Essays on the Greek Romances

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Title: Essays on the Greek Romances

Author: Elizabeth Hazelton Haight

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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON THE GREEK ROMANCES ***

ESSAYS ON
THE GREEK ROMANCES

BY
ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT
_Professor Emeritus of Latin, Vassar College_

_NEW YORK_
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
M D CCCC XLIII

HAIGHT
ESSAYS ON THE GREEK ROMANCES

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN
THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO

FIRST EDITION

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_To_
BLANCHE FERRY HOOKER
IN HONOR AND FRIENDSHIP

The Publication
of this book was made possible
by the
J. LEVERETT MOORE RESEARCH FUND
IN CLASSICS
and the
LUCY MAYNARD SALMON FUND
FOR RESEARCH
established at Vassar College
in 1926

_PREFACE_

If all the world loves a lover, as the old proverb says, then this my
book should win wide fame. For these Greek Romances of the first to the
fourth century of our era seem still to be singing the immemorial
refrain from the old spring-time song of “The Vigil of Venus”:

Cras amet qui numquam amavit,
quique amavit cras amet.

“Let those love now, who never lov’d before;
Let those who always lov’d, now love the more.”

At a time when fiction is the most popular form of literature, these
wonderful old Greek stories of love, adventure and worship are half
forgotten and rarely read except by the scholar. Yet here, as in epic,
lyric, elegy, drama, oratory and history, the Greeks were pioneers. In
the second and third centuries they had created four different types of
romance (of love, of adventure, the pastoral, the satiric) which were to
have great influence on French, Italian and English fiction. The student
of comparative literature, the student of the history of fiction cannot
afford to neglect these pioneer Greek novels.

Their appeal, however, should be just as great for the general reader as
for the scholar. For here are stories that mirror the life of the
Mediterranean world in the Roman Empire with all its new excitements of
travel, piracy, kidnapping, the new feminism, the new religious cults.
And through all the different types of romance except the satiric the
Love-God holds supreme sway over the hearts of men. So human, so
vivacious are the love-stories that I offer to my readers Longus’
assurance of profit in his introduction to his Pastoral Romance:

“I drew up these four books, an oblation to Love and to Pan and to the
Nymphs, and a delightful possession even for all men. For this will
cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has
loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For
there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall
there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes
can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and
while I write, keep me in my own right wits.”[1]

My hope in writing on the Greek Romances is that I may lure readers back
to them. My essays aim to be guideposts pointing the way. I venture to
suggest that along with my book readers should peruse at least four
novels of different types for which good translations are available.
These are _Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe_ by Warren E. Blake
(beautiful in English and format) and three volumes of _The Loeb
Classical Library_: _Daphnis and Chloe by Longus_, Lucian’s _True
History_ (in Lucian vol. I) and the Latin novel which combines the
different Greek types into one great synthesis, Apuleius’
_Metamorphoses_. If I can win new readers for these my favorites, my
writing will be as successful as it has been happy!

It is a pleasure once again to express grateful thanks to publishers and
authors who have allowed me to quote material. I am indebted to the
Harvard University Press for its courtesy in allowing me to quote freely
from volumes in _The Loeb Classical Library_; to the Clarendon Press,
Oxford for the use of material from R. M. Rattenbury, “Romance: the
Greek Novel,” in _New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature_,
_Third Series_, from F. A. Todd, _Some Ancient Novels_, from J. S.
Phillimore, “Greek Romances” in _English Literature and the Classics_,
and from _The Works of Lucian of Samosata_ translated by H. W. Fowler
and F. G. Fowler; to Longmans, Green and Co., for the use of a quotation
from F. G. Allinson, _Lucian Satirist and Artist_; to the University of
Michigan Press for the use of Warren E. Blake’s translation of Chariton;
to the Columbia University Press for permission to quote from S. L.
Wolff’s _The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction_; and for
generous permissions for quotations from Professor M. Rostovtzeff and
Professor B. E. Perry.

My writing has been greatly facilitated by the cooperation of the staff
of the Vassar Library, especially of Miss Fanny Borden, Librarian, who
has provided me with a study in the Library, patiently borrowed many
books from other libraries for me and shown unfailing interest in my
work. A constant stimulus to my writing has been the appreciation of my
colleagues and students expressed in invitations to read different
chapters of this volume to the Classical Journal Club and to the
Classical Society. Finally my profound gratitude is due to the donors of
the funds which made possible the publication of these Essays.

_CONTENTS_

CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Greek Romances and Their Re-dating. 1
II. Chariton’s _Chaereas and Callirhoe_. 14
III. The _Ephesiaca_ or _Habrocomes and Anthia_ by Xenophon of
Ephesus. 38
IV. The _Aethiopica_ of Heliodorus. 61
V. _The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon_ by Achilles Tatius. 95
VI. _The Lesbian Pastorals of Daphnis and Chloe_ by Longus. 119
VII. Lucian and his Satiric Romances: the _True History_ and
_Lucius or Ass_. 144
VIII. A Comparison of the Greek Romances and Apuleius’
_Metamorphoses_. 186
Index 203

ESSAYS ON
THE GREEK ROMANCES

I
_THE GREEK ROMANCES AND THEIR RE-DATING_

The term “Greek Romances” is applied to long stories in Greek prose,
written from the end of the first to the beginning of the fourth century
before Christ and later imitated by Byzantine writers. It was one of
these last, Nicetas Eugenianus, who prefixed to his own romance a
prelude of verses which described their content:

“Here read Drusilla’s fate and Charicles’—
Flight, wandering, captures, rescues, roaring seas,
Robbers and prisons, pirates, hunger’s grip;
Dungeons so deep that never sun could dip
His rays at noon-day to their dark recess,
Chained hands and feet; and, greater heaviness,
Pitiful partings. Last the story tells
Marriage, though late, and ends with wedding bells.”[2]

The subjects listed in these lines are typical of nearly all the novels.
An author selected new names for his hero and heroine and portrayed the
same quest for love and adventure. The young pair always marvellously
handsome fall desperately in love and plight their eternal fidelity in a
sacred oath. Soon they are separated by misadventure or the cruel will
of Fortune and suffer alone every misfortune and temptation, but by
superhuman effort and often by the aid of the gods, they at last emerge
triumphant and chaste and fall in exultation into each other’s arms.

It was just because of this similarity of pattern that it became the
fashion for critics to belittle these melodramas, to emphasize their
similarities, and to disregard their individual characteristics and
enthralling style. Erwin Rohde’s great critical study, _Der griechische
Roman_, was perhaps the first to treat them with the serious
consideration which they deserve. Now Rohde’s theories have to be in
large part rejected because of new discoveries in papyri which have
necessitated the re-dating of the extant novels and adding to their
study fragments of novels hitherto unknown which help establish new
types and give a basis for a new critique.

My own discussion is to be concerned with the novels themselves, their
individual characteristics, their literary qualities, viewed on the
basis of their new dating. For this reason I shall spend little time on
the famous theories of the origins of the Greek Romances and on their
precursors. For my purpose of intensive, literary study it is enough to
present these in outline.

In regard to the origins of the Greek Romances, two special theories
must be mentioned since they have had more vogue than any others. These
are the theories of Erwin Rohde and of Bruno Lavagnini. Erwin Rohde in
_Der griechische Roman_, which first appeared in 1876, recognized two
essential elements in the Greek Romances: stories of love and stories of
travel. He studied the precursors of these two types. He finally
affirmed that the synthesis of the two, the romance, is a direct product
of the rhetorical schools of the Second Sophistry which flourished in
Greece during the Empire. Rohde based his work on the extant romances
and the summaries of Photius (Patriarch of Constantinople, 858-886) and
believing that none of this material antedated the second century of our
era, he constructed his theory that “Greek romance was a product of the
_Zweite Sophistik_, and had no direct connection either with the short
story as represented by the Milesian Tales or with any Greek or
Alexandrian literary form.”[3] W. Schmid in the third edition of Rohde
(1914) summarized in an Appendix the new discoveries and theories after
Rohde’s death.

I omit a résumé of the work of Huet,[4] Dunlop,[5] Chassang[6] and of
Chauvin,[7] all significant in their times, to present a theory which is
now more striking. In 1921 Bruno Lavagnini in a learned monograph, _Le
Origini del Romanzo Greco_, traced the development of the Greek romance
from local legends of Magna Graecia, Greece proper, the Greek Islands
and Asia Minor. He found support for his theory in the titles of many of
them:

Ἐφεσιακά by Xenophon of Ephesus,
Βαβυλωνιακά by Xenophon of Antioch,
Αἰθιοπικά by Heliodorus,
Κυπριακά by Xenophon of Cyprus,
Ῥοδιακά, Κωακά, Θασιακά by

a Philippus of Amphipolis, which Suidas mentioned. In his study he took
into account the novelle or short stories which Rohde believed had no
influence on the novel, and studied the Μιλησιακά, the short _Love
Romances_ of Parthenius, the fragment of the _Aitia_ of Callimachus,
_Acontius and Cydippe_. He showed that Rohde had entirely neglected the
important influence of the novella in the Greek romance and had been
mistaken in his insistence on the fundamentally different character of
the two. Rohde claimed that the novella was realistic, the romance
idealistic and hence declared that any derivation of the romance from
the novella was impossible. Lavagnini recognized other influences in the
development of the romance, especially those of satire and of the new
comedy, but he maintained that an essential feature was the historical.
He admitted that in the use of his local legends the events are
projected into an ideal and remote past.

The tendency in the new criticism of the Greek Romances, notably in the
work of Aristide Calderini,[8] is not to seek for any one main source
for their “origins,” but rather to consider all possible precursors in
the field of fiction who directly or indirectly influenced them. Their
name is legion and they appear in the fields of both poetry and prose.
For from the earliest times of Greek literature the art of narration was
in use. Epics presented narratives of war in the Iliad, of adventure in
the Odyssey, of love in Apollonius Rhodius. Drama produced narrative
speeches particularly in tragedy in the role of the messenger. Elegiac
poetry developed subjective-erotic stories, based on myths, or history,
or real life, and written in lyric mood in narratives or letters. Idyls
finally portrayed against a pastoral setting the outdoor loves of
shepherds.

In prose, there are full-grown novelettes combining love and adventure
embedded in the Greek historians: Herodotus’ story of Candaules’
wife,[9] the story of Rhampsinitus’ treasure,[10] the story of the love
of Xerxes,[11] the story of Abradatas of Susa and Panthea in Xenophon’s
_Education of Cyrus_ which Whibley calls “the first love-story in
European prose.”[12] Short stories or novelle in prose are known from
the accounts of the Milesian Tales and from Parthenius’ miniature _Love
Romances_. The Μιλησιακά were written in the second century B.C., by
Aristides of Miletus and a collection of them was translated into Latin
by Cornelius Sisenna who died 57 B.C. Their character was definite: they
were erotic stories of a lascivious type. Their philosophy of life was
that all men—and women—are sinners, and this belief was embodied in
episodes from every-day life. Their amorality was such that the Parthian
Surena was horrified when in the Parthian War of 53 B.C., a copy of the
Milesian Tales was found in the pack of a Roman officer. Other short
local tales, for example those of Sybaris and of Ephesus, shared these
characteristics of realism, irony and disillusion.

Parthenius of Nicaea wrote a collection of short _Love Romances_ of a
very different type. This Greek elegiac poet of the Augustan Age wrote
his _Love Romances_ in Greek prose as a storehouse for his friend,
Cornelius Gallus, to draw upon for material for epic or elegiac verse;
and for this reason he put them forth in the briefest and simplest form
possible. Most of them are unfamiliar stories even when they are about
well-known mythological characters. In many the love tales are set
against a background of war. Short as they are, both their subject
matter and style are significant for the development of Greek prose
fiction.

Moreover, the work of the rhetorical schools must be considered among
the forerunners of the novel, both in Greek and Latin. Although we know
now that the Greek Romances were being written before the time of the
New or Second Sophistry which Rohde postulated to be their origin, still
in the Greek Romances as well as in the _Satyricon_ and in Apuleius’
_Metamorphoses_, there are many illustrations of the influence of the
practice cases of the rhetorical schools. A study of the _Controversiae_
in Seneca the Elder and in the pseudo-Quintilian, a study of _The Lives
of the Sophists_ by Philostratus demonstrates that in these school
exercises where “oratory became a theatrical fiction”[13] lay many first
drafts of a new literary genre, the romance.[14]

It is a pity that Erwin Rohde could not have lived to revise himself his
great work on the Greek Romances in the light of the new discoveries
about them. No scholar has yet arisen equipped with his tremendous
erudition and penetrating criticism to succeed him worthily. Perhaps
indeed the time has not yet come to write a new critical history of the
Greek romance, for at any time added discoveries may demand still
further revision of dates and consideration of types. But at this stage
it is essential to review the new discoveries and to try to estimate
their significance. This outline is based on three important summaries:
the introduction by Aristide Calderini to his translation of
Chariton;[15] the “Appendix on the Greek Novel” by Stephen Gaselee in
the edition of _Daphnis and Chloe_ and Parthenius in _The Loeb Classical
Library_;[16] and the chapter on “Romance: the Greek Novel” by R. M.
Rattenbury in _New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, Third
Series_.[17]

Most spectacular and important of the new discoveries was that of the
fragments of the Ninus Romance, first published in 1893. They were found
on an Egyptian papyrus, on the back of which are written some accounts
of A.D. 101. The writing of the romance is so clear and beautiful that
it is dated by experts as belonging to the first century B.C. As
Rattenbury says: “The Ninus Romance is therefore the only pre-Christian
specimen of its kind; it is indisputably two centuries earlier than the
earliest of the completely extant romances (Charito), and probably as
much earlier than any of the known fragments.”[18] The remains consist
of two separate fragments with parts of five columns on the first and of
three on the second. Gaselee writes of the content:[19] “in the first
(A) the hero, Ninus, and the heroine (unnamed), deeply in love with one
another, approach each the other’s mother and set forth their love,
asking for a speedy marriage; in the second (B) the young couple seem to
be together at the beginning, but almost immediately Ninus is found
leading an army of his Assyrians, with Greek and Carian allies, against
the Armenian enemy.”

Fragment A is short enough so that we can read Gaselee’s translation of
it:[20]

Ninus and the maiden were both equally anxious for an immediate
marriage. Neither of them dared to approach their own mothers—Thambe
and Derceia, two sisters, the former Ninus’ mother, the latter the
mother of the girl—but preferred each to address themselves to the
mother of the other: for each felt more confidence towards their aunts
than towards their own parents. So Ninus spoke to Derceia: “Mother,”
said he, “with my oath kept true do I come into thy sight and to the
embrace of my most sweet cousin. This let the gods know first of
all—yes, they do know it, and I will prove it to you now as I speak. I
have travelled over so many lands and been lord over so many nations,
both those subdued by my own spear and those who, as the result of my
father’s might, serve and worship me, that I might have tasted of
every enjoyment to satiety—and, had I done so, perhaps my passion for
my cousin would have been less violent: but now that I have come back
uncorrupted I am worsted by the god of love and by my age; I am, as
thou knowest, in my seventeenth year, and already a year ago have I
been accounted as having come to man’s estate. Up to now I have been
nought but a boy, a child: and if I had had no experience of the power
of Aphrodite, I should have been happy in my firm strength. But now
that I have been taken prisoner—thy daughter’s prisoner, in no
shameful wise, but agreeably to the desires both of thee and her, how
long must I bear refusal?

“That men of this age of mine are ripe for marriage, is clear enough:
how many have kept themselves unspotted until their fifteenth year?
But I am injured by a law, not a written law, but one sanctified by
foolish custom, that among our people virgins generally marry at
fifteen years. Yet what sane man could deny that nature is the best
law for unions such as this? Why, women of fourteen years can
conceive, and some, I vow, even bear children at that age. Then is not
thy daughter to be wed? ‘Let us wait for two years,’ you will say: let
us be patient, mother, but will Fate wait? I am a mortal man and
betrothed to a mortal maid: and I am subject not merely to the common
fortunes of all men—diseases, I mean, and that Fate which often
carries off those who stay quietly at home by their own fire-sides;
but sea-voyages are waiting for me, and wars after wars, and I am not
the one to shew any lack of daring and to employ cowardice to afford
me safety, but I am what you know I am, to avoid vulgar boasting. Let
the fact that I am a king, my strong desire, the unstable and
incalculable future that awaits me, let all these hasten our union,
let the fact that we are each of us only children be provided for and
anticipated, so that if Fate wills us anything amiss, we may at least
leave you some pledge of our affection. Perhaps you will call me
shameless for speaking to you of this: but I should indeed have been
shameless if I had privily approached the maiden, trying to snatch a
secret enjoyment, and satisfying our common passion by the
intermediaries of night or wine, or servants, or tutors: but there is
nothing shameful in me speaking to thee, a mother, about thy
daughter’s marriage that has been so long the object of thy vows, and
asking for what thou hast promised, and beseeching that the prayers
both of our house and of the whole kingdom may not lack fulfilment
beyond the present time.”

So did he speak to the willing Derceia, and easily compelled her to
come to terms on the matter: and when she had for a while dissembled,
she promised to act as his advocate. Meanwhile although the maiden’s
passion was equally great, yet her speech with Thambe was not equally
ready and free; she had ever lived within the women’s apartments, and
could not so well speak for herself in a fair shew of words: she asked
for an audience—wept, and desired to speak, but ceased as soon as she
had begun. As soon as she had shewn that she was desirous of pleading,
she would open her lips and look up as if about to speak, but could
finally utter nothing: she heaved with broken sobs, her cheeks
reddened in shame at what she must say, and then as she tried to
improvise a beginning, grew pale again: and her fear was something
between alarm and desire and shame as she shrank from the avowal; and
then, as her affections got the mastery of her and her purpose failed,
she kept swaying with inward disturbance between her varying emotions.
But Thambe wiped away her tears with her hands and bade her boldly
speak out whatever she wished to say. But when she could not succeed,
and the maiden was still held back by her sorrow, “This,” cried
Thambe, “I like better than any words thou couldst utter. Blame not my
son at all: he has made no over-bold advance, and he has not come back
from his successes and his victories like a warrior with any mad and
insolent intention against thee: I trust that thou hast not seen any
such intention in his eyes. Is the law about the time of marriage too
tardy for such a happy pair? Truly my son is in all haste to wed: nor
needest thou weep for this that any will try to force thee at all”:
and at the same time with a smile she embraced and kissed her. Yet not
even then could the maiden venture to speak, so great was her fear
(_or_, her joy), but she rested her beating heart against the other’s
bosom, and kissing her more closely still seemed almost ready to speak
freely of her desires through her former tears and her present joy.
The two sisters therefore met together, and Derceia spoke first. “As
to the actual (marriage?),” said she....”

In fragment B the seventeen-year-old warrior is found marshalling his
forces, “seventy thousand chosen Assyrian foot and thirty thousand
horse, and a hundred and fifty elephants,” and at the end beginning the
advance at the head of his cavalry:

And stretching out his hands as if (offering sacrifice?), “This,” he
cried, “is the foundation and crisis of my hopes: from this day I shall
begin some greater career, or I shall fall from the power I now
possess.”[21]

In this Ninus Romance as we have it, the name of the heroine is not
mentioned, but her mother’s name is Derceia and that is a close variant
of Derceto, the name of the divine mother of Semiramis in the usual
legend. So although the type is different from that of the queen of
Babylon, the character is probably hers. It seems evident that this
early novelist was, then, building his romance around historical
characters. Rattenbury points this out and also shows conclusively that
the characteristics of all the other romances are indisputably present
in this early fragmentary story:[22]

“The impetuous but honest Ninus reappears clearly enough in the
Theagenes of Heliodorus, and the lovesick maiden of unassailable
virtue and almost intolerable modesty might be the heroine of any
Greek romance.”

