Daphnis and Enkidu
Longus’ novel “Daphnis and Chloe” contains an episode based on a myth unique to the extant classical literature although well known in other cultures - the myth of a wild man who is unfamiliar with the mystery of sex and marriage and who gets acculturated under a woman’s guidance. Lycaenion instructs innocent Daphnis initiating him into the mysteries of Eros. The scene of Daphnis’ erotic initiation is compared to the earliest written record of this myth, i.e., the meeting of Enkidu, who lives among animals and does not know how to speak, with the temple prostitute Shamhat; other examples from world mythology are also presented. This myth, forced out of the Classical Greek literature, was claimed by Longus in the sophistic context about the relations between nature and art, village and city, peasants and noblemen Mundane on the surface, the story about a shepherd and a shepherdess is grounded on a fundamental for the mankind’s culture myth, presumably forced out of the Classical Greek literature. By means of literary structure and imagery the author not only demonstrates the distance between nature and human culture but shows an apparent sympathy toward the first member of this opposition, something which the ancient myth does not have and cannot have. Thereby it creates the mediation between the opposites characteristic for the myth whereas on the basis of a secondary myth appears a literary archetype of a pastoral.