Book 1

praef.1. In Lesbos, while hunting in a grove sacred to the Nymphs, I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: a painting, a picture, a tale of love. The grove too was beautiful, thick with trees, full of flowers, and watered throughout; a single spring nourished it all, both the flowers and the trees. But the painting was more delightful still, both for its exceptional artistry and for the love-story it told; so that many, even strangers, came at the report of it, suppliants of the Nymphs and admirers of the picture.

praef.2. In it were women giving birth and others arraying infants in swaddling-clothes; babies exposed, flocks feeding them; shepherds taking them up, young people pledging themselves to one another; a raid of pirates, an onset of enemies. As I gazed at the many other scenes, all of them touched with love, and marvelled at them, a longing seized me to set down in writing a rival to the painting.

praef.3. So I sought out an interpreter of the picture and laboured to compose these four books, as an offering to Love and the Nymphs and Pan, and a delightful possession for all mankind, which will heal the sick and comfort the grieving, which will remind the one who has loved and instruct the one who has not yet loved.

praef.4. For certainly no one has ever escaped Love, or ever will, so long as beauty exists and eyes can see. But for my own part, may the god grant me to keep my self-command while I write of the loves of others.

1.1. There is a city in Lesbos called Mytilene, great and beautiful; for it is divided by channels through which the sea flows in, and it is adorned with bridges of polished white stone. You would think you were looking not at a city but at an island.

1.2. Some two hundred stades from this city lay the estate of a prosperous man, a most beautiful possession: mountains stocked with game, plains bearing wheat, hillsides covered with vines, pastures for flocks; and the sea broke upon a long stretch of beach with soft sand.

2.1. On this estate a goatherd named Lamon, while pasturing his flock, found an infant being suckled by one of his goats. There was a thicket, a tangle of brambles, ivy creeping over them, and soft grass on which the child lay. The goat kept running off to it again and again, often disappearing, and abandoning her kid to stay beside the baby.

2.2. Lamon, taking pity on the neglected kid, watched her comings and goings, and at high noon followed her tracks and saw the goat standing carefully astride the baby, lest she should hurt it by treading on it with her hooves, and the child drawing in the flow of milk as though from a mother's breast.

2.3. Marvelling, as well he might, he drew near and found it was a boy, large and beautiful, and wrapped in finer swaddling-clothes than its exposure would suggest; for there was a little cloak of sea-purple, a golden brooch, and a small dagger with an ivory hilt.

3.1. At first he thought to carry off only the tokens and trouble himself no further about the child; but then, ashamed that he would not even match the kindness of a goat, he waited for nightfall and carried everything to his wife Myrtale—the tokens and the child and the goat herself.

3.2. She was amazed that goats now bore children, but he told her the whole story: how he had found it exposed, how he had seen it being suckled, how he was ashamed to leave it to die. When she too agreed, they hid away the things that had been exposed with it, claimed the child as their own, and entrusted its nursing to the goat. And so that even the child's name might seem to belong to a herdsman, they decided to call him Daphnis.

4.1. When two years had now gone by, a shepherd from the neighbouring fields, named Dryas, while pasturing his flock, met with similar discoveries and similar sights. There was a cave of the Nymphs, a great rock, hollow within and rounded without.

4.2. The statues of the Nymphs themselves were made of stone: their feet were bare, their arms naked to the shoulders, their hair loose down to their necks, a girdle about the waist, a smile upon the brow; the whole figure was like a band of dancers in a dance. The mouth of the cave was at the very centre of the great rock.

4.3. From a spring water gushed up and made a flowing stream, so that a very lovely meadow stretched out before the cave, much soft grass nourished by the moisture. There were dedicated there milk-pails and slanting flutes and pan-pipes and reeds, the offerings of shepherds of an earlier time.

5.1. To this shrine of the Nymphs a ewe that had lately lambed kept coming so often that she more than once gave the impression of being lost. Wishing to punish her and bring her back to her former good behaviour, Dryas twisted a fresh green withy into a noose and went up to the rock, meaning to catch her there.

5.2. But when he came upon her, he saw none of what he had expected; rather, he saw the ewe offering her teat in a thoroughly human way for the abundant drawing of her milk, and an infant pulling eagerly, without crying, moving its mouth from one teat to the other, its face clean and bright, for the ewe would lick its face with her tongue when it had had its fill.