Ninus pledges his faith as later heroes take an oath. He like them is
the toy of Eros or Aphrodite. In the extant romances,

“The characters, the treatment, and even the plots are almost
stereotyped; and yet one difference is observable—a tendency to
abandon an ostensibly historical background in favour of a purely
fictitious setting. The relative dates of the authors are by no means
certain, but the fortunate discovery of papyrus fragments of Charito
and Achilles Tatius supports the view, probable on other grounds, that
Charito is to be considered the earliest, and Achilles Tatius the
latest. It is therefore of interest to notice that Charito, though his
hero and heroine are creatures of his imagination, introduces some
historical characters and some historical events; his main story is
fictitious, but he seems to have been at pains to lend it a historical
flavour. Heliodorus, somewhat later, presents a picture of a fairly
definite historical period, but no more; his characters are all
fictitious and there is no historical authority for the sequence of
events which he describes. Achilles Tatius degrades romance from the
realm of princes to the level of the bourgeoisie. His story is frankly
fictitious, and he evidently had no feeling that romance should be
related to history.”

Rattenbury goes on to illustrate his theory of the change from the
semi-historical to the purely fictitious romance by a study of the
Alexander Romance and the new fragments of other stories. The
pseudo-Callisthenes Alexander Romance in the oldest version extant is
dated about A.D. 300. But papyrus fragments indicate that a large part
of the material in it goes back to a time shortly after Alexander’s
death. From the evidence of our late pseudo-Callisthenes version which
probably followed tradition it would seem that history was treated as
fiction and little attention paid to the love-story of Roxane which
could have furnished such a lively erotic interest. New fragments of
other romances show other great rulers used as heroes.[23] One is the
Egyptian prince, Sesonchosis, called by the Greeks Sesostris.
Mythological characters too become protagonists in romances: Achilles
and Polyxena; the Egyptian Tefnut, daughter of Phre, the sun-god, who
took her adventures in the shape of a cat wandering in the desert of
Ethiopia. Other fragments run true to the general type of the Greek
Romances in manifesting now this, now that characteristic.

The sum total of all the fragments discovered up to date gives
convincing evidence of two important facts: first, the extant Greek
Romances are only a small part of the output of this genre; second, the
dating of all the fragments places them between the end of the first and
the beginning of the fourth century of our era. The Ninus Romance is the
earliest fragment, Chariton’s the earliest complete romance, that of
Achilles Tatius the latest. On this framework a chronological list of
the extant novels arranged on the basis of proved data and the
probabilities of internal evidence and comparisons, shapes like this:

The Greek Romances
_Date_ _Author_ _Title_
I Century B.C. Unknown The Ninus Romance (frag.)
Before A.D. 150 Chariton of Chaereas and Callirhoe
Aphrodisias
II Century A.D. Lucian of Samosata A True History Lucius or
Ass (an epitome of the
lost _Metamorphoses_)
II-III Centuries Xenophon of Ephesus Ephesiaca, Habrocomes and
A.D. Anthia
II-III Centuries Heliodorus of Emesa Aethiopica, Theagenes and
A.D. Chariclea
II-III Centuries Longus Daphnis and Chloe
A.D.
About A.D. 300 Achilles Tatius of Clitophon and Leucippe
Alexandria
_Byzantine_
XII Century A.D. Eustathius Hysmine and Hysminias
XII Century A.D. Nicetas Eugenianus Charicles and Drusilla
(verse)
XII Century A.D. Theodorus Prodromus Dosicles and Rhodanthe
(verse)
XII Century A.D. Constantine Aristander and Callithea
Manasses (verse)
Also known by translation or abstract
II-III Centuries Unknown Apollonius of Tyre (Latin
A.D. translation)
II-III Centuries Iamblichus, a Babyloniaca, Rhodanes and
A.D. Syrian Sinonis (abstract in
Photius)
II-III Centuries Antonius Diogenes The Wonderful Things
A.D. beyond Thule (abstract
in Photius)
Not before A.D. pseudo-Callisthenes Alexander Romance
300

It is to be observed that from internal evidence Xenophon of Ephesus
probably came before Heliodorus. Longus is _sui generis_, and so stands
apart from the typical genre of the novels; in fact is a unique specimen
of another type, the pastoral romance.

The new discoveries from the papyri with the consequent re-dating of all
known material has given a strong impetus to new study of Greek
Romances; new editions of text with translation are being brought out by
English, French, Italian and American scholars.[24] The introductions to
some of these editions, especially those of Calderini and Dalmeyda, are
the first distinguished literary work in the field since Rohde with the
exception of Samuel Lee Wolff’s monograph on _The Greek Romances in
Elizabethan Prose Fiction_, New York, 1912.

The time has now come for a literary study in English which will make
available foreign criticism and present perhaps some new ideas. I plan
to discuss in successive chapters Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus,
Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius and Longus, and to suggest something of
their influence. Then I shall take up the Λούκιος ἢ ὄνος attributed to
Lucian and his _True History_ and finally I shall show the synthesis of
the novel of adventure and the true Greek romance of love in the great
Latin novel, Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_.

II
_CHARITON’S_ CHAEREAS AND CALLIRHOE

There are two reasons for beginning a perusal of the Greek Romances with
Chariton’s _Chaereas and Callirhoe_. It is “the earliest Greek romance
of which the text has been completely preserved.” It is “a lively tale
of adventure in which a nobly born heroine is kidnapped across the sea
from Syracuse to Asia Minor, where her beauty causes many complications
and she is finally rescued by her dashing lover.” I quote from Warren E.
Blake whose publication of the Greek text and a literary translation of
it are a monument to American scholarship.

The date of the manuscript of this novel has been proved to be not later
than the middle of the second century A.D., by the recent discoveries of
papyrus fragments of it.[25] Warren Blake comments on the significance
of these discoveries:[26]

“In view of the complete absence in ancient literature of any certain
allusion to Chariton, he was long supposed to be the latest of the
authors of Greek romance, and was dated, purely by conjecture, about
500 A.D. But by a turn of fortune as truly remarkable as any
attributed by Chariton himself to that fickle goddess, three scraps of
his book have been turned up in Egypt during the last forty years. One
of these scraps was found in company with some business documents
which date from about the end of the second century of our era.
Inasmuch as the place of discovery was a small country town to which
new works of literature would not likely penetrate immediately on
publication, and since in any case an expensive book is almost sure to
be preserved longer than day-by-day business papers, we seem quite
justified in setting the date of publication back some twenty-five or
even fifty years. Thus it is probable that this novel was written at
least as early as the middle of the second century, only about one
hundred years later than most of the books of the New Testament.”

The identity of the author is made known by the first sentence: “I am
Chariton of Aphrodisia, secretary to the advocate Athenagoras.”
Aphrodisia was a town in Caria in southern Asia Minor. Its locality
helps little in expanding the autobiography of the author out of this
one crisp sentence. But the romance itself reveals more of his
personality. His fondness for court-room scenes and his elaborate
descriptions of them are what we would expect from a secretary to a
ῥήτωρ or advocate. His learning is evident from his many literary and
mythological references. And occasionally he steps out of the role of
the impersonal narrator into his own character and speaks in the first
person to his reader. We will come to feel rather sure of his interests
and tastes as we read his πάθος ἐρωτικόν.

Before proceeding to outline the plot of the eight books of this
romance, it will be well to clarify the story by presenting a list of
the characters.

The chief characters are:

_Chaereas_, the handsome young Greek hero, son of Ariston of Syracuse
_Callirhoe_, the beautiful young Greek heroine, daughter of
Hermocrates, a famous general of Syracuse
_Polycharmus_, a young Greek, the devoted friend of Chaereas
_Hermocrates_, the general of Syracuse
_Theron_, a pirate
_Dionysius_, the governor of Miletus
_Mithridates_, satrap of Caria
_Artaxerxes_, king of the Persians
_Statira_, his wife, queen of the Persians
_Pharnaces_, the governor of Lydia and Ionia
_Rhodogyne_, the sister of Pharnaces, daughter of Zopyrus, wife of
Megabyzus, a Persian beauty.

The minor characters of importance are:

_Leonas_, a slave-dealer of Miletus
_Plangon_, a female slave of Dionysius
_Phocas_, slave and overseer of Dionysius, husband of Plangon
_Artaxates_, the eunuch of Artaxerxes
_Hyginus_, a servant of Mithridates.

The list of characters reveals at once a connection of Chariton’s novel
with the Ninus Romance because of the use of historical characters.
Hermocrates, the great general of Syracuse who defeated the Athenians in
the naval battle, 414 B.C., is the father of the heroine and is referred
to repeatedly with the greatest pride. Artaxerxes, the king of the
Persians, appears in person in courts and in wars. Historical events too
are mentioned as if to give a background of reality: the contests
between the Syracusans and the Athenians; the war between the Greeks and
the Persians; the rebellion of Egypt against Persia; the merit of Cyrus
the Great in organizing the army.

Against such a background of plausible reality, the plot develops along
three main lines of interest: love, adventure and religion. The story
begins with the introduction of the radiant young hero and heroine of
Syracuse when they fall in love at first sight at a festival of
Aphrodite. Almost immediately they are married, but their ecstatic
happiness is short, for Callirhoe’s many other suitors, angry at her
choice, plot revenge. They make her husband jealous by false stories of
a lover whom his bride favors, and, by staging a surreptitious admission
to his house of a lover of Callirhoe’s maid, convince Chaereas that his
wife is faithless. In passionate fury he dashes to his wife’s room and
when Callirhoe overjoyed at his unexpected return rushes to meet him, he
kicks her with such violence in the middle of her body that she falls
down, to all appearance dead. Chaereas is tried for murder and pleads
for his own condemnation, but is acquitted against his will by the
appeal of Hermocrates.

Callirhoe is now given a magnificent funeral and buried with much
treasure. The heroine, however, who had only fainted, soon revives, but
while she is bemoaning her sad fate, a band of pirates, led by Theron,
breaks open the tomb, steals the treasure, kidnaps the girl, then sets
sail with all speed for the east. At Miletus, Theron sells Callirhoe as
a slave to Dionysius, a noble Ionian prince. He soon falls in love with
his slave, but learning her story (except the fact that she was already
married which Callirhoe omits) respects her tragic position and woos her
with delicacy and consideration. Callirhoe, on finding that she is two
months with child, decides to accept the advice of the maid Plangon and
marry Dionysius to give her baby a father. Plangon assures Callirhoe
that the child will be considered a premature seven months baby, and she
secures from Dionysius a promise to bring up as his honored children any
sons of the marriage. Book III tells how Chaereas found the tomb empty;
how Theron was captured, forced to tell the truth by torture and
crucified; how Chaereas and his bosom friend Polycharmus went on a
warship to Miletus in search of Callirhoe but were captured and sold as
slaves to Mithridates, satrap of Caria.

Now Mithridates too had fallen in love with Callirhoe on seeing her at
Miletus. On returning to Caria he discovers the identity of his slave
Chaereas just in time to save him from crucifixion because of an
uprising of his fellow-slaves, and tells him that his wife is now
married to Dionysius. Chaereas writes a letter to Callirhoe full of
penitence and of love and Mithridates forwards it by Hyginus, his
faithful slave, adding another letter of his own promising Chaereas and
Callirhoe his aid. Unfortunately these letters fall into the hands of
Dionysius himself and that noble prince, in his mad passion for his
wife, conceals from her the news that Chaereas is alive and makes a plot
for the protection of his own interests. He appeals to Pharnaces,
governor of Lydia and Ionia, who is also in love with Callirhoe, to help
a scheme he has made. Pharnaces thus prompted writes a letter to
Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, accusing Mithridates of trying to
corrupt Dionysius’ wife. The great King then summons Mithridates to a
trial for plotting adultery and sends also for Dionysius and Callirhoe.

The court scene is full of magnificence and surprises. Mithridates has
no fear because in answer to the denunciations of Dionysius he is able
to produce as a witness Chaereas who swears to his innocence and
friendship. Mithridates is acquitted and departs. Then the King
dismisses the court for five days before adjudging whose wife Callirhoe
is to be since now she has two living husbands. Meanwhile he intrusts
the lady for safe keeping to his wife, Statira. Dionysius is torn
between the promptings of passion and reason. Chaereas is in despair at
the possibility of losing Callirhoe again. And Artaxerxes, the King,
like all the other great gentlemen in the story, falls madly in love
with Callirhoe for her beauty.

The King’s passion makes him postpone the court trial a month on the
pretext of a dream which demanded sacrifice to the gods. His eunuch
tries to persuade the heroine to do herself the honor of submitting to
the King’s embraces, but only horrifies and offends her purity. Now
Fortune again takes a hand in separating once more Chaereas and
Callirhoe, for a revolt of the Egyptians is announced, the King must be
off to war, and as usual the queen and her suite go with him. Callirhoe
accompanies the queen by royal orders.

Dionysius of course serves as one of the King’s generals. He has a
crafty piece of news conveyed to Chaereas that in reward for his
faithful service the King had given him Callirhoe. Chaereas, believing
this false story, and no longer caring to live, enlists with the
faithful Polycharmus in the Egyptian army to fight against his rival. He
is allowed to collect an army of three hundred Greeks in memory of
Thermopylae and with them captures Tyre. News of this loss makes the
Persian King so anxious that he decides not to travel with all his
retinue, but to leave the women on the little island of Aradus. Chaereas
who is proving a valiant warrior soon takes the island and discovers
Callirhoe among his captives. Both faint on seeing each other but since
joy never kills, they soon recover and reunited tell all and forgive
all.

Word suddenly comes that the Persian King has defeated the Egyptians and
their King is dead. Chaereas and his men decide to sail home to
Syracuse, but first in response to the plea of Callirhoe Chaereas sends
his prisoner, the queen Statira, back to the King because she had
befriended Callirhoe in her woes. Callirhoe without the knowledge of
Chaereas writes a beautiful and affectionate letter of farewell to
Dionysius, intrusting to him the care of her son. (Dionysius still
believes he is the boy’s father!) The ship of Chaereas is driven by fair
winds to Sicily where Hermocrates and the people of Syracuse receive the
hero and heroine in amazement and joy. Chaereas tells the story of all
their adventures and Callirhoe ends the tale with a prayer to Aphrodite:
“I beg thee, never again part me from Chaereas, but grant us both a
happy life, and death together.”

With this simple outline of the plot before us let us study the way in
which the story is told. Notable first of all are the shifting scenes,
for the action moves rapidly from Syracuse, to Miletus, to Caria, to
Babylon, to the sea, to Tyre, to the island of Aradus and then at last
back to Syracuse after the full circle of adventures. The contrast
between the free Greek city of Syracuse and the oriental kingdoms is
constantly emphasized, but it is the love of adventure for adventure’s
sake that spices the narrative. The settings include, besides
picturesque descriptions of localities, court-room scenes which are full
of contrasts: the murder-trial of Chaereas in Syracuse and the trial of
Theron also; the arraignment of Mithridates for adultery before the
Great King in Babylon. Pageantry of weddings and of religious ceremonies
also enrich the plot.

The characters are painted in bold, rich colors. Hero and heroine are so
beautiful that they can be compared only to great works of art: Chaereas
resembles the pictures and statues of Achilles, Nireus, Hippolytus,
Alcibiades. Callirhoe is now Aphrodite incarnate, now Artemis. Love is
enflamed by their great beauty and enters through their eyes at their
first sight of each other. Chaereas is proud and arrogant because of his
looks and so passionate that he is unrestrained in his anger when he
believes Callirhoe false. The kick which he gave his bride is a blot on
his character which the reader finds harder to condone than Callirhoe
did. She declares that cruel Fortune forced her husband to this act, for
he never before had struck even a slave. He is also so mercurial that he
repeatedly gives way to despair and is repeatedly saved from committing
suicide by his devoted friend and companion, Polycharmus. He appears in
more heroic guise as a warrior when he joins the Egyptians against
Artaxerxes and Dionysius, resolved to die in battle, and wins a great
naval victory. He is generous in sending the captive queen back to her
lord. And he fulfills the ideals of romantic chivalry by declaring to
Callirhoe at the end that she is the mistress of his soul.

Callirhoe like Helen had the gift of fatal beauty so that all men who
saw her fell in love with her and she incurred for a time the jealousy
of Aphrodite. But in spite of every temptation her spirit remained
virginal and she was persuaded to marry Dionysius only to give a nominal
father to her unborn child. She meets misfortune with natural tears, but
with more fortitude than Chaereas shows. And she rules her anger even
when the eunuch of King Artaxerxes makes insulting proposals to her by
remembering that she had been well brought up and as a Greek taught
self-control. She handles difficult situations with a woman’s intuitive
tact as when she writes a consoling farewell letter to Dionysius,
without letting her husband have the pain of knowing of it and its
tenderness. By it she secures Dionysius’ care for the son he still
believes his own. She wins from Chaereas with gentle tact a promise to
send back the captives Statira and the beautiful Rhodogyne to the
Persians. And in meek devotion at the end she essays to win even the
goddess Aphrodite to complete reconciliation.

Polycharmus is a type more than an individual, for he is to Chaereas
what Achates was to Aeneas, the faithful friend who accompanies him
through all adventures. With boyish zeal, he hides from his parents in
Syracuse his plan to go with Chaereas on his search for Callirhoe, but
he appears on the stern of the ship as it sails in time to wave a
farewell to his father and mother. His chief function is to encourage
Chaereas and prevent his suicide. At the end on their return to Syracuse
he is rewarded by being given Chaereas’ sister for a bride and a part of
the spoils of war for a dowry.

Dionysius is a sympathetic and noble character; indeed his sins are all
for love. He is in deep mourning for his dead wife when Callirhoe is
purchased as a slave by his manager. Although he believes that no person
who is not free-born can be truly beautiful, he is overwhelmed with love
at the first sight of Callirhoe. With tactful sympathy he draws out her
story and believes it. He never forces his passion upon her, but woos
her delicately through his maid-servant, Plangon, and is overjoyed when
Callirhoe finally consents to legal marriage for the purpose of raising
a family. Even then in spite of his desire he delays the marriage that
he may do Callirhoe the honor of a great wedding in the city. His
happiness is complete to his mind when after seven months a son is born.
So it is because of his sincere love that when he hears that a Syracusan
warship has arrived to demand Callirhoe back, he commends his slave
Phocas who out of loyalty to his master had persuaded barbarians to
destroy the ship and its crew. Dionysius’ only anxiety is that since
some of the men escaped, Chaereas may still be alive. This last fact he
conceals from Callirhoe and to comfort her for Chaereas’ supposed death
persuades her to erect a cenotaph to her first husband’s memory. Later
when he receives the intercepted letter of Chaereas to Callirhoe, he
faints with grief and fear, but coming to he believes the letter forged
as part of a plot of Mithridates to win the favor of his bride, so he
accuses Mithridates to the Great King. Summoned to Babylon to the trial
he is in constant terror, for “he looked on all men as his rivals”
knowing the devastating effects of Callirhoe’s beauty. When Chaereas is
produced alive in the trial, he argues valiantly for the retention of
his wife with some telling thrusts at Chaereas, but finally when he has
lost his love, he bears his grief like a man, having remarkable
self-control, treasuring Callirhoe’s affectionate letter as true solace,
and devoting himself to her son. Dionysius, as Callirhoe reminds him
once, is a Greek with a Greek education.

