphrodite', or collection of love
tragedies which have happened in Cyprus of late years; the
death for love of Irene and the suicide of her lover, Vasos, in
Crete; the love-sufferings of ugly Erotonikes and beautiful
Kontulla; but they treat also of sacred subjects, such as the
miraculous cure of the epileptic Constantine Michael by the
intercession of St. Andrew, and more secular themes, like
denunciation of modern feminine fashions and methods of hairdressing .... There is one prose drama, 'The Runaway Schoolmaster', of which the scene is laid at Serres in Macedonia in
1906 and 1907-a story of liberation from the Turks, written
by one Pegasius, a Cypriote doctor, in 1921.

The books given me by the poet have been followed

by others, for I have a faithful watcher in Cyprus, who
sends me such of these ephemeral prints as she can pick
up. Many-most indeed- are uninspired versions of
contemporary happenings, such as a fatal motor-car
collision at a cross-roads; but love romances still occur,
both actual and traditional, and the latter of Eastern
and Western origin alike.
Yet the interest of Erotokritos is not only that of a
link in a chain of a literature far remote from ours.
I am not sure that I am convinced by the parallels
adduced with Romeo and Juliet or its Italian original,
and I do not think that our author claims more than a

Introduction
vn
certain probability. Here again I must return to Cyprus,,
this time for an analogy. The lobbies in several of the
little churches in Nicosia contain speciiD;ens of icons
now out of fashion, where an Orthodox painter has
portrayed a saint for Orthodox faithful, but has worked
on a strictly Venetian model: 1 pose and even dress are
Western, face and other detail Byzantine. I feel that
there is no doubt of Italian borrowing, whatever its
precise origin. Mr. Robert Byron is proving to us the
debt of Western art to Christian Byzantium: the
counter-action may be less important in the history of
our civilization, but its pursuit is well worth while, and
here is an indication of how it may be traced. I like to
think that New Rome was not too proud to take back
something from Graecia capta's first and best pupil.
1 Compare the change in style of the Abyssinian illuminators
of religious manuscripts under the influence of a single fresco by
Brancaleone in their country.

STEPHEN GASELEE.

N a paper published elsewhere on a gr0up of playsthe Sacrifice of A braham, the ETophile, and the Gyparis
-which occupy a unique place in the post-Byzant ine
descent of Greek literature, I have suggested that we
might see in them, not masterpieces, but significant
attempts of Crete, after the fall of Constantinople the
fi rst of the 'Succession States' of Greek culture, to join
under the influence of Venice in the general movement
of European letters. I only referred incidentally to that
far better known monument of Venetian Crete, the
Erotokritos, a romantic epic, or in the words of Professor Bury 'a long and tedious romance saturat ed with
Italian influence', saying that it had indeed the slowness of a popular and expensive film; but that it was not
written for the entertainment of Professor Bury. In
spite or perhaps because of its prolixity, 1 which is the
leading complaint of all the scholars and travellers who
before Professor Bury attempted to read it, it has remained the favourite reading of the Greek people for
two hundred years. In 1 801 the traveller E. D. Clarke
in the Crimea had it read to him in the evenings by his
hosts, a Greek family from Sparta.2 Popular translations

1 It is certainly long. By my own count of the ordinary edition

(Atlantis) there are 9,956 1ines. The text ofXanthoudides, who includes
some extra lines from the manuscript, amounts to ro,oso lines. It is a
little longer than the Aeneid (9,8~) and not quite so long as Paradiu
Lost (10,558). (Boccaccio's 'Iueide contains the same number as the
Ameid, Chaucer's 'Iroilw aud Criseyde, 8,239; Wordsworth's Prelttde
contained from 8,584 to 8,8z4lines in the early manuscripts, and 7,883
in the printed version (1850); there are 15,693 lines in the Iliad, and
I Z,IIO in the Odyssey). Those who have seen the edition formerly in
Professor Bury's library (Venice, 1804) will not be surprised that he
found it hard to read, although it is better printed than some of the
cheap Athenian editions a hundred years later.
2 E. D . Clarke, '!ravels in 1/ariotts Countries of Europe, Asia and
Africa (z vols., r8ro-16), vol. i, p. 415. There were numerous editions

Erotokritos

Erotokritos

of it have appeared in Roumania. 1 Its characters have

entered so familiarly into the life of all classes that
Erotokritos is found all over Greece and the Greek
islands as a Christian name-a very widely distributed
but not a very common Christian name, because we
may suspect the Church has usually been strong enough
to prevent a pagan hero fr~m usurping the functions
of a Christian saint. Dramatic p erformances of selected
scenes have been witnessed at Carnival within living
memory. It is only since the War with the ~ultiplica
tion of newspapers and the massed entertamments of
industrial life that its popularity h as begun to wane.
It is undoubtedly ceasing to be universally read now
that the labours of Professor Xanthoudides have at last
produced a text fit t? read. It is still possible, how~':er,
to buy for a shilling m the streets of Athens an ed1t10n
rich with all the tradit ional misprints of two hundred
years.2 And all the time it has been monotonou~ly
insulted by the historians of Greek literature who, qmte
apart from the quest~on of its . uncongenial languape,
have felt for it somethmg of the Jealous contempt wh1ch
the highbrow always reserves for the best seller.J They
would probably have ignored it altogether if their attention had not been compelled by Koraes, who on more
than one occasion referred to the Erotokritos as 'our
second Homer' or as 'the Homer of our vulgar poesy'.
The opinions of Koraes constitute an amusing incident

in the history of the poem; for even Giannares, no mean

scholar, and the first to subject its text and history to a serious critical examination, accepted with gratitude
and awe the testimonial of Koraes, which was, as he
points out, a considered and unshakable opinion and
not the expression of a momentary enthusiasm. Yet a
study of the contexts in the letters of. Koraes makes it
quite clear that he referred to Erotokntos only as, what
Leake called it, 'a specimen of the Romaic dialect at
a remote period' which unfortunately could not be
neglected as an aid to the interpretation of the purer
tongue; and his description of the work as ' the .HoJ?er
of the vulgar dialect' was always profoundly uomcal
and far from complimentary. If any doubt remained, it
could be disp ersed by another passage from the correspondence in which his real opinion of the Erotokritos
and other similar works is expressed in t erms which are
not at all ambiguous and extremely insulting. 1

of this work in varying numbers of volumes. Both Giannares and

Xanthoudides give the date 1819-24 and the reference vol. ii, p. 99
I For references to the Roumanian literature see Byzantitlisch-Neugriechische Jahrbiicher, vol. iii, Berlin, _1922, p. 198. .
.
z Bibliography, No. 5 The Etotokrttos held a promment place m the
street literature of Constantinople before the War, and was well known
in Smyrna; but I have found no evidence that it ever penetrated into
the interior of Asia Minor.
J Ignorance has not been confined t o Greece. Chambers's Encyclopaedia describes it as a 'pastoral', and the Encyclopaedia Britatmica
(13th edition) says that its metre is the 'rhymed alexandrine'.

HE Erotokritos was first printed at Venice in 1713

and is described on the title-page-as it has been
ever since-as a romantic poem (7Tot'Y)p.a pwnK6v),
composed by the most noble Vincenzo Kornaros ~ram
the t own of Sitia in the island of Crete. The prmter
in his preface describes the popularity of the poem in
the islands of the Adriatic as well as on the mainland of
Greece; and especially in the island of Zante whither
it had been brought by Cretan refugees after the fall of
Candia in 1669. Only one copy of the first. edition _is
known, and that is where you would expect 1t to be, m
the library of M. Gennadius. There were evidently
numerous manuscripts in circulation, and the printer

I 'I confess that it is not a pleasant occupation to read the Erotokritos

and other such abortions oflong-suffering H ellas; but whoever loves the
beautiful mistress must not fail to flatter the ill-favoured maidservant
as well, if his approach to the mistress is t o be in any way facilitated.'

Erotokt-itos
invites the owners of such to submit them for the enlargement and improvement of future editions. It
seems, however, that no other manuscript was ever received by this benevolent publisher, for the second
edition which followed in 1737 is a faithful reprint of
the first with all its misprints and imperfection. Only
one of these manuscripts has so far been discovered and
that is at present in the Harleian Collection in the
British Museum, for which it was bought in Corfu in
1725 for the sum of five guineas. The manuscript is
shown by various verbal peculiarities to have been
written in one of the Ionian islands, probably Zante,
by a scribe who adorned it with 120 miniatures. 1 It is
dated 1710 and though it omits numerous lines, mostly
those in which some severity of the Cretan idiom would
have presented difficulties to a Heptannesiac copyist of
a Cretan manuscript, it supplements the printed editions
with about fifty new lines and in many passages preserves a true reading which has been lost by the Venetian
printer. This manuscript, though known to Legrand
and Sathas, was first examined and described by Giannares, who in 1886 was asked by the Cretan National
Assembly to undertake a worthy edition of the Cretan
epic; he produced an introductory essay and a glossary
in 1889, but died twenty years later without having
produced the promised t ext. Meanwhile the numerous
editions published at Venice, and after the middle of
last century at Athens, continued to reproduce all the
errors of the first and to add a few of their own :2 the
only editorial revision ever undertaken by any of these
successive printers took the form of removing a few rare
One of these is reproduced as frontispiece.
z One of these misprints, which is to be noticed in edition numbered
z in the Bibliography, consisted in the omission of a negative in line zo,
a mistake which led Sathas to declare that the poem not only showed,
like the majority of the Greek folk-songs, a complete indifference to
religion, but actually opened with a denunciation of the Christian
faith. The earliest edition in the British M useum is Venice, 1789.
I

Erotokritos
5
Cretan words, or modifying the language of the titlepage with the intention of making it appear more
elegant. One other adventure of interest befell the .
poem, when in 1818 Dionysios Photeinos published in
Vienna his own version rewritten entirely in what professed to be a purer language (the kathanvousa) and in
a variety of metres, adding numerous embellishments
of his own, all with a view to making it more suitable
for the moral edification of the young: this New Erotokritos was illustrated with a series of engravings, from
which are descended the exceedingly rough woodcuts
which now seem to have become traditional-and which
are very much better than the modern drawings added
to a cheap reprint published in New York in 1918.
Rangabe, whose own praise of the original E1otokritos
is exceedingly faint, could not help remarking that the
two volumes of Photeinos had made it easier to read
and less worth reading. It remained for Xanthoudides
to publish in I 9 I 5, after a collation of the first two
printed editions and the Harleian manuscript, the first
text with any claim to scholarly accuracy and completeness, provided with an invaluable glossary and a voluminous introduction. If Xanthoudides has a weakness,
it is that he was perhaps too patriotically a Cretan, and
in his enthusiastic collection of every possibility of
Cretan flavour failed to distinguish sufficiently between
real differences of vocabulary or inflexion and mere
local varieties of pronunciation, so that the ordinary
reader may sometimes find it more difficult to contend
with the Cretan dialect and phonetics so rigorously
enforced in this edition than with the swarms of misprints in the older texts.
There was by this time a great mass of accumulated
argument to be sifted. The earlier travellers and literary
historians had been content to accept the authorship of
Vincenzo Cornaro, professed in the concluding lines of
the poem; and when it came to the question of dates

Erotokritos
they had pointed vaguely in the direction of the sixteenth century. But Sathas in a series of wild incursions
between I 868 and I 888 had retreated from the eighteenth
century 1 to the sixteenth and from the sixteenth to the
tenth-when a Thessalian or Athenian original, we are
to suppose, was carried to Crete, where it was rewritten
by a Venetian notary in the seventeenth. Then Giannares in I889 made the astonishing assumption that
such a poem must have been written in a period of
tranquillity, and having had considerable difficulty in
discovering a tranquil period in Cretan history was
obliged to conclude that a certain Vincenzo Cornaro
born in 1486 would just have had time to write his poem
before his birthplace was destroyed by an earthquake
in I so8. Twenty years later Polites published a serious
study of the poem, in the first part of which, marked by
all his usual exactness and sobriety, he had no difficulty
in disposing of the arguments of Giannares; when, apparently infuriated by a lecture of Professor Soteriades 2
praising the results of Western or Frankish influences in
Greek literature, he suddenly threw his well-known
sobriety over the hedge and went madder, much madder
than any previous commentator; he surprisingly declared that the poem must have been written in the
fourteenth century, before the appearance of the Turks,
in a Greek land not subject to the Franks, and after1 In his Neoe>J.7Jv1K~ cj),i\oiloy(a (Athens, 1868), p. 603.
At that time
he thought that the poem had been first published at Venice in 1756.
2 The lecture of Professor Soteriades (now Rect or of the University
of Salonica) is a spirited and charming eulogy of the Franco-Hellenic
epic, in which there is little to criticize except his acceptance of the
date 'about 1500'. He evidently offended Polites not only by his assertion that the world of chivalry represented is purely Frankish and
feudal in colour, but also by saying that the Greece of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries had 'much to receive and little to give', and
by hinting that the Greek Church was responsible for the spiritual
darkness of Greece and for the regrettable divorce between Greece
and tl1e West.

