Note 3 — Chapter LXXX · (Vetála 6.)

So in the Hero and Leander of Musæus the two lovers meet in the temple of Venus at Sestos, and in the Æthiopica of Heliodorus Theagenes meets Chariclea at a festival at Delphi. Petrarch met Laura for the first time in the chapel of St. Clara at Avignon, and Boccacio fell in love with Maria, the daughter of Robert of Naples, in the Church of the bare-footed friars in Naples. (Dunlop’s History of Fiction, translated by Liebrecht, p. 9.) Rohde remarks that in Greek romances the hero and heroine usually meet in this way. Indeed it was scarcely possible for two young people belonging to the upper classes of Greek society to meet in any other way, (Der Griechische Roman, p. 146 and note). See also pp. 385 and 486.