Among the orientals, resplendent princes appear often only to be
numbered among the disconsolate lovers of Callirhoe and because of their
passion to assist in furthering the complications of the plot. Such are
Mithridates and Pharnaces. More individualized portraits are painted of
King Artaxerxes and Queen Statira. Oriental magnificence is the aura of
the Great King’s personality whether he appears presiding in the
court-room, or hunting in Tyrian purple with golden dagger and elegant
bow and arrow on his caparisoned horse, or riding to war with his great
army and his retinue: his queen, her attendants, his eunuchs, all their
gold and silver and fine raiment. Yet through this rich setting appears
a wise ruler who takes counsel of his advisers in times of crises,
listens judiciously to evidence in the court-room, and in war follows
the military traditions of Cyrus the Great. But he has his human side:
is influenced by wine, loneliness and the dark, and succumbs to
Callirhoe’s beauty though he is married to a great and subtle queen.
Hoping to win the object of his passion he is not above machinations
with his eunuch who acts as his go-between and with optimistic hope of
success even has Callirhoe taken along with the queen when he goes to
war. Yet when Statira is restored to him by Chaereas’ magnanimity, he
welcomes her warmly although her news that Callirhoe is with Chaereas is
like “a fresh blow upon an old wound.” He appears most human after
hearing Statira’s story of all that happened, for he is filled with
varied emotions: wrath at the capture of his dear ones, sorrow at the
departure of Chaereas, and final gratitude that Chaereas had ended the
possibility of his seeing Callirhoe. Out of his own conflict of
emotions, he breaks gently to Dionysius the news of his loss of
Callirhoe and calls him away from personal sorrow by giving him higher
responsibility in the realm. Artaxerxes is really made to appear in the
novel as the Great King.

Statira is no less the queen. She is delighted when her husband suddenly
intrusts Callirhoe to her care, regarding his action as an honor and a
sign of confidence. She encourages Callirhoe with tactful sympathy and
secures needed rest for her, keeping away the curious ladies who hurry
to the palace to call. After a few days Statira can not resist asking
Callirhoe which husband she preferred, but her curiosity is not rewarded
for Callirhoe only weeps. As time goes on Statira’s jealousy is aroused
because Callirhoe’s beauty outshines her own and because she is fully
aware of the significance of the King’s more frequent visits to the
women’s quarters. So when Artaxerxes is preparing to start off for war,
the queen does not ask what will become of Callirhoe because she does
not wish to have to take her, but the King at the end demands her
presence. Apparently Statira never betrayed her jealousy to Callirhoe,
for after Chaereas took captive all the women in Aradus, Callirhoe has
only praise for her kindness to relate to Chaereas and calls Statira her
dearest friend. Her generous happiness in being able to return Statira’s
courtesy by sending her back to her husband wins from Statira a just
encomium: “You have shown a noble nature, one that is worthy of your
beauty. It was a happy sponsorship indeed which the King intrusted to
me.” Callirhoe on parting commends her child to the queen’s care and
secretly consigns to the queen her letter to Dionysius. Statira is still
a subtle enough woman to enjoy telling the King at once on her return
without her rival: “You have me as a gift from Callirhoe.”

Set off against the Great King of the Persians is Hermocrates, the
general of Syracuse who defeated the Athenians. His greatness as an
admiral is matched by his leadership as a citizen. At the trial of
Chaereas for the murder of Callirhoe it is Hermocrates whose generous
plea in his daughter’s name secures from the people a vote of acquittal.
He listens to the wish of the people assembled when they urge him to
marry his daughter to Chaereas. When Theron, the pirate, is captured and
the crowd at Syracuse is milling about him, Hermocrates insists on a
public trial for him in accordance with the laws and after the evidence
is presented it is by a vote of the people that he is condemned. Then
Hermocrates asks the people to vote to send a ship in search of his
kidnapped daughter as a reward for his patriotic services. Callirhoe’s
pride centers in her father no less than in her Greek blood. Her reunion
with her father at the end of the romance is almost as moving as her
restoral to Chaereas. Hermocrates shines forth in untarnished glory as a
patriotic admiral, a leader of thought in a democratic state, and a
devoted father.

The minor parts are painted with less subtlety. Theron, the villain of
the story, is a black-hearted pirate dominated only by gain and
self-interest, ready to save his life at the expense of his
fellow-sailors. Slaves are presented as vivaciously as they are in
comedy. Plangon, the maid of Dionysius, is a shrewd, cunning
opportunist, ready to serve her master’s interests but not without
kindness to the distraught Callirhoe in her plight of pregnancy.
Artaxates, the eunuch of Artaxerxes, is venal, wily, complaisant and
low-minded. As the confidant of Artaxerxes he takes his cues from his
master’s words, and solicits his favor by an attempt to seduce
Callirhoe’s heart for him. As a eunuch, a slave and a barbarian (says
Chariton) he could not conceive that Callirhoe would not yield to the
wishes of the King. When he is unable to persuade her by flattery, he
threatens her with the King’s vengeance. And when her words betray her
love for Chaereas, Artaxates can call her only a poor, foolish girl for
preferring a slave to the Great King of the Persians.

The use of the crowd by Chariton is another link between his romance and
drama, for it often fulfills the function assumed by the chorus in
tragedy, that is, the part of the spectator who comments on the action
and interprets it. It is the people of Syracuse in assembly that
persuades Hermocrates to wed his daughter to Chaereas. The crowd votes
the crucifixion of Theron and attends it. At Miletus the crowd joins in
Dionysius’ prayer to Aphrodite to protect Callirhoe and her son. The
crowd at Babylon is struck dumb with amazement at the radiance of
Callirhoe. And when the Great King is to decide whether Chaereas or
Dionysius is to be her husband, all Babylon becomes a court-room as the
people discuss the rival partners. At the end of the romance, all the
harbor of Syracuse is filled with men to watch the ship come in, and
when Chaereas and Callirhoe are revealed on it, the crowd bursts into
tears. All rush to the theater and demand that there at once Chaereas
tell them his adventures. “Tell us everything,” they keep shouting. They
groan at his misfortunes. They offer prayers for the future of his son.
They shout assent to his proposal to make his three hundred valiant
Greek soldiers fellow-citizens of Syracuse. Indeed the crowd is
constantly the background of the action of the romance.

Various mechanical devices used in the development of the plot show
Chariton’s art of narration. Conversation as any novel demands is
constantly used. Soliloquies are introduced frequently: at some
emotional crisis, Chariton, instead of describing the thoughts and
feelings of his characters, has them burst into speech to themselves.
Callirhoe on hearing of the supposed loss of Chaereas with the warship
laments his death and the destruction of her father’s gallant vessel.
Later beside the Euphrates river when she can no longer see “the ocean
which led back to Syracuse,” she upbraids cruel Fortune for driving her
farther and farther from home. Again, in horror at the proposals of the
eunuch, she laments all her misfortunes and expresses her resolve to die
as befits Hermocrates’ daughter rather than become the mistress of the
Great King. So too Dionysius on the return of Chaereas, after attempts
at self-control, bursts forth with despair and jealousy into a lament
over the imminent loss of his love. At the same time Chaereas, believing
that Callirhoe loves Dionysius and will never return to him from the
wealthy Ionian, utters a bitter lament before attempting to hang
himself.

Letters also are an important means of developing the plot in the Greek
Romances, especially in Chariton. He uses seven letters.[27] Chaereas’
first letter to Callirhoe is an impassioned love-letter with an appeal
for forgiveness and for an assurance that she still loves him. This is a
crucial letter in the plot because it is sent by Bias of Priene to
Dionysius himself who conceals it from Callirhoe. Bias sends a brief
business letter with it. Pharnaces, governor of Lydia, on the
instigation of Dionysius writes a letter to Artaxerxes accusing
Mithridates of trying to seduce Dionysius’ wife. This letter is
important for the plot, because it motivates the trial of Mithridates.
The Great King on receiving it dispatches two laconic business letters
to Pharnaces summoning Dionysius and to Mithridates calling him to
trial. The other two letters do not affect the plot, but reveal the
characters of the senders. These are the letters in Book VIII of
Chaereas to Artaxerxes and of Callirhoe to Dionysius. Chaereas proudly
sends back Statira unharmed as the gift of Callirhoe to the Great King.
Callirhoe with a woman’s intuition comforts Dionysius for her loss by
gratitude for his protection, by assuring him that she is with him in
spirit in the presence of her son whom she intrusts to his care. She
begs him not to marry again, but to bring up the daughter of his first
wife and her own son, eventually marry them to each other and send him
to Syracuse to see his grandfather. She includes a message to Plangon
and ends with an appeal to good Dionysius to remember his Callirhoe. It
is hardly strange that Callirhoe concealed this masterpiece of
epistolography from her jealous husband, Chaereas.

The taking of an oath is often an important feature of Greek Romances.
In Chariton, Dionysius swears solemnly by the sea, by Aphrodite and by
Eros that he will marry Callirhoe according to the Greek laws “for the
begetting of children” and will bring up any child she bears.[28] Dreams
too play their part in the plot. In a dream Dionysius sees an apparition
of his dead wife as she looked on her wedding-day. His slave Leonas
interprets the dream as prophetic of his coming happiness with the newly
purchased slave, Callirhoe.[29] Callirhoe in her sleep sees a phantom of
Chaereas who says to her: “My wife, I intrust our son to you.” This
dream determines her to bring up her baby and so to marry Dionysius.[30]
In Babylon when she is dreading having to appear in court, she has a
dream of her happy wedding to Chaereas in Syracuse. The maid Plangon
interprets the dream as a good omen for future happiness.[31] King
Artaxerxes had a dream of gods demanding sacrifice so he proclaimed a
festival of thirty days throughout Asia. This delayed his decision
between Chaereas and Dionysius, hence was most important for the plot
because wars arose before the court was held and in them Chaereas and
Callirhoe came together.[32]

Apparent deaths are a common device of the Greek novelists and
Chariton’s plot turns on two, the supposed death of Callirhoe from
Chaereas’ blow and her subsequent burial; the reported death of Chaereas
on his warship. Concomitant with such deaths are the unexpected
reappearances which add the element of surprise, so essential for the
characters and the crowd.

Descriptive passages are few and brief in Chariton and are often worked
out in a suggestive simile rather than in a conspicuous purple patch.
Chaereas was as “radiant as a star. The flush of exercise bloomed on his
glowing face like gold on silver.” Callirhoe, recognizing her lover,
became more stately and lovely than ever, as a flickering lamp again
flares up when oil is poured in.[33] Public ceremonies are described at
more length: the funeral procession of Callirhoe,[34] her wedding to
Dionysius.[35] Space is given too to the description of Artaxerxes’
hunt, that favorite ancient sport;[36] to storm at sea;[37] to war.[38]
But all these descriptions are concise in their picturesqueness.

Finally clarity in the narrative is secured by repeated résumés of the
story either by the characters or by the author himself. Callirhoe tells
her tragic tale to Dionysius with such sincerity that he believes it and
honors her as a free-born woman.[39] Polycharmus relates his adventures
with Chaereas to Mithridates and thereby saves his friend and himself
from crucifixion.[40] Chaereas at the end unfolds the whole Odyssey of
his wanderings to the populace in the theater of Syracuse.[41] At the
beginning of Book V Chariton epitomizes all the preceding part of the
novel and at the beginning of Book VIII he recapitulates the preceding
book and reassures his audience about the final book.

“Furthermore, I think that this last book will be the most pleasant of
all to my readers, and in fact will serve as an antidote to the tragic
events of the former ones. No more piracy or slavery or court trials
or battles or suicide or war or capture here, but true love and lawful
marriage! And so I am going to tell you how the goddess brought the
truth to light and revealed the unsuspecting lovers to each other.”

The happy ending which Chariton here forecasts is an essential feature
of a Greek romance. For in this type of literature in which Chariton is
a pioneer, virtue must triumph. The ethics demands that the hero and
heroine must be noble in character as well as in station and that
therefore justice must be done to virtue. The hero we have seen must
possess personal courage and military courage. He must be capable of
emotional devotion, first of all to his lady, then to his friend, and
always to his father. His faults are those of pride, arrogance and
passion and his moments of brutality are condoned by his contemporaries
on account of his passionate temperament. He can be generous to his
foes. He can show pity to the unfortunate. But his sympathies, even when
the type is embodied in as noble a character as Dionysius, are evoked by
the free-born in distress, rarely by slaves. The virtues of the heroine
are first of all chastity, then loyal devotion to parents, husband and
child, pride of family, generosity of spirit and sympathy. She is
capable of resolute decision and heroic action if her chastity is
menaced or her dear ones are in danger. Standards different from our own
best ones appear in the general attitude towards slaves as an inferior
class and in the brutality manifested in the hero’s kick, in executions
on the cross, in torture of witnesses. Cleverness and deception are
traits which are prized more highly than we admit now. The noblest
sentiments expressed are in behalf of liberty and patriotism.

Religion plays so important a part in the romance that it demands a full
treatment. Chariton’s novel is dominated by two cults: the worship of
the abstract goddess Fortune, the worship of the goddess of love,
Aphrodite. At the end of Book I Callirhoe, just after she has been sold
as a slave, in a soliloquy, upbraids cruel Fortune for all her troubles,
for the goddess made her lover her murderer, surrendered her to
tomb-robbers and now has let her be sold as a slave. Again Callirhoe,
when she finds that she is pregnant, reproaches Fortune for letting her
bear a child to be a slave. And on the banks of the Euphrates in another
soliloquy Callirhoe again charges Fortune with all her miseries and
blames her for taking “delight in persecuting one lone girl.”
Mithridates tells Chaereas: “The whims of Fortune have involved you in
this melancholy drama.” Queen Statira, when captured, exclaims that
Fortune has preserved her to see this day of slavery. And the author of
the romance as well as the characters repeatedly attributes to Fortune
the strange and sad misadventures of his hero and heroine. Callirhoe,
Chariton says, “was overcome by the stratagems of Fortune, against whom
alone human reason has no power. She is a divinity who loves opposition,
and there is nothing which may not be expected of her.” Throughout the
romance Fortune seems to be conceived not as blind chance, but as a
baleful goddess, who takes delight in cruelty and torture.

In conflict with her machinations is the power of the goddess of love
whom the young lovers worship. As clearly as in a Greek tragedy
Aphrodite’s influence is predominant throughout the romance. At the very
beginning, Chaereas and Callirhoe see each other for the first time at a
festival of the goddess and immediately fall in love. The end of the
romance is the prayer of thanks which Callirhoe offers to Aphrodite in
her temple at Syracuse. Callirhoe is so beautiful that over and over she
seems Aphrodite incarnate, now to the slave-dealer, Leonas, now to
Dionysius, now to the crowd at the time of her marriage to Dionysius,
now in Babylon. Prayers for aid are constantly offered to the goddess by
Callirhoe, by Chaereas, by Dionysius, by Artaxerxes, and these
worshippers offer their petitions in her temples in Syracuse, in
Miletus, in Babylon, in Aradus and in Cyprus. Her power is acknowledged;
her favor is asked. Chaereas discovers Callirhoe is alive by seeing a
golden statue of her which Dionysius had dedicated in the temple of
Aphrodite near Miletus. Chariton himself in his résumé at the beginning
of Book VIII records the influence that Aphrodite had in his story. When
Fortune was maneuvering to have Chaereas leave his wife behind at
Aradus, all unaware of her presence, “this seemed outrageous to
Aphrodite,” says Chariton, “who, though she had previously been terribly
angered at Chaereas’ uncalled-for jealousy, whereby he had insolently
rejected her kindness after receiving from her a gift more superlatively
beautiful even than Paris’ prize, was by now becoming reconciled with
him. And since Chaereas had now nobly redeemed himself in the eyes of
Love by his wanderings from west to east amid countless sufferings,
Aphrodite felt pity for him, and, as she had in the beginning brought
together this noble pair, so now, having harried them long over land and
sea, she was willing once more to unite them.”

The final consideration about Chariton must be the style of his work.
And first of all the inquiry rises to our lips: how did the secretary of
Athenagoras become so distinguished in the art of narration? Homer, I am
convinced, is the master from whom, as Dante from Vergil, he took his
beautiful style. The romance is rich in literary allusions, but beyond
all others Homer is quoted repeatedly (twenty-four times indeed) and
with great effectiveness. Sometimes a mere transitional phrase is
adopted:

“while the words were yet on his lips.”[42]

In descriptions the brevity and simplicity of Homer are used with such
nicety that the language often trails off naturally into the very words
of the epic. In the thirty day festival at Babylon

“the sweet savor arose to heaven eddying amid the smoke.”[43]

Men are pictured fighting and in their close array

“buckler pressed on buckler, helm on helm, and man on man.”[44]

And as the conflict joined and Chaereas rushed against his enemies, he

“smote them right and left and there rose a hideous moaning.”[45]

Artaxerxes in his court is compared to Zeus among the assembled
gods.[46] A phantom of Chaereas appears to Callirhoe resembling him

“in stature, and fair eyes, and voice, and the raiment of his body was
the same.”[47]

When Callirhoe came into the court-room in Babylon,

“she looked just as the divine poet says that Helen did, when she
appeared to ‘them that were with Priam and Panthöos and Thymoëtes ...
being elders of the people.’[48] At the sight of her, admiring silence
fell, ‘and each one uttered a prayer that he might be her
bedfellow.’”[49]

Besides this use of Homeric phrases in descriptions, quotations are
frequently introduced in conversations as if Chariton found only Homer’s
words expressive to convey the thought of one character to another.[50]
But far more important than such uses of Homeric phraseology is the
intensification of emotional coloring by a quotation from Homer at a
crisis of poignant feeling. When Callirhoe’s nurse calls her to get up
for it is her wedding day,

“her knees and heart were unstrung,”

because she did not know whom she was to marry.[51] When Chaereas is
told that his wife is an adulteress,

“a black cloud of grief enwrapped him, and with both hands he took
dark dust and poured it over his head and defiled his comely
face.”[52]

When Chaereas is determined to set sail in winter in search of his
kidnapped bride, his mother begged him to take her with him and cried in
Homer’s words:

“My child, have regard unto this bosom and pity me if ever I gave thee
consolation of my breast.”[53]

When Dionysius suddenly learned at a banquet that Chaereas was alive
from reading his letter to Callirhoe,

“his knees and his heart were unstrung.”[54]

When Artaxerxes was smitten with love for Callirhoe, he lay awake all
night,

“now lying on his side, now on his back, now on his face.”[55]

When Chaereas and Callirhoe had their ecstatic reunion on Aradus,

“when they had had their fill of tears and story-telling, embracing
each other,

‘they came gladly to the rites of their bed, as of old.’”[56]

Enough illustrations of Chariton’s use of Homer have been given to show
the manner of it. Different explanations of Chariton’s constant use have
been advanced. Schmid thinks it is an indication of the influence of the
Menippean satire with its mingling of prose and verse. Jacob believes it
due to Chariton’s desire to make his style poetic. Calderini is more
understanding. He thinks that Chariton, thoroughly familiar with Homer,
quoted him to express worthily some noble thought and that he saw the
peculiar emphasis which a quotation from Homer could give to the
expression of a sudden, violent emotion. He also uses episodes from
Homer (the appeal of Hecuba from the wall to Hector,[57] the apparition
of Patroclus before Achilles,[58] the Homeric τειχοσκοπία).[59] More
than all, his style is usually Homeric in its brevity and simplicity;
and in his use of quotations, of scenes and of style he is the first
example of those relations between epic and romance which became so
important in the mediaeval literature of the west.[60]

Other literary influences are apparent. The Milesian Tales may have
suggested Miletus as the locality for the love-story of Dionysius. The
Ninus Romance is the precursor of the historical element which paints a
background of realism through the use of historical characters, notably
Hermocrates and Artaxerxes, and through allusions to actual wars. Drama
contributed the language of the stage to the description of the action.
And at one crisis when Chaereas, who is believed dead, is produced by
Mithridates in court, Chariton explains:

“Who could worthily tell of the appearance of the courtroom then? What
dramatist ever produced so incredible a situation on the stage? Indeed,
you might have thought that you were in a theater, filled with a
multitude of conflicting passions.”[61] In another passage Mithridates
says Fortune has forced the lovers to enact a very sad tragedy.[62] New
comedy contributed types of characters (particularly the slaves), spicy
dialogue and at least two quotations.[63] The influence of history and
especially of Herodotus is apparent in the use of local history, in
narratives of adventure, in depiction of the adulation of the eastern
sovereign, in the reflection of the great struggle between the west and
the east. The influence of the rhetorical schools is seen in the court
scenes which in both their cases and speeches are strangely like those
of the _Controversiae_ of Seneca and the _Declamationes_ of Quintilian.