5.3. This child was a girl, and beside her too lay tokens: a head-band shot with gold, gilded sandals, and golden anklets.

6.1. Thinking the find to be something heaven-sent, and learning from the ewe to pity and to love the child, Dryas took the baby up on his arm, put the tokens away in his wallet, and prayed to the Nymphs that with good fortune he might rear their suppliant.

6.2. And when it was time to drive the flock home, he came to his farmstead and told his wife what he had seen, showed her what he had found, and urged her to regard the child as a little daughter and to rear her secretly as her own.

6.3. So Nape (for that was her name) became a mother at once and loved the child, as though afraid of being outdone by the ewe; and she too gave it a herdsman's name to lend the story credit, and called her Chloe.

7.1. These children grew very quickly, and a beauty showed in them too fine for the country. By now the boy was fifteen years old, and the girl two years younger, when both Dryas and Lamon on a single night saw a dream of this kind.

7.2. They thought that those Nymphs of the cave, where the spring was, where Dryas had found the child, were handing Daphnis and Chloe over to a boy who was very proud and beautiful, with wings on his shoulders, carrying tiny arrows along with a little bow; and that he touched them both with a single arrow and bade each henceforth tend a flock—the boy the goats, the girl the sheep.

8.1. When they had seen this dream, they were distressed that the children would be herders, though their swaddling-clothes had promised a better fortune (which was why they fed them on more delicate fare and taught them letters and everything that counted as fine in the country); yet they thought it right to obey the gods concerning those whom the providence of the gods had saved.

8.2. So, sharing the dream with each other and sacrificing beside the Nymphs to the boy with the wings (for they could not say his name), they sent them out as herders along with the flocks, having taught them everything: how one must pasture before noon,

8.3. how when the heat had slackened; when to lead them out to drink, when to bring them back to the fold; for which tasks one should use the crook, for which the voice alone. And the children took it up with great delight, as a great office, and they loved the goats and the sheep more than is the way of herders—she tracing the cause of her rescue to a sheep, he remembering that, when exposed, a goat had reared him.

9.1. It was the beginning of spring, and all the flowers were in bloom, those in the woods, those in the meadows, and all the flowers of the hills. Now there was the humming of bees, the song of musical birds, the gambolling of newborn lambs; the lambs gambolled on the hills, the bees hummed in the meadows, the birds sang in the thickets.

9.2. With so fair a season filling all things, these tender young children became imitators of what they heard and saw: hearing the birds sing, they sang; seeing the lambs gambol, they leapt lightly; and imitating the bees, they gathered flowers, throwing some into the folds of their garments and weaving others into little garlands which they carried to the Nymphs.

10.1. They did everything together, pasturing close to each other. Often Daphnis would round up the sheep that strayed, and often Chloe would drive the bolder goats down from the cliffs; and now and then one of them would watch over both flocks while the other lingered at some game. Their games were those of herders and of children.

10.2. She would gather asphodel stalks from somewhere in a marsh and plait a locust-cage, and while busy at this she neglected her flock; he, cutting slender reeds and piercing the joints between the knots and fastening them one to another with soft wax, would practise piping until nightfall.

10.3. And sometimes they shared their milk and wine, and pooled the food they had brought from home. You would sooner have seen the sheep and the goats parted from one another than Chloe and Daphnis.

11.1. While they were thus at play, Love contrived an earnest matter of this kind. A she-wolf, rearing young cubs, often carried off creatures from the neighbouring fields out of other flocks, since she needed much food for the rearing of her cubs.

11.2. So the villagers gathered by night and dug pits a fathom across and four deep. Most of the earth they carried far off and scattered; but stretching long dry sticks across the gap, they sprinkled the rest of the earth over them in the likeness of the ground that had been there before, so that even if a hare ran across, it would break the sticks, weaker than straws, and so make it plain that here was no ground but only the imitation of ground. They dug many such trenches both in the hills and in the plains, but they had no luck in catching the she-wolf, for she sensed the trick in the ground; they did, however, destroy many goats and sheep, and very nearly Daphnis, in this way.