Erotokritos
wards rewritten by a Cretan, who was not
Cornaro. Not content with this paradoxical conclusion
he pro~ee~ed .to prove that the Tournament was ~
Greek mstitutwn and an invention of the Byzantine
Empire. Hatzidakis in I~Io prepared the way for his
fellow Cretan ~anthou.dides by sweeping away the
~rguments ofPohtes, whiCh was not difficult, and showm~ _that the poem is. undoubtedly a work of Cretan
ongm and can be assigned on linguistic and metrical
grounds to the end of the sixteenth or the beginning
of the seventeenth centuries.
In all.this discussion, on the details of which it would
be weansome to insist, can be discerned the influence
of t~o .disastr~us prejudices, both arising from a sort of
patnotism which has no place in scholarship. The first
suppos:s t_hat poems beco:ne ~ore glorious as they
re~ede I:f1 tim7. The second unagmes that there is somethmg discreditable about Italian influence-as if some
of the best plays in the world had not been based on
plots taken from second-rate Italian novelists.
The poem is written throughout in the usual political
verse of fifteen s,rllables arranged in rhymed couplets:
the rh{mes. s~o':"mg ~omp.let: facility and accomplishment. Thrs m Itself IS an mdtcation that the poem was
separat~d by a considerable interval from the beginning
of the SIXteenth century when rhyme came into common
use; ~nless. we are to suppose that the extant poem was
rewntten m rhyme from an earlier unrhymed version
a proceeding of which many examples are known. Th~
sense ~ften runs on from one couplet to the next, though
1
!his ~etrical sophistication is fortunately not accompanied by

Vincenz~

a~y mvemon of the natural order of words, which, especially in the

dia~ogue, flow as ~irectly as they do in the best folk-songs. The versifi-

catiOn, however? IS sharply distinguished from that of the folk-songs by

the frequent etl)ambmtmt. For the political verse in general see th~
n.ote on p. 2 of my I ntroduction to Professor F. H. Marshall's translation of 'Ihre~ Cretan P lays (Oxford, 1929), adding a reference to
Wagner, Meduval Greek <J"exts (1870), pp. ii- viii.

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8
Erotokt-itos
in spite of the sense the printers of the old editions
almost invariably put a full stop at the end of every
couplet. The language is the quite homogeneous Cretan
dialect of modern Greek, which began from the end of
the sixteenth century onwards to throw out all archaic
survivals. This process is practically completed in the
Cretan plays, which the language of the Erotokritos
strikingly resembles in form and vocabulary. Xanthoudides claims that the dialect can be further identified
as that of Eastern Crete, which agrees with the locality
of Cornaro's birthplace, Sitia. There are less than fifty
words in the vocabulary of Italian or Venetian origin,
not counting another fifty which though apparently
Italian are really, as Xanthoudides shows, Byzantine
formations from Latin. About another ten words are
of Arabic origin, survivals from the Arabic occupation
of Crete in A. D. 824- 960. Hatzidakis adds that of 3,ooo
words used in the Erotokritos less than twenty would be
unintelligible to a modern Cretan.

3
Book I
AM going to tell you a story, says the poet, about
the ups and downs of Fortune's wheel, the clash of
arms, the power of love, the grace of friendship, and
what befell a girl and a boy who were joined in the
bands of true affection as an example to all listeners and
1 9 lovers. In olden times when the pagan Hellenes ruled
the land there reigned in Athens a king called Herakles
and his queen Artemis, who after many years of happy
marriage remained childless. At last their prayers to
Sun and Sky were answered and the birth of a little
girl filled the palace with light and the streets with
rejoicing: she grew up in loveliness and grace and was
called Aretousa.
71
Among the many counsellors of the King was one,
his favourite, named Pezostratos; and he had a dear and

Erotokritos
9
only son, a boy eighteen years old, so eager in the
pursuit of knowledge tha~ he would often se,ek ~he company of his elders. His name was Rotokntos. 1 I t 89
happened that going about the palace he saw and
secretly fell in love with A~etousa. An~ neither ~is
hawks nor his hounds nor his horses which kept him
early and late away from the palace could make him
forget the thoughts of her that spread like hidden
flames. For whenever he heard the birds singing or saw 115
flowers growing or a tree covered with leaves he woul;I
think of the lovely Aretousa. So he turned from his
horse and his hunting and his young companions; and
one morning he told his dear and constant friend Polydares about his ridiculous love for the King's daughter.
Polydoros was surprised to hear such nons~nse and 210
warned him not to expect any favour from Krngs who
were not least dangerous when they were pleasant
spoken. Erotokritos answered with a very long discourse
on t he power of Love, and agrees to try to forget t~e
palace and the girl and to take to hawk and hound agam
and if necessary to die from never seeing her. 2
He found it harder than he expected and so 'when 37 2
the cool night brings rest to mankind' he would take his
lute and going silently would play very sweetly under
the windows of the palace and sing of the sorrows of
Love, vowing to his friend that this would ease him.
The King and Queen heard the nightly music and were 4 10
glad. Most of all did Aretousa take pleasure in the
songs, which often kept her awake, and would speak of
the singer to her wise old nurse Phrosyne; and would
write down the songs and learn them by heart: and 431
1 It is curious that throughout the poem he is called nothing but
Rot6kritos: this is sometimes even shortened to Rokritos. Erotokritos
only appears on the title-page, and was pe~ha.l?s a name given by t~e
printer. Aretousa also appears as Arete, wh1ch 1s a name well known m
Greek popular literature; indeed it appears to be a variant of this and
quite distinct from the ancient Arethousa.
.
. .
2 At I. 330 there is a possible reference to Icarus burnmg h1s wmgs.

Erotokritos
gradually she was enslaved by the sweetness of the music
453 and the skill of the verse. Soon the King wanted to
know who it was sang such pleasant love songs at night ;
and so he gave a party at the palace thinking that the
singer would be found among the gue~ts. But Ero~o
kritos would not sing openly and sat quietly apart With
his friend and only once or twice could not help glancing
at Aretousa who herself sitting at the King's side knew
that none ~f the singers was anything like the one she
wanted.
soo The King took thought and one night sent ten .menat-arms to lie in wait and capture the secret smger.
Again he came and sang more sweetly than the nightingale: and when it was near claw~ t~e men came. suddenly
out of a ruin where they were hidmg. Erotokritos broke
his lute into a hundred pieces, called on his friend, and
after refusing to accompany the guards to the pala~e,
when they tried to take him by force, fought them With
such fury that two of them were killed and the others
fled. Erotokritos and his friend were unhurt and also
unrecognized for they had had their faces hidden in long
false beards. The eight who ran awaJ: reported to ~he
King that the singer was as masterly with sword as With
lute; and they had seen nothing but the flashing of
swords in the dark. Aretousa, trying to thinkonlyofher
6rs reading and her embroidery, had to throw aside her
books and her samplers 1 and confess to her nurse
Phrosyne her desire to know and see the lute-player:
and when Nurse begged her to remember her position
and not to talk nonsense she wanted none the less to
730 hear the song again and began to pine away with secret
longings.
.
The King now sent thirty men to wat ch every mght,
but Erotokritos had thrown aside his lutes and his music
and grew pale and solitary. His father had to remind
10

1
I. 617. The needlework is here called ~&,...,.>.,, from the Latin
exemplum, from which comes also the word sampler.

Etotokritos
I I
him that now he was an old man and depended more
and more on his son for the management of their estate
outside the town; and that he really must pull himself
together. So Erotokritos tries ag~in to be gay and go 790
hunting with a crowd of young fnends but soon has to
give it up, and now talks only to a few old men v.:ho
came from the palace and to them would never mentiOn
her name but only led them on in hope that in t~lk 81o
about the palace he might hear the naT?e of th~ P:I~- .
cess. Even a dog barking meant somethmg to him tf It
came from the palace.
Now too the Princess complains more boldly to h er 83o
Nurse of her longing to find the Singer. She has copied
out all his songs and knows they were meant for h er; Sso
from the first night when they had heard the sound of
the lute in the dark she knew it was for her. The words
show that he is noble and wise and his fighting ten
soldiers in the dark shows that he is brave and strong.
Nurse is now seriously shocked: no nice girl wou~d 875
pay attention to a man much les_s to ~ twang o~ music
in the dark: who would ever believe It ! Aretousa says
she is helpless now, and it. is to? stupid and too excruciating. When I was a httle girl, she says to Nurse, 950
do you remember how I was devoted to my dolls: and
then how I took to needlework and would not put down
my sewing fro~ .morning till .night; and then it was
reading and wntmg and drawmg, and how cross you
were when I would read in bed in the morning and you
used to say you would have to put all my books on the
fire. Now a greater passion than all these has come over
me music is my comfort. I want to see the luteplayer and we know now that he must be worth seeing. 1000
Nurse 'dared say no more that night knowi~g th~t Love
with his cunning had conquered the weepmg g1rl who
had no rest.
Meanwhile Erotokritos sometimes gazed on the walls 1040
of the palace as night and day his heart gazed on the

E1otokritos
loveliness of the Princess within. One day his friend
Polydoros taking him aside in a lonely garden spoke on
the folly of his love for such a distant Princess and how
he had put off reason which alone raises man above the
beasts and the birds which have all else-beauty,
r140 strength and sweetness of voice. 1 And when Erotokritos
c~nfes.sed how Love had caught him and was torturing
u96 h1m mght and day, and that the naked boy would give
him no rest and when he closed his eyes would show
him her lips stooping to kiss him :2 he persuaded him
to go abroad and see strange people in foreign places,
1220 strange rivers, towns, meadows, and woods, the changes
of the world and girls more beautiful than Aretousa.
The only medicine, says Polydoros, is to go away and
126o forget: and I will come with you. So they chose their
finest arms and their strongest horses and set out for
Egripos, the beauties of which were said to surpass all
other places. But first he took leave of his parents and
taking his mother aside he asked her to keep safely the
keys of his room; for he had in his wardrobe certain
writings that he wanted no one to see. His mother
128o promised that she would keep them safely-'even from
your father'.J Now all this while Aretousa was pining,
IJIS her beauty fading, and when they asked her she would
find a thousand fair stories for them to believe. One
day her father said that for her amusement, for she
was his only daughter, he would proclaim in all the
towns and islands a great tournament to be held on the
12

1
Compare also tl1e passage about instinct, I. 2161- 74: and other
passages which show an intelligent interest in the animal kingdom and
something like a capacity to take a wide and detached view of Nature :
i11jra, Ill. 1269-80; IV. 497
2
I. n 85, 1290, show derivation of the name Erotohitos (Lovetried). At II 94 is a rare mention of a physical contact : and at II~ a
rare reference to the 'naked boy'.
3 I. 1280 and i11jra 1810 (her attitude to a promise) give a humorous
picture of the mother's character. Curiously enough she is the only
person in tl1e book who is left witllout a name.

E1otokritos
13
twenty-fifth of April: the prize should be a wreath of
gold and pearls which she should make with her own
hands.2 And she was glad, thinking to herself that the
lad who sang so well would look no less fine on a 1340
horse and in armour; and as he would not have his
lute with him she would know him she hoped by his
valour.
Now at that time Pez6stratos, the father of Erotokritos, fell ill with a fever: and the King being very
sorry for his favourite counsellor, one day the Queen
herself went to call at his house with some ladies of
the palace and with her daughter Aretousa. And the 1360
counsellor's wife, mother of Erotokritos, being in a
tremble with the Queen's visit and all these fine ladies,
took Aretousa by the hand and led her into the garden
to see the trees and the roses. Built apart at the end
of the garden was the pavilion where lived Erotokritos.
And his mother forgot her promise and unlocked the
door and they went in and Aretousa admired everything
more than any of them. And she pushed a little door 1390
in the corner, and there at the side of it was a little key
hanging which opened a little closet where Erotokritos
had his writing-desk and his chair and his inkstand and
his papers where he could come t o write and draw by
himself. Aretousa turned the key and went in alone. 1400
She opened the cupboard and picked up a paper, and at
a glance there she saw written all the songs which she
had heard the Singer sing night by night. She went out
at once and saying she felt ill asked to be left alone for a
little while with her Nurse. When they were alone together, Hush, she said, to-day my prayers are granted;
and she read out all the songs to Nurse (who was transfixed with the feeling of 'some consequence yet hanging
in the stars'); and Know, she said, that these verses and
1

I.
I.

The feast of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice.

Her accomplishments apparently include making jewellery
as well as reading and writing, music and embroidery.
1

1 312.
1 3 18.

14

Erotokt-itos

t~ese airs and all that bravery belong to the man who

will make me his wife, and now I begin to live.