All these different literary forces combined to produce a style of
narration in Chariton which is at the same time simple and ingenuous,
yet rhetorical. His startling baroque effects are achieved by just this
variation from simple concise epic narrative with strong Homeric
coloring, to intense dramatic moments of high tragedy, to comic scenes
of slaves’ intrigues, to love passages which before had found expression
only in poetry. Probably Chariton learned the effective use of
parallelism, contrast and surprise from the schools of rhetoric, but he
wields all his various tools with such success that he has carved out a
new form of literature in his prose romance.

III
_THE_ EPHESIACA _OR_ HABROCOMES AND ANTHIA
_BY XENOPHON OF EPHESUS_

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

Love’s not Time’s Fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.”

Shakespeare’s famous CXVI sonnet is the lyric _credo_ of those who
believe that love can triumph over adversity, old age and even death
itself. The lines just quoted are the quintessence of lyric romance.

Suppose now that the romantic novel or the modern cinema wishes to
feature this same theme: “True love lasts.” How would either one convey
the idea? I am going to show you by a concrete and melodramatic
illustration. Here is a script for it.[64]

A young Greek who has been seeking over the world his kidnapped bride
has come to Sicily, his resources nearly gone. An old fisherman
Aegialeus gives him hospitality. It is night. The young man and the old
man tell each other their sad love stories. The old man is now speaking:

“I was a wealthy young Spartan and loved a Spartan girl, Thelxinoe. She
returned my love and presently we had, no one knowing it, our heart’s
desire. But my darling’s parents proposed to marry her to another
Spartan. So we fled secretly together and Sparta pronounced sentence of
death on us both. We managed to travel to Sicily. Here we lived in dire
poverty, but in our happiness we forgot all else because we were
together. Soon my dear died, but her body was not buried. I have her
with me and I love her always and I am with her.” After these words he
led Habrocomes into an inner room and showed him the mummy that had been
Thelxinoe. She was old now, but she appeared beautiful to her husband.
“To her,” said he, “I always talk as if she were alive. I sleep here
with her; I eat near her. If I come back tired from my fishing, the
sight of her comforts me. For I do not see her as you do, my son. I see
her as she was in Lacedemon, as she was when we fled. I see the night of
our first love. I see our flight together.”

The young Greek exclaims:

“O my own dearest love, shall I ever find you even dead? Here to
Aegialeus the body of Thelxinoe is the great comfort of his life. Now
I have learned that age sets no bounds to true love.”

This story of the second or third century A.D. might seem too macabre to
be possible if the _New York Times_ of Nov. 12, 1940 had not recorded
such a case at Key West, Florida. Karl Tanzler van Cosel, aged X-ray
technician, had removed the body of Elena Hoyas Mesa from its crypt and
had kept it in his bed-room for seven years. He said he had hoped to
restore it to life. Perhaps Xenophon of Ephesus who wrote this story of
Aegialeus and his mummy had heard some such “true story” which he
embodied in his novel. In any case, he has given us here an illustration
of how the theme “true love is eternal” may be pictured in a realistic
romance. Think how dramatic this scene would be in a movie: the small
inner bed-room of the fisherman’s hut suddenly lighted; the old man
getting his young friend to help him remove the front of the coffin,
then looking rapturously at the mummy inside and reaffirming before it
his life-long love. That is my illustration of the heart of a realistic
Greek romance.

Almost nothing is known about Xenophon of Ephesus who wrote it. Suidas
mentions his romance the _Ephesiaca_ in ten books (instead of the
present eight) and speaks also of a work he wrote on the city of
Ephesus. Xenophon probably was a native of Ephesus, for he shows
intimate acquaintance with many details of the cult of Artemis there.
His date can be given only approximately, but considerable internal
evidence helps us to place him. He imitates certain passages in
Chariton, so he must be later than the second century A.D. Certain
references are very important. He is later than Augustus, for he refers
to the prefect of Egypt and of course there was none until after 30
B.C.[65] He mentions the Irenarch of Cilicia, and this official was not
known before Hadrian.[66] He refers to the Artemision of Ephesus as if
it were at the height of its glory and contemporary.[67] It was pillaged
and burned by the Gauls in 263 and only in part rebuilt. But, as
Dalmeyda points out,[68] these details give us only vague indications of
the date. Until some fragment of papyrus which can be dated is
discovered, we can place Xenophon merely with some probability about the
end of the second century of our era.

The novel itself is simple in language and brief in scope, but
complicated in plot from many kaleidoscopic changes of scenes. There are
so many exits and reentries of the characters that we lose track of
them. The brevity of the narrative, the laconic expressions of emotion
in it have made certain critics maintain the theory that it is only an
epitome of a story, or a kind of scenario written as a preliminary
sketch of a longer work. It seems to me possibly an intentionally short
romance written briefly and simply by an author whose taste was akin to
that of Chariton and who perhaps was intentionally showing a definite
reaction against the verbosity of other novelists.

Partly because of the brevity of the romance a synopsis of the plot has
to be long. So much is crowded into small space, so many rapid
transitions from scene to scene are made, that a full sequential outline
must be given before we can study the significance and color of the
romance. Here then is the plot. The chief characters are:

_Habrocomes_ of Ephesus, the handsome hero
_Anthia_ of Ephesus, the beautiful heroine
_Apsyrtos_, a pirate chieftain
_Manto_, the daughter of Apsyrtos
_Moeris_, a Syrian, husband of Manto
_Lampon_, a goatherd, slave of Manto
_Hippothoos_, a brigand
_Perilaos_, a high police official of Cilicia
_Eudoxos_, a physician
_Psammis_, a rajah of India
_Araxos_, an old soldier in Egypt
_Cyno_, his wicked wife
_Aegialeus_, a Syracusan who kept a mummy
_Polyidos_, a captain in Egypt
_Rhenaea_, his jealous wife
A procurer of Taras
_Leucon_, a male slave of Habrocomes and Anthia
_Rhode_, a female slave, his wife

In Ephesus lived a lad named Habrocomes who was sixteen years old. The
beauty of his person was matched by the nobility of his soul. He had one
great fault, pride. And he scorned Eros as less handsome than himself
and unable to control a man against his will. Eros enraged armed himself
against this arrogant boy. It was the time of the festival of Artemis.
At this festival it was the custom to select fiancés. There was a great
procession of young men and women. Anthia, daughter of Megamedes and
Evippe, led the girls, and she was garbed as Artemis. She was so
beautiful that the crowd forgot handsome Habrocomes though a few
exclaimed: “What a couple Habrocomes and Anthia would make!” Here was
Eros’ opportunity. After the procession broke up and all were attending
the sacrifice in the temple, the two saw each other and were vanquished.

Day by day, night by night love dominated them until both were worn out
by longing. Their parents not knowing what this strange malady was sent
embassies to the oracle of Apollo at Claros. The god diagnosed their
illnesses as the same, needing the same cure; he foretold long suffering
for both, dangerous travel by sea, kidnapping, imprisonment, death and
burial, but he promised final salvation through the goddess Isis and
happy days.

The parents of Habrocomes and Anthia, puzzled and grieved by the oracle,
decided that at least they must use the remedy suggested by the god. So
Habrocomes and Anthia were married, and they did not fear the future
because of their present joy. As time went on, however, it seemed
necessary to the happy pair and to their parents that they should
fulfill the oracle by going on a journey. On the ensuing voyage both
swore mighty oaths (Anthia by Artemis) to be faithful to each other
always. Next they put in at Rhodes for rest. Habrocomes and Anthia hand
in hand visited all the city and dedicated golden armor to the sun-god
in his temple. Then they sailed to Egypt, but the ship was becalmed and
one night Habrocomes had a frightful dream. A giantess clad in red
appeared to him who set fire to the ship, destroyed all the sailors and
saved only himself and Anthia. He awoke in terror and terror became
reality. Phoenician pirates arriving in a great trireme boarded the ship
and drove the sailors into the sea where they drowned. Then they fired
the ship, but took captive Habrocomes and Anthia and bore them off to
the country near Tyre. Corymbos, one of the pirates, became enamored of
Habrocomes; his bosom companion fell in love with Anthia, but before
they could accomplish their wicked designs on them, the chief of the
pirate band Apsyrtos arrived and appropriating the handsome young pair
as part of his booty took them to Tyre.

This was the beginning of worse troubles, for while Apsyrtos was away on
business, his daughter Manto fell in love with Habrocomes and made
advances to him through a slave and a letter. When he refused to satisfy
her desires, for vengeance she accused him to her father of having tried
to rape her. Apsyrtos had Habrocomes flogged, tortured and cast into
prison. Anthia contriving a secret visit to her husband told him she had
been given as a slave to Manto and must accompany her to Syria, where
Manto’s newly acquired husband Moeris lived. The two slaves of
Habrocomes and Anthia, Leucon and Rhode, were sold into a distant land.
Manto to disgrace Anthia as much as possible married her to one of her
humblest slaves, Lampon, a goatherd. But Lampon pitying Anthia on
hearing from her own lips her story respected her and never made her his
actual wife. In Tyre Apsyrtos happened to find the love-letter which his
daughter had written to Habrocomes. Learning from it his unjust
treatment of Habrocomes he released him from prison, gave him his
freedom, and made him steward of his house.

Meanwhile in Syria Anthia’s fatal beauty had inflamed Manto’s husband
Moeris with a mad passion for her. He confided this to the goatherd
Lampon begging for his aid. Lampon to save Anthia went secretly and told
Manto her husband’s designs. Manto in jealous fury ordered Lampon to
kill the woman. In sorrow he told Anthia all and together they planned
that instead of killing her he should sell her as a slave in some remote
district. He managed to hide this transaction and saved her life by
selling her to some Cilician merchants. But their ship was wrecked in a
storm. A few (among them Anthia) came to land on a raft and after
wandering all night in the woods were captured by the brigand
Hippothoos.

Manto meanwhile wrote to her father a letter made up of truth and lies,
saying that the slave Anthia had been so troublesome she had given the
girl to a goatherd and afterwards when Moeris became enamored of the
woman, she had sold both the goatherd and his wife in Syria. Habrocomes
at once started out in search for Anthia and finding Lampon and learning
the true story from him, he set forth for Cilicia.

There, however, Anthia had been in great danger. Hippothoos and his
brigands were about to sacrifice her to Ares, but she was rescued by a
high police official of the district, Perilaos, who captured all the
brigands except Hippothoos. He took her to Tarsus and of course soon
fell in love with her. He offered her honorable marriage, wealth,
children and she fearing his violent passion forced herself to consent
but asked for a month’s delay.

Now Habrocomes riding through Cilicia on his quest met by chance
Hippothoos who begged to be allowed to travel with him. They went into
Cappadocia and there dining together told each other their life
histories, Hippothoos his love of a beautiful lad and the loss of him,
Habrocomes his love for the beautiful Anthia and his loss of her. The
description of Anthia made Hippothoos relate his capture of a fair
maiden and her rescue. Habrocomes, convinced that the girl was Anthia,
persuaded Hippothoos to join him in his search.

But the preparations for the wedding of Perilaos and Anthia were going
on apace, and it would have been consummated had not Anthia found a
friend in an Ephesian physician Eudoxos to whom she confided her
tragedy. She begged him to give her poison so that she might die
faithful. She promised him silver so that he might return to Ephesus.
Eudoxos gave her not poison but a sleeping potion, then hurriedly
departed. The very night of her wedding, in the nuptial chamber, Anthia
took what she believed poison. Perilaos coming to his bride found a
corpse. To do her all honor, the bereft bridegroom had her placed in a
magnificent tomb with splendid funeral gifts.

Robbers broke in the tomb for the treasure just as Anthia awoke. They
carried her off with them to Alexandria. No one else knew she was alive.
Habrocomes heard from an old woman the story of Anthia’s death, of the
pillaging of her tomb and the carrying off of her body. So leaving
Hippothoos he started off alone by ship for Egypt hoping to find the
brigands who had committed such sacrilege. The bandits had already sold
Anthia to a rajah named Psammis, but Anthia saved herself from his
amorousness by telling him that she was a consecrated priestess of Isis
so he respected her.

Habrocomes’ ship missed its course to Alexandria and landed in
Phoenicia. There the inhabitants set upon the strangers and capturing
them sold them as slaves at Pelusium, Habrocomes to an old soldier,
Araxos. This soldier had a hideous and wicked wife Cyno who, falling in
love with Habrocomes, offered to kill her husband and marry him. When he
refused, she herself killed her husband and accused Habrocomes of the
murder. He was sent to Alexandria to be tried. Hippothoos meanwhile had
gathered a new band and in his travels had come to Egypt and made the
mountains near the frontiers of Ethiopia his center for expeditions.
Habrocomes was condemned to death by the Prefect of Egypt, but his
execution was twice frustrated by miracles caused by the Nile river when
he appealed to the sun-god Helios for aid against injustice. So he was
cast into prison.

At this time Psammis started home to India with a great camel train
taking Anthia with him. At Memphis Anthia offered prayers to Isis
begging her aid. As they neared the borders of Ethiopia, Hippothoos with
his band fell upon their caravan and, slaying Psammis and many men,
seized his treasure and took captive Anthia. Hippothoos and Anthia did
not recognize each other.

The Prefect of Egypt, on giving Habrocomes a new hearing, was convinced
of his innocence, freed him and gave him money. So Habrocomes took ship
again and went to Italy to make inquiries there about Anthia. Cyno was
executed.

Anthia was again in danger because of the lust of one of the bandits,
Anchialos. He, while Hippothoos was away, tried to do violence to her,
but she stabbed him fatally with a sword which she had found. Hippothoos
on his return decided, in vengeance for the death of his companion, to
kill her in a horrible way: to put her in a deep trench with two fierce
dogs. But the bandit set to guard the trench from pity secretly conveyed
food to her so that she fed and tamed the beasts.

Habrocomes on arriving at Syracuse in Sicily lived with a poor old
fisherman named Aegialeus who treated him like a son and told him his
own sad love-story. This is the story of the Mummy in the House.
Hippothoos left Ethiopia to go to Alexandria and believing Anthia dead
made no inquiries about her. The bandit left to guard her, now in love
with her, hid in a cave with a good store of provisions until the
caravan had gone, then released Anthia and the devoted dogs. He swore by
the Sun and the gods of Egypt to respect her until she voluntarily came
to his arms, so dogs and all they started on their travels.

The Prefect of Egypt had sent a company of soldiers under Polyidos to
disperse the bandits of whose marauding he had heard. Hippothoos’ band
was broken up; indeed he alone escaped. He embarked on a ship for
Sicily. Polyidos next captured Anthia and her escort. Polyidos although
he had a wife in Alexandria at once fell in love with Anthia and when
they reached Memphis, tried to rape her, but she fled to the temple of
Isis as a suppliant. Polyidos then swore that he would respect her if
she would return to him, saying that to see her and speak to her would
satisfy his love, so she went back to his care. On their arrival at
Alexandria, Rhenaea the wife of Polyidos was nearly insane with jealousy
of the girl her husband had brought home. One day in her husband’s
absence she beat and reviled poor Anthia, then gave her to a faithful
slave with orders to take her to Italy and sell her there to a procurer.
This he did at Taras.

Hippothoos by this time had reached Sicily and was staying at
Tauromenium. Habrocomes at Syracuse in despair planned to go to Italy
and if he found no news of Anthia there, to return to Ephesus. The
parents of the young pair in their anxiety over them had died. The
slaves Leucon and Rhode who had been sold in Lycia had, on the death of
their master, inherited his wealth. They were on their way back to
Ephesus but were staying at Rhodes.

The procurer now forced Anthia to stand in front of his brothel,
magnificently arrayed, to attract customers. When many had gathered
because of her beauty, Anthia feigned a seizure and fell down in the
sight of all in convulsions. Later when she declared to the procurer
that she had had this malady since childhood, he treated her kindly.

Hippothoos in Tauromenium had come into great need. So when an elderly
woman fell in love with him, constrained by poverty, he married her.
Very shortly she died, leaving him all her possessions. So he set sail
for Italy always hoping to find his dear Habrocomes. Arriving at Taras
he saw Anthia in the slave market where the procurer because of her
illness was exhibiting her for sale. Hippothoos, recognizing her,
learned from her lips her story, pitied her, bought her and offered her
marriage. Finally Anthia told him that she was the wife of Habrocomes
whom she had lost. Hippothoos on hearing this revealed his devotion to
Habrocomes and promised to help her find her husband.

Habrocomes also had come to Italy, but in despair had given up his quest
and started back to Ephesus. Stopping at Rhodes on his voyage he was
discovered by Leucon and Rhode, who now took care of him. Next
Hippothoos also arrived at Rhodes, for he was taking Anthia back to
Ephesus. It was the time of a great festival to Helios. At the temple
Anthia dedicated locks of her hair with an inscription:

“In behalf of her husband Habrocomes Anthia dedicates her locks to the
god.”

This inscription was seen by Leucon and Rhode and the next day they
found Anthia herself in the temple and told her that Habrocomes was
alive and near and faithful. The good news spread through the city. A
Rhodian carried the word to Habrocomes and he came running like a madman
through the crowd, crying: “Anthia!” Near the temple of Isis he found
her, and they fell into each other’s arms. Then while the people
cheered, they went into the temple of Isis and offered thanks to the
goddess for their salvation. Then they went to the house of Leucon and
at a banquet that night told all their adventures.

When at last Habrocomes and Anthia were got to bed, they assured each
other that they had kept their oaths of faithfulness. The next day all
sailed to Ephesus. There in the temple of Artemis Habrocomes and Anthia
offered prayers and sacrifices; also they put up an inscription telling
what they had suffered and achieved. They erected magnificent sepulchres
for their parents. And they passed the rest of their lives together as
though every day were a festival. Leucon and Rhode shared all their
happiness and Hippothoos too established himself in Ephesus to be near
them.