12.1. Two he-goats, roused to a fight, fell upon each other. In the more violent of their clashes one of them had his horn broken, and in pain, snorting, he turned to flight; but the victor, following close on his tracks, kept the flight unbroken. Daphnis, grieved about the horn and vexed at the goat's boldness, took his crook and gave chase to the pursuer.

12.2. But since the one was fleeing for his life and the other pursuing in anger, neither had a clear view of what was underfoot, and both fell into the pit—the he-goat first, Daphnis second. This was the very thing that saved Daphnis: he used the goat to break his fall.

12.3. So there he waited, weeping, for someone to haul him up, if anyone should come; but Chloe, seeing what had happened, ran to the pit, and learning that he was alive, called a cowherd from the neighbouring fields to help.

12.4. He came and looked for a long rope, holding to which Daphnis might be drawn up and climb out. But there was no rope; so Chloe undid her breast-band and gave it to the cowherd to lower; and thus those standing at the edge pulled while Daphnis climbed up, following with his hands the drawing of the band.

12.5. They hauled up too the wretched goat, both his horns now broken—so far did justice pursue the defeated goat. This they gave to the cowherd to sacrifice, as a reward for the rescue, and they meant to lie to those at home, claiming a raid of wolves, if anyone should have missed it. They themselves went back and inspected the flock and the goats; and when they had made sure that both goats and sheep were grazing in good order, they sat down beneath the trunk of an oak and looked to see whether Daphnis had bloodied any part of his body in falling.

12.6. He was neither wounded nor bloodied anywhere, but his hair and the rest of his body were smeared with earth and mud. So it seemed best for him to bathe, before Lamon and Myrtale should learn what had happened.

13.1. And going with Chloe to the shrine of the Nymphs, he gave her his tunic and his wallet to keep, and standing beside the spring he washed his hair and his whole body.

13.2. His hair was black and thick, his body burnt by the sun; one might have thought it was tinted by the shadow of his hair. To Chloe, watching, Daphnis seemed beautiful, and because he then for the first time seemed beautiful to her, she thought the bathing the cause of his beauty. As she washed his back the flesh yielded softly to her touch, so that without thinking she touched her own more than once, trying whether it were more delicate.

13.3. And then—for the sun was now setting—they drove their flocks home, and Chloe had suffered nothing remarkable except that she longed to see Daphnis bathing again.

13.4. The next day, when they came to the pasture, Daphnis sat down beneath the accustomed oak and piped, while watching his goats lying down as though listening to his tunes; and Chloe, sitting nearby, kept her eye on the flock of sheep, but looked more often at Daphnis; and he seemed beautiful to her as he piped, and again she thought the music the cause of his beauty, so that after him she too took up the pipe, in hope that she too might somehow become beautiful.

13.5. She persuaded him to bathe again, and watched him bathing, and having watched she touched him, and went away praising him; and the praise was the beginning of love. What she was feeling she did not know, being a young girl reared in the country and never having heard from anyone else even the name of love. But a restlessness possessed her soul,

13.6. and she could not command her eyes, and she said much about Daphnis. She neglected her food, lay awake at night, paid no heed to her flock; now she laughed, now she wept; then she slept, then she sprang up; her face grew pale, then again was kindled with a blush. Not even a heifer stung by the gadfly behaves so. One day, when she was alone, these words came to her.

14.1. "Now I am sick, but what my sickness is I do not know. I am in pain, yet I have no wound. I am grieved, yet none of my sheep is lost. I burn, yet I sit in such deep shade.

14.2. How many brambles have torn me, and I did not cry; how many bees have driven their sting into me, yet I went on eating! But this thing that pricks my heart is sharper than all of them. Daphnis is beautiful—so too are the flowers; his pipe sounds beautiful—so too do the nightingales. Yet I take no account of any of them. Would that I were his pipe, that he might breathe into me;

14.3. would that I were a goat, that I might be pastured by him! O cruel water, you made only Daphnis beautiful, while I bathed in vain. I am undone, dear Nymphs; not even you save the girl who was reared among you. Who will crown you after me?

14.4. who will rear the wretched lambs? who will tend the chattering locust, which I caught with such labour, that it might lull me to sleep with its song before the cave? But now I lie awake because of Daphnis, while it chatters in vain."

