Five short, violent Greek love-legends collected by Plutarch, each ending in death, exile, or divine retribution over a contested marriage or beloved.
Amatoriae Narrationes ("Love Stories") is a brief text preserved among Plutarch's Moralia, the vast collection of essays and dialogues that supplements his better-known biographical Lives. Unlike the philosophical dialogues elsewhere in the Moralia, this piece is simply a string of five local legends from Boeotia, the Peloponnese, and Sparta, each built around a contested courtship that ends in death.
In the stories, a beautiful girl or boy is desired by rival suitors, and the conflict escalates past persuasion into abduction and killing: Aristocleia is torn apart between Straton and Callisthenes as they fight over her at a sacrifice; Actaeon of Corinth dies when Archias tries to seize him by force, after which his father's curse brings plague on the city until Archias flees and founds Syracuse; the daughters of Scedasus at Leuctra are raped and murdered by two Spartan guests, a crime the narrative ties directly to Sparta's later military defeat on that same ground; the thirty suitors of Calliroe murder her father Phocus and are in turn hunted down and stoned by the Boeotians; and Damocrita, wife of the exiled Alcippus, kills her own daughters and herself in revenge for the political persecution of her family, an act the Lacedaemonians answer with exile of the corpses and are punished for with an earthquake.
The collection matters less as literature than as a window into how Greeks used erotic anecdote to explain real historical and topographical facts: the site of the battle of Leuctra, the founding of Syracuse, local tomb-cults and place names. Plutarch (or whoever assembled the collection under his name) treats desire, when frustrated by force rather than persuasion, as a recurring cause of civic catastrophe, plague, and divine vengeance, linking private erotic violence to public disaster.
“the girl perished in the hands of those pulling her from both sides”
— Amatoriae Narrationes · read this chapter →
“drought and plague seized the city, and when the Corinthians consulted the oracle about relief, the god declared that it was the wrath of Poseidon”
— Amatoriae Narrationes · read this chapter →
“the Lacedaemonians suffered utter defeat right beside the very monument of the daughters of Scedasus”
— Amatoriae Narrationes · read this chapter →
“Damocrita slew her daughters, and then herself upon them”
— Amatoriae Narrationes · read this chapter →
It is a short collection of five Greek local legends, traditionally attached to Plutarch's Moralia, in which contested courtships turn violent and end in death, exile, or suicide. Each story is also tied to a real place, tomb, or historical event, such as the battle of Leuctra or the founding of Syracuse.
It is transmitted among Plutarch's works in the Moralia collection, though scholars have long debated its authorship. The text itself simply narrates the five stories without philosophical commentary.
Two Spartan travelers who had been guests in Scedasus's house raped and murdered his daughters at Leuctra. Scedasus sought justice from the Spartan ephors and kings, was ignored, and killed himself; the text connects this crime to Sparta's later defeat at Leuctra.
Actaeon was a handsome young Corinthian pursued by many suitors, especially Archias, who tried to abduct him by force; Actaeon died in the struggle. His father Melissus cursed Corinth publicly before killing himself, and a plague and drought followed until the city acknowledged Poseidon's wrath, prompting Archias to flee to Sicily and found Syracuse.
After her husband Alcippus was exiled on false charges and their enemies decreed that no one could marry the daughters, Damocrita set fire to a hall full of Spartan women during a festival, then killed her daughters and herself rather than let the persecution continue. The Lacedaemonians were said to suffer an earthquake afterward as divine punishment.
Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum · Moralia: Adversus Colotem · Moralia: Amatorius · Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum · Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit · Moralia: An Virtus Doceri Possit · Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia · Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores · Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica · Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior · Moralia: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · Moralia: Comparationis Aristophanes Et Menandri Compendium