Artamène  

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"Elle exprime si délicatement les sentiments les plus difficiles à exprimer et elle sait si bien faire l'anatomie du coeur amoureux... Elle sait décrire toutes les jalousies, toutes les inquiétudes, toutes les impatiences, toutes les joies, tous les dégoûts, tous les murmures, tous les désespoirs, toutes les espérances, toutes les révoltes et tous ces sentiments tumultueux qui ne sont jamais bien connus que de ceux qui les sentent ou les ont sentis"

English:

"She expresses so delicately the most difficult feelings to express and she knows so well how to painting the anatomy of the loving heart... She knows how to describe all the jealousies, all the anxieties, all the impatiences, all the joys, all the disgusts, all the murmurs, all the despairs, all the hopes, all the revolts and all those tumultuous feelings that are never well known except to those who feel them or have felt them."

--Madeleine de Scudéry describing herself in vol. 10 of Artamène, using the pseudonym Sapho

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Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus is a novel sequence, originally published in ten volumes in the 17th century. The title pages credit the work to French writer Georges de Scudéry, but it is usually attributed to his sister and fellow writer Madeleine. At 1,954,300 words, it is considered one of the longest novels ever published.

"Scudery’s major classical references and source-material comes from HerodotusHistories and Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Other sources include Plutarch, Justin, Polyaenus, Pliny, Ovid, Strabon, and the Bible."

Description by Dunlop

No hero of antiquity has been so much disfigured as Cyrus by romance. Ramsay, we have already seen (vol. ii. p. 348), has painted him as a pedantic politician. The picture represented in the Artamenes, ou Le Grand Cyrus, of Mile. Scudéry, bears still less resemblance to the hero of Herodotus, the sage of Xenophon, or the king announced by the Hebrew prophets. The romance of which the Persian' monarch is the principal character, is the second written by Mile, de Scudery, and, like Ibrahim, passed on its first publication xmder the name of her brother. It is the longest of all the French heroic romances, and reaches ten octavo volumes and 6,679 pages.

Astyages, king of Media, perplexed by the disastrous horoscope of his grandchild Cjrus, ordered him to be ex- posed on a desert mountain.^ Harpage, however, the officer charged with this errand, committed him to the care of Mitradate, a shepherd, by whom he was reared. He soon distinguished himself among his companions, over whom he exerted a sort of regal authority. By the confession' of the shepherd, it was <£scovered that his foundling is the grandson of Astyages; but the magi being clearly of opinion that the sway he assumed over his companions, was the royal usurpation portended by the planets, Cyrus was sent for to court, and in this portion of the romance, some babyish anecdotes are related in the manner of Xenophon.

The constellations again became malignant, and Cyrus was banished to Persia. From this country he set out on bis travels, bearing the assumed name of Artamenes, and under this appellation visited different towns of Greece, particularly Corinth, where he was ^nagnificently enter- tained by the sage Periander and his mother. On his re- turn to Asia he passed into Cappadocia, over which his uncle Cyaxeres, son of Astyages, then reigned in right of his queen. As this monarch, like his father, was under- stood to have a superstitious terror for Cyrus, the young prince was obliged to appear incognito. It was in a temple ^

^ See table of Aryan Exposure and return Formula No. X. Append, vol. i. The author tells the reader in the advertisement ro vol. v. that she sometimes follows Herodotus and sometimes Xenophon, and the chronology and the personages agree with the Cyropiedaea and the account in Herodotus. The latest translation of Xenophon's work which she could have used was that by Fyramus de Candolle, 1613, while Herodotus was first translated by Dn Kyer in 1 645. — Koertino, p. 420.

' In the heroic novels' temples were very generally the meeting place of friends or lovers, just as, it will be remembered, was the case in the Greek erotic romances, the influence of which is in this as in other features apparent. In the address to the reader prefixed to vol. i. of the Cyrus, the author says : '* i'ay pris et . . . ie prendray tousjours pour mes vniques Modelles Timmortel H6liodore et le Grand Vrf4. Ce sont les senis Maistres que i'imite, et les seuls qn'il faut imiter : car quiconque s'^artera de leur route s'^rera certainement." See vol. i. supp. note, p. 445.

of Sinope, the capital of Cappadocia, that he first beheld Mandane, the daughter of Oyaxares, and heroine of the romance, who came with her father and his magi to return thanks for the demise of Cyrus, who had been belieTed dead since his departure from Persia. Although engaged in this ungracious ofl&ce, Cyrus became deeply enamoured of the princess, or, as the romance expresses it, was amorously blasted by her divine apparition.

Cyrus ^ was thus induced to offer his services to Cyaxares, in the contest in which he was then engaged with the king of Pontus, who had declared war, because he was refused the Princess Mandane in marriage. A soldier of fortune, called Philidaspes, but who afterwards proves to be the king of Assyria, also served in the Cappadocian army. He. too. was in love with Mandane, and between this adventurer and Artamenes there was a perpetual rivalshipof love and glory.

