Abstract

The legend of Phatta, as narrated by Longus in Daphnis and Chloe (1.27), intertwines aesthetic, psychological, religious, and narratological aspects. It is linked with Aphrodite and love, with Kore-Persephone-Pherephatta and death, and with Orpheus and music. But this intricate narrative, which plays upon narrators and audience, fiction and art, is also a subtle and complex synthesis of Theocritean bucolic enshrined in the original prose form of an aetiological legend.