From this summary of the plot, it is at once apparent that the chief
interests of the romance are love, adventure and religion. The three are
used by Xenophon with almost equal distribution of interest and
emphasis. Two divinely beautiful young people (the lad only sixteen)
fell in love with each other at first sight at the festival of Artemis.
Habrocomes had been too proud of his appearance and in his arrogance had
scorned the beautiful god of Love as his inferior. So Eros brought him
low and made the pair suffer many misfortunes through separation.
However they were married first and through all their troubles they were
true to their oaths of mutual faithfulness. Temptations and adventures
could not nullify their chastity, but their victories were often
superhuman and made possible only by miracles and the aid of protecting
gods. Anthia after a dream of seeing Habrocomes drawn away from her by
another fair lady awoke to utter the belief that if he had broken faith,
he had been forced by necessity; and for herself she would die before
losing her virtue.[69] At the end, when Anthia had proudly recounted the
lovers she had escaped, Moeris, Perilaos, Psammis, Polyidos, Anchialos,
the ruler of Taras, Habrocomes was able to reply that no other lady had
ever seemed to him fair or desirable: his Anthia found him as she had
left him in the prison at Tyre.[70] So hero and heroine shine as types
of perfect virtue. The nobility of the romance, as Dalmeyda points out,
appears not only in the purity of Habrocomes and Anthia, but in a
restrained expression of the sentiments and the acts of love.[71]

The course of this true love was proverbially unsmooth and after the
pair were separated, the plot seesaws between the adventures of hero and
heroine. These are varied, exciting and often closely paralleled. Both
were assailed by amorous lovers, Anthia by at least nine, Habrocomes by
Corymbos, a pirate, by Manto, daughter of the chief of the pirate band,
and by Cyno, the lewd wife of an old soldier. Both were shipwrecked,
Anthia twice. Both nearly met death: Anthia as a human sacrifice, by
taking poison, by being thrown in a trench with fierce dogs; Habrocomes
by crucifixion and pyre. Bandits and pirates captured both. Both were
nearly executed for murder, Anthia for actually killing a bandit who
attacked her, Habrocomes on the false charge of Cyno. Both were sold
into slavery, Habrocomes once, Anthia over and over again. Strangely
enough among their adventures war played little part: the only wars
described are official expeditions against bandits.

From most of these adventures the pair were saved by their piety. Never
did they lose an opportunity of offering prayer, thanksgiving, vows and
sacrifices to the gods. The story begins with the festival of Artemis at
Ephesus at which Habrocomes and Anthia fell in love and ends with their
return to her temple to offer thanksgiving for a happy ending out of all
their misfortunes. At the festival Anthia appeared as the priestess of
Artemis and led a procession of maidens in which she alone was garbed as
Artemis. This may be a symbol of her resolute chastity. Many details of
the worship of the goddess are given which seem based on reality.[72]
Artemis appears not as the Ephesian goddess of fertility, but as the
protectress of chastity and in this function joins with Isis in
safeguarding the purity of the heroine.

Eros is the offended god who undoubtedly in vengeance caused the violent
love of Habrocomes, the separation and the miseries of the unhappy pair.
There are few references to Aphrodite: to her son rather than to herself
is given the function of inspiring love. On the Babylonian baldequin
over the marriage bed of Habrocomes and Anthia there had been woven a
scene in which Aphrodite appeared attended by little Loves and Ares
unarmed was coming towards her led by Eros bearing a lighted torch.[73]
Habrocomes at Cyprus offered prayers to Aphrodite.[74]

The oracle of Apollo at Claros determined the plot by ordering the
marriage of Habrocomes and Anthia and predicting their voyaging, their
separation, their disasters, their reunion. But its clauses are not
sufficiently explained: we are never told why the young bride and groom
and their parents feel they must start out on their fateful journey.
Some think the obscurity is due to Xenophon’s epitomizer. There are
other possible explanations. The action may be an abandoning of
themselves to the will of the gods; or a bold step towards their final
promised safety; or a flight from the city where they had suffered so
much. An oracle is the traditional prelude to a voyage of adventure.
Xenophon uses it, says Dalmeyda, to pique curiosity, to render the
misfortunes of the two more dramatic by the prophecy of them and to
reassure his readers about a happy ending.[75]

In happiness or distress both the young lovers honored the god of the
place in which they found themselves. In the first part of their journey
together they offered sacrifice to Hera in her sanctuary at Samos.[76]
At Rhodes, Habrocomes’ prayer to Helios saved him from crucifixion and
burning through the miracles of the Nile.[77] Perhaps Helios was
rewarding Habrocomes for the golden armor which he and Anthia had
jointly dedicated to him at Rhodes in his temple.[78] This votive had
another certain part in the plot because when Habrocomes returned there
alone to pray near his votive, Leucon and Rhode, who had been reading
the inscription set up near it by their masters, recognized him and
revealed themselves.[79] At Memphis Anthia appealing to the pity of the
god Apis received from his famous oracle a promise that she would find
Habrocomes.[80]

Ares appears only in Xenophon. This is strange when war plays such a
part in the other romances. In the _Ephesiaca_, Hippothoos and his
bandits at the festival of Ares had the custom of suspending the victim
to be sacrificed, human being or animal, from a tree and killing it by
hurling their javelins at it. They were preparing to sacrifice Anthia in
this way when she was rescued.[81]

The other cult which is as important as that of Artemis for the story is
the cult of Isis. Anthia saved herself from Psammis’ advances by
declaring that she was a consecrated priestess of Isis so the rajah
respected her person.[82] At Memphis in her temple, Anthia appealed to
Isis who had preserved her chastity in the past to grant her salvation
and restore her to Habrocomes.[83] To escape Polyidos’ lust, Anthia took
refuge at the sanctuary of Isis at Memphis and again besought the
goddess for aid. Polyidos in fear of Isis and pity for Anthia promised
to respect her.[84] Finally near that temple of Isis Habrocomes and
Anthia found each other and in the same temple they offered prayers of
thanksgiving.[85] Isis thus in the _Ephesiaca_ figures as the
protectress of chastity.

The worship of Isis had been carried to the coast of Asia Minor by
sailors and traders. In the empire both Artemis and Isis had statues in
the Artemesion of Ephesus. The Egyptian cult, purified and penetrated
with moral ideas, seems to belong to the second century A.D. From its
very nature, the goddess Isis becomes as natural a protector of Anthia
as is Artemis.[86] This synthesis of the two goddesses in one
protectress of the heroine is a natural process of the philosophical
thought of the time. In a modern novel or a cinema, better clarity would
be attained for our non-philosophical minds if one goddess, Isis, was
worshipped by Anthia and was the deity of her salvation. Apuleius
achieved just this simplification in his novel by making Isis the one
and only savior of his hero Lucius.

To develop and sustain these three main interests of the story, love,
adventure and religion, the usual devices of a plot are employed. The
setting is cinematic in its many changes: Ephesus, the ocean, Samos,
Rhodes, Tyre, Syria, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Egypt, Sicily, Italy, Rhodes
again, back to Ephesus, and thrown in with the setting are many
geographical details which are often wrong.[87] The characters are
familiar types: the ravishingly beautiful hero and heroine, their
perturbed parents, high officials (Perilaos and Psammis) who take the
place of historical characters, faithful slaves, a wily procurer, a
doctor, pirates, bandits.

Dalmeyda has written a discriminating paragraph on the morality of the
characters.[88] He says that of course all the characters of the romance
do not attain the perfection of virtue of the two protagonists, but
altogether the author shows us a gallery of persons without wickedness
who are sympathetic and who have an air of honesty even in the exercise
of the worst occupations. Manto, who falsely accuses Habrocomes of
having wished to violate her and who has him cruelly tortured, is
motivated by an overwhelming passion. Apsyrtos, her father, chief of the
pirates, shows himself just and generous to the hero when he has
discovered his daughter’s calumny. The slaves are devoted and faithful.
Lampon to whom Manto gives Anthia as his wife is a rustic full of
civility and goodness. The man who traffics in young girls to whom
Anthia is sold shows a noble sympathy when she pretends to be afflicted
with seizures. Hippothoos, a brigand chief, exercises his trade
ruthlessly putting villages to fire and sword; he has a weakness too for
handsome lads; but to Habrocomes he is a faithful and devoted friend. He
renounces his passion for Anthia when he finds she is the wife of his
friend and aids her in every way in her search for Habrocomes. It is
this recognition of some good in every human being that gives Xenophon
his large humanity.

Oracles are given by Apollo at Claros and by Apis in Memphis. Dreams and
visions disturb both hero and heroine. A letter (Manto’s) is important
for the plot. Some conversation is used. A court-room scene is sketched
in, Habrocomes’ trial for murder before the prefect of Egypt.
Soliloquies are frequent since woeful lovers parted must bewail their
lot. Attempted suicides testify to their despair.[89] Résumés of
adventures are helpfully presented by important characters at different
stages in the narrative. And after a hundred hair-breadth escapes,
journeys end in lovers’ meetings as the oracle of Apollo had
reassuringly predicted at the beginning of the romance.

In spite of the use of these conventions, the story has a lively and
compelling interest. We are led to share the admiration and marvel of
the characters themselves. We are moved by the pity which they often
feel. Their piety induces in us reverence. We agree with their
preference for Greeks rather than barbarians. And we admire the romantic
love which maintains faithfulness in the face of death, or outlives
death itself.[90]

The style of this gem of a novel is finely cut, clear and beautiful in
its pure Atticism. Dalmeyda, who follows Rohde and Bürger in believing
the present form of the romance is due to an epitomizer, yet has to
admit that all the “naked simplicity” of the style is not due to the
redactor.[91] This characteristic is so distinctive of the author that
it seems to differentiate him from other writers of romance by giving
his story the air of a popular tale. Sometimes, Dalmeyda continues, the
expression is double, as if in a sort of naive elegance. Words are
repeated awkwardly. Stereotyped formulae are used. The author gives
every person a name even if he appears only once. Love is generally
expressed in conventional terms, which are however intended to suggest
its violent or tragic character. There is even a ready-made formula for
ecstasy (οὐκέτι καρτερῶν or οὐκέτι φέρειν δυνάµενος). But the passion of
Habrocomes and Anthia is expressed differently. At their final reunion
Xenophon describes with force and delicacy their joy which is both
tender and passionate.[92]

Whether “the naked simplicity” of the _Ephesiaca_ is to be attributed to
an epitomizer, to its approach to the genre of a popular tale, or to the
author’s own taste, the romance is certainly characterized throughout by
brevity, restraint and sparcity of decoration. There are so few
descriptions that those of the festival of Artemis and of the canopy
over the marriage bed of Habrocomes and Anthia are notable.[93] The
action is too rapid and varied to allow time for decorative passages.
Instead of being set amid purple patches, it is advanced by a kind of
documentary evidence: two oracles, two letters, one memorial and two
votive inscriptions, all directly quoted,[94] and a reference to an
inscription finally offered as a votive in the Artemesion by Habrocomes
and Anthia giving an account of all their adventures.

Inset narratives, those stories within stories which make pleasing
digressions in other longer romances, are here very few. Hippothoos
recounts his love for the beautiful Hyperanthes and the boy’s untimely
drowning.[95] Aegialeus, the Spartan living with the mummy of his wife,
tells how his love for her has outlasted death.[96] Both these
narratives are colorful, dramatic and poignant from the very qualities
which characterize all the romance. These are brevity, sincerity and
restrained emotion.

The influence of Chariton is clearly seen in Xenophon both in direct
imitation and in qualities of style. When the Phoenician pirates had
kidnapped Habrocomes and Anthia on their trireme and fired their
captives’ vessel leaving many to perish in the sea, an old slave, as he
swam, pitifully called to Habrocomes to save his aged paedagogue or at
least kill him and bury him.[97] In view of the situation this is a
ridiculous appeal, but it is a clear imitation of a passage in Chariton
where, when Chaereas resolves to go to sea to search for Callirhoe, his
father Ariston begs his son not to desert him, but to take him on his
trireme,[98] or to wait a few days for his father’s death and burial.
Anthia, when Manto, the daughter of the brigand chief, demands
Habrocomes’ submission to her passion, begs her husband to save his life
in this way and swears that she will leave him free by killing herself,
only asking from him burial, one last kiss, and a place in his memory.
This is in direct imitation of Chariton and of Chaereas’ words when he
finds Callirhoe married to Dionysius.[99] Here Xenophon is simpler than
his model, for he does not transfer the effective lines from Homer which
Chariton quotes.[100] The burial of Anthia with its rich funeral gifts
resembles the burial of Callirhoe and also the lavish equipment of the
cenotaph for Chaereas.[101] The language of Chariton is adapted for the
lament of Habrocomes in Italy at the failure of his quest and his
renewed pledge of faithfulness unto death.[102]

These clear indications of imitation of detail serve to corroborate the
evidence of general imitation of style. Indeed Dalmeyda sees in the
whole temperament of Xenophon a close affinity to Chariton. Xenophon
introduces the most startling events without fanfare. Characteristic of
his style are accumulated questions, pathetic résumés, oaths,
invocations of the gods, apostrophes of men and of things particularly
of that fatal beauty which the young hero and heroine deplore because of
their misery. Xenophon’s relation to Chariton in all this is
striking.[103]

The plot of the novel has seemed to some critics epic in its
chronological narrative of successive adventures. Others find the
structure a tragic plot with an angry god demanding satisfaction for the
sin of arrogance and the guilty hero involving in his own nemesis the
one most dear to him. It is true that this and other resemblances to
tragedy exist. The story of Manto and her false denunciation of
Habrocomes for an attempt to rape her after she has failed to win his
love goes back to the Phaedra story of Euripides’ _Hippolytus_. The
noble goatherd husband of Anthia finds his prototype in Electra’s
peasant husband in Euripides’ play. The scene where Anthia on her
wedding-night takes poison which proves to be a sleeping potion, to
avoid a new marriage and keep her troth to her lost love seems to be the
antecedent of the poison scene in Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_.

To me, however, this novelette finds its closest affiliation in another
successor. Both the structure and the devices used to arouse emotion
anticipate the modern cinema. This contemporary form of amusement is
such an accepted part of modern life that we hardly need to read the
books about the cinema by Allerdyce Nicoll, Lewis Jacobs, Maurice
Bardèche and others to understand “the Rise of the American Film.”
Personally I go to the movies to escape from routine and from painful
thoughts of our own times. Occasionally I allow myself to be educated
about _Steel_ or _The River_. I prefer to industrial films or films of
social problems like lynching, prison conditions, housing, films with
biographies of great historical characters: Pasteur, Zola, Rembrandt. I
like films set in local history such as _Maryland_ or _Kentucky_ or
_Gone with the Wind_ or _The Howards of Virginia_ or _The North West
Mounted Police_. I have to shut my eyes during the fighting and the
cruelties of _Sea Hawk_ and _All This and Heaven Too_. But I like the
cinematic rapidity of changes of scene, the control by the camera of
space and magnitude, the extension of the time-limit, the fade-ins and
fade-outs which can create fantastic visions, the value of the
flash-back to recall what has been already seen, the concentration of
interest achieved by close-ups.

Many of these devices I recognize in the Greek Romances and especially
in Xenophon of Ephesus. His narrative is as condensed as that of a
scenario with lacunae, abrupt transitions, failures in an adequate
vocabulary of emotion. The local history of Ephesus is emphasized and
depicted. Scenes shift with cinematic rapidity. Hair-raising adventures
succeed each other at an exciting pace. Bandits and pirates achieve
robbery and kidnapping. High police officials or officers like G-Men
perform valiant rescues. Court-room scenes as in many films vie with
shipwrecks in interest. Documents like letters are presented to the
reader’s eye as on the screen. Visions and dreams are made to seem as
real as in fade-ins and fade-outs.

There is a clear morality in the opposition of good and bad characters
and in the final victory of the good. Hero and heroine captivate by
their extraordinary beauty and maintain their chastity and fidelity
against terrific odds. Hence their phenomenal virtue is rewarded by
reunion in the end. Religion often plays a saving part (as on the screen
for example in _Brother Orchid_). The Reader like the audience at the
movie goes away with a sense of having been enlivened, entertained and
vastly improved. For the function of the Greek romance in the second and
third centuries A.D., when the universal rule of the Roman Empire gave
scant scope for great oratory or tragedy under the blessings of an
enforced peace, was to entertain and to edify. The Greek romance
substituted for the adventures of the mind new themes: the excitements
of passion, the interests of travel, and the consolations of religion.
It was lifted out of the ranks of the trivial and the second-rate by its
great central theme: that there is such a thing as true love; that
weighed in the balance against it all the world is nothing; and that it
outlives time and even death.

Our own age in America, bleeding internally from the agony of a war
which it is powerless to end, fearful for its own menaced security,
demands from the cinema not only temporary oblivion and excitement, but
encouragement to believe that love lasts even unto death, that heroes
ride again and are victorious, and that finally, by the help of God, the
right will conquer.

IV
_THE_ AETHIOPICA _OF HELIODORUS_

The life of Heliodorus is as obscure as that of each of the other
writers of Greek romance, but in the tradition of his there is a special
point of controversy. Was Heliodorus a pagan novelist or a Christian
bishop? Or by some strange metamorphosis did the writer of the romantic
_Aethiopica_ become in later and staider years the Bishop of Tricca? The
only certain facts are found in the autobiographical sentence which
concludes the romance, that he was a Phoenician of Emesa, of a family
descended from Helios, the son of Theodosius.

It was Socrates who, in the fifth century A.D., stated that the custom
of celibacy for the clergy was introduced in Thessaly by Heliodorus when
he became bishop of Tricca. He added that Heliodorus wrote in his youth
a love-story, which he called _Aethiopica_.[104] Photius in the ninth
century says that he received the bishopric later, that is after writing
the romance. Nicephorus Callistus in the fourteenth century after
quoting the remark of Socrates adds that the _Aethiopica_ created such a
scandal Heliodorus had to choose between his bishopric and the
destruction of his romance so he abandoned his charge, but this is
probably mere embellishment of the story. As Rattenbury points out,[105]
neither Socrates, Photius nor Nicephorus declares that Heliodorus was a
Christian when he wrote his romance, but they imply clearly that he
became a bishop afterwards. And if the author of the romance was a
devout pagan as he seems to have been, that state of mind could have
made possible his conversion to Christianity. This seems a reasonable
explanation of the strong tradition continuing from the fifth century
that Heliodorus became bishop of Tricca.

As to his date, there are some certainties but no exactitude. The Bishop
of Tricca must have lived before Socrates wrote his _Historia
Ecclesiastica_ which covered the period 306-439. There is no external
evidence on the time of the writer of the romance, but from the general
conclusions about the dating of the Greek Romances, he probably wrote
not later than the end of the third century. His native city Emesa was
the birthplace of two Roman Emperors, Heliogabalus (218-222) and
Alexander Severus (222-235). About the middle of the century Emesa was
conquered by Zenobia of Palmyra, but was freed by Aurelian in 272.
Heliodorus may have written in its most flourishing period, 220-240. It
is generally agreed that Heliodorus is later than Chariton who could not
have written after 150 and earlier than Achilles Tatius who wrote about
the beginning of the fourth century.

Rattenbury thinks that a possible reconstruction of Heliodorus’ life is
this. He was born in Emesa in Phoenician Syria. His family was connected
with the cult of the Sun. In his youth, perhaps between 220 and 240, he
wrote a romance in which the influence of the cult of Helios appears,
also the neo-Pythagoreanism of Apollonius of Tyana. It is not impossible
that finally he was converted to Christianity, became bishop of Tricca
and in that office introduced in his diocese celibacy for the
clergy.[106] Calderini has shown with discrimination and perspicacity
that the special characteristic of the _Aethiopica_ is the interest in
philosophy which distinguishes it and its author from Chariton, the
writer of historical romance, and from Achilles Tatius, the writer of
romance tinged with science.[107] A study of the _Aethiopica_ itself
will show how deeply infused the novel is with this religious
philosophical coloring.

