Longus

Nothing is known about Longus except that he wrote Daphnis and Chloe, a pastoral romance set on the island of Lesbos. The novel, probably composed in the second century AD, tells the story of two foundlings raised by shepherds who fall in love, endure various adventures and separations, and are eventually reunited and discovered to be of noble birth.

It is the most artistically accomplished of the surviving Greek novels — lyrical, sensuous, and carefully structured. The Lesbian landscape is evoked with a painter's eye, and the sexual awakening of the two young lovers is handled with a delicacy and humour that has charmed readers from the Renaissance onwards. Ravel's ballet suite and Chagall's illustrations are among its more famous afterlives.