15.1. Such were her sufferings, such her words, as she sought for the name of love. But Dorcon the cowherd—the one who had hauled Daphnis out of the pit—a youth with the first down of a beard, who knew both the deeds of love and its name, was at once that very day moved with love for Chloe, and as more days passed his soul was the more inflamed; and despising Daphnis as a mere boy, he resolved to win her by gifts or by force.

15.2. The first gifts he brought them were, for Daphnis a herdsman's pipe of nine reeds bound with bronze instead of wax, and for Chloe a Bacchic fawnskin, whose colouring was as though painted on with pigments.

15.3. From then on, being reckoned a friend, he little by little neglected Daphnis, and to Chloe every day he brought either a soft cheese or a flowery garland or a ripe apple; and once he brought her a newborn calf and a gilded cup and chicks of mountain birds. But she, being inexperienced in a lover's art, took the gifts and rejoiced, because she had something to give Daphnis as a present.

15.4. And—for now Daphnis too had to learn the deeds of love—there arose one day a contest of beauty between him and Dorcon; Chloe was the judge, and the prize set for the victor was to kiss Chloe. Dorcon spoke first, in this way.

16.1. "I, girl, am taller than Daphnis, and I am a cowherd while he is a goatherd—as much superior as cattle are to goats; and I am white as milk, and ruddy as the harvest about to be reaped, and a mother reared me, not a beast.

16.2. But he is small and beardless as a woman, and black as a wolf; he pastures he-goats, smelling foully of them, and he is so poor he could not even keep a dog. And if, as they say, a goat actually gave him milk, he is no different from a kid."

16.3. So spoke Dorcon, and such things; and after him Daphnis: "A goat reared me, as one reared Zeus; I pasture he-goats bigger than his cattle; I smell nothing of them, no more than Pan does, though he is for the most part a goat.

16.4. Cheese contents me, and bread baked on a spit, and white wine—the wealth of prosperous country folk. I am beardless—so too is Dionysus; dark—so too is the hyacinth; yet Dionysus is better than the Satyrs, and the hyacinth than the lilies.

16.5. But this one is ruddy as a fox, and bearded as a he-goat, and white as a woman from the town; and if you must kiss someone, you will kiss my mouth, but his you will kiss the hairs upon his chin. Remember too, girl, that a flock reared you also, and yet even so you are beautiful."

17.1. Chloe waited no longer, but partly pleased by the praise, partly having long desired to kiss Daphnis, she sprang up and kissed him—a kiss untaught and artless, yet very able to warm the soul.

17.2. So Dorcon ran off in pain, seeking some other path of love; but Daphnis, as though not kissed but stung, was straightway downcast, and often grew chill, and his heart kept pounding, and he wished to look at Chloe, but when he looked he was filled with blushes.

17.3. Then for the first time he marvelled at her hair, that it was golden, and at her eyes, that they were large as a heifer's, and at her face, that it was truly whiter even than the goats' milk—as though only now he had gained eyes and had been blind in the time before.

17.4. So he took no food except just to taste it, and drink, if ever he was forced to it, he took only to the point of wetting his mouth. He who had been more talkative than the locusts was silent; he who had stirred about more than the goats was idle. The flock was neglected; the pipe was cast aside; his face was paler than summer grass. To Chloe alone he became talkative; and if ever he was apart from her, he would babble such things to himself:

18.1. "What in the world does Chloe's kiss do to me? Her lips are softer than roses and her mouth sweeter than honeycomb; but the kiss is sharper than a bee's sting. Often I have kissed kids, often I have kissed newborn puppies and the calf that Dorcon gave; but this is a new kind of kiss. My breath leaps out, my heart bounds, my soul melts away, and yet I want to kiss her again.

18.2. O wretched victory! O strange sickness, whose very name I do not know how to say! Did Chloe taste of some drug before she kissed me? How then did she not die of it? How the nightingales sing, while my pipe is silent! How the kids gambol, while I sit still! How the flowers are in their prime, while I weave no garlands! No, the violets and the hyacinth are in bloom, but Daphnis withers away.

18.3. Will even Dorcon be seen to be more comely than I?" Such things did the worthy Daphnis suffer and say, as one tasting for the first time the deeds and the words of love.

19.1. But Dorcon the cowherd, the lover of Chloe, watched for Dryas as he was planting a vine-cutting and came to him with some choice little cheeses, giving them as a gift, since he had long been his friend, back when Dryas himself was a herder; and beginning from there, he broached the matter of Chloe's marriage.