Before outlining the narrative, I will give as usual a list of the
principal characters. These are:

_Theagenes_, the young Greek hero
_Chariclea_, the young heroine, supposed to be a Greek
_Hydaspes_, king of Ethiopia
_Persinna_, queen of Ethiopia
_Calasiris_, of Memphis, priest of Isis and his sons:
_Thyamis_, in exile, a pirate captain
_Petosiris_, priest of Isis
_Charicles_, priest of Apollo at Delphi
_Alcamenes_, nephew of Charicles
_Trachinus_, a pirate
_Pelorus_, a pirate and officer of Trachinus
_Cnemon_, a young Athenian, son of
_Aristippus_, an Athenian, a stupid husband
_Demaeneta_, the amorous step-mother of Cnemon
_Thisbe_, the scheming maid of Demaeneta
_Arsinoe_, a slave-girl, a friend of Thisbe
_Nausicles_, a merchant
_Thermuthis_, an officer under Thyamis
_Oroondates_, viceroy of the Great King of the Persians
_Mithranes_, viceroy of Oroondates
_Arsace_, wife of Oroondates
_Cybele_, the maid of Arsace
_Achaemenes_, son of Cybele
_Euphrates_, the chief eunuch of Oroondates
_Sisimithres_, an Ethiopian Gymnosophist
_Meroebus_, nephew of Hydaspes

The opening scene of the romance is startling and mysterious. In Egypt,
from a mountain near the mouth of the Nile a band of pirates get a view
of the seashore. They behold a heavily laden ship without a crew, a
plain strewn with dead bodies and the remains of an ill-fated banquet. A
wounded youth is lying on the ground. He is being cared for by a
beautiful young woman dressed in a religious garb which makes her seem a
priestess or a goddess, Diana or Isis. Indeed a divine effulgence
emanates from her. The pirates though at first overawed descend and
collect rich booty. Their captain then courteously conveys the maiden
and the youth to their pirate home. This was called “The Pasture” and
was a sort of island in a delta of the Nile. Some of the pirates lived
in huts made of reeds, some in boats. The water was their fortification.
Their streets were winding water-ways cut through the reeds.

The pirate chief assigned the care of his two captives to a young Greek,
Cnemon, who was his interpreter. The prisoners were overjoyed on finding
their custodian a Greek. He promised to heal the wounds of Theagenes,
who had now revealed his own name and that of Chariclea, and on their
urgent request, he told him his own story.

“I,” he said, “am the son of Aristippus, an Athenian. After my brother’s
death, my father married again a woman named Demaeneta, who was a
mischief-maker. Like Phaedra she fell in love with me, her step-son,
indeed called me her dear Hippolytus. When I repelled her advances she
accused me to my father of attempted rape. He had me scourged. Worse
than that, Thisbe, the maid of Demaeneta, on her mistress’ orders
involved me in an amorous intrigue with herself and later promised to
show me my step-mother with an adulterer. Sword in hand I followed her
to the bed-room and just as I was about to murder her paramour, I found
he was my father. Aristippus charged me in court with attempted
parricide. Only a divided vote spared my life and sent me into exile.
Lately I received news that my father through Thisbe had found out his
wife’s corruption; she had killed herself; and now Aristippus is trying
to obtain from the people his son’s pardon.”

The next day Thyamis the pirate leader although he was warned in a dream
that having Chariclea, he would not have her, announced to his band his
intention of marrying her. She pretended to consent, but asked that
their marriage be postponed until they reached Memphis so that there she
could resign her priesthood of Diana. Thyamis accepted this condition.
Theagenes was horrified until Chariclea explained that this agreement
was made only to secure more time for their plans for safety. A hostile
band of brigands was now seen approaching. Thyamis had Cnemon hide
Chariclea in a secret cave. When the terrible battle began to go against
him, Thyamis rushed back to the cave and killed a woman in the dark whom
he believed Chariclea. In battle he was then taken alive. The victorious
brigands fired the huts on the island but did not find the cave. Cnemon
and Theagenes, who had escaped in little boats, returned to the island.
When Cnemon conducted Theagenes to the cave by its secret entrance, they
found in its dark gloom the body of a dead woman. Theagenes believing it
Chariclea burst into lamentation and planned suicide. But Cnemon took
away his sword, got a torch lighted and found that the woman was Thisbe
and in her dead hand was a letter. They soon found Chariclea alive.

After the first joy of reunion Chariclea wished to know who the dead
woman was. Cnemon revealed that she was Thisbe and related all her
story: how after her plot against him, Arsinoe, a rival courtesan whose
lover Nausicles she had stolen, revealed Thisbe’s machinations against
Demaeneta; how Cnemon’s father was exiled on the ground of complicity
and Thisbe fled. The letter in Thisbe’s hand proved to be to Cnemon, a
petition to save her from the pirates who had stolen her. Just then
Thermuthis, her pirate captor, arrived to reclaim her, only to find her
dead. The sword in her wound proved to him that she was slain by
Thyamis.

Theagenes and Chariclea, Cnemon and Thermuthis now started out in
separate pairs towards Chemmis, a rich city on the Nile, to get food.
The menace of Thermuthis was conveniently removed as he died from the
bite of an asp. Near Chemmis Cnemon met an old man who entertained him
at his home. He proved to be Calasiris, the foster-father of Theagenes
and Chariclea. This he revealed to Cnemon in a long narrative of his own
life: how though a priest of Isis he had gone into voluntary exile to
break off the wiles of a courtesan; how he had sojourned at Delphi,
attending the ceremonies and talking with the philosophers. One,
Charicles, related how in his own travels in Egypt he had had intrusted
to him by an Ethiopian merchant a beautiful child. The merchant had
found her exposed with a bag of jewels and an inscribed fillet. These
too he gave to Charicles making him promise to guard her freedom and wed
her to a free man. He had named her Chariclea and brought her up in
Greece but now, though she was very beautiful, she refused to marry.

Calasiris also described to Cnemon the sacrifice to Neoptolemus offered
by the Aenianians and the Delphic oracle which he had heard there.

“Delphians, regard with reverential care,
Both him the goddess-born, and her the fair;
“_Grace_” is the sound which ushers in her name,
The syllable wherewith it ends, is “_Fame_.”
They both my fane shall leave, and oceans past,
In regions torrid shall arrive at last;
There shall the gods reward their pious vows,
And snowy chaplets bind their dusky brows.”[108]

Calasiris at the urgent request of Cnemon described all the ceremonies
attendant on the sacrifice to Neoptolemus: the hecatomb and the other
victims, the Thracian maidens bearing offerings, the hymn to the Hero,
the dance, the procession of the fifty armed horsemen led by Theagenes,
the radiant appearance of Chariclea in a chariot. All this description
was the brilliant setting for the meeting of Theagenes and Chariclea,
for when Theagenes took from the priestess’ hand the torch to light the
sacrificial pyre, in them both the flame of first love was kindled.

The next day Chariclea lay abed very ill in her apartment in the temple.
Calasiris feared it was due to “_fascinatio_.” Calasiris after meeting
Theagenes had a vision in which Apollo and Diana consigned Theagenes and
Chariclea to his care and bade him take them to Egypt. The next morning
Theagenes confessed to Calasiris his love and besought his aid.
Charicles begged him to heal his daughter. This enabled him to talk to
her.

Chariclea recovered sufficiently the next day to attend the contest of
the men in armor and to award the palm to the victor, Theagenes. But her
passion and her illness increased after this second meeting and
Calasiris was again summoned to treat her. Her disease was diagnosed as
love and Calasiris persuaded her father to let him see the fillet found
with the exposed baby. Calasiris was able to read the inscription on it.
It was a letter from her mother, Persinna, queen of the Ethiopians,
revealing that she had borne a white daughter because at her conception
she had been looking at a picture of Andromeda; then fearing the charge
of adultery she had exposed her baby with the fillet and the jewels. All
this Calasiris told to Chariclea. Calasiris then made a plot with her by
which she was to pretend to become affianced to Alcamenes, the nephew of
Charicles, as her foster-father wished. Charicles was delighted although
he was nervous because of a dream in which an eagle from the hand of
Apollo bore his daughter away. He gave her all the jewels.

Then Calasiris persuaded some Phoenician merchants to take him and two
friends on their ship as far as Sicily; and he ordered Theagenes and his
young friends to kidnap Chariclea. She consented to the plan after
Theagenes had bound himself by an oath never to force her love. After
they were off, Charicles roused the city to pursuit of them. Calasiris
after telling of the arrival of the Phoenician ship at Zacynthos
interrupted his narrative to rest. Nausicles returned to the house and
unknown to the others had brought Chariclea with him.

(Here the author himself gave a résumé of the adventures of Theagenes
and Chariclea from the time they parted with Cnemon. In the cave the
lovers had a long talk and made an agreement as to what they would do in
case fortune again separated them: they would inscribe on temple,
statue, herm or boundary stone, Theagenes the name Pythicus, Chariclea
Pythias; the direction in which each departed; to what place or people;
also the time of writing. For recognition if they met disguised they
decided to use as signs Chariclea’s ring and Theagenes’ scar from a
boar. Their watchwords were to be a lamp for her, a palm-tree for him.
They sealed this covenant in kisses, then left the cave taking
Chariclea’s sacred robes, her bow and quiver and her jewels.

Soon they met an armed band and were taken prisoners. The commander was
Mithranes, an officer of Oroondates, viceroy of Egypt. Nausicles had
persuaded him for pay to make this expedition to the island in search of
his Thisbe. Nausicles on seeing Theagenes and Chariclea cleverly
pretended that Chariclea was Thisbe, the object of his quest. Mithranes
demanded Theagenes as his prize and despatched him to Oroondates as a
fine youth for service with the Great King.)

The next day Calasiris and Cnemon heard all Nausicles’ story from
himself, saw Chariclea and made a plan to ransom Theagenes. After
Nausicles had celebrated a sacrifice in the temple of Hermes, the god of
gain, Calasiris on request continued his narrative of the voyage from
Delphi. At Zacynthos a deaf old fisherman Tyrrhenus gave them lodging.
The Tyrian merchant who won the victory at the Pythian games now sued
for Chariclea’s hand. Tyrrhenus discovered an ambush of pirates waiting
for the Phoenician ship to sail. Calasiris without revealing this
persuaded the Tyrian captain to sail that night. The pirate crew under
Trachinus pursued them and engaged them in a terrible battle so finally
the Phoenicians had to surrender. Trachinus demanded marriage with
Chariclea and she deceitfully promised her hand if he would spare
Calasiris and “her brother” Theagenes. With difficulty the pirates
maneuvered the boat to land near the mouth of the Nile. Trachinus told
Calasiris that he proposed to marry Chariclea that day. Calasiris,
ingenious as ever, persuaded him to let Chariclea go on the ship to
attire herself for the wedding and be left undisturbed there. Calasiris
then plotted with Pelorus, second in command of the pirates, telling him
Chariclea loved him. Pelorus since he had been the first to board the
Phoenician ship demanded, as his right of first choice of the booty, the
girl. A terrible battle ensued in which Trachinus was killed, Pelorus
wounded by Theagenes and put to flight and Theagenes badly wounded. In
the morning Egyptian pirates arrived and carried them both off.
Calasiris had spent his days mourning for them until this present
recovery of Chariclea.

The next day Calasiris, Cnemon and Nausicles set out to find Theagenes.
An acquaintance informed Nausicles that Mithranes had sent his troops on
an expedition against the men of Bessa, commanded by Thyamis, because
they had stolen a captive Greek youth. So Nausicles and his friends
returned to Chemmis and told all to Chariclea. Nausicles gave a farewell
dinner-party since the season favorable for navigation compelled him to
sail for Greece. Cnemon after a struggle with himself decided to go with
him and was permitted to marry his daughter, Nausiclea.

Calasiris and Chariclea disguised as beggars started for Bessa to seek
Theagenes. Near Bessa they found many corpses lying on the ground. An
old woman told them there had been a battle between Mithranes’ forces
and the men of Bessa in which the men of Bessa had been victorious and
Mithranes had been killed. The victors had now set out to Memphis
against Oroondates. The old woman had lost her son in battle. That night
Calasiris and Chariclea secretly watched her magic rites by which she
raised him to give her news of her other son. The shade also revealed
that there were two witnesses to her wicked necromancy; that Chariclea
should be happily reunited with Theagenes and that his own mother would
meet her death by the sword. This soon happened, for she fell on an
upright sword on the battle-field.

Calasiris and Chariclea arrived at Memphis just as Thyamis and his
brigands began a siege of it. The people of Memphis in the absence of
Oroondates consulted the queen Arsace about the wisdom of going out to
attack the enemy. Thyamis had been driven into exile by the slanders of
his brother Petosiris who swore there was an amour between Thyamis and
Arsace. Petosiris had then succeeded his brother in the priesthood of
Isis. Arsace after looking at the enemy from the wall ordered a single
combat between Thyamis and Petosiris to decide the war. In this combat
Petosiris was forced to flee. As he was running around the city walls
the third time, Calasiris arrived and saw the combat between his two
sons that an oracle had foretold. Rushing between them he ended the
contest.

Chariclea discovered Theagenes and suddenly threw her arms about him.
Her hero disgusted at her beggar’s rags threw her off and did not
recognize her until she whispered: “Pythias, have you forgotten the
torch?” Then he took her to his arms, while Arsace and the other
watchers on the wall marvelled at the scene as though it were on the
stage. So peace was made by the father and the lovers were reunited. All
went to the temple of Isis. Calasiris restored his son Thyamis to the
priesthood.

Arsace had fallen madly in love with Theagenes on seeing him twice and
confided this to her aged maid, Cybele. This maid on going to the temple
of Isis to offer prayers for her mistress learned that Calasiris had
died there during the night and that no one except the priests could
enter the temple for seven days on account of the funeral rites.
Thereupon Cybele craftily secured permission to entertain the two young
Greeks who were staying there in Arsace’s palace and took them home.
When they found that they were in the palace, they became suspicious for
they had noticed the queen’s interest in Theagenes the day before. So at
Chariclea’s suggestion, Theagenes said they were brother and sister.
Cybele went to Arsace’s apartment to tell her all, locking the guests in
their room. In her absence, her son Achaemenes came home, listened at
their door and from their talk and from a glimpse at Theagenes realized
that this was the very youth who had been taken from him by Thyamis.

As the days passed, Arsace tried to win the love of Theagenes first
through subtle allurement, then through open confession of her passion
and at last through domination. Achaemenes finally told Arsace who they
were so the queen informed Theagenes that they were now her slaves as
they had been the captive slaves of Mithranes and he must obey her. Then
in the presence of Cybele Theagenes promised himself to Arsace on
condition that she would never give Chariclea to Achaemenes, who had
demanded her. He confessed that Chariclea was not his sister but his
fiancée. On hearing this Achaemenes rode away to inform Oroondates of
all.

Oroondates was engaged in a campaign against Hydaspes, King of the
Ethiopians, who had got possession of Philae. On hearing Achaemenes’
report Oroondates despatched his eunuch Bagoas with fifty horsemen to
Memphis to bring Theagenes and Chariclea to his camp. He sent two
letters to this effect to Arsace and to his chief eunuch. Achaemenes he
kept with himself.

In Memphis Thyamis had been unable to procure the release of the young
Greeks from Arsace. Moreover the frustrated queen had begun to try
imprisonment and torture on Theagenes. When he was still obstinate,
Cybele advised getting rid of Chariclea to free his heart and she
prepared to poison the girl. Fortunately a maid exchanged the goblets.
Cybele herself drank the poison and expired, but with her last breath
she declared Chariclea had murdered her. So Arsace threw the girl into
the prison where Theagenes was and had her tried. In the court-room
Chariclea pleaded guilty, for this was the plan that she and her lover
had agreed on in the prison, that they might die together. The Supreme
Council ordered that she be burned alive. Chariclea was saved by a
miracle, for the flames on the pyre refused to touch her person. Arsace
then consigned her again to prison on the ground that she was a witch.

In prison, Chariclea and Theagenes had a long talk about the
dream-visions they had each seen. To each Calasiris had appeared and
given a metrical prophecy. To Chariclea he had said:

“Bearing Pantarbè, fear not flames, fair maid,
Fate, to whom naught is hard, shall bring thee aid.”

And to Theagenes:

“From Arsace, the morrow sets thee free—
To Aethiopia with the virgin flee.”[109]

Chariclea interpreted these oracles to mean that her jewel, the
Pantarbè, was protecting her; and that on the next day they would be
freed from Arsace and go to Ethiopia.

Meanwhile Bagoas arrived at Memphis and Euphrates on receiving the
letter of Oroondates sent Theagenes and Chariclea off secretly with
Bagoas. On their journey they received first the news that Arsace had
killed herself and second that Oroondates had gone to Syene. Later on
the way they were seized by a band of Troglodite Ethiopians who took
Bagoas and the two Greeks to their king, Hydaspes. He planned to save
them as victims to be sacrificed to the gods.

Hydaspes was besieging Syene. Oroondates had got inside the city before
the blockade and was directing the defense. But Hydaspes used a new
weapon against him, inundation. His army dug a great trench around Syene
with earth-works encircling it. This trench he connected with the river
Nile by a long canal, fifty feet wide, banked by high walls. When the
works were finished, he cut away the embankment between his canal and
the Nile and let the river in. Syene became an island city and the
pressure of the water on the walls threatened inundation. So Oroondates
and the people of Syene had to sue for peace. This was granted, and
Hydaspes built up again the embankment between his canal and the Nile
and proceeded to drain off the water.

During the festival of the overflowing of the Nile Oroondates and his
army slipped away in the night, bridging the mud swamps about Syene by
planks, and went to Elephantine, which revolted with him against
Hydaspes. In the new battle Hydaspes was again victorious and took
Oroondates prisoner, but the Ethiopian was a generous conqueror and sent
Oroondates back to be again viceroy of his province.

Hydaspes on his way home stopped two days at Philae and from there sent
home letters announcing his victory to Persinna and the Gymnosophists.
Persinna recalled a dream that she had brought forth a full-grown
daughter and interpreted the daughter as this victory. The people
assembled for the celebration at the island city of Meroe and according
to their traditions demanded human sacrifice of foreign captives of war.
The prisoners now underwent the test of chastity by ascending the altar
of fire and of course Theagenes and Chariclea passed the test.

The Gymnosophists through their leader Sisimithres refused to witness
human sacrifice and foretold that this one would never be consummated.
Chariclea begged them to stay and hear her case. (She had recognized
Sisimithres’ name as that of the one who had given her to Charicles at
Catadupa). Chariclea declared that she was a native, not a foreigner,
and produced her fillet and her jewels, among them the mystic ring,
Pantarbé. Sisimithres narrated his part in her story. Hydaspes was
puzzled over how he could have a _white_ child, but Sisimithres
explained that Persinna at the time of conception had fixed her eyes on
a picture of the naked, white Andromeda. When the picture was brought in
as evidence, Chariclea’s resemblance to its Andromeda was found
startling. Moreover a birthmark of a black ring around Chariclea’s arm
attested her black blood.

The people now refused to have Chariclea sacrificed, but the fate of
Theagenes still hung in the balance. Chariclea begged that if he were to
be sacrificed, she might perform the deed. (Apparently she planned to
carry out a kind of suicide pact.) Hydaspes thought his daughter was
insane and sent her into a tent with her mother while he received
ambassadors and their gifts of victory. His nephew Meroebus brought a
mighty athlete. Hydaspes as a joke gave him in return an elephant, but
also promised him the hand of Chariclea. The Axiomitae presented a
giraffe, an animal so strange that it terrified some of the natives.
Moreover, one bull and two horses broke their fetters and dashed madly
around the inside of the circle of guards. Theagenes mounted another
horse, pursued the bull, wore it out and finally downed it. The
enchanted spectators now demanded that he be matched with the champion
Meroebus. Him too he vanquished. Oroondates crowned Theagenes as victor,
but nevertheless prepared to sacrifice him.

At that moment ambassadors from Syene arrived with a letter from
Oroondates. He begged that a young woman captive be sent to him with her
father who was one of the ambassadors. This was Charicles. He recognized
Theagenes and accused him of having stolen his daughter at Delphi.
Theagenes revealed that Chariclea was the one demanded. Sisimithres told
the rest of the story. Chariclea rushing out of the tent begged
Charicles to forgive her elopement. Persinna told Hydaspes that she had
learned that Chariclea was betrothed to Theagenes.