Nurse tearfully protests that there is nothing to show
that Erotokritos made these songs for you. He may
~ave copied them out as you did yourself. And even
If he did there are lots of poor lousy rascals who can
string a few rhymes together. And anyhow when he was
here he never came near the palace to have a look at
1465 you. Aretousa did not answer but turned again to the
cupboard, and on the next shelf she found a picture of
herself which Erotokritos had painted on a fine canvas
and ~olled up and put away. 1 She gazed in wonder at
1500 t he h~eness and Now, she said, Now will you say he
doesn t love me ? Then for love she became a thief and
she took her painting and .the manuscript of the songs
and kept them. So unlockmg the door she said she felt
better, she had slept it off, and they rejoined her mother
the Queen and t hey all went home to the palace. Night
1540 fell and when all were asleep Aretousa and her Nurse
talked together, Nurse saying t hat a man will not make
a .good husband because some love-songs are found in
his cupb~ard, Aretousa laying her cheek against Nurse's
face, telling her how she was caught like a bird in a
I 590 sn.are; 'and it seems easy to you, she said, from the
ch~s but wait till you are in the middle of the waves in
a little boat. Now I know what it is to be afraid caught
as I am between the fear of my father and Love who
threatens me with flames and arrows. Only you will
never see me do anything I ought not to do not if I
were burned in the fire ; not a finger of min~ shall he
1651 touch; .nor anything else do I want of loving and the
rest of It but only to speak with him a little. Only if he
1434

I The mention of painting on canvas is remarkable but is not of

much value as an indication of date, for Botticelli and P~rugino painted
on canvas as early as about 148o; and both Titian and Raphael quite
commonly u~ed canva~ from the very beginning of the sixteenth centu ry
(as Mr. LoUis Hoarc mforms me).

Erotokt-itos
15
loves me and if I love, as the wheel turns, and my
mother and father order it, then decently and duly shall
Erotokritos be my husband and I his wedded wife.'
The dawn came and Nurse considered and thought that
she could do nothing but hope for the best. Erotokritos might easily forget all about it. But he all this
while was with his friend under foreign skies and when
the messenger arrived with news of his father's illness
they hurried back to At hens. Dismounting at home 1750
his first thought was to get the keys from his mother.
When he found his painting gone and his verses he was 1770
frozen with horror like a mother who should suddenly
find her child dead in her arms. No thief could have
taken them for he would have looked for money 1 or
silver. His mother when he questions her vows that the
keys had never left her and 'not a soul had entered the 1 g10
pavilion only one day the Queen came and her ladies
and the Princess and I showed them and they admired
the decoration and how clean everything was and they
didn't touch a thing, only the Princess looked into your
little den, and she left everything as she found it. H ave
you missed anything, my boy ? You must be mistaken,
I never gave your keys to anyone in my life.' Erotokritos knew at once that his secret was known at the
palace; the Princess must have been furious and shown
the papers to her father. He tells his fears to his friend
Polydoros who says they must find some friends to 187o
swear that some one else wrote the verses and gave them
to Erotokritos : there is nothing to be done but for
Erotokritos to keep quiet while his friend goes to the
palace and keeps his eyes open to see if the King looks
angry. If he does Erotokritos must go into exile again. 1884
Polydoros goes to the palace where the King asks
affectionately after Erotokritos : and Polydoros cannot
help noticing the joy in the face of Aretousa and her
I I. 1798, the word for 'money' is Topvloa, which Giannares, wrongly,
thought might be a useful indication of date.

Erotokritos
anxiety when she hears that Erotokritos could not come
because he is ill. But fearing, like Nurse, some consequence of these entanglements and with the be~t intentions in the world he returns and tells Erotokntos that
the King knows nothing but the Princess is obviously
furious and could hardly contain her anger at the sound
1943 of his name. 'She has not told the King for the sake of
your father and mother; but you must forget all about
her and never go near the palace.' So it was announced
that Erotokritos was ill, as now he was indeed, and every
1984 day the King sent to inquire. Then one day Aretousa
found four apples from a tree that bears fruit twice a
year1 and she sent them to the mother of ~rotokritos
to make him better. Then fear left Erotokntos and he
knew that she was not angry with him ; and in sudden
relief he begins to make rather fatuous explanation~, as
that all women like to be told that they are beautiful,
and that she must have thought the picture was just
2040 a sketch made by an admiring courtier. So he got up
and went to the palace to kiss the King's hand, and he
hardly dared to glance at the Princess who was both
glad and distressed. He began to come more oft en to
the palace and little by little both lost their fear of the
waters tha~ had seemed so deep and dark, and little by
little each knew that they loved and the secret was out,
2122 though they had neither spoken nor smiled : and
both Nurse and Polydoros knew that they could do
nothing now. The glances of Aretousa were still as
cool and noble as they were loving, and Erotokrit os
was content to know that his Princess looked on him
gladly and that he had nothing more to expect.
Young and untaught as they were they were skilled
in the graces of love, and as a little baby knows what
2184 it wants, so untaught did those two, girl and boy,
I I. 1984.
Reading Sl.j>opa. for Suf..j>opa., with Xanthoudides '":ho
explains the popular superstition that fruit of this sort was beneficiaL
This reading is preserved in the H arleian MS.

Erotokritos
17
know how to hide their passion and begin their contest
of love.

HE time came for the Tournament, in which Book II

Erotokritos is longing to win the golden wreath,
although Polydoros tries to dissuade him, because he
fears it will encourage the two lovers, and he warns his
friend that it will bring the secret singer into the open.
T hey busy t hemselves with a brilliant dress till the day
arrives, trumpets clear the market -place, the King with
a written proclamation, the Queen with a jewelled
spray, and the Princess Aretousa still holding her N urse's 120
hand, all take their places on the high dais.
The first champion to come forward was the young 145
prince of M ytilene, D emophanes.
The second was the young son of the King ofNauplia, 165
Andromachos.
The third Philaret os, L ord of Methane.
187
The fourth was Herakles, Lord of Egripos.
201
The fifth Nikostratos (or Nikostrates), Lord of 215
Macedonia.
The sixth Drakomachos, Prince (nephew of the Lord) 235
of Kmone.
The seventh was Tripolemos, L ord of Sklavounia. z6o
The eighth Glykaretes, 1 L ord of Naxos.
285
The ninth was a savage warrior from Karamania by 320
name Spidoliontas. H e worshipped neit her the H eaven
nor Stars nor Moon, but only h is own sword, and he
was a bitter enemy of the island of Crete.
The tenth was the young son of the King of Byzan- 365
I His name appears in the list of persons in the printed editions as
Liokaretes. T he printed editions have here Nikostratos, and the MS.
Glykostratos or Glykostrates. Xanthoudides reads Glykaretes, which
may be accepted. In Italian script both TA Y and AI would be represented by GLI. Similarly in Ill. 1293 the printed editions have
>.,ya.lvn and the MS. correctly y>.uKalm.

18
Erotokritos
tium, very glorious to look at and gloriously attended,
and his name was Pistoforos.
44o Phrosyne the Nurse is struck by his magnificence,
and tells Aretousa that here is a proper husband for her.
454 The eleventh is the sinister Lord of Patras, ~gly . and
cruel Drakokardos his name and no man was hts fnend
' the Karamanian.
except
495 The twelfth was K ypridemos, the young and charm.
.
.
ing prince of Cyprus.
Thirteenth came Erotokntos, all m whtte, on a black
518
horse, who gazes at the Princess while he registers his
name.
585
And fourteenth, all in black, the prince of Crete,
ruler of the famed and fair city of Gortyna. His name
6ro was Charidemos, and the tale is told of his happy life
among the hills and vales of flower~ Id~ with his youn_g
and lovely bride. But she becommg Jealous of a fatr
shepherdess one day when he had fallen ~sleep by a
fountain hid among the trees to watch him (for the
shepherdess was keeping her flock near by). And he
waking and seeing something m~ving among the leave~,
drew his bow and the arrow pterced the breast of hts
' who sank into the grass wtt
. hout a cry.
too-loving bride
And ever after he went about, from land to land, to
contests and tournaments, and all the trophies and
prizes of his valour he would hang up on her tomb.
770 As soon as the Karamanian sees him he begi?s to rage
furiously, accusing the Cretan's father of havmg stole?
his own father's sword. The Cretan answers that hts
father won the sword in fair fight, when a quarrel was
forced on him and he had to show how they fight in the
868 island of Crete. The King tries to keep the peace but
1000 without success: they fight with swords and great fury
and the Karamanian is slain.
u8z The King distressed by this unfortunate incident,
puts off the Tournament till the morrow to the great
u21 disappointment of Erotokritos.

Erotoktitos
19
Nurse and Aretousa talk at night, Nurse wisely remarking that these fighting men are all butchers anyhow. Aretousa turns restlessly in her bed till the hour 1239
when the birds begin to shake the dew from their wings
and with quiet chatter invite the sun: then she rises
and opens the window and looks gladly at the day-break.
The Tournament as carefully arranged by the King 1267
is to take the form of three champions-Crete, Cyprus,
and Erotokritos-fighting the remaining ten, two of
them fighting three each, and one four. 1
Before they begin Aretousa asks Nurse which she likes 1315
best and Nurse rising to the occasion half seriously and
half in malice says she likes none of them only the Prince
[of Byzantium] and the pretty lad with the fair curly
hair and the gold and red uniform [of N axos] and anyhow sees many better than Aretousa's fancy in white.
The trumpets blow, Erotokritos begins. He defeats 1365
in turn Methone and Egripos (with two jousts each) and
finally Patras, who after a terrific joust is unhors~d.
1512
Next is the turn of Cyprus, who unhorses Mytzlene: 1524
in his first joust against N auplia both horses are forced
to their knees; at the second N auplia is unhorsed and
not allowed to try again. His next antagonist is N axos, 1652
who coming forward speaks very sweetly (instead of the
usual threats) and is very politely answered. At the
second joust his horse falls and injures his hand. When
he has been picked up and petted, Byzantium, the 1755
fourth antagonist of Cyprus, comes forward, and at the
third joust is unhorsed, but receives a special message
The draw:
1. Erotokritos v. Egripos, Methone, Patras.
2. Cyprus
v. Mytilme, Nauplia, Naxos, Byzattti1t1n.
3 Crete
v. Koroue, 111acedonia, Sklav01mia.
4 Final round. Crete draws a bye.
Erotokritos v. Cyprus.
Result: Winner of Golden Crown ... Erotokritos.
Queen's Special Prize for general distinction and elegance . . .
Byzantium.
1

Erotokritos
of commendation from the King who wants him for
a son-in-law.
1829
In the third match the Cretan, who is now preparing
his black and heavy lances, first of all faces the very
184o hostile and blustering K01one, and finally unhorses him.
1925 M acedonia who takes his place is on the contrary ex1959 tremely polite and sincerely respectful; he is offered a
friendly withdrawal which he naturally refuses and in
due course he is unhorsed. Before leaving the lists, however, he swears friendship with C1ete, and says his own
father often used to speak of the Cret an's famous father
as the finest knight he had ever seen (especially in an
2030 expedition he made against the father of the Karamanian). The Cretan accepts with the greatest respect
and affection.
2054
The Sklavonian comes next and is very boastful, and
is held up to ridicule and hatred as big, stupid and un2138 pleasant before being overthrown, horse and all, to the
general delight. All are left talking about him as the
T ournament is declared over, leaving the three cham2169 pions Crete, Erotokritos and Cyprus, victorious (their
devices r espectively being Candle, Moth and Wagon).
21 85
The Queen gives her jewelled nosegay to Pistoforos,
prince of Byzantium (which secretly annoys Aretousa as
well as Erotokritos who fears that he will lose the
2203 Princess): and there follows a curious passage in which
the Poet explains that the beauty of Aretousa was not
wonderfully admired by others because she never looked
at t hem.
The King now proclaims that of the three vict orious
2222 champions, the Cretan, the Cypriot and Erotokritos
[t he Athenian], two are to be drawn by lot out of a gold
cup to fight for t he wreath of gold-the remaining one
to r etire. Aretousa's anxiety that if Erotokritos's name
2254 is drawn first, the second should be not t he Cretan but
the Cypriot is another sidelong compliment from the
Poet to the Cretan. This actually happens-and t he
20

Erotokritos
21
Cretan sulkily withdraws, without dismounting or 2266
taking leave of the King.
After three terrific jousts Erotokritos has his helmet
shattered, but he unhorses Cyprus and thus remains the
winner. His victory is very popular, especially with
Aretousa : as she gives him the Wreath their hands 2415
touch and their secret love overwhelms their hearts.
All go home rejoicing that the lad from the palace has
won, and Aretousa loves to hear every one talking about 2452
Erotokritos.

