uld not suffice for the purpose of reconstruction were we not
aided by the two epistles which the lovers exchange with each other in
the _Heroides_ of Ovid, and more still by the prose version of
Aristaenetus, which appears to be quite literal, judging by the
correspondence of the text with some of the extant fragments of the
original.[323] The story can be related in a few lines. Acontius and
Cydippe are both very beautiful and have both been coy to others of
the opposite sex. As a punishment they are made to fall in love with
each other at first sight in the Temple of Diana. It is a law of this
temple that any vow made in it must be kept. To secure the girl,
Acontius therefore takes an apple, writes on it a vow that she will be
his bride and throws it at her feet. She picks it up, reads the vow
aloud and thus pledges herself. Her parents, some time after, want to
marry her to another man; three times the wedding arrangements are
made, but each time she falls ill. Finally the oracle at Delphi is
consulted, which declares that the girl's illness is due to her not
keeping her vow; whereupon explanations follow and the lovers are
united.

In the literary history of love this story may be allowed a
conspicuous place for the reason that, as Mahaffy remarks (_G.L. &
T._, 230), it is the first literary original of that sort of tale
which makes falling in love and happy marriage the beginning and the
end, while the obstacles to this union form the details of the plot.
Moreover, as Couat points out (145), the later Greek romances are mere
imitations of this Alexandrian elegy--Hero and Leander, Leucippe and
Clitophon, and other stories all recall it. But from my point of
view--the evolutionary and psychological--I cannot see that the story
told by Callimachus marks any advance. The lovers see each other only
a moment in the temple; they do not meet afterward, there is no real
courtship, they have no chance to get acquainted with each other's
mind and character, and there is no indication whatever of
supersensual, altruistic affection. Nor was Callimachus the man from
whom one would have expected a new gospel of love. He was a dry old
librarian, without originality, a compiler of catalogues and legends,
etc.--eight hundred works all told--in which even the stories were
marred by details of pedantic erudition. Moreover, there is ample
evidence in the extant epigrams that he did not differ from his
contemporaries and predecessors