Sisimithres speaking not in Greek but in Ethiopian for all the people to
hear ordered Hydaspes to submit to the will of the gods who had saved
the two young lovers and who did not approve of human sacrifice and
exhorted him to end human sacrifices forever. So Hydaspes asked the
people to observe the will of the gods and to sanction the marriage of
Theagenes and Chariclea. This they did. Then Hydaspes consecrated the
two as priest and priestess of the Sun and the Moon and on their heads
he placed the mitres which he and Persinna had worn as symbols of their
offices. Thus was fulfilled the oracle:

“In regions torrid shall arrive at last;
There shall the gods reward their pious vows,
And snowy chaplets bind their dusky brows.”

Then a great procession escorted them to Meroe there to fulfill the more
mystic parts of wedlock.

In this brief re-telling of Heliodorus’ long story, certain striking
features of his structure appear. Geography and ethnography are
important as in the other novelists. The eastern basin of the
Mediterranean is the center of the adventures, the district which for
centuries was the scene of the conflict for power between many nations.
As in Xenophon, many geographical details are given, often with little
accuracy.[110] As Maillon points out, imagination and fantasy falsify
the historical and geographical allusions. Heliodorus gathers everything
that can satisfy the taste for the strange and the marvellous. At a time
when the critical spirit was so little developed in the historians, a
writer of romance would naturally produce marvellous narratives and
vague descriptions. Heliodorus confuses the Ethiopia of Herodotus with
that of the Ptolemies and imagines an Ethiopian empire which did not
exist during the domination of Egypt by the Persians.[111] As in
Chariton, the superiority of the Greeks over the barbarians is part of
the author’s faith.

In the development of the plot Heliodorus makes his set more unified,
less cinematic than Xenophon had done. The scene of action lies almost
entirely in Egypt with a shift to Ethiopia for the final climax. This
Egyptian set is to be sure varied by different local scenes: the Nile,
an island village in its delta, towns such as Chemmis, Memphis, Syene
and Philae, the battle-fields of Bessa and Elephantine, but nearly the
whole plot develops in Egypt. The exceptions are in the sub-plot
presented in Cnemon’s narrative of his life-history which is laid in
Athens, and in Calasiris’ long account of his visit to Delphi. These
however are clearly set off as insets in the unity of the Egyptian
scene.

The plot itself is an original combination of epic and dramatic
structure. The other writers of Greek romance begin at the beginning
with a detailed account of the hero and heroine, their family, their
background. Heliodorus in true epic style plunges us _in medias res_
with his startling opening scene of a seascape where a ship rides at
anchor, treasure-laden but not manned, where the shore is littered with
the remains of a banquet, but strewn with corpses, where a young man
lies wounded with a beautiful maiden dressed as a goddess ministering to
him. The reader is as amazed and puzzled at the sight as are the pirates
who are peering down from the hills.

Another epic part of the structure is that the narrative of events does
not proceed in a straight line but zigzags back and forth while a new
arrival contributes his part to the development of the plot, or the
author himself gives a retrospective résumé of past events to explain
the present. Calasiris’ long narrative is the best illustration of this
resumptive method but Cnemon, Achaemenes, Sisimithres and Charicles all
contribute their share of résumés.[112] In general, Heliodorus uses
résumés with great effect to clarify his complicated plot. Sometimes he
merely suggests a summary of events (V. 16, 5); sometimes he gives a
full succinct recapitulation of events (II. 14, 1-2); sometimes his
heroes recount their adventures to complain of them (V. 11).[113]

Many episodes too are taken from Homer. The games in Delphi in honor of
Apollo are indebted to those given by Achilles in honor of Patroclus.
The τειχοσκοπία where Arsace on the wall of Memphis watches the combat
in the plain recalls Helen on the walls of Troy. The duel there between
Thyamis and Theagenes is like one of the Homeric single combats. In it
Theagenes’ pursuit of Thyamis around the walls owes something to the
pursuit of Hector by the swift-footed Achilles. The scar of Theagenes
which is to be a sign of recognition was surely suggested by Odysseus’.
The scene where the old woman evokes her dead son on the field of battle
imitates the Homeric Νέκυια.[114]

Even more prominent than his debt to epic poetry is Heliodorus’ use of
dramatic structure. All the usual devices of Greek tragedy appear.
Indeed the plot centers on the recognition of the young Greek heroine as
the white Ethiopian princess by the tokens exposed with her in babyhood:
her jewels, her mystic ring, her lettered fillet. This dramatic device
of an agnorisis or recognition is multiplied by Heliodorus for repeated
situations: the recognition of Chariclea in beggar’s rags by Theagenes
through her watchword, the identification of Charicles as her
foster-father and of Sisimithres as the noble Greek who found and saved
the exposed child.

No less important is the usual Greek peripeteia, or reversal of fortune,
for hero and heroine are repeatedly reunited only to be separated anew;
together or separately they are rescued from one catastrophe only to be
plunged into a worse danger. Calasiris’ long narrative resembles not
only the minstrel’s songs at the court of Alcinous of old far-off divine
events, but also the messenger’s speeches in tragedy wherein events too
horrible or too complicated to be presented on the stage are told with a
realism which starts the imagination. The mechanism of a parallel
subplot is employed in Cnemon’s life-story. The letter in Thisbe’s dead
hand is indebted to Phaedra’s in Euripides’ _Hippolytus_. Cybele,
Arsace’s maid, owes much in her character of confidant to Phaedra’s
nurse though she is more cynical and familiar. The crowd takes the place
of the chorus, now demanding human sacrifice in the name of tradition,
now releasing Chariclea from it through pity, now approving of the
appeal of the noble Gymnosophists in the name of the gods to abolish the
immolation of human victims. The _deus ex machina_ is supplied by these
very gods of the Gymnosophists, Helios, the Sun, and Selene, the Moon,
celestial symbols of pure deities of space and time conceived in the
philosophical mind.

Against this structure of drama the characters move as though on a stage
and even through the stylized formulae of dramatic conventions usually
attain individuality and vitality. Maillon seems to me undiscriminating
when he speaks of them all as general types, not individuals, as
marionettes who can talk, lament and complain, but are without
life.[115] Even characters that fall into general groups may as in real
life have distinguishing traits and in the list of characters certain
are unforgettable personalities.

The hero Theagenes is of course supremely handsome and physically
strong. He is also as Wolff says spectacularly courageous but easily
discouraged.[116] He has to be kept from suicide by Cnemon. He has to be
cheered by Chariclea. And his Lady Fair is the resourceful partner in
emergencies who whispers to him “Call me your Sister” or invents means
of recognition in case of separation or makes a plot to share with him
his fate be it life or death. She demands too when they start off on
travels together that her lover swear a sacred oath to respect her
virginity. Indeed her leadership deserves the tribute given Dido, _dux
femina facti_. As Calderini notes, cleverness and deception were valued
traits in those times and both she displayed.[117] But she guarded her
chastity even from her dearest and her courage never failed. On the
battle field she can shoot her arrows. She is surrounded by a divine
aura of radiant beauty that illuminates her holy garb.

The real hero of the romance is her father, the Ethiopian King Hydaspes,
whose qualities she seemed to have inherited. He is the type of the good
king, but beyond that he is very human. He has his humor so that when
his nephew presents him with a gigantic athletic champion he smilingly
gives him in exchange an elephant. He is generous to a defeated foe,
freeing Oroondates and restoring him to his office so that the viceroy
makes obeisance to him and calls him the most just of mortals. He
follows tradition in preparing to offer to the gods foreign captives as
human victims, but when convinced by the Gymnosophists of the
inappropriateness of such sacrifice he leads his people to the right
decision about abolishing it and happily crowns his daughter and her
lover as new priests of a purified worship.

Persinna his queen is a type of frustrated motherhood, timid enough to
expose at birth her beautiful white baby for fear of the charge of
adultery, but when her daughter is restored to her she glows with ardent
parentalism and interprets Chariclea’s wishes to her husband.

The characters in the sub-plot (Cnemon’s story) are less clearly
delineated than those in the main narrative. The story serves however
not merely to introduce Thisbe, who is useful for the main plot, but
anticipates and prepares for certain main characters. Aristippus the
betrayed husband, Demaeneta the wanton wife, Thisbe the corrupt maid and
Cnemon the coveted youth parallel Oroondates, Arsace, Cybele and
Theagenes himself.

The far east opens up before us under the shadow of the Great King of
the Persians. He never appears, but his viceroys, their lieutenants,
their eunuchs work his will with the complete subservience which their
act of obeisance symbolizes. Oroondates is a good fighter, but he is
ready to desert secretly the city of Syene, which he has been defending,
before terms of surrender had been concluded, to start another war in
the name of the Great King. His will conveyed by letters must be law to
his eunuch or his wife. This arbitrariness when imitated by his eunuch
Euphrates becomes sadistic tyranny over prisoners given to his care.

Arsace his wife finds her escape in intrigue and amours.[118] Highly
over-sexed she stops at nothing to satisfy her passion as her wanton
fancies shift from one desired lover to another. She has no mercy for
Theagenes when he is obdurate or for Chariclea when she finds she is the
object of Theagenes’ affections.

Cybele her maid abets her machinations and her lust. Though her position
as confidante recalls Phaedra’s nurse in the _Hippolytus_, her character
reproduces all the venality, cunning and complaisance of the maids in
new Attic comedy. Torture and murder are natural tools for success in
her eyes and when she is hoist with her own petard, she dies asserting
that she has been poisoned by the innocent girl whom she had hoped to
make her victim. Arsace with her Cybele is a complete foil for the
purity and loyalty of Chariclea.

The most interesting among the upright characters in the play are the
priests: Calasiris, high-priest of Isis in Egypt, Charicles, priest of
Apollo at Delphi, Sisimithres, the Greek Gymnosophist. They are
consecrated to service, devoted to worship. They are men of the world
extending their knowledge by travel and talk. Calasiris on his visit to
Delphi spent his days in philosophical discussion of religious rites and
the meaning of the gods of Greece and of Egypt. Charicles is a
humanitarian who educates the little waif Chariclea as his own daughter.
Sisimithres dares withdraw from the human sacrifices proposed by a great
king and people and by his personal authority converts them from such
abominable customs to a purer conception of deity and of worship.
Calasiris in his role of interpreting the events of the story and
solving its problems, in his clear philosophical interests probably
represents Heliodorus himself.[119]

To return to the structure of the romance, the plot with such borrowings
from epic and dramatic poetry, with such characters, some types, some
highly individualized, moves forward in a manner that resembles the
modern cinema. There is no carefully interwoven plot such as tragedy
presents, for example in _Oedipus Rex_. Rather there is a progression of
episodes, each a clear picture in itself, all after many involutions and
evolutions falling into an orderly narrative. Rattenbury thinks that
after Heliodorus’ original beginning which secures the interest and
sympathy of the reader through his curiosity he fails to maintain the
interest throughout. The long retrospective narrative of Calasiris
becomes monotonous. The reader is irritated by the postponement of the
denouement after he as well as the hero and heroine knows the secret of
Chariclea’s parentage. Maillon, however, finds in Heliodorus a great
talent for narration. After the impressive opening scene, he says, from
narrative to narrative, from description to description, one is led
slowly but without ennui to the grandeur of the final chapters. The
variety of the episodes does not detract from the unity of the narrative
because we keep returning to Theagenes and Chariclea in whom we have
been interested from the first.[120]

To me personally the defects in the romance lie not in the long
narrative of Calasiris or in the early revelation of Chariclea’s
identity, but in the excessive use of descriptive passages. Planned
though they undoubtedly are to satisfy the craving of the age for a
knowledge of the novel and the strange, or to give local color, they
retard the development of the story. Often they are prolix and difficult
because of an unfamiliar vocabulary and a complicated sentence
structure. There are many such passages: descriptions of natural
phenomena (the island city in the delta of the Nile, the straits at
Calydon); of curious animals (crocodile and giraffe); of operations of
war (a naval battle, the siege of Syene, the duel of Thyamis and
Petosiris); the religious ceremonies at Delphi. These vary greatly in
clarity and effectiveness, but in general they tend to be verbose and to
retard the narrative. Such descriptions are however one of the
conventional features of the Greek romance. And with all Heliodorus’
originality in plot, in his tripartite structure of epic, dramatic and
cinematic features, he employs all the usual devices of Greek romance.
These are oracle and oath, résumés, conversation and rhetorical
speeches, letters and soliloquies, meditated suicide and apparent death,
dreams and epiphanies. But Heliodorus makes these conventional devices
integral parts of his plot.

The oracle given by the Pythian priestess at Delphi early in the story
motivates the plot until the very end when its meaning is explained and
its prophecy fulfilled. The oath which Chariclea requires of her lover
early in her travels protects her chastity through all the intimacies of
palace apartment and prison dungeons. Résumés of events given several
times by Cnemon, by Calasiris in his long narrative, by Charicles,
clarify and facilitate the plot.[121] Conversation is used constantly on
the battle field or in the boudoir, in palaces, in dungeons. Turn over
the pages of Heliodorus’ Greek as you would a modern novel and test how
often the pages are broken and enlivened by talk. Rhetoric colors some
of the longer speeches, but in the court-room scene (the trial of
Chariclea for poisoning Cybele) the procedure is described but the
speeches are not quoted.

Letters are as important as oracles for the development of the plot. The
letter of Persinna inscribed on the fillet exposed with her child
furnishes the indisputable evidence for the recognition of Chariclea.
The letter in Thisbe’s dead hand is of prime importance in the sub-plot
in announcing to Cnemon the death of his wicked step-mother. Business
letters of Mithranes to Oroondates, of Oroondates to Arsace and to the
eunuch Euphrates, of Hydaspes to the Supreme Council of Ethiopia and to
his queen Persinna furnish documentation for the march of events. The
letter of Oroondates to Hydaspes in the last book prepares the way for
Charicles’ final explanation of his relation to his foster-daughter and
his own recognition of Chariclea.

Soliloquies reveal emotional states and meditated suicide. At Chemmis
one night Chariclea left alone yields to despair and vows that if she
learns Theagenes is dead, she will join him in the shades. An apparent
death nearly precipitates tragedy when in the dark of the cave the body
of Thisbe is mistaken for that of Chariclea. Theagenes bursts into
despairing lamentation and proposes suicide. But Cnemon foreseeing this
has filched his sword and presently the light of Cnemon’s torch reveals
the truth and there ensues a happy reversal of fortune.

Among all these usual features of the plot a new importance is given to
dreams and epiphanies. They are peculiarly significant because of their
bearing on Heliodorus’ philosophical and religious interests. Some
motivate minor events or simply create atmosphere. Thyamis in the night
before the battle with another band of brigands had a vision of Isis who
gave Chariclea to him with the mystic words: “Having her, you will not
have her, but you will be unjust and will kill the stranger. And she
will not be killed.” At first Thyamis, interpreting the dream in
accordance with his own wishes, thought it meant that he would murder
her virginity, but she would live. Then when the battle went against
him, he changed his interpretation and to save Chariclea from his foes,
killed her (as he thought) in the cave. So Thisbe’s death is explained.
Another dream of little importance is Chariclea’s in which a wild
looking man appeared and pierced her right eye with his sword. Opposing
interpretations are given by Theagenes and Cnemon. The epiphanies,
however, which are vitally significant for the plot all foretell the
final fortunes of the hero and the heroine. To Calasiris Apollo and
Diana appeared, the god leading Theagenes, the goddess Chariclea, and
intrusted them to him. Diana too bade him consider the pair as his
children and take them to Egypt when and how the gods should decree.
Charicles too dreamed that an eagle flew from the hand of Apollo, seized
Chariclea and bore her away from Delphi to a land of dark forms.
Calasiris again had a vision, this time of Odysseus, the great
traveller, who demanded sacrifices and presented Penelope’s blessing on
Chariclea. Calasiris after his death himself appeared simultaneously to
Chariclea and Theagenes, telling the heroine that the Pantarbè jewel
would protect her, and telling the hero that he would be freed from
Arsace and take his Lady to Ethiopia. Hydaspes, when the prisoner
Chariclea is brought before him, recalled a dream that a full-grown
daughter was born to him and the face of this dream-girl was
Chariclea’s. This prepared him for the real recognition of her identity.
Now the validity of these apparitions is sometimes questioned: are they
dreams or visions? The author comments that desire often prompts
favorable interpretation. He has Hydaspes’ officers tell him that the
mind creates for itself fantasies which seem to foretell future events.
He has the optimistic Chariclea encourage Theagenes to trust in the gods
and interpret Calasiris’ prophecies as beneficent. But all the same
Heliodorus motivates his plot by this popular belief in dreams and
epiphanies.

This structural element fits in with the religious-philosophical
coloring of the whole background. Dreams and epiphanies, miracles and
necromancy are partial manifestations of a deep-seated interest in cults
and philosophies that is a phenomenon of the times. There is a long
description of the festival of Neoptolemus at Delphi with its pageantry,
sacrifices, hymn, dance, libations and the lighting of the pyre. It is
here that Theagenes and Chariclea meet and at first sight fall in love.
Nausicles the merchant must sacrifice to Hermes, god of trade. The
festival of the overflowing of the Nile is celebrated in Egypt. And
among the Ethiopians the first fruits of victory in war are offered in
the form of sacrifice of human captives to their gods. The most
prominent cults are those of Apollo-Helios of Delphi, Egypt and Ethiopia
and of the Egyptian Isis. These are savior gods to whom mortals offer
petitions for salvation.

Opinions differ as to whether the representation of the cult of Helios
is the usual conventional religious background of a Greek romance or
whether it is the author’s glorification of the cult of his native city
with which he and his family had some official connection. At the
antipodes in criticism are Rattenbury who perceives only the usual
religious conventions and Calderini who thinks the unique feature of the
_Aethiopica_ is its rich philosophical coloring.[122] All would agree on
marked influence in Heliodorus of Neo-Pythagoreanism and the teachings
of Apollonius of Tyana as recorded by Philostratus.[123] Maillon in his
preface gives this discriminating summary of his own position towards
Heliodorus’ philosophical interests. He says that the Pantheon of
Heliodorus does not contain many deities. He refers to the gods under
the Neo-Pythagorean name of οἱ κρείττονες. Calasiris whose role is most
important may well represent the author’s state of mind. This priest of
Isis practices a large eclecticism. He goes to Delphi and divides his
time between the service of the temple and theological discussion. He
worships especially one god, Apollo of Delphi, Helios of Emesa. Apollo
directs the drama of his story, Helios crowns it in Ethiopia. One sees
in Heliodorus the intention of simplifying and unifying mythology and of
bringing back religion to its eastern and Egyptian origins. Instead of
wishing to discredit pagan stories, he treats them philosophically to
make them acceptable to an age which was becoming emancipated and more
severe and to a new faith which wished to reconcile the philosophical
tradition and the sense of the divine and the mysterious.

Neo-Pythagoreanism was a curious attempt to found a religion which would
satisfy both the critical spirit and the people. At the beginning of the
third century appeared _The Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, a magician and
a disciple of Pythagoras. Philostratus takes his hero to the Orient,
Ethiopia, Greece, Rome. He writes a real romance. And that of Heliodorus
recalls it often. Both authors show the same admiration for the
Gymnosophists, the same distinction between magic and theurgy. Both
Apollonius and Calasiris are opposed to impure sacrifices. The story of
the magical Pantarbè jewel appears in both Philostratus and Heliodorus.
Calasiris like Apollonius is a model of Pythagorean asceticism.
Apollonius defends himself about working miracles and lets a doubt
appear about his theurgic powers. Calasiris shows in daily life a common
wisdom and reserves for exceptional cases an appeal to great demons.