HAVE passed very lightly over the details of the

Tournament, omitting the sp-ecification of the champions, the colours of their dress, the minute details of
their heraldic devices, the stage carpentry which somet imes added ferocity to their entrances-thus Korone
entered from a blue, green and black cavern and
Sklavounia from a cloud and a peal of thunder- not to
mention their long speeches of denunciation and defiance, the descriptions of the tilting, and the elaboration
of similes used to intensify the shock of the horsemen,
which seem t o exhaust every possible combination of
storms, earthquakes, tempests on land and sea, hawks
and lions, t orrents, fires, floods, whirlwinds and thunderbolts. But before we forget the Tournament it may be
useful to draw what conclusions we can as to the circumstances of the poet.
First of all it is sufficiently obvious that the wild and
heathen Karamanian is a poetic representation of the
Turk, the Arch-Enemy of Greece, of Venice and of
Christendom. T he disguise is as transparent as that in
which some modern novelists present their best friends.
I t is only surprising that a scholar of the calibre of
Polites should have vehemently asserted that he can
find in the poem no reference to either T urkey or Venice,
arguing that as medieval poets were destitute of his-

E1otokritos
tori~al sense and incapable o_f excluding contemporary
environment, the poem, as 1t does not present either
Turks or Venetians in their own proper habit, must
have been composed before either Turkey or Venice
were heard of. The answer is briefly that this poet was
capable of excluding the Christian religion, being ingenuously scrupulous in making his characters pray
always to Sun, Moon, and Stars. Secondly that this
po~~ was. clearly trying to exclude the Turk by disgmst.ng h1m, but though he succeeded in excluding the
Rartlcular T_urk, the Turk in his universal aspect inSISted on bemg represented. The point need not be
laboured, though it would be possible to show that all
sorts of details in the narrative agree with the identification; for instance that the claim to the sword of the
Cretan's father is a symbolic presentation of Turkey's
challenge to Venetian sovereignty in Crete, just as the
Cretan mourning for his young bride (the only unmistakable refe~e~ce in the poem to ancient mythology,
apparently denvmg from the story of Cephalus and
Procris 1 )? may be a poetic image of Crete mourning for
her lost mdependence. The Cretan sympathies of the
poet require no underlining: the tiltyard echoes with
the praises of the black Prince of Crete, who is made to
beat all the other knights, until, by the ingenious device
of as it were drawing a bye in the final, he remains
undefeate~ _without winning the Crown, which had by
the necessities of the plot to be reserved for the Athenian
champion and hero of the story, Erotokritos. The poet
shows a particular interest in the idyllic landscape of
Mount Ida which is probably inspired by personal
affection; and the Cretan's defeat of the savage Karamanian obviously indicates Crete as the champion of
civilization against the Asiatic barbarian.
After Karamania the places which are regarded with
particular hostility are Patras, and Methane and Korone,
22

Ovid, Met. vii. 796 ff. and 778. See below, p. 51.

Erotokritos
23
which are the two famous Venetian colonies of Modon
and Koron-all three places in the Peloponnese and all
three conquered by the Turks between 1460 and 1500.
The places other than Crete which the poet regards
with particular tenderness and affection are Cyprus,
Naxos, and Egripos (Negropont or Euboea), all three
islands formerly under some form of Venetian sovereignty. Negropont was captured by the Turks after a
terrific siege in I 4 70, N axos in I 566, and Cyprus in I 570after which there was peace between Venice and Turkey
till the Turks attacked Crete in 1645.
If these facts are properly digested I believe it will
appear extremely probable that the poem must have
been written after I645, at a time when the three islands
could still be regarded as fellows in distress, especially
as their happier state under Venetian rule would still be
remembered; for two of them, Cyprus and Naxos, had
been lost less than a century before, while the third
Egripos was captured after such a terrific and bloodcurdling struggle that it would not easily be forgotten
in any Venetian environment. 1 At such a time however
the Peloponnese, captured by Turkey I 50 years before
and much more completely assimilated, would be regarded only as a hostile base; and when we find that in
I645 the Turkish fleet actually sailed for Crete from the
bay ofNavarino, and that immediately after the Turkish descent on the coast of Crete, the Venetians attempted to divert them 2 by making raids on Patras and
Koran, it becomes extremely tempting to suppose that
the poem was written only a year or two after I645
Of the other places mentioned, the glory ofByzantium
requires no explanation: no one except Professor Polites
would suppose that the city or its ancient name could
have been forgotten in less than two centuries. M ytilene
captured by the Turks in 1462 and Nauplia in I542
I

Miller, Latim in Levant, 478.

Miller, Latin Orient, 194; Finlay, v.

111.

Erotokritos
have no particular colour and only take part in the
Tournament in a brave and chivalrous way. The description of the Sklavonian seems to be a fairly straightforward attempt to express contempt and dislike for the
Slavonic tribes of the Dalmatian coast. The very demonstrative affection for Macedonia presents some
difficulty unless we suppose the poet to ~ave heard of ~he
glories of Alexander the Great (a not unhk~ly,hyp_?thesi~),
in which case the story of the Macedoman s fnendship
for the Cretan's father becomes a simple allegory of
ancient Hellenic grandeur and future hopes. It is quite
independently of political arguments such as these, and
exclusively from evidences of language and metre, from
the diffusion of Italian literary influences, epic pastoral and dramatic, from the extremely unsafe evidence
of the diffusion of such artistic emblems as the Heart
transfixed with an Arrow or Death with a Sickle, as well
as from the significant fact that no references to or
borrowings from the poem, literary or lexicographical,
are found before its publication in 1713, that Xanthoudides concludes that it must have been written between
rsso and r669.

6
Book Ill MEANWHILE Aretousa is parched and burning

for a sight ofErotokritos, and can neither eat nor

sleep. The doctors say it must be her nature. to ~e wow40 ing so thin. I At last she tells Nurse she will d1e If she
cannot have a few words with Rotokritos.
Nurse says his victory in the Tournament was mostly
luck: he would never have won if he had had to fight
the Cretan. Anyhow it is not possible that he should
78 marry a Lady, and that the Apple should be eaten by
the Gardener. It is bitter to have nursed and loved
a King's child, and now to see her building hopes on
I

The doctors are always mentioned with a suspicion of satire.

Erotokritos
z5
a foundation of snow. People never listen to their real 125
friends, but if she will only turn back now from the edge
of the precipice-- I know you are right, says Aretousa, 16o
but it all goes in at one ear and out at another. And the
struggle with my father will lead, as wise men say of
war, to peace and love. It may be true of war, says
Nurse, but an attack on your Father's honour will lead 190
to rage and misery even beyond the grave. Aretousa
pitifully repeats that she is no longer Aretousa with a 200
will of her own; she is like a reed in the wind. She wants
to marry Erotokritos. It began with a little pleasure
in a song: now she is helpless in the storm of Love
like a boat without a helmsman. If her Father will not 2 45
give her Erotokritos for her husband she will die. She
has not forgotten honour: she only wants to see him
and talk with him a little. Nurse becomes more gnomic
than ever: you must medicine the wound while it is
fresh: what can be done in the green wood cannot be
done in the dry: remember that some day you will be a 291
Queen. What is the use of talking to me about medicine,
cries Aretousa, when the wound is in the deep of my
heart? I cannot fight Love who has already conquered 318
me: and she breaks into a conceit which explains that 352
her sighs come from the furnace in her heart which
Love fans with his wings. It is a set piece with hysterical
ending-Wherever your hand touches me it shall find
Erotokritos: I am on fire: I am up in the sky and down 362
in the deep. . . . And Erotokritos, with his Wreath of
Honour to gaze at, was in even greater turmoil. He often 378
went to the palace now, and the lovers openly declared
their love by smiles and glances. Below Aretousa's own
room was another used only for clothes and needlework:
this had a little barred window opening on to the roof
of the palace store-house. She coaxes Nurse to allow 424
her to talk with Erotokritos by night at this window:
only to ask him about his songs, and why he wanted to
draw her portrait, will end her sufferings.
p;

z6

Erotokritos

Nurse replies: such an interview will only make you

worse, and the King will find out; and anyhow I will
500 have nothing to do with it, and you ought to b e ashamed
of yourself, dragging your R oyalty and your prettiness
in the mire. My reason has flown away, says Aretousa:
I am on fire, and only a few words from his lips can
536 quench me. Nurse, finding it was no use to talk to h er
and only made her worse, let h er have her way. 1
Night came, the palace slept and Aretousa, dressed as
she was, waited in shame and longing at the little barred
570 window in the dark. At last Erotokritos climbing on the
roof and not a pebble stirring came si~ently ;:o the win~ow
and said who he was; she answered m a still small vmce,
and both remained trembling and silent for a whole
594 hour, their hearts too full to speak, as a pitcher with a
narrow neck cannot be emptied. Aretousa was the first
6o6 to speak and sh e asked him why he had drawn her
picture and kept it in his cupboard with the. songs h e
used to sing.2 Then h e began to speak of all his sorrows
62o that you know, and kissed the bars of the window.
6 o Aretousa wept silently and at dawn sent him away,
3
telling him to come again the n ext night only to speak
with her and nothing more. In the upper room she
645 found Nurse Phrosyne waiting dumb with grief. She
did not sleep that night, n either did he, each rememberr Ill. 529 ff. There is no mention of any letter carried by Nurse
and we are not told how this first meeting was arranged.
2 Ill. 6o6. That her first words should be to ask him about this
drawing seems to me to be an extremely good touch. Such moments
of poetic value, when the author's instinct overcomes contemp?rary
conventions and makes him unexpectedly brief, are rare but unmistakable; see also Ill. r6r8, IV. 1565, and IV. 1770; and Ill . .617-zo,
the passage immediately following, in which the poet reframs from
recapitulating the sorrows of Erotokritos. It is a defect of most
Modern Greek poetry, outside the folk-songs, tha~ it tends .to. be flatly
descriptive, forgetting that 'emotion recolle~te~ m tranqu~ty~ ~ust
be communicated by a form of words more s1gmficant than md1v1~ual
diction. This true virtue and purpose of poetry has been lost s1ght
of by nearly all modern poets between Valaorites and Kavafes.

Erotokritos

27

ing every word that the other had spoken. Bright day
came and they waited for the night: and when d arkness 662
came that night Aretousa began to speak more freely
from the bottom of her heart. They arranged that he
should not come often to the palace.
M any nights they spoke together at the window and
~ften wept s_ilently; and the darkness brought them
h ght. One mght he asked Arete to give him her hand. 67o
Never think to touch my hand, said Aretousa till the
.
'
sweet time comes and my father wills it. O nly b e con- 69o
t ent to know that whatever happens you will be my
husband.
And she told him that his father, old P ezostratos,
should go to the King wh o was very fond of him, and
ask for her in marriage. Their love was father to the
thought that it would be easy, and they did not know 702
the great gulf that divides a great lord from his servant.
So Erotokritos, whose friend knew of these nightly
mee!ings but could do nothing, found a chance to speak
to his father. Old Pezostratos had long wanted his son
to marry and was delighted to help him, but when he
heard the truth (all except the meetings at the window) 766
a black cloud o~scured his joy. H e begs his son to give
up such a mad Idea and smother his ridiculous passion.
You are much too old and d ried up, says Erotokritos, 8r6
to understand my feelings. If you will not even try, 844
then I will go away and die in a strange lan d . R ather
t~an lose ~s son, ~ezostratos agrees t o try, and next day 9oo
With the Kmg begms to recall how in olden times virtue
and wisdom, which Fortune cannot take away, were of
more account than rank and riches; 1 and after two or 918
three unsuccessful attempts he at last, thinking of his
d ear son, forces himself to speak out-but the King cuts
him short, orders him to leave the palace and never
enter it again, and Erotokritos to leave the country 932
1

Ill. ~910. These sentiments resemble the arguments of Erophile,

1v. 278 ff. See below, p. 52.

28

Erotokritos

within four days and never t o return unless he wants

death for a wedding present. Pezostratos returns in
despair, chiefly at losing his son, and wishing he had never
1ooo listened to the boy. Erotolaitos says the King's anger
will soon blow over; . . . and the Poet leaves the son
comforting the father in order to speak of Aretousa. 1
Seeing the King in a bad temper she begins to be a
1032 darling ;2 he tells her of the silly presumption of the old
man that had nearly spoiled the day for him : of the
sentence on father and son : and that fortunately the
Prince of Byzantium had asked for h er hand the night
before, and she should soon be happily married.
Aretousa leaves the room half fainting and pours out
her sorrows to Phrosyne, who though pitying her is glad
108c to hear that Erotokritos is to be sent away. Nurse advises
her to forget him and marry the Prince and be thankful.
Fortunately no harm has been done : no one need ever
know: so now is the time to forget the servant and
II22 marry a king. Aretousa determines to do al~me at
Love's dictation what she had hoped to do With the
advice ofPhrosyne (1073)-what she had written on her
h eart3- to betroth herself to-night to Erotokritos and
to t ell the King that she has sworn never to marry
II44 another. H e probably won't kill her, but even if he does
- - Nurse pale as death says, How dare you, you who
used to blush so easily, and piles up wise saws about
12oo women who run after vanities and such things that soap
and water will not cleanse, and all the time holds her
in her arms and kisses her. Aretousa with many words
reproaches Phrosyne with wanting to leave her and
1268 being afraid to die with her- with one who in loving is
r Ill. I OII. The poet is a little awkward in these transitions from
suffering hero t o suffering heroine and back. Indeed the direct narrative
is never as good as the dialogue.
z Ill. 1018. <11TAO.)'XVIKOiJAa.lylV7J.
J Ill. 1129. Only the name Aretousa in the text at this point shows
that she speaks these lines to Phrosyne. The usual Myt .,.~"1 or >.ly n
r'l]s is omitted. But Xanthoudides inser ts >.In.