19.2. If he might take her to wife, he promised many great gifts, such as a cowherd could give: a yoke of plough-oxen, four hives of bees, fifty young apple-trees, a bull's hide to cut into sandals, and a calf every year that no longer needed milk.

19.3. So that Dryas, all but bewitched by the gifts, nearly assented to the marriage. But considering that the girl deserved a better bridegroom, and fearing that he might one day fall into incurable troubles, he refused the marriage, asked his pardon, and declined the gifts that had been named.

20.1. Having failed of his hopes a second time, and having wasted good cheeses for nothing, Dorcon resolved to lay hands on Chloe when she was alone; and noting that on alternate days the herds were led to drink, now by Daphnis, now by the girl, he devised a stratagem suited to a herdsman.

20.2. Taking the hide of a great wolf, which a bull, fighting before his cows, had once gored to death with his horns, he stretched it over his body, draping it down his back to his feet, so that the forepaws were spread over his arms and the hind ones over his legs down to the heel, and the gaping mouth covered his head like a soldier's helmet.

20.3. Having made himself as beastlike as he possibly could, he came to the spring where the goats and the sheep drank after pasturing. The spring was in very low ground, and all the place around it was wild with thorns and brambles and low juniper and thistles;

20.4. easily there might a real wolf have lurked unseen. There Dorcon hid himself and watched for the hour of drinking, and had high hopes of seizing Chloe with his hands by frightening her with his disguise.

21.1. A little time passed, and Chloe drove the herds down to the spring, leaving Daphnis cutting green leafage to feed the kids after pasturing.

21.2. But the dogs that followed to guard the sheep and the goats, with that busy keenness dogs have in tracking, scented Dorcon as he stirred to assault the girl, and barking very fiercely, rushed at him as at a wolf, and surrounding him before he could even rise, in his alarm, fastened on the hide and bit at it.

21.3. For a while, ashamed of being caught and protected by the hide that covered him, he lay silent in the thicket; but when Chloe, dismayed at the first sight, called Daphnis to help, and the dogs, tearing at the hide, began to reach his body, with a great groan he begged the girl, and Daphnis now present, to come to his aid.

21.4. They quickly quieted the dogs with the accustomed call, and leading Dorcon, bitten about the thighs and shoulders, to the spring, they washed his bites, and chewing fresh elm-bark sprinkled it on them;

21.5. and from inexperience of love's daring deeds, taking the putting on of the hide for a herdsman's prank, they felt no anger at all, but even comforted him and, leading him by the hand for a while, sent him on his way.

22.1. So he, having come so near to danger and been saved from a dog's mouth, not a wolf's, tended his body; but Daphnis and Chloe had much toil until nightfall in gathering the goats and the sheep;

22.2. for, terrified by the hide and thrown into confusion by the barking of the dogs, some had run up onto the rocks and others had run down to the very sea. And yet they had been trained to obey the voice and to be charmed by the pipe and to gather at the clap of a hand;

22.3. but then their fear cast forgetfulness of all this upon them. Hardly, finding them like hares by their tracks, did they bring them back to the folds. That one night alone they slept a deep sleep, and found in their weariness a remedy for the pain of love.

22.4. But when day came again, they suffered much the same as before. They rejoiced to see each other, and grieved when parted; they wanted something, but did not know what they wanted. This only they knew: that a kiss had undone the one, a bath the other.

23.1. The season of the year inflamed them too. It was now the end of spring and the beginning of summer, and everything at its peak: the trees in fruit, the plains in standing corn. Sweet was the cicadas' song, sweet the scent of the ripening fruit, delightful the bleating of the flocks.

23.2. One might have imagined that the rivers were singing as they flowed gently along, that the winds were piping as they breathed among the pines, that the apples were falling to the ground for love, and that the sun, being a lover of beauty, was stripping everyone bare. So Daphnis, warmed by all this, would go into the rivers, and now would bathe, now would catch the fish that circled there; and often too he drank, as though to quench the burning within him.

23.3. Chloe, after milking the sheep and most of the goats, had trouble for a long while in setting the milk; for the flies are cruel to vex and to sting, if they are driven off. Then, when she had washed her face, she would crown herself with branches of pine and gird herself with the fawnskin, and filling the milk-pail with wine and milk, she would share a common draught with Daphnis.

