1898.] SMYTH — PERICLES AND APOLLONIUS. 215 



Kostbarkeiten und verkauft ihn als Sklaven. Der neue Herr ver- 

 kauft ihn an seinen Vater, der ihni seine Gunst zuwendet ; diese 

 benutzt des Konigs Juwelier um ihn zu verfiihren des Konigs Siegel 

 zu stehlen ; als ihn dieser dafiir hinrichten lassen will, und ihn 

 entkleiden liisst, erkennt er in ihm an einem Male seinen verlore- 

 nen Sohn." 



The Volksmarchen are marked by childlike simplicity and naivete. 

 They translate the reader into a realm of extravagant fancy where 



" One vast realm of wonder spreads around, 

 And all the muse's tales seem'truly told." 



The gold that is sown so liberally is fairy gold, and the kings 

 and princesses are fairy people. Not seldom, however, in the 

 midst of the thaumaturgy of the Apollonius narrative a scene is 

 half disclosed that reveals the presence of the attentive and skillful 

 Greek rhetorician who was the first to handle the romance. Thus 

 the scene at the beginning of the banquet with King Archistrates is 

 perhaps modeled after the meal of Menelaus in the Odyssey. Rohde 

 thinks also that the grace of an original picture has been blurred 

 by the copyist in such scenes as the courtship of the three youths, 

 and the old king's roguish familiar treatment of them ; the dis- 

 covery of the chest by the physician, Cerimon, and his preco- 

 ciously smart pupil j and the half-scurrilous, half-farcical manner 

 of the bawd. 



On the other hand, Riese points out (Vorrede, p. xv) that certain 

 boorish witticisms may likely have been introduced into the narra- 

 tive by the Latin author. 



Here then are sufficient indications from every source that the 

 romance was originally a work of sophistic rhetoric, though pre- 

 sumably of the simpler sort after the style of Xenophon. 



Its scenery is the coast lands and islands of the Mediterranean ; 

 its pirates and other malefactors are the usual evil-doers of the 

 sophistic romance ; its motives are external, accidental and fatalis- 

 tic. Under the hands of the Latin scribe the rhetorical romance 

 was transformed into a Volksbuch, which accounts for its wide- 

 spread popularity in the Middle Ages.^ 



1 The Latin text even in the oldest extant MSS. shows traces of provincialisms 

 and of the influence of popular usage. This passage of a pseudo-classical romance 

 into a Volksbiich is alluded to by Riese in his edition of 1893 • " Inter quae sunt 

 popularia quaedam, quae iam prorsus linguarum romanarum prae se ferunt 

 imaginem, ut ablativi illi in inatrinionio postulabant, populi = homines, habet 

 nnnos (gallice il y a des Ans), quid est hoc quod (gallice qu^est ce que"), alia. 