Erotok ritos

?nly o?eying. the law _of Nature. Nurse stops scolding: 1281
If she IS t? die there IS no cure for it; and promises to
help to-mght, as long as you don't let him come inside.
Of course !lot, says Aretousa joyfully, and you will be 1326
there to witness.
At midnight Erotokritos came to the window and 1350
weeping, told her of his banishment. He will di~
sooner than forget h er, and asks her to remember him 14o8
w_hen she marries another. H ow could she ever forget
~IJ?, protest_s Aretousa, whose image is marvellously 1452
livmg deep m. her heart_? H e shall see. And calling
Phros~e she gives her a hght and puts h er on her right
hand, hke a m other, and asks her to witness that Rotokritos is her husband, and swears by H eaven, Sun and
Moon that none other shall ever wed her. She stretched
her hand out of the window, saying, Let Rokritos take 1465
~his hand that so enclasped we may go down together
mto ~ne tomb. And she gave him a ring, asking him to
wear It always, for always she would wait for him alive or
dead. Erotokritos blesses the marble hand that promises
what he feared. to ~ose. And whoever has loved, says
the Po~t, can 1magm e t heir farewells and sighs that
la.sted till daw~-and what they said for three more 1520
m~hts at that wmdow. Came the last night, and Eroto~ltos spok~ of how by a? y means she might escape
eit her marnage to Byzantmm or death. D on't worry
says Aretousa, he won't kill me and h e suspects nothing~
D awn comes to part them: 1 thunder, lightning, the
palace shakes, the stones and bars of the window drop 1570
tears which next morning are seen to be blood, and
when Aretousa falls fainting into Nurse's lap, the Poet
turns to the Reader and asks him not to be h ard on her
children even after they are twelve years old never kno~
Th~ poet fa.ils badly in describing their farewell. Compare Romeo
m1d Jultet, m. tv. 6-'It was the lark ... '-with this extraordinary
digression, IlL 1579-1612. Yet when Aretousa recovers from the
swoon (1618) her words are natural and vivid.
1

29

I
I

I
I

I
I

I
I

30

what is good for them; and she is not the only one:
1618 young and old, Love maddens all of them; and she was
only thirteen years old, rising fourteen. 1 When she
164o comes to (asking, Where is he?), Nurse gives her usual
166o words of comfort that Time works wonders. Erotokritos tells his friend to stay behind and to keep him
and the Princess secretly informed of each other. Polydoros promises and hopes for the best, and is commended
17oo to the sorrowing parents. Erotokritos breaks away from
them, whose lamentations begin to bore him, and ri~es
off with only one servant2 blindly through mountams
1720 and forests, himself lamenting. He calls on the Heavens
to burn up everything except Aretousa, and on the
Stars and on the Sun to hurl a thunderbolt at the
pitil:ss King, and on the Planets to move ap the kings
of the earth in alliance to make war on him, that he
1732 may remember and call for Erotokritos. 3
So his sighs make rain as he goes on into distant
places unknown. Meanwhile his father dismisses friends
and servants horses and hawks, nails up the windows,
176o bolts the do~rs and goes into mourning and seclusion.

T.

HE King talking things over with the Queen,

suspects that something must have been going on
21 between Erotokritos and Aretousa: her dressings up;

Book IV

Erotok1itos

Erotokritos

I Ill. 1608. Just Juliet's age ... 'come Lammas eve at night shall
she be fourteen.' Curiously enough, Shakespeare reduced Juliet's age
from sixteen which is her age in Brooke's poem, as Brooke had reduced
it from Bandello's eighteen. It is usually suggested that Shakespeare
was influenced in this reduction by Marlowe-Jew of Malta, Act 1,
adji?J.
2 Ill. 1690. This faithful servant has a name in the list of characters,
Pistentes, which is given i?Jjra, IV. 776.
J Ill. 1723-32. The rudiments of a supernatural machinery are here
visible, perhaps a sign that the poet hoped his work might grow from a
romance closely concerned with the personalities of hero and heroine
to an epic which surpasses the fate of individuals.

31

all his new suits; he may have been the mysterious luteplayer. All the more reason, now he is out of the way 2 7
for marrying her off quickly.
'
One morning Aretousa dreams: she is nearly drowned 49
in a stormy sea, afterwards in a river in which she is
wading breast deep. A man with a torch leads her to
shallow water but again she is left helpless and wakes
up terrified. Nurse comforts her, but such dreams, she 1oo
tells Nurse, are true, two hours before dawn when the
spirit is free and unhampered by humours and vapours
from the stomach. This gift is man's because he is
animated and what we see at dawn are often not dreams 119
but vision~ of c.?ming events. Nurse (surprisingly) takes 130
the opposite v1ew: she sees dozens of dreams. And if 138
they are of such import what is the use of free will?
Each man sleeps as he makes his bed. In fact what you
saw was true: you are in trouble, but it is of your rso
own making and you don't want a dream to tell you
that.
She was herself alarmed but now interprets the
dream 1 as meaning that the worst troubles are over.
And Arete was comforted h aving often been told that 190
it is silly to believe in dreams.
That very day an embassy arrives from Byzantium
asking for her hand in marriage, which rejoices the 2oo
King's heart.
Aretousa fears the worst, and Nurse chatters unconvincingly about all sorts of things which might occasion 238
feudal embassies; and continues to comfort her as best 253
she can, when to her terror they are sent for by the
King, who wisely and kindly tells her of the happy
marriage2 offered by that 'golden eagle' who shone at 284
the tournament. A cold hand grasped her heart. She
answers very affectionately that she cannot leave her
IV. 161. With a bad pun on ~.!>.ov-'~1/>.wp.aTa.
With the King's speech here, IV. 273, compare Capulet's wordsRomeo a11d Juliet, m . v. 177.
I

32

Erotokritos

315 father 1 and mother, and develops the argument with

36o great feeling: she would rather die.
388

410

420

440
465
470

490

508

558

570

The King listened with his heart boiling like water

on the fire, and seizing her hand in a rage, warns her
not to play with them. Aretousa sinks to her knees
humbly : she is only a little girl with the milk still on
her lips and the dolls still on her knees : they can do
with her what they wish-but she will never marry any
man against her will. The King throws her to the
ground, drags her behind him and beats h er; and
threatens her with death, giving her a day to think it
over. Aretousa says she has thought it over and repeats
her determination not to leave them. The King writes
to the ambassadors that he cannot answer at present as
his daughter is in a consumption.
Then he cuts off her long plaits of golden hair, kicks
her, beats her and throws her into prison. There
Aretousa loses her humility and denounces her father
for his cruelty. Even animals without intelligence or
reason love their children and give their lives for them. 2
Even beasts in the forest that feel no pity kill their prey
before eating it.3
Phrosyne is imprisoned with her and also begs the
King to spare Aretousa who will come round in time
if she is kindly treated, for she is a good girl. But the
King believes they are both conspiring to deceive him,
one cutting out and the other stitching. H er mother
too turns against Aretousa with a cruelty which surprises even the Poet!
She is dressed in old clothes which only come down
to her knees, given an old palliasse stuffed with hay and
1 As Erofile answered her father; see Erophile, ii. 410.
z IV. 497 Another curious glance at the animal world, v. supra,

l.

I140.

Tllis somehow recalls M eamre for M eamre, ll. ii. 83. 'Spare him,
spare him ! He's not prepar'd for death: even for our kitchens we kill
the fowl of season.'
3

Erotokritos
33
thorns, 1 and thrown with Phrosyne into the darkest and
muddiest dungeon with an ounce of bread and water.
Aretousa laments the change in her parents who used t o 590
love her so, telling her what wine and what water to 596
drink,. defending ~er from sun and frost. Put not your
trust m worldly nches. The poor man has nothing to 620
fe~r. '9one are ~11 the blessings of my childhood. This
pnson IS all ~y hfe. My only comfort to think that it is 646
love of Rokntos has brought me to this.' So she wept
without hop~ like a ship in a great storm: Nurse corn- 67o
forts her tellmg her she must be brave and weather it.
Aretousa apostrophizes restless Fortune and wishes she 730
had been poor to love a poor man. So with only her
tears to comfort her she passed h er days in prison on
bread and water. Her mother meanwhile was even
more bitter t~an the Ki~g. And once a. month they
se~t to ask her If she was still of the same mmd. H er im- 750
pnsonment began to be known abroad, but not its cause.
Meanwhile Erotokritos in miserable exile dwelt at
Egripos, thinking always of Aretousa. And he bethought him to send his faithful servant Pistentes with
a se~ret letter to his friend in Athens hidden in the lining
of his boot, as well as an open letter to his father. The
plan worked wel~: one day the messenger stayed, the 795
n~xt returned With an answer from Polydoros, telling
him all the news of Arete in pen and ink. The messenger
reached Egripos 'in a few days'. Erotokritos was both
sad and glad to hear of her sufferings and her constancy.
And Aretousa had news of him whichPhrosynegathered
by talking to the guards-who picked up the reports g 25
whi~h Polydoros scattered on purpose- only where Eroto~Itos was and that he was well; not his real sufferings
wh1ch were such that, not eating or sleeping, his hair 84 r
and beard grew long and he became unrecognizable.
Three years had passed and the lovers were still on 85o
1
IV. 583. The sheets and feathers of which she is deprived show a
high standard of comfort.

Etotokritos
fire when the King had a quarrel with the King of
Vlahia,r who gathered a great army and marched .on
Athens. Vlantistratos, as he was called, camped outs1~e
the walls and ravaged the countryside .. Great ar~nes
were assembled on both sides. Erotokn tos determmes
to help the King, if only because he is A:etousa's fat~er,
88 remaining outside the camp and sallymg out agamst
5
the enemy by day when there is. a battle, t~ disappear at
night. First he goes to a certarn clever w1tch that ~as
s9r at Egripos who had been a wet-nurse, who could brmg
down the 'heavens and the stars, and obtains from her
a lotion with which he blackens his face so that his own
mother would not have known him, together wit~
another lotion in a little bottle which will restore. his
former whiteness and beauty. In a few days he arnves
2o outside the walls of f\.thens, observes th~ two carr:ps and
9
wishes he were a b1rd to fly to the pnson of h1s dear.
He finds a secret place under a tree where he can arm
himself and sleep at night. Thence when the battle
was engaged he would dart out like an eagle ar:d attack
the enemy unrecognized, cutting them. up.t~rnbly, and
o
94 at nightfall he would hurry bac~ to h1s h1dmg-p~ace a
mile away. The King heard the JOyful new~ of th1s unknown warrior sent by righteousness; but ne1ther he nor
even Polydoros thought ofErotokritos especially, as it was
964 said he was as black as a Sar~cen: As for the Vlachs, two
more like this, they told the1r Kmg, and we are done for.
Vlantistratos hoping to conquer by ?umbers plans a
surpr~se attack with his whole force m the very early
mornmg.
.
.
. .
The Athenian camp IS surpnsed. The Kmg IS sent

34

I IV. 853. The possession of a to~n w~s i.n disput~. It is impossible

to decide whether there is any special s1gnicance m the appearance
here of the Wallachians as enemies of Athens; or whethe~ they r~present
the historical Wallachians, the Albanians, or, as the s~m1-Slav~mc name
of their King, Vladistratos, suggests, and as Sotenades believes, the
Slavs.

Erotokritos
35
for and rushes bravely out to help his army thrown into 1ooo
confusion in the darkness. Erotokritos heard the noise, 101 r
and like a whirlwind on a summer day arrived on the
battlefield where the Athenians were in flight. He is 1023
like a hungry lion- the Vlachs are in for it now. He
dashes on them like an eagle-or like a flood. H e rushes
into the fight and cuts them up in all sorts of ways 1 like a wolf among the lambs. They fly, and again are
cut down. He pursued them like an ogre, and seeing him
from afar they fled in terror. The Athenian host takes ro6o
heart, which had been composing a most horrible battlepiece, where wounded being trampled on, horse and
man, friend by friend, dying and dead, were lying in
blood, the earth their pillow. The green earth became ro9o
red and Erotokritos carried death in his hand. So the
battle wavered like a stormy sea: King Herakles was
anxious, and Erotokritos could not be everywhere. Amid rr 10
the slaughter twenty-two picked warriors led by Vlantistratos were searching for King H erakles alive or dead.
They found the old man fighting like a lion with Poly- 1130
doros and others. They are outnumbered, the King is
unhorsed, Polydoros is wounded in hand and head, they 1150
are facing death when they hear a great shout. It is
Erotokritos, who charges and kills three with his lance
before taking his sword. Like a hawk among little birds
on a lake, he scatters them, rescues the King and Poly- 118o
doros, and remounts them.
The King of Vlahia rides off. Polydoros goes home
badly wounded, leaving King Herakles in charge of
Erotokritos. After the trumpets had sounded the end
of the battle, the King sent for him, and (failing to
recognize him although their helmets are removed and
he looks him in the face, 1219) thanks him for his life 1202
and offers to divide his realm with him and adopt him
as his heir. Erotokritos says he fights for the right and 1216
I Orlando Furioso, xvi. 22, 2 3, seems undoubtedly to be the original
of this passage IV. 1045 ff.