24.1. When noon came on, their eyes were now captured: for she, seeing Daphnis naked, was overwhelmed by his beauty all at once, and melted away, finding no part of him to fault; while he, seeing her in the fawnskin and the crown of pine, holding out the milk-pail, thought he was looking on one of the Nymphs of the cave.

24.2. So he would snatch the pine from her head and crown himself, having first kissed the crown; and she would put on his clothes while he bathed and was naked, having first herself kissed them too.

24.3. Sometimes too they pelted each other with apples and decked each other's heads, parting the hair; and she likened his hair, because it was black, to myrtle-berries, and he likened her face to an apple, because it was white and rosy.

24.4. He taught her also to pipe; and when she began to blow, he would snatch the pipe and run his own lips over the reeds; and he seemed to be correcting her mistakes, but by means of the pipe he was decorously kissing Chloe.

25.1. Once, as he piped in the noontide and the flocks lay in the shade, Chloe unawares dozed off. Daphnis, noticing this, set down his pipe and gazed at all of her insatiably, since he had nothing to be ashamed of, and at the same time he murmured softly: "How her eyes sleep, and how her mouth breathes!

25.2. Not even the apples breathe so, nor the pears. But I am afraid to kiss her: the kiss bites the heart, and like new honey it makes one mad; and I shrink too from waking her with a kiss.

25.3. O chattering cicadas! they will not let her sleep, ringing out so loudly. And the he-goats too clatter with their horns as they fight. O wolves more cowardly than foxes, not to have carried these off!"

26.1. While he was in the midst of such words, a cicada, fleeing a swallow that wished to catch it, fell into Chloe's bosom; and the swallow, following, could not catch it, but coming close in the chase brushed her cheeks with its wings.

26.2. She, not knowing what had happened, with a great cry started up out of sleep. But seeing the swallow still flying near and Daphnis laughing at her fright, she ceased to be afraid, and wiped her eyes that still wished to sleep.

26.3. And the cicada chirped from her bosom, like a suppliant acknowledging gratitude for its rescue. So Chloe again cried out loudly, and Daphnis laughed; and seizing the excuse, he put his hands into her bosom and brought out the worthy cicada, which would not be silent even in his right hand. She was delighted to see it, and took it and kissed it, and put it back, still chirping, into her bosom.

27.1. Once a wood-pigeon delighted them, sounding its rustic note from the wood. And when Chloe wished to learn what it was saying, Daphnis taught her, telling the tale that is commonly told.

27.2. "There was once, girl, a beautiful maiden, and she pastured many cows in a wood; and she was also a singer, and her cows took delight in her music, and she pastured them with neither the blow of a crook nor the prick of a goad, but sitting beneath a pine and crowning herself with pine she sang of Pan and Pitys, and the cows stayed by her voice.

27.3. A boy pasturing cows not far off, himself also beautiful and a singer like the maiden, vied with her in melody, and matched against hers a voice greater, as a man's, sweeter, as a boy's, and charming away eight of her best cows into his own herd, drove them off.

27.4. The maiden was grieved at the loss of her herd and at her defeat in song, and prayed to the gods to become a bird before reaching home. The gods consented and made her into this bird, a mountain bird like the maiden, musical like her. And even now in her song she tells of her misfortune, that she is seeking her cows that have wandered away."

28.1. Such delights did the summer afford them. But when autumn was at its height and the grape-cluster ripe, Tyrian pirates, in a Carian galley so as not to seem barbarians, put in at those fields, and disembarking with swords and half-corslets, they swept off everything that came to hand: fragrant wine, abundant wheat, honey in the comb; they drove off too some cattle from Dorcon's herd.

28.2. They seized Daphnis as well, as he wandered by the sea; for Chloe, being a girl, drove out Dryas's sheep later than usual, in fear of the insolent shepherds. And seeing a youth tall and beautiful and worth more than plunder from the fields, they busied themselves no further with the goats or the other farms, but led him down to the ship, weeping and at a loss and calling loudly on Chloe.

