f Dionysus, imploring his help. The
god granted the prayers of his priest, for suddenly the
Calydonians began to lose their senses, like drunkards,
and to die in fits of madness. They appealed to the
oracle of Dodona ... which declared that the calamity
was due to the wrath of the god Dionysus, and that it
would not cease until Coresus had sacrificed to
Dionysus either Callirrhoe or anyone else willing to
die for her. Now when the girl saw no way of escaping,
she sought refuge with her former educators, but when
they too refused to receive her, nothing remained for
her but death. When all the preparations for the
sacrifice had been made in accordance with the precepts
of the oracle of Dodona, she was brought to the altar,
adorned like an animal that is to be sacrificed;
Coresus, however, whose duty it was to offer the
sacrifice, let love prevail in place of hate, and slew
himself instead of Callirrhoe, thus proving by his deed
that he had been animated by the purest love. But when
Callirrhoe saw Coresus as a corpse, overcome by pity
and repentance for her treatment of him, she went and
drowned herself in the fountain not far from the
Calydonian harbor, which since that time is known as
the fountain of Callirrhoe."

If a modern lover, desiring to possess a girl, got her into a
predicament which culminated in the necessity of his either slaying
her with his own hands or killing himself, and did not choose the
latter alternative, we should regard him as more contemptible than the
vilest assassin. To us self-sacrifice in such a case would seem not a
test of love, nor even of honor so much as of common decency, and we
should expect a man to submit to it even if his love of the poor girl
had been a mere infatuation of the senses. However, in view of the
contempt for women, and for love for women, prevalent among the Greeks
in general, we may perhaps discover at least a gleam of better things
in this legend of masculine self-sacrifice.

PERSIAN LOVE

A closer approximation to our ideal may be found in a story related by
the Persian poet Saadi (358):

"There was a handsome and well-disposed young man, who
was embarked in a vessel with a lovely damsel: I have
read that, sailing on the mighty deep, they fell
together into a whirlpool: When the pilot came to offer
him assistance; Go