E1otokt-itos
1225 not for any reward. The Athenians lost 8,100 men that
day, and the Vlachs 1o,ooo. Both Kings w7re seriously concerned at such losses-for men are theu wealth1231 and wrote lovingly to each other to arrange a twelve
day's truce. 1 While Erotokritos is pleased at his opportunity and the King is wondering who his rescuer
was, there rides into the camp of the Vlachs a wo~der1255 ful knight, though still beardless (1270), called Anstos,
nephew by female blood of Vlantistratos, come from
the country of the Franks to help his uncle; who thinks
it would be a good thing if the King of Athens would
appoint a champion to figh~ wit~ Ari~tos and so p~t an
end to all this slaughter. Anstos 1s delighted at the 1dea.
12 82 I did not come here, he said, to sing or amuse myself,
but to get some fighting. The envoys find King
Herakles in town on his throne, having left the camp
on business.
1301 The matter is so serious that he must have a day to
think it over. He summons a full Council and solemnly
expounds the proposal, which is not so simple as it
sounds. For the Vlach King, he says, has Aristos, a
world-famous warrior (who began fighting at I 3 and
1355 is now 22). I have no one, except possibly Polydoros,
and he is seriously wounded. Then a Councillor called
1370 Phronistas spoke, saying, forgive me, it is too easy; you
have the Strange Knight to fight for you. Let us go
1390 to the camp. Come, replies the King, he has just saved
my life; am I to show my gratitude by asking him to
save everyone else's ? But let us go to the Camp and not
be in a hurry. While the discussion continues, ~retousa
1420 hears about it and says that now her father w11l know
what it would be worth not to have banished Erotokritos.
In camp the King without food is still wondering
what answer he is to give before nightfall when
1436 there is a footstep on the gravel, and Erotokritos
r IV. 1232. Xanthoudides notes that the truce for the burial of
Hector was of similar length (Iliad, 24, 668).

Erotokritos
37
enters, only to ask if there is to be a battle in the
morning. When he heard the King's trouble he was
sorry, forgetting about his own banishment, and kneeling down he said:
Your warriors, 0 King, are much braver than any of 1447
the enemy; and one especiallywhowaswounded two days
ago, but only slightly, I think. This he said in order to find
out about his friend whose wound made him anxious. 1 1464
The King tells him kindly that the wound of Polydoros is likely to be mortal; and that he thinks he had
better fight with his whole army than with one champion. 1482
Erotokritos, his heart weeping for his dear friend, tells
the King to accept the challenge without fear, and with 1506
extreme modesty asks himself to be allowed to fight the
challenge. The King embraces him and, Surely, he
says, you must be my dear son and if you win as you will
my heir. Erotokritos says: Send your answer quickly:2 1522
my heart is glad to fight, and I feel that I am going to
win and set the country free. If only, says the Poet, 1540
Aretousa weeping in her prison had known that Erotokritos was at hand; and poor old Pezostratos mourning
for his son could have hurried to embrace him under 1550
the tree; and Polydoros lying sorely wounded could have
had a visit from such a doctor as that! But cheer up! all
of you.
The challenge is answered, the armies are glad, and
on the fourth day in the evening begin to prepare. All
night the King sits up instructing Erotokritos in the
arts of warfare, Erotokritos who knew, adds the Poet, r565
much more about it than he did.J And the Vlach King
1 IV. 1463. This is an admirable touch that the first thought of
Erotokritos, when at last he gets his chance, should be about his friend;
and it comes as a complete surprise.
z IV. 1527. He is very short and sharp now that action is afoot.
J IV. 1565. Another example of conscious humour which is emphasized here by the use of a proverbial expression. 'The King tells him
one and he understands four, having been gifted with courage from his
mother's breast.'

38

Erotokritos
was similarly engaged in teaching all about cuts and
thrusts to his nephew. At dawn the champions are
1580 armed; the King lovingly girding with steel the flesh he
had wished to see dead. Then the two Kings signed the
r6o7 agreement, which was read out to the assembled hosts,
that the King whose champion was slain should withdraw his army and become tributary to the other; and
the Kings kneeling down take the oath by Heaven and
Earth, Sun and Moon. 1
The anxiety of the armies and the armament of the
young warriors 2 is described, and the champing of the
war-horses. The Kings' hearts break as they look on
r667 the two golden eagles, one of which must die. Like two
r68o storm winds they charge, their lances are shattered.
They draw their swords, which are like the thunderbolt. 3
17oo Aristos is slightly wounded on the nose, Erotokritos
near the breast. The Kings pray; the warriors :fight,
like winds shut up in the deeps of the earth that rage
1732 until they make the earth to quake. Erotokritos is
handicapped by his horse which is not as good as the
1765 other's. A blow of Aristos cuts through his shield and
kills the horse. He waits on foot for Aristos who dis178o mounts-they speak a few words to each other: and the
181o sword :fight begins with fury.4 Women had gathered
1833 with the armies to watch like doves in a tempest. The
light begins to fail: they throw away their swords, close
up, and draw their daggers. None thought to part them,
for it was a :fight to the death; the agreement doomed
I IV. 1261. Here, as above, II. 323, the word for the Moon, as a
deity, is the ancient word 1:A~V1J; elsewhere is used the modern word
<Pqyapt, which is also used as a name to swear by in Ill. 1459
2 IV. 1648. :>.vy{a01}KV iJ eiJp.oprf>~ TOVS vwh'l}s is a line very full of
Greek feeling for the beauty and bravery of youth, '/TaU1JKapta, which is
strong in the poem. Cf. also IV. r 88o.
3 IV. I683 wl-rpa 'T1jS aa'Tpaw1js for the usual clU'TpOwMKt; cf. Shakespeare's thuuderstone.
4 IV. 177o-78. Their speeches now are of a quite Homeric brevity
and dignity, and Homeric is the sword fight.

Erotokritos
39
one of them to the D oor of Cobwebs. They wrestle and r8 4o
stab. They fall to the ground. Erotokritos slips and is r86s
underneath; but with a last effort gathering all his
strength. he stabs Aristos through the helmet in the left 1872
eye. Anstos at the same moment stabs Erotokritos in
the left breast, but he still lives.
T he Kings rush up thinking he was dead; but when r 88r.
they take them out of their armour it is Aristos-like
:>
1
a ~ower cut down by ~he .plm;gh -who is dying. And
With only a word he dies m h1s uncle's arms. 2 There is 1 910
a clap of thunder and a whirlwind and a wailing from
the ~ost .. K.ing V!antistratos mourns the lovely boy, 1920
who IS laid m a silver coffin and buried with a procession of great length.3 The King speaks a noble 1942
lamentation: and after that all Vlahia shall mourn his 1990
funeral.
2014
8

EANWHILE King Herakles was weeping over Book v

Erotokritos, who appeared to be dead. He had
fainted from loss of blood, and all the blood left in his 5
body had hurried to his heart to fill it up again.4 His 26
face was bedewed with the King's tears and he opened

I IV. 1887-94. The flower cut down by the plough is a beautiful

passage a~parently taken from Ariosto (Orlando Futioso, xviii, 153),
who had It from Vergil (Ae11eid, ix. 434), who had it, partly, from
Ho~er. But see also Groto's Hadriana (r. iii. 172) and I sach (iv. i. 255)
wh1ch tend to show that from the combined resonance of Homer
Vergil, and Ariosto this simile had become a commonplace in Italia~
literature.
2 .IV. I?o~ . .There is a distinct attempt to get the vitaque wm
getmtu fugtt wdtguata sub umbras effect with the beautiful line:

~IIOv ~ c'Jpa vu

~rofe~sor

yevfi ~ aapKa waAtv xwp.a.

Deinakis in his ~ursuit of classical parallels compares

Aenetd, XI. 59 :If. The elaboration of the concluding passage of this
book, the death and burial of Aristos, suggests an interesting note on
the significance in epic poetry of the enemy as Hero.
4 V. 5, 6, 26-30. Cf. infra, V. 968, V. 1048, for some apparent
knowledge of circulation of the blood.
3

40

Erotokritos

39 his eyes. I Doctors are sent ~or,. and .find seven wounds,
42 one of which, piercing the nb,

IS senous. They tell the

King that he has one chance to fifty of recovery. They
make a wooden stretcher and carry him to the palace,
51 the King holding his hand, and yu~ him in t~e best
63 room, the gilded room, and lay~ m .Aretousa s bed.
The doctors came in and out, t en times m an hour (103)
and went up and down, and his wounds began to heal.
70
Aretousa soon heard of the. victory, but was not
interested in the unknown Warnor. If 1t had only been
Erotokritos, she says, who had come. and conquered ar:d
so won the King's love! As it is, my JOys are far away m
exile. If you had only known, adds the Poet, that h~
was lying on the bed where yourself used to sleep .
Calm and bright days are at hand after darkness and
100 storm. Polydoros too recovered from his wounds and
10 5 often went to see the Stranger at the Palace whom he
~e tells him that he has a
120 grew strangely to l~ve.
'friend and brother' m foreign parts whom he strangely
130 resembles in all except face . Erotokritos slowly gets
stronger. When he was well eno~gh to eat meat and to
156 get up the King one .day a.s~ed him who he was. Erotokritos says his name IS Kntides, and that he left ho~e,
father mother and two brothers on account of a gul
1 68 who died that he has lived as a knight errant ever since;
18 and that ~ot now but when the time com.es he will tell
4
the King why he was glad to fight for him, and from
what land he came.
The King says: Anyhow my r eal.ms from to-day onwards are yours, for I owe you my hfe and all; and any192 thing else I have in the world you have only to as.k for.
200 Erotokritos replies : I want neit~er realms nor nches,
but your kindness makes me admit that I do want your
daughter whom I hear you keep in prison. It was for
21 her sake
came h ere and fought your enemies. If you
4

V. 14. The King appears to have no sense of his blackness or

ugliness.
1

Erotokritos

41

want me to stay here persuade her to marry me. T he

King answers kind!y but regretfully: .I fear v:rhat you
ask may be impossible: my daughter IS kept m pnson
for the reason that she refuses to marry anybody: and 226
she tells me that she means to stay in prison. I only
wish she would marry you, for she was to have inherited
everything. But you had better go to the prison and
have a look at her first, for I hear that she has become 236
dirty and unrecognizable, and if she were to accept you
and ask forgiveness I should not like you to back out of it
when you saw her. Go a~d see her first and th~n if Y.ou
still want her and she wont have you she shall die. With 248
dry eyes and tears in his heart Erotokritos made answer:
I am your slave for ever, but I don't want to see her.
Just as she is, if she is lame and blind, I want her: all 26 1
others are darkness to me and she is my daylight . I n my
travels I heard such wonders of her beauty that I even 268
forgot her whom I lost so suddenly, and counted myself her slave and all unworthy to marry her. But since
the dry wood has blossomed, and you, 0 King, have
taken me to your heart, this is my choice. And if this
marriage comes to pass then I will tell you my country 28 1
and my parents. One more favour I ask: if she refuses,
forgive her all the same and release her from prison, and
let her marry whom she will, or no man at all if, like so 295
many others, she prefers it. So now let messengers go
quickly to the prison. The King burst into tears, and
after five years he was at peace and knew his own cruelty
and longed to take his daughter in his arms again, an?
to give her to the Stranger. And he called two o.f hts
chief Elders of the Palace and sent them to the pnson; 309
and weeping to see the Princess in such a plight, pale
and thin and dirty, they told her how they would all 318
have been enslaved by the Vlachs, how the enemy would
have come to ravish her in prison, if they had not all been
delivered by the Stranger, King and country, and herself from shame. So they managed to come to what they 330
G

Erotokritos

had to persuade her to, which they repeated three times

o:ver. Aretousa t;arfully made answer: Is not my father
tired of tormentmg me? He knows I would rather die
than marry. And if a Stranger has delivered the land
let them give him the throne that should have been
348 mine, and leave me in prison. They begin all over again,
they ask, command, advise and strive, that she may
bring gladness to the land and make her parents young
36o again. After this she threw them out and told them not
to come back again, or she would put an end to it all with
a knife. The old men return to the King bitterly regretting this refusal of the best of suitors whom they
all want to keep in the country.
The King thinks she and her Nurse must surely die,
an~ hardly knows how to tell Erotokritos. He is secretly
38o dehghted at Aretousa's constancy, and asks the King if
he may go himself to the prison, and ask her just once,
and i~ she still refuses l;t the King release her from prison
390 for his sake, and he will go away content to think of her
as his Lady as long as he lives. If only you can persuade
her, says the King, I shall be as grateful, my son, for
this as I was for your help in the war.
Imagine with what glad steps Erotokritos went to4oo wards the prison wondering how he should remain unknown to her, for although he was dark and his hair long
he was still handsome; and he mumbled and stammered
to . change his voice, and laughed thinking that the
41 r pnson was a place of milk and honey in which was
hidden the light of his eyes, a candle that had gone out
420 and he was going to light it again. The Elders went
before, expecting to be thrown out again, and timidly
announced the Stranger. And Aretousa waited in fury
to tell him to go his way and leave her alone. Eroto44o kritos approached and leaned half-fainting against the
bars. The King had sent her a new dress and begged
her to make herself presentable, but she had trodden it
underfoot, torn to rags the dress she was wearing and