Meanwhile intelligence arrived from old Astyages, that, in order to preclude all chance of the Persian family ever mounting the throne of Media, he had resolved again to marry, and that on reflection, the only suitable alliance appeared to him to V© Thomyris, queen of Scythia. Arta- menes is despatched by Cyaxares on an embassy, to propi- tiate this northern potentate. On his arrival, the queen unfortunately falls in love with him, which defeats the object of his mission, and he with difficulty escapes from her hands. He finds, on returning to Cappadocia, that his rival, the king of Assyria, had succeeded in carrying off Mandane, and had conveyed her to Babylon. Artamenes is placed at the head of the Cappadocian army, and marches against the capital of Assyria. The town is speedily in- vested, but when it is on the point of being captured, the king privately escapes, and, taking Mandane along with

^ Cyrus is the great Cond4, and Mandane Madame de LongueviUe : Cr^sus s= Archduke Leopold ; Feraulas «» M. de Rohan ; Lea Egyptiens ss les Lorrains ; Princess of Salamis ^= Marquise de Sabld, etc. etc The city of Artaxate « Paris, The Siege of Cumaa = siege of Dunkirk, battle of the Massagetae = battle or Rocroy. M. Cousin praises the striking truthfulness of the descriptions of these engagements, etc. A full kev to the work, preserved in the library of the Arsenal, has been printed by V. Cousin, as appendix to torn. i. of his La Society fran^ise au xvii* siecle d*aprds la Grand Cyrus, Paris, 1858. From it we have taken the above few names.

him, shuts himself up in Sinope. Thither Artamenes inarches with his army, but on arriving before its walls, he finds the city a prey to the flames. Artamenes on seeing this, begins to expostulate with bis gods, taxing them in pretty round terms with cruelty and injustice. The cir- cumstances were, no doubt, perplexing, but scarcely such as to justify the absurdity and incoherence manifested in his long declamation. At length, however, he derives much consolation by reflecting, that if he rush amid the flames, his ashes will be mingled with those of his adored princess ; a commixtion which, considering the extent of the confla- gration, was more to be desired than expected. One of his prime counsellors perceiving that he stood in need of advice, now gives it as his opinion, that it would be most expedient to proceed in the very same manner they would do if the town were not on fire. The greater part of the army is accordingly consumed or crushed by the falling houses, but Cyrus himself reaches the tower where he sup- posed Mandane to be confined. Here he discovers the king of Assyria, but Mandane had been carried off in the con- fusion by one of the confidants of that prince. The rivals agree for the present to postpone their difference, and unite to recover Mandane. The subsequent part of the romance is occupied with their pursuit, and their mutual attempts to rescue the princess from her old lover, the king of Pontus, under whose power she had fallen, and who pos- sesses the magic ring of Gyges,^ which rendered its wearer invisible. We have also the history of the jealousy of Mandane, and the letters that pass from the unfortunate Mandane to the unfaithful Cyrus, and from the unhappy Cyrus to the unjust Mandane.

^ Plato (De Rep. 1. ii.) says that Gyges, haring descended into a chasm in the earth, found a brazen horse, and, opening its side, perceired a man's corpse of gigantic statnre, from a finger of which he took a brazen ring, which rendered him, when he put it on, invisible. By its means he entered the apartment of Candaules, King of Lydia, unseen, slew him, usurped his throne, and espoused his widow. Cf. Cicero, De Officiis, 1. iii. c. 4, € 38. Mile. Scud^ry, says Koerting, doubtless derived the myth from Ueliodoms, iv. 8, and viii. 9 (i. p. 27), as did also probably Ariosto (Orl. Fur. c. U^. Cf. Edelealand du M^ril, Floire et Blancenor, ed. 1856, p. clxii. The Tamkappe, of the Nibelungenlied, and fern seed possess a similar virtue.

At lengtli CjTus succeeds in rescuing his mistress from the king of Pontus, and, as the Assyrian monarch was slain in the course of the war, he has no longer a rival to dread : his grandfather and uncle having also laid aside their superstitious terrors, he finally espouses the Princess Mandane at Ecbatana, the capital of Media.*

The episodes in this romance are very numerous, and consist of the stories of those princes who are engaged as auxiliaries on the side of Cyrus or the king of Pontus, This is the romance which has been chiefly ridiculed in Boileau's "Les Heros de Roman." Diogenes addressing Pluto, says, " Diriez vous pourquoi Cyrus a tant conquis de provinces . . . et ravagd plus de la moitie du monde ? " " Belle d^mande ! " replies Plato. " C'est que c'etoit un prince ambitieux. . . . Point du tout ; c'est qu'il vouloit delivrer sa princesse qui avoit ^t^ enlevife. . . . Et savez vous combien elle a dte enlevee de fois ? — Oii veux-tu que je Taille chercher? — Huit fois. — Voila une beautc qui a pass^ par bien des mains."






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