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Although Longus's pastoral has attracted disapproval too - Mrs. Browning called it an 'obscene text' - it has proved an enduringly fertile source for artists from Henry Fielding to Corot and Ravel and is recognizably the masterpiece among early Greek novels. It shares with them the stock in trade of pirates, dreams and supernatural aids, but Longus's artistry adds other dimensions, transforming it into a virtuoso love story, rich in insights, humorous and ironical in its treatment of human sexual experience. 'One would do well to read it every year,' Goethe advised, 'to be instructed by it again and again, and to receive anew the impression of its great beauty.'
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