it is time to be making for home. Diocleides has not had his dinner,
and the man is all vinegar--don't venture near him when he is kept
waiting for dinner.--Farewell, beloved Adonis, may you find us glad at
your next coming!

This idyl of Theocritus suggests the freedom of movement and the
ordinary pursuits of the Alexandrian lady in the days of Arsinoe. A lost
work of Callimachus, the AEtia, has also an importance in our quest,
since it contained one of the earliest love stories in literature,
showing the ideals of feminine character which were popular at that
time. As the literary original of that sort of tale which makes love and
marriage the beginning and end of the plot, and which emphasizes the
constancy and purity of female love, this story, which was the model for
the Greek novel of later generations, is evidence that in an age
infamous for the wickedness of those in high places the people yet
delighted in stories of domestic affection and innocence. The tale of
Callimachus, according to Mahaffy, ran in this wise:

"There were once upon a time two young people of marvellous beauty,
called Acontius and Cydippe. All previous attempts on the part of any
youth or maiden to gain their affections had been fruitless; and the one
went about, a modern Achilles in manly splendor; the other, with the
roses and lilies of her cheeks, added a fourth to the number of the
Graces. But the god Eros,--now already the winged urchin of the
Anacreontics,--angry at this contumacy, determined to assert his power.
They met at a feast of Delos, she from Athens, he from Ceos.... Seized
with violent love at first sight, the youth inscribes on a quince, which
was a fruit used at this particular feast, 'I swear by Artemis that
Acontius shall be my husband,' and this he throws at the girl's feet.
Her nurse picks it up and reads the words to the girl, who blushed 'in
plots of roses' at the oath which she had never taken. But she too is
seized with an absorbing passion, and the situation is complicated by
the ignorance or hardness of heart of her parents, who had determined to
marry her to another man. Her grief prostrates her with sore sickness,
and the marriage is postponed. Meanwhile, Acontius flees the city and
his parents, and wanders disconsolate through the woods, telling to
trees and streams his love, writing 'Cydippe' upon every bark, and
filling all the groves with his sighs. Thrice the parents of the maiden
prepared the wedding, an