28.3. And they, having just cast off the cable and put their hands to the oars, were rowing out to sea; while Chloe drove down her flock, bringing a new pipe as a gift for Daphnis. But seeing the goats in confusion and hearing Daphnis ever more loudly crying out to her, she forgot her sheep and threw down the pipe and ran to Dorcon to beg his help.

29.1. He lay battered by the young pirates' blows and scarcely breathing, much blood flowing from him. But seeing Chloe and catching a little spark of his former love, he said: "I, Chloe, shall be dead in a little while; for the impious pirates, while I fought before my cattle, cut me down like an ox.

29.2. But you, save Daphnis, and avenge me, and destroy them. I have trained the cows to follow the sound of the pipe and to pursue its tune, even if they are pasturing somewhere far off. Go then, take this pipe and blow into it that tune which I once taught Daphnis and Daphnis taught you; the rest will be the pipe's concern, and the cows' yonder.

29.3. I make you a gift too of the pipe itself, with which, in contests, I have beaten many cowherds and goatherds. In return for this, kiss me while I still live, and weep for me when I am dead; and if you ever see another pasturing the cows, remember me."

30.1. Dorcon, having said so much and given a last kiss, with the kiss let go his life; and Chloe, taking the pipe and setting it to her lips, piped as loudly as she could; and the cows heard and knew the tune, and with a single impulse, lowing, leapt into the sea.

30.2. As the violent leap struck against one side of the ship and the sea parted into a hollow with the cows' plunge, the ship turned over and, as the surge closed in, was lost; and the men were thrown out with unequal hopes of safety.

30.3. For the pirates had their swords slung on them and had put on their scaly half-corslets and had bound greaves halfway up their shins; but Daphnis was barefoot, as one pasturing in a plain, and half-naked,

30.4. since the season was still hot. So after they had swum a little way, their arms carried them down to the deep; but Daphnis easily stripped off his clothing, yet laboured at the swimming, since he had swum before only in rivers.

30.5. Later, taught by necessity what to do, he rushed into the midst of the cows, and laying hold with his two hands on the two horns of a cow, was borne along between them without pain or toil, as if driving a wagon.

30.6. For a cow swims as not even a man can; she falls short only of the water-birds and of the fish themselves; nor would a cow ever drown while swimming, were it not that the nails of her hooves, becoming sodden, fall off. To this account many places along the sea bear witness even now, called "the ox-fords."

31.1. So in this manner Daphnis was saved, having against all hope escaped two dangers, of piracy and of shipwreck; and coming out, and finding Chloe on the shore laughing and weeping at once, he fell into her arms and asked what she had meant by piping;

31.2. and she told him everything: her running to Dorcon, the training of the cows, how she had been bidden to pipe, and that Dorcon was dead—only, out of shame, she did not mention the kiss. They resolved to honour their benefactor, and going with his kinsfolk they buried the wretched Dorcon.

31.3. They heaped up much earth, and planted many cultivated plants, and hung upon them the first-fruits of their labours; but they also poured libations of milk, and crushed grape-clusters, and broke many pipes.

31.4. There were heard too piteous lowings of the cows, and certain disordered runnings were seen along with the lowings; and as far as could be guessed among herdsmen and goatherds, these were the cows' lament for their cowherd who had died.

32.1. After Dorcon's burial Chloe led Daphnis to the Nymphs and bathed him. And then for the first time, while Daphnis looked on, she herself bathed her own body, white and pure in its beauty and needing no bathing for the sake of beauty;

32.2. and gathering flowers, all that the season afforded, they crowned the statues, and hung Dorcon's pipe from the rock as an offering. And after this they went and looked to the goats and the sheep.

32.3. They were all lying down, neither grazing nor bleating, but, I suppose, longing for Daphnis and Chloe in their absence. At any rate, when they appeared and gave the accustomed call and piped, the sheep rose up and grazed, and the goats gambolled and snorted, as though rejoicing at the safety of their familiar goatherd.

32.4. Yet Daphnis could not persuade his soul to rejoice, having seen Chloe naked and her once-hidden beauty laid bare. His heart ached as though eaten away by drugs, and his breath now came out in violent gusts, as though someone were pursuing him, now failed altogether, as though spent in the earlier onsets.

32.5. The bath seemed to him more fearful than the sea; he thought his soul still remained among the pirates, being young and rustic and as yet ignorant of the piracy of love.