Longus

Map of ancient Lesbos, the setting of Daphnis and Chloe and possibly home to Longus

Longus, sometimes Longos (Greek: Λόγγος), was the author of an ancient Greek novel or romance, Daphnis and Chloe. Nothing is known of his life; it is sometimes assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos, the setting of his only known work, during the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD.

It has been suggested that the name Longus is merely a misinterpretation of the first word of Daphnis and Chloe's title Λεσβιακῶν ἐρωτικῶν λόγοι ('story of a Lesbian romance') in the Florentine manuscript; E. E. Seiler observes that the best manuscript begins and ends with λόγου (not λόγγου) ποιμενικῶν. If his name was really Longus, he was possibly a freedman of some Roman family which bore that name as a cognomen.

Quotes

• For our part, may the god grant us proper detachment in depicting the story of others.
  • Daphnis and Chloe, Proem, § 4 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson); cp. Paul Turner (1956): "But as for me, I hope that the god will allow me to write of other people's experiences, while retianing my own sanity."

About

• Ofter the Scaligers and Heinsius name,
  Aur Critick-Cæsars, who can raise thy fame,
  Great Sophist? unlesse Colledges, and the Pen
  Of all our best new University men,
  If yet in all their Libraries there be
  So much of the Arts left as to praise thee.
  Let them their Aristotle himself rehearse,
  And prove thy worth by Syllogisms in verse;
  And then Conclude, None truly can declare
  The Sophists praise but the great Sophister.
  • James Wright, printed as an epigraph "Upon the Author" in Thornley (1657)