Erotokritos

43

rubbed mud on her face, hoping to disgust the suitor

once for all. For some time he could not speak, but
strove to hide from the Elders his emotion which no
pen, ink, tongue, hand or paper can describe. After 46o
sev~ral atte~pts he gazed at her and began to speak,
s~ymg that It was only ~or her sake that he had hung his
hfe on a thread, and still bore the wounds on his body
that he wanted her for his wife ; and that she shoulcl
answer him gently and come out of that mire into the
daylight of the Court. And she without raising her eyes
replied in a frenzy that he should sooner see the sun
w~thout light, the forest without leaves, the plains
Without grass, the sea without water, and the shore
wi_thout sand, than that she should say yes or change her
mmd. He should lo~k to her father for his reward, for 490
she would rather die a hundred deaths than take a
husb.and. The dark~ess was her husband, the prison her
portwn, and the spiders her companions, and there she
would end her life gladly. Erotokritos was filled at once
with such joy and such pity that he could say no more sro
and ~alli_ng Phrosyne to the window, he secretly gav;
her his nng and told her to ask her mistress to think it
o_ver, and if she did not want to see him again to give the 528
rmg back to a man whom he would send in the morning.
P~rosy?e told her.mistress, an~ then looking at the ring
said this was the nng she had giVen to Erotokritos when sso
they parted.
When Aretousa saw the ring with the sapphire which
she. had giv:n to Erotokritos at the window, her lips
white, her hmbs hot and cold, she began to imagine
every sort of danger and death coming to him. It was s8o
about a year since she had had any message from him
through his friend. She began to cry out that Phrosyne
should send for the Stranger; for Erotokritos would
never have given up the ring while he was alive, and her
reason fought against her compelling her to find out
what her heart feared to learn. Nurse thinking Eroto- 6oo

44

Erotok?-itos
kritos was surely dead, says: Never mind the Stranger,
we will hear what there is in good time; I will find out
from the guards. What is done cannot be undone, says
62o Aretousa, whether we find out soon or late. And I
cannot wait. The message was sent, and when it reached
Erotokritos the King was with him and was overjoyed
to think she had come to her senses. Erotokritos, who
understood why she had sent for him, went alone and
64o found her distraught. Anxiety to learn the fate of
Erotokritos had driven out all restraint and modesty.
Before they talk about marriage will he tell her as a
favour where he got that ring? One day dancing with
other girls in a garden they lost between them four
652 rings. I This is hers. Erotokritos still stood firm in spite
of the beating of his heart. H e would tell her in the
morning. Lady, said h e, I cannot tell you about the
ring this evening. I have a headache. At daybreak I
675 will tell you everything; and meanwhile change your
mind a little and cheer us all up. She begged him only
to answer now what she asked about the ring. And he,
full of joy to see her great love, told h er again not to
trouble, for he would tell her in the morning. So he
702 left her to another night of agony that seemed as long
as a whole year. Erotokritos did not sleep either, and in
the morning he thought to tell her, but he wanted to
714 test her once more, and see how she would weep if she
heard of his death. Such are the fruits of Love, remarks
the Poet : it is not fair to treat her so, Erotokritos, aft er
740 all she has suffered for your sake and five years in prison. 2
You will kill her-what more do you want? But love
is never satisfied. Even if the lover stays all night in her
arms, as soon as he gets up he tortures himself wondering
1 V. 652. Tlus presumably is meant to be a stupid story. The other
three rings she puts in in her excitement and anxiety to add any sort
of detail to her story.
2 V. 715- 32. The poet affect s to be shocked himself at the incredible
cruelty of which only heroes of romance are capable.

Erotokritos
45
if she really loves him. Erotokritos wanted to see what
she would do, and he would not leave her long in that
woe but soon would gladly bring himself to life again.
Indeed, adds t he Poet, it was a wise medicine that 752
mingled grief with such joy: for joy h as killed more
often than sorrow; and so it proved a great assistance 764
that Aretousa should hear of the death of Erotokritos
before she heard of his return.
The day dawned bright and lovely, a sweet north wind no
blew out of the arms of t he sky, the birds sang, the nightingale forgot its sorrows and joined the others, and two
little birds flew into the dark prison, and singing and
billing fluttered about Aretousa's head. Phrosyne thinks 795
this means a marriage and says: How much longer are
you going to wait for Erotokritos ? He won't come in a
thousand years. Be a sensible girl and marry the Stranger,
and good luck to you. But Aretousa angrily said that if 816
all the powers of nature combined to make a perfect man
and he were king of the world she would still wait for
Erotokritos. And if t his day brought the news that he
were dead a knife in the heart should be her bridegroom. 834
Erotokritos was dead, and the song of the birds meant that
his spirit had not forgotten their vow, but was come for
her and she should marry him in the cobwebby cavern 1
of the grave. This day shall you see my wedding, with 846
D eath for witness and the Grave for notary, t he worms
my dowry, spiders' webs my veil, the black earth my
palace, the dust my bride-bed, and the ghosts of the
dead to give me their blessing; then my soul will rejoice
to be for ever with Erotokritos.2
s6o
D ay dawned, and Erot okritos quickly took the key and
found her in the grime of the prison, and went in alone;
for what he had in mind he wanted to do secretly, so that
afterwards they could go to the King and ask for his 879
blessing like good children. He tells her a long story, 88o
1

V. 846. See above IV. 184o; and cf. Passow, 518. 45

V. 853--60. See Romeo and Juliet, IV. i. 79; IV. iii. 30; v. iii. 109.

Erotokritos
how two months ago near Egripos after a fight with wild
beasts he went to drink at a spring 1 under an evergreen
oak and hearing groans near by found a fair knight with
two beasts dead at his side dying from a small but
poisoned wound, who had given him the ring, unable to
950 utter more than the words, 'Aretousa, I have lost thee'.
When Aretousa h eard this tale she stood at first
frozen like a stone ; then, as the blood returns from the
98o heart to a wound, so her tears returned and she cried
out that now she had nothing left to live for; that now
roo7 at last fate had conquered her, but that now having no
ro2o more hope she had nothing more to fear; and cried out
on fate that now it had no more power over her soul,
the which as she had not been allowed to fight for Erotoro# kritos in life should now mingle with his in death.
She could say no more but fell down cold and white
as snow. Erotokritos was terrified that he was going to
lose her2 and began to blame himself: and Nurse thought
she was dead; but she came out of her faint and her
ro7o tears began to flow in a bright stream, and Erotokritos
thought it was time to release her from her sorrows. He
said: H ave you forgotten then what you promised me
at the iron-barred window? And as she asked what he
ro79 meant he quickly wiped the black from his face and
appeared in his former beauty, red, white and gold,
marble and sugar. Aretousa knew him and fainted
again and would have fallen. She revived, and as soon
as she could speak asked: Is it really you-or a dreamn ee or a deceiving spirit? T ears now sweet and cool ran
down from her eyes, and she began to bloom again in
beauty like a flower in the sun after snow and darkness.
1 V. 892 ff. There is an incident of going to drink at a spring under
a palm tree and there hearing groans in Dige11es A kritas (Andros version),
2515 ff., whence Xanthoudides says Kornaros must have derived it.
But it seems to be a commonplace.
2
V. rose. Even now apparently Erotokritos does not realize his
own devilish cruelty, and is only remorseful because he thinks he is
going to lose her !

..

------.,...,.___

Etotokritos
47
They wept and talked together as of old. Quickly tell u2o
my father, said Aretousa, that I will marry you, and
that he should send my best dresses that I may wash
and be lovely again. But I will not let you touch me
unt il my father gives his consent. Make yourself black
again that none may know you. And afterwards before n4o
my father all shall be confessed and we will be married.
So he took the other bottle and made himself black uso
again, and went out and told the waiting Elders that
the Princess had accepted him. Arete and Phrosyne
were glad that what they had desired in heaven was
come to pass on earth below. There was great joy
throughout the land-only Polydoros who had not heard
from his friend for two months was deeply grieved, and
so was old Pezostrat os. A child is easily forgiven by its
parents provided it has not offended honour, 1 which
can never be healed. So the King and Queen with II94
loving kindness sent fine clothes to the prison and lucky- uro
handed ladies to help her dress, and with her N urse,
amid great rejoicing, Aretousa came to the palace from
which the clouds had vanished, and kneeled before her
weeping parents-and there repeated the old story r242
about loving them so much that she had not wanted to
leave home. But now that the D eliverer to whom she
h ad been promised was to live at Court she was content 1272
to marry him. The King and Queen embraced her and
then Erotokritos asked them to send for his old father
Pezostratos and his mother. (He had always kept himself quietly informed how they fared.) No one knew
why he had sent for them, but thought it natural. And
when they h ad changed and in fear and trembling were 1322
come, he kneeled down and in his own natural voice he
said : How have we offended you, my father and I, that
1 V. rr85- 94 Xanthoudides notes how Kornaros returns (cf. mpra
I ll. 185-94) to the theme of parental honour, and parental forgiveness
for unsuitable marriages if honour be saved ; and suggests that there
may have been a personal application.

48

Erotokritos
we have been banished from your palace for five years?
Yet I am still your servant, and I came and fought for
you and drove away the Vlachs. If you are still angry
with us I will go away again. I have been unknown, but
r 364 now you shall know me. The King and Queen and all
of them thought they were dreaming; but when he
washed his face with the magic water and appeared as
1378 the very Erotokritos, his father and mother embraced
him and the astonishment was drowned in a general
sho~t of joy from the people. The King made silence,
and without anger said: The past is forgotten, and let
1388 us all be glad that time has. brought a happy .ending.
And since Aretousa was destmed to be your bnde, and
I am an old man, you shall take the throne and all my
powers and dominions-and we hope to see y~ur
14oo children to inherit them. He then makes a charmmg
speech to his daughter, saying that as she liked this
Stranger well enough when h~ was .black she ~hould like
him better still now that he IS wh1te and fau, and has
turned out to be none other than our brave Erotokritos.
1420 He is not a King like us but a King he is become in
strength and wisdom. I am t~ankful tha.t by your stubbornness you have helped this happy gift of fate: and
1 43o may you both be happy together as we are. Aret?usa
wickedly pretends that she h.ad not knov:n all the time,
looks surprised and says as httle as possible for. fear ~f
r 44z saying too mu~h! . Polydo~os could hardly .b~heve his
senses to see his fnend agam. Every one reJOiced: and
old Pezostratos asks to be forgiven, but adds that he was
not so very wrong after all, and vye all ~ike to ~o the best
r4 8o we can for our children; and giVes his blessmg. They
stayed late with the fes~ivi~ies in the. hall of the palace
which had seen the begmnmg of theu love. And what
1496 they said and did that night I cannot and will not say.
Only those two know. When day came Erotokritos sat
on the Throne and became a wise and beloved ruler,
a King among Kings. A good heart made this loving

Erotokritos
49
couple live long, and they had children and grand- 1510
children. So roses grow out of thorns, faithful love has
its reward; and may those who read learn to face dangers
with hope, to wish joy to those in trouble, and to forgive
those who err.
My boat is coming to land, and very glad I am to see 1519
land and run into harbour after sailing in deep waters,
while earth and sky resound with the shouts of my
friends, shouts which confound my critical enemies, who
can't say Alpha themselves.
1530
I believe many want to know who wrote all this, and
I have no wish to remain hidden. Vitzentzos is the
poet, by family Kornaros, may he be found without sin
when death takes him. He was born and brought up in
Sitia, where he wrote this. He was married at Kastron, 1
as nature guided him. His end will be where God wills. 1540

9
HE author of the work is here said, as you will have
observed, to have been Vitzentzos Kornaros, born
at Sitia, and married at Candia-and that is all that we
know about him; for the information on the title-page
of the first edition obviously only repeats, with the
addition of a complimentary epithet of nobility, that
given in the concluding lines of the poem. Even this
has been too much or too easy for many of the commentators, who have followed Polites in rejecting this
testimony as the later addition of a copyist, or rewriter
in rhyme of an older unrhymed original (of which, however, as Hatzidakis and Xanthoudides do not fail to
point out, there is not the faintest trace or tradition).

