Schevill — Studies in Cervantes. 507 



with the love philtres, enchantments and the like, which serve simi- 

 lar purposes in sixteenth century romances. In the Persiles the cor- 

 responding part in the above mentioned love affairs is taken by the 

 old hag Zenotia. 



Having examined the age of Cervantes we see, therefore, that the 

 great passion of Dido with its splendid exposition and vividness 

 exerted influence on the sentimental fiction of the entire sixteenth 

 century; nowhere is there a more forceful description of the "love- 

 sickness" which characterizes so many Renaissance heroines thai? 

 in the fourth book of the Aeneid.^ 



Sinforosa falls in love with the handsome stranger at the cele- 

 bration of festal games. The idea of using such an opportunity to 

 bring together hero and heroine goes back, as we have seen, to 

 Heliodorus and the Greek romances ;- but nowhere among the latter 

 would Cervantes have found any festivities as fully described as 

 those which he gives. He felt, no doubt, that in order to present 

 his hero in the most advantageous light, with strength and beauty, 

 he must dwell more extensively than his predecessors on his athletic 

 superiority and skill. To this end he may have cast about for sug- 

 gestions and so have come upon the Aeneid.^ The fifth book with 

 its funeral games had already been frequently imitated, and a similar 

 contest in which the hero outstripped all competitors and gained all 

 prizes, must have seemed appropriate for his novel also. Their 

 adoption was therefore no more an innovation than the use of 

 Dido's story; they had already been taken out of their original 

 setting in Homer* and Virgil by writers of fiction to serve as enter- 



^ Encida, Vol. I, p. 144: "Quando los astros que del cielo bajan | Embian 

 al niundo el sueuo y el silencio, | Sola ella en sii espaciosa y viuda casa, | Se 

 aflige, se consume, y se desliace, | Sobre su viudo estrado se reclina, etc." 

 Persiles, p. 593, col. I ff., illness of Auristela. 



" Cf. Rohde, op. cit., p. 155 ff. 



^ Mena's Heliodorus has a marginal reference to the games in the Aeneid; 

 cf. p. 475, n. 2. 



* In Homer, Iliad, XXIII, the contests are : ( 1 ) chariot, with five prizes ; 



(2) boxing (or pugilaio in a recent Spanish version), with two competitors; 



(3) wrestling or lucha, with two competitors; (4) foot race, with three 

 competitors; (5) duel with spears, with two competitors; (6) hurling of 

 great weights of metal, with four competitors ; ( 7 ) shooting, with two 

 competitors; in the Odyssey, VIII, there is a reference to games, foot race, 

 wrestling, leaping, throwing of weights and boxing; Theocritus, Idyl 22, 

 describes a boxing-match which influenced Virgil's contest, bk. V; for 



Trans. Conn. Acad., Vol. XIII. 35 Apeil, 1908. 