V. 1539 Kast ron, better known as Kandia, and less known by the
ridiculous modern name of Herakleion.
The words: 'as nature guided', m1v pp.:fJvE15n .fJ ,P.Jcn, usually taken
as meaning 'in the course of nature', put in to fill up the line, may
possibly suggest intentionally that he was guided by nature, rather than
by his father, in the choice of a bride.
H

....
50
Erotokritos
But it must be admitted that in this matter Polites was
an extremely unreliable guide; he seems to have thought
that if he admitted the authorship of Kornaros the
Italian sound of the poet's name would be used in
evidence against his theory of the pure unadulterated
fount of H ellenic Hippocrene. If the poet had a
Venetian name he might well have had Venetian sentiment s. Dieterich had actually propounded a theory
that t he poem was written as Venetian propaganda in
order to teach seditious Cretans the virtues of loyalty
and submission. It was not altogether surprising that
Polites rushed to the other extreme of absurdity. But in
fact there seems to be no sufficient reason for rejecting
the close of the poem and the informat ion it gives; and
if we are not content with the name of Kornaros the
author will have to go without a name altogether.
There were numerous families of that name in Crete,
none of them necessarily connect ed with the V enetian
ducal family. One such Vincenzo sold a house in Candia
in t he middle of the sixteenth century. A notary of
Sitia named Vincenzo Cornaro has been traced in the
Venetian archives in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Xanthoudides himself has found the
name Bitzentzo Kornaros scratched on t he wall of a
little church near Sitia, with the date 1677, and allowing himself a touch of sentiment as the coping of his
monumental edition he suggests that the poet may have
come back to revisit his birthplace after the Turkish
occupation.
IO

HE question of the poet's sources has provided

more work for the ingenious investigator. In spite
of Leake who declared vaguely that h e 'seemed to have
read Homer' it is quite clear, I think, that he had no
direct knowledge of the classics. The few resemblances

Erotokritos
51
to well-known similes of H omer and V ergil that can be
traced could have been found already decanted in
Boiardo or Ariosto; and it seems incredible that if he
had had any first-hand knowledge of the ancient world
he should not h ave put more detail and colour, even a
few names of places or heroes, into a story which professes to be staged in ancient H ellas. Actually the only
reference to ancient mythology is the pale reflection of
the story of Kephalus and Prokris which adorns the
account of the Cretan Prince (supra II. 610 ff.); and
(if we except the name of Athens and its King and
Queen, H erakles and Artemis) the only ancient name
mentioned is that of Gortyna where the Cretan Prince
had the seat of his dominion. Gortyna is only mentioned
once in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey. T he epithet
Gortynian as a synonym for Cretan is common however
in the L atin authors. It may be only a coincidence that
it is used as an epithet of the Cretan bow in the very
passage of Ovid's Metamorphoses cont aining the story of
Kephalus and Prokris; 1 and that the bow as a weapon is
not used, except metaphorically, anywhere in the poem
except in the episode of the Cretan prince and his
jealous bride. It is true that Kephalus in Ovid pierces
the breast of Prokris with a javelin ; but in the preliminaries of the story occurs t he line Go1'tyniaco calamus
levis exit ab auu, from which the poet of the Erotok1itos
might have taken both Gortyna and the arrow. But
this episode, like the Cretan comedy Gyparis which it so
much resembles, is also generally indebted to Italian
pastoral poetry; and the stories of Ovid had been so
widely diffused in Italian literature that it would be
extremely unsafe to assume any direct knowledge, even
knowledge from an Italian translation, ofthe Latin poet.
It seems to have been from Boiardo's Orlando l nnamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso that he drew his
Italianate versions of H omeric similes and battle pieces,
I

Ovid, Met. vii. 796 ff. and 778.

52

Erotokt-itos
and after a number of supposed parallels have been dismissed as the commonplaces of poetic storm and strife
there remain about a dozen passages to show his indebtedness.
The relation of the E1otokritos to the Cretan dramas
is difficult to determine with any accuracy. Even an
analysis of the language, which has been attempted by
Hatzidakis and Psichari, gives uncertain results, for we
do not know how far the original texts have been
modified by later copyists and editors; nor do we know
how far the religious mood or the tragic mood may
have tended to preserve archaic forms. Xanthoudides
says that the SaC?i.fice of A braham might almost have
been an early work of the author of Erotokritos, and he
produces a few striking similarities of expression and
rhythm; I but it is better to be content at present with
the general impression that the Cretan dramas and the
Erotokritos were all written in the same half century.
Of greater interest are the relations of the Erotokritos
and the Erophile. The themes, as I have noted elsewhere, are practically identical-the faithful love of a
youth of ministerial but not royal rank for a King's
daughter, their secret marriage, the girl's Nurse and the
young man's confidential Friend, his victory in war and
tournament, and final discovery.z In the Erophile the
guilty relations of the lovers lead to a tragic and horrible
death; while in the romantic Erotok1itos patience and
purity are rewarded. It must be added that the Erotokritos has some signs of dramatic form: it is divided
Including the famous Out, aut, brief candle couplet (Sacrifice 401)
which is repeated by Erotokritos in his farewell (Ill. 1395). But it
is also found in a popular distich from Syra (Polites, 'EK"Aoya, 135. o'),
as well as in 'The Fair Shepherdess (z73); and had evidently become
a commonplace like the flower cut down by the plough.
2
It is worth noting, however, that the characters of the two
Nurses in E1aphile and E1atakritas are sharply distinguished, Erophile's
Nurse being extremely practical and positive : see e. g. her speeches in
Act II. z.
I

E1otokritos
53
into five books; the names of the speaking characters,
including that of the Poet when he takes up the t ale,
are printed in the t ext like the names of the persons in
a play; and it is very noticeable that the author is better
at dialogue than at narrative; his transitions are clumsy
and naive, while t he speech of the characters is nearly
always vivid and life-like.
It may not have any special significance that both
works, Erophile and Erotokritos, display a young author
who takes problems of rank and marriage very much t o
heart. All over Europe literature, it was natural, had to
reflect a social revolution of some severity when it began
to be realized that a daughter might choose a husband
for herself, and outside her own class. 1 T hose who preserve traditions of the patriarchal Greek families of
Trieste and Constantinople may faintly imagine the
conditions of Greek society in Crete, which was further
complicated by the Venetian occupation. There is a
story in Pashley's Travels2 of a Cretan leader of revolt
who tried to marry his son to the daughter of an Italian
noble, a true story taken from a Venetian document,
which shows that a Cretan author might have found
problems of rank and creed, and nightmares ofvengeance
and blood, in the recent history of his own island, to
give passion and colour to his reflection of t he Italian
stage.
II

HE search for the plot of the Erotokritos is a detective story which I will pass over very briefly,
especially as it must remain for the present without a definite solution. We may accept Professor
I T he moral of Grato's Hadriana (for which see below p. 58) is
Imparate, donzelle, Non maritarvi, senza Voler de' padri vostri. Pero
che '1 matrimonio senza questo, Esser non puo, se non dannoso, e mesto.
2 R. Pashley, 'Travels i11 Crete, vol. ii, pp. 150 ff.

54

Erotokritos
F. H. Marshall's belief! that the Greek translation of
Boccaccio's 1'eseide (Venice, I 529) 'was known to Korn aros, and that it influenced, though not very largely,
the structure of his poem'. This does not take us very far
but it is a little farther than most of the commentators
who have only produced a few very unconvincing clues
by confining their attention to isolated episodes of the
story. Gidel, with special facilities to investigate the
whole field of French romance, could only discover that
there are a number of stories of strange knights, tournaments and kings' daughters in the Reali di Francia, an
Ita~ian prose compilation of French chansons de geste
~hich was very popular in Italy at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. 2 He thought he was getting warmer
when he discovered that the well-known French romance of Aucassin et Nicolette has a h eroine who is not
allowed to marry the hero because she is a captive, is
thrown into prison, and after regaining her liberty and
being recognized as daughter of the King of Carthage
refuses to marry a pagan King, but runs away and
blackens her face in order to revisit her first love
Aucassin in the disguise of a Moorish juggler. Gidel's
enthusiasm for this resemblance seems to have been
rather chilled by one of his own foot-notes which reminded him that the blackening of the face, even if the
necessary juice is supplied by an old woman, is a commonplace of fairy tale and is even found in Sinbad the
SailoT. Yet he could find nothing else except a few
purple passages from the great Persian epic Firdausi's
Shah-Nameh , which prove only that when great champions fight in single combat the unfortunate court poet
has to ransack heaven and earth for decorative comparisons. It may be imagined that Polites was not likely
F. H. Marshall, Glouaries to the Greek Tramlatio1J of Boccaccio's
T eseide a11d to the Poem of Georgios Chott1111lOJ 011 Ge11esis a11d Exodtts
1

(unpublished), 1927.
2
Published at Modena in 1491, and versified at Venice in 1534.

Erotokritos
55
to swallow all these suggestions of a French, Italian or
even Persian source of the story of Erotokritos. Determined to find a Greek source he produced a very long
fairy-tale from Astypalaea,I one incident of which is
that the hero disguises himself as a kasides or 'scaldhead' in order to rescue in warfare not his future fatherin-law but his own father. Polites it is true only produced this to show that the adventures of Erotokritos
were a Greek rather than a Frankish type of story (an
argument that is rather weakened by the fact that
the story had Flemish, Italian, English, and Slavonic
parallels); but his followers Hesseling and Pernot go one
better and boldly declare that the poet was indisputably
inspired by the story of the Scald-head- who is, as
W. R. Halliday has shown, a well-known figure in
Greek and Turkish folk-tale either as clever hero or as
masquerading prince. 2 I do not think it is very profitable to pursue analogies of this sort which can lead only
to the general conclusion that there is always going on
a mutual exchange between folk-tale and literary romance; and I should be inclined to assert that the only
popular element of any importance in the Erotokritos
are the hundreds of proverbial phrases which are formed
so naturally by the Greek language.

I2

F any close parallel to the story of Erotokritos is to

be found my feeling is that it should be sought, as
I have already hinted, in a 'tale of woe' which is extremely familiar in another form. L et me ask you, after
hearing the tale of Erotokritos and Aretousa, where you
1
J ean Pio, Contes Populaires Grecques, Copenhagen, 1879, pp.
159 ff.
2
In R. M. Dawkins, Modem Gteek i1J Asia Miuor (Cambridge, 1916)
pp. 222, 223.

56
Erotokritos
have heard before those accents of fierce white passion
from the lips of a girl just out of the schoolroom:
If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow ...
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,
And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world.'

Where have you heard the voice of the worldly-wise

Nurse who companions and comforts her?
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nursed:
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish ... 2

And again:
Is banished! And all the world to nothing,
That he dares ne'er come back to challenge you;
Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
Then, since the case so stands as now it cloth,
I think it best you married with the county.
0, he's a lovely gentleman; .. ,3

and that masked lover

Come hither, cover'd with an antic face, 4

with his inseparable friend advising him?

forget to think
By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
Examine other beauties.
Take thou some new infection to thy eye. 5

Where have you heard before that father so anxious

to marry his only daughter ?
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; . . . 6
The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she ;7
1

2 I . iii. 6o.
Ronuo and ]11liet, n. ii. 143
Romeo and Juliet, m. v. 2I4.
4 I. v. 6o.
s I. i. 230; 1. ii. SI.
6 But see note on Ill. I6o8 (mpra, p. 30) for the strange coincidence
of Aretousa's age.
7 Romeo and Juliet, I. ii. 9

Erotokritos
and bullying her when she refuses:

57

Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch !

I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face:
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest
That God had lent us but this only child;
But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we have a curse in having her.'

and that inhuman mother:

Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word.
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. 2

Where have you heard before those midnight vows

oflove at the window?
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks ~ .. .
I would not for the world they saw thee here.
Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.3

and that secret marriage:

She pointed we should meet
And consummate those never parting bands,
Witness of our hearts' love by joining hands. 4

followed by separation:
I must be gone and live or stay and die.
0, now be gone; more light and light it grows. 5

and by the banishment of the bridegroom :

Some word there was ...
That murder'd me: I would forget it fain; .. .
That 'banished', that one word 'banished' . .. 6
Be fickle, fortune,
For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long,
But send him back. 7
1 ur. v. I6o.
2 III. V. 203.
3 ll. ii. 2; ll. ii. ss.
4 n. vi. S (First Quarto).
6 m. ii. I I2.
7 m. v. 62.
S m. V. II, 3S

58
Erotokritos
and the bride's sending of the ring:
0 find him! Give this ring to my true knight,
And bid him come to take his last farewell. 1

and defiance of her parents:

I pray you tell my lord and father, madam,
I will not marry yet. z

and desperate constancy:

Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.
If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,
Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with this knife I'll help it presently. 3

an.d .afterwards her readiness to lie and pretend submissiOn:

I have learn'd me to repent the sin,
Of disobedient opposition. 4

And her final vision of her lover dead :

Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. 5

And of herself wedded to the tomb:

My grave is like to be my wedding bed ...6
O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones ... 7
With worms that are thy chamber-maids ...8

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was based on an English metrical version by Arthur Brooke (1562) of an
Italian novel by Bandello, whose collection of tales was
printed at Lucca in 1554; but the story had been
current in Italy for some years before that date, and
continued to be used by other writers; and it is extremely probable that some version of it, possibly that
of Luigi da Porto which appeared at Venice in 1535, or
Luigi Grato's tragedy of Hadriana (1578) had reached
I Ill.

4 IV.
7 IV.

ii. 143
ii. 17.
i. 82.

120.
v. 55
...
v. 111. 109

i. 51.
138

2 111. V.

3 IV.

5 Ill.

6 I. V.

Erotokritos
59
the Cretan poet. A careful reading of the H adriana
discovers very many resemblances of style and temper,
an analogous type of diction and time of dramatic movement; a virtuosity of euphuism which appears to have
stimulated some of the clumsier conceits of the Greek;
and a few characteristic passages, such as that describing
the death of the young prince, Hadriana's brother, in
single combat with her lover Prince Latino, to prove
beyond question that K.ornaros was familiar with Grato's
play. There are very great differences in the structure
of the two stories; yet in view of the direct connexion
now established between Grato's Isach (1586) and the
Cretan Sacrifice of Abraham (1635 ?), 1 and the similarities noted by Xanthoudides between the Sacrifice
and the Erotokritos, z it remains an illuminating possibility that it was from Grato's pre-Shakesperian version
of R omeo and Juliet that K.ornaros derived a suggestion
of the story which he wove, with the addition of an
allegorical tournament, plenty of fighting, and of course
a happy ending, into the romance of Erotok1itos.
1
See my 'Postscript on the Cretan Drama' in J. H. S. xlviii. 243,
reprinted in Professor Marshall's Three Cretan Plays.
2
See above p. 77 and Xanth. Erotokr., p. cx:x.

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