In the _Aethiopica_ dreams play a more important role than the demons.
Communications with the invisible world are constant, but only
exceptional human beings who have had long experience in divine matters
and a life mortified and purified by expiation know the mysteries of the
invisible world.

This paraphrase of Maillon’s paragraphs shows how completely logical is
the conclusion of the romance where the noble Gymnosophist Sisimithres
persuades the king of the Ethiopians and his people to renounce human
sacrifice and accept the divine blessing on the loves of Theagenes and
Chariclea.

“At length Hydaspes said to Sisimithres, ‘O sage! What are we to do?
To defraud the gods of their victims is not pious; to sacrifice those
who appear to be preserved and restored by their providence is
impious. It needs that some expedient be found out.’

Sisimithres, speaking, not in the Grecian, but in the Ethiopian
tongue, so as to be heard by the greatest part of the assembly,
replied: ‘O king! The wisest among men, as it appears, often have the
understanding clouded through excess of joy, else, before this time,
you would have discovered that the gods regard not with favour the
sacrifice which you have been preparing for them. First they, from the
very altar, declared the all-blessed Chariclea to be your daughter;
next they brought her foster-father most wonderfully from the midst of
Greece to this spot; they struck panic and terror into the horses and
oxen which were being prepared for sacrifice, indicating, perhaps, by
that event, that those whom custom considered as the more perfect and
fitting victims were to be rejected. Now, as the consummation of all
good, as the perfection of the piece, they show this Grecian youth to
be the betrothed husband of the maiden. Let us give credence to these
proofs of the divine and wonder-working will; let us be fellow workers
with this will; let us have recourse to holier offerings; let us
abolish, for ever, these detested human sacrifices.’”[124]

A few words must be said on the style of Heliodorus. It is predominantly
literary, but extremely varied. He uses Homer almost as much as Chariton
does. His adaptation of Homeric episodes has already been
described.[125] A discussion of Homer and his parentage between
Calasiris and Cnemon is introduced in the style of the rhetorical
schools.[126] Descriptions as well as episodes owe much to Homeric
coloring, witness the epiphany of Odysseus.[127] But above all the
language itself is almost as rich in quotations from Homer as is
Chariton’s.

Often reminiscent phraseology betrays quotations in solution. Frequently
too very famous phrases are quoted directly. Calasiris greets Nausicles
with that best of all wishes: “May the gods give you your heart’s
desire!” Nausicles reminds Calasiris that the gifts of the gods are not
to be despised. The maid Cybele assures Arsace that soon Theagenes will
desert Chariclea for her, exchanging bronze for gold.[128] Emotional
crises are described or expressed in Homer’s words. Arsace’s
sleeplessness has the same manifestations as Achilles. Cnemon upbraids
Chariclea for her pessimism about Theagenes’ fate in the words of
Agamemnon to Chalchas. And Chariclea when she is questioned by
physicians as to the cause of her illness only keeps repeating:
“Achilles, Peleus’ son, noblest of Greeks!” as though only the
apostrophe uttered by Patroclus could describe her dear Theagenes.[129]
These are but a few illustrations of Heliodorus’ constant use of Homeric
diction.

No less did he use the language of the theater.[130] We have already
seen how much his plot owes to the structure of Greek tragedy. From
drama he took also a vocabulary of pungent metaphors to describe the
progress of events in his story. Repeatedly the action is referred to as
a tragedy.[131] And certain scenes by their wording imply a recognition,
a _deus ex machina_, a prologue and a change from tragedy to comedy.
These may, as Calderini suggests, be reminiscences of contemporary plays
now lost, which readers of the time would recognize.[132] Certainly
structure and language of the romance attest Heliodorus’ deep interest
in the theater.

The third striking element in the diction of Heliodorus is the
rhetorical. He often uses all the artifices taught in the schools:
alliterations, antitheses, set phrases. He loves the grand style. A
speech, even one uttered by his charming heroine, is an opportunity for
pomposity. He uses in excess that fine writing for descriptive passages
which the schools taught and he scatters throughout his narrative pithy
truisms or _sententiae_ which were part of the capital of the
rhetorician.

But these lapses into over-refined phrases, laborious symmetry and
decorative rhetoric are less of a barrier to a modern reader than is his
syntax. His sentence structure in general is not paratactic as is so
much of Chariton and of Xenophon, but complex. Moreover these complex
sentences are often exceedingly long with a kind of agglutinative
accumulation of participial constructions that demands re-reading for
comprehension. Yet he can be simple and pellucid in rapid narrative and
emotional crises as the final Book shows. And it is just because much of
his narrative is so exciting that we fall into resentful criticism when
Homer nods in dull drowsiness.[133]

Although we cannot date the _Aethiopica_ more exactly than somewhere in
the third century (probably in the first half), the romance reflects in
general the life of the times in which Heliodorus lived. The east daubs
its brilliant colors upon the story as the power of oriental rulers
impinges on the life of the Greeks. The absolutism of the Great King of
Persia is the model for minor courts of viceroys and their queens who
demand of their subjects and captives the obeisance that they must
render to their Super-Ruler. Military officers and eunuchs are the
descending steps in this hierarchy of tyranny.

Adventures center in war and travel. Cities and tribes revolt. Heroes
must display military virtues. Merchants, priests and women travel
widely, braving the dangers of storms at sea and of attacks by pirates.
Women have found a new freedom and are leaders in courage and endurance
as the story of Chariclea shows. Women take part in banquets and
religious ceremonies as well as in adventures. Romantic friendship
between men and admiration of young men’s beauty are a counterpart of
the famous relation between Hadrian and Antinous. Slaves and captives
may become court favorites or be subjected to indignities, imprisonment,
torture.

The times are characterized too by an eager search for the new, the
unfamiliar, by scientific curiosity, by an interest in art. So
descriptions of strange countries and peoples, accounts of strange
adventures and sights are part of the novelist’s stock in trade. He
describes vividly the island city in the Nile’s delta, its water-ways
through the reeds, its cave refuge with its secret entrance; or he gives
a technical account of the engineering processes by which a city is
besieged by threat of inundation; or he pictures such a curiosity in the
animal world as a giraffe. Works of art are featured with admiring care:
Theagenes’ embroidered robe and its clasp, Chariclea’s robe and its
girdle, the amethyst ring with its carved scene, the painting of Perseus
and Andromeda, nude, shining, chained to the rock.

And part of the picture of the times centers in man’s quest for new
values for life itself. Ethical standards for conduct are weighed and
emphasized in contrasts between Greeks and barbarians. Aspiration
towards the higher life is portrayed in the worship of the gods and its
ceremonials and in the philosophical discussions in which the priests
take part. The Gymnosophists and Calasiris share a large humanity.

The primary interests of the romance, however, far outweighing its
philosophy and its adventures, is love. Once more two enchanting young
people meet at a festival of a god, fall in love at first sight, plight
their troth, accompany each other through world-wide adventures,
preserve their faith and their chastity and for their piety are at last
united in perfect happiness. Theagenes and Chariclea join Chaereas and
Callirhoe, Habrocomes and Anthia, Clitophon and Leucippe, Daphnis and
Chloe in the undying annals of true love. And the reader closes
Heliodorus’ novel with Cnemon’s comment:

“I am at feud with Homer, father, for saying that love, as well as
everything else, brings satiety in the end; for my part I am never
tired either of feeling it myself, or hearing of its influence on
others; and lives there the man of so iron and adamantine an heart, as
not to be enchanted with listening to the loves of Theagenes and
Chariclea, though the story were to last a year?”[134]

V
THE ADVENTURES OF LEUCIPPE AND CLITOPHON
_BY ACHILLES TATIUS_

“Every romance,” says Aristide Calderini in writing of the Greek novels,
“represents successively a new advance or a new type in its genre. Now
the closest affiliation is with history, now with pastoral poetry, now
with philosophy. While certain common elements persist, the general
pattern of the whole changes; often the content is varied; often the
limits.”[135]

The variation within this new form of literature is richly illustrated
by the novel we are now to study, the one which was probably written
last of the extant Greek Romances as Chariton’s was the first. This is
_The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon_ of Achilles Tatius.

We know little of the author. Suidas, the lexicographer of the tenth
century, wrote his brief biography:

“Achilles Statius” (note the incorrect form of the name ‘Tatius’) “of
Alexandria: the writer of the story of Leucippe and Clitophon, as well
as other episodes of love, in eight books. He finally became a
Christian and a bishop. He also wrote a treatise on the sphere, and
works on etymology, and a mixed narration telling of many great and
marvellous men. His novel is in all respects like that of the other
writers of love-romances.”[136]

Now though Suidas used earlier material and essayed accuracy, two
statements in this biography are manifestly incorrect. There is nothing
whatever in the romance to indicate that Tatius was ever a Christian and
the story about his conversion and bishopric probably duplicates the
similar tradition about his predecessor, Heliodorus, who was identified
with a bishop of Tricca who bore his name. Moreover Tatius’ novel is
very different in many particulars from all the romances which are now
known. And it is these contrasts rather than the similarities which make
him in our studies so excellent a foil for Chariton.

The date of about A.D. 300 is probably right for the novel because the
author seems to imitate the style of certain romancers of the third
century and because a recently discovered papyrus fragment[137] shows
that for palaeographical reasons this earliest manuscript could not have
been written later than the first half of the fourth century. This
evidence about the lateness of Achilles Tatius we shall find borne out
by a deterioration in style from Chariton’s simplicity to an
over-elaboration and exaggeration and a change in spirit from sincerity
to ironic parody.[138]

One important reason for knowing Achilles Tatius is “his contributions
to Elizabethan prose fiction and, through this, to the making of the
modern novel.”[139] The first Greek text was not published until 1601
but before this he was made known to the sixteenth century by
translations in Latin, Italian and French. And in 1597 the first English
translation, that of William Burton, appeared. Todd succinctly states
his resulting influence:

“With Heliodorus, though in less measure, he furnished structure and
material for Sidney’s Arcadia, and thus was among the influences that
formed the novels of Richardson and Walter Scott; of Greene, as Dr. S.
L. Wolff puts it, he was the ‘first and latest love’; in Lyly himself,
and not only in him, we recognize Tatius as one of the sources of
English Euphuism.”[140]

My plan in taking up Achilles Tatius is first to analyze briefly his
plot and then summarize its similarities to _Chaereas and Callirhoe_ and
the other Greek novels. Then I shall discuss more in detail the unique
features in Tatius and his special characteristics.

An epigram in the Palatine Anthology, attributed to Photius, patriarch
of Constantinople, but by some to Leon the philosopher gives a bird’s
eye view of the story.[141]

“The story of Clitophon reveals to the eyes, as it were, a bitter love
but a virtuous life. The very virtuous life of Leucippe puts all in
ecstasy, (for the story tells) how she was beaten and shorn of her
hair and clothed pitiably, and—the greatest point—having died three
times she endured to the end. And if you too wish to be virtuous,
friend, do not consider the side issues of the plot, but learn first
the outcome of the story, for it joins in marriage those who love
sanely.”

For the expansion of this epitome it is necessary to have before us a
list of the many characters in the romance.

Chief characters:

_Clitophon_, a Greek of Tyre, son of Hippias
_Leucippe_, daughter of Sostratus of Byzantium, the uncle of Clitophon
_Clinias_ of Sidon, cousin of Clitophon
_Chaereas_ of Pharos, a fisherman
_Melitte_, a woman of Ephesus
_Thersander_, the husband of Melitte
_Callisthenes_ of Byzantium
_Calligone_, the half-sister of Clitophon

Minor characters:

_Sostratus_, of Byzantium, father of Leucippe
_Panthea_, his wife
_Hippias_, a Tyrian, father of Clitophon and Calligone
_Charicles_, the _amicus_ of Clinias
_Menelaus_, an Egyptian
_Sosthenes_, the bailiff of Thersander
_Satyrus_, a slave of Clitophon
_Clio_, Leucippe’s chambermaid, in love with Satyrus
_Charmides_, an Egyptian general
_Gorgias_, an Egyptian soldier

For the plot I condense Phillimore’s well-written summary.[142] The
author begins with a description of Sidon. He has reached Sidon in his
travels and is touring the city, looking at the temples. He describes a
painting of Zeus and Europa, also a statue of Eros. He was reflecting on
the Eros: “Think of such a brat being lord of earth and sea!” When a
young man near testifies to Eros’ power which he has felt, the author
invites him to tell his story. In a Platonic scene under a plane-tree
near a stream they sit down.

The stranger, Clitophon, a Greek of Tyre, tells his story in the first
person. Clitophon has been unwillingly betrothed at nineteen to his
half-sister, Calligone. Now his uncle, Sostratus, writes that he is
sending his daughter Leucippe and her mother from their home in
Byzantium to Tyre for safety during a war. Clitophon at once falls in
love with Leucippe. He makes his cousin, Clinias, his confidant. Clinias
is sympathetic because he had a tragic love affair with a youth who was
killed by a fall from a horse which Clinias gave him. (Here is
introduced a purple patch on the driving accident.)

Encouraged by Clinias, Clitophon makes love constantly. Various scenes
of his wooing, for example a garden, are described in detail. Finally
the lovers elope, find a ship at Berytus, embark and start to
Alexandria. They meet an Egyptian fellow-passenger, Menelaus. There
comes a great storm. Hero and heroine are cast on shore at Pelusium near
the temple of Zeus Casius. Enter black brigands. Soldiers rescue
Clitophon, but Leucippe is kidnapped. Clitophon joins in an attempt to
save her, but it is baulked by a deep, impassable canal between the
rescuing party and the ten thousand brigands. Across it Clitophon
watches the bandits perform a human sacrifice by disembowelling the
victim before an altar. It is Leucippe. The body is put in a coffin.

The next day the canal is diked and crossed. Clitophon resolves to die
on Leucippe’s body, but suddenly he meets his slave Satyrus and
Menelaus, both saved from the wreck, who assure him that Leucippe is
alive. On the coffin being opened, she comes out—“Gashed open and minus
all viscera.” But the murderers had been deceived by a sheepskin full of
animal entrails attached to her and by a stage sword which never
penetrated her body. Clinias too was saved from the wreck. Now a
punitive expedition under Charmides, the Egyptian, starts, but
unfortunately he falls in love with Leucippe and has a philtre given her
which drives her insane. On her recovery they go to Alexandria. There a
new rival, Chaereas, abducts Leucippe. Clitophon pursues on a ship of
war, but has to endure seeing Leucippe beheaded on the deck of the
enemy’s vessel. Clitophon recovers the head from the sea and gives it
burial.

Six months later Clitophon meets Clinias again. Clinias who had been
home in Sidon reports that “the cruel parent had actually betrothed the
loving cousins” so Clitophon and Leucippe might have married in peace.
Clitophon who naturally believes Leucippe dead is pursued by Melitte, a
lovely, wealthy and amorous widow of Ephesus. He finally yields to her;
they are betrothed in the temple of Isis and are to be married when they
reach Ephesus. On their arrival, Melitte drives Clitophon around her
great estates. There he has the overwhelming surprise of encountering
Leucippe who is working in the garden as a miserable slave. This
difficult situation is made more complicated by the sudden reappearance
of Melitte’s husband, Thersander, who had been falsely reported drowned
at sea. Thersander beats up Clitophon as an adulterer with his wife and
has him imprisoned.

Sosthenes, the bailiff of Thersander, interests his master in Leucippe,
so he tries to seduce her, but unsuccessfully. Clitophon in prison is
told a false story that both Leucippe and Melitte are faithless to him.
Clitophon resolves to denounce Melitte as an accomplice in a plot for
the murder of Leucippe and then to die. He is tried for adultery and
self-confessed murder, but Clinias foils his attempt by telling the
whole truth in court. Sosthenes departs, leaving Leucippe free.
Leucippe’s father, Sostratus, by good fortune arrives in Ephesus on a
sacred embassy just in time to assist his daughter. The trial of
Clitophon is resumed in a long court scene in which finally Thersander
challenges Leucippe and Melitte to tests of chastity by the magic pipes
of Pan and the magic spring of Rhodopis. Both pass the ordeals.
Thersander, since everything is going against him, for his slave,
Sosthenes, has been captured and will be forced to confess the truth,
flees. Sosthenes confesses. Clitophon is acquitted. Leucippe tells her
whole story: how the bandits beheaded another woman dressed in her
clothes to prevent Clitophon from following; how a quarrel over her
arose among them in which Chaereas was slain; then she was sold by the
other pirates to Sosthenes, who bought her for Thersander. Sostratus
then relates the secondary romance of Callisthenes and Calligone. The
novel ends with a happy reunion of all at Tyre where prayers and
sacrifices are offered in behalf of the lasting felicity of Clitophon
and Leucippe, of Callisthenes and Calligone.

Such is the story which Phillimore characterizes as “a breathless
succession of improbable incident.”[143] The settings move with the same
cinematic rapidity which Chariton employed: from Sidon to Berytus, to
the sea and shipwreck, to Pelusium and Alexandria, to Ephesus and the
great court scene, to Byzantium and back again to Tyre.

In one point particularly the structure of the plot differs from
Chariton’s and indeed from the plots of all the other Greek Romances.
The author in the beginning hands over the story to a narrator, the
hero, Clitophon, who then tells the events in the first person. Very
soon, however, the reader has forgotten this device: so many other
characters are given the floor to relate their own tales. And at the end
the author too has forgotten this beginning, for Clitophon does not
round up his narrative with a polite farewell. He does not even explain
how he happened to be at Sidon where he started the tale. And the author
does not express his appreciation of the entertainment Clitophon has
given him.[144]

The chief interests of the romance are again love, adventure and
religion. There are two love-stories of primary interest instead of one.
Yet the bulk of the plot turns on adventure rather than on sex or
worship. And delight in adventure adds to the typical travellers’ tales
a flaming curiosity which demands description of many strange novelties.

In general the technical devices common to all the romances are used.
There is much conversation. There are many soliloquies. Clitophon
upbraids himself for swerving from Calligone to Leucippe.[145] Later he
bemoans Leucippe’s fate when she has been kidnapped by the blacks.[146]
Leucippe, sold as a slave, laments her whole sad love-story while
lustful Thersander is eavesdropping outside the door.[147] Clitophon, on
hearing in prison the false story that Leucippe has been murdered by
Melitte, voices his horror over her death and over the fact that he had
kissed her slayer.[148] These soliloquies are employed to reveal the
intense feelings of hero and heroine at emotional crises.

Three letters are used. The first is a brief business letter which
serves to develop the plot, for in it Sostratus writes to his brother
Hippias that he is sending his daughter Leucippe and his wife Panthea to
him for safe-keeping until the war between the Byzantines and the
Thracians is over.[149] The other two are love-letters. One is
Leucippe’s to Clitophon telling him that she has been sold as a slave,
begging for ransom money, wishing him happiness in his coming nuptials
with Melitte, and assuring him she is still a virgin. The other is
Clitophon’s answer declaring that he has “imitated her virginity, if
there be any virginity in men,” begging her not to judge him until he
can explain all, but to pity him.[150] Leucippe’s letter is found by
Melitte and helps motivate the plot in its emotional aspects, for it
works Melitte up through jealousy and despair to such passionate ardor
that she persuades Clitophon to sleep one night with her.[151]

Oaths are not important in the structure of the plot. Once Leucippe
swears to her father by Artemis that she has told him a true story about
being still a maid.[152] Dreams are frequent and are significant. Four
are reported which are vital factors in the plot. Clitophon’s father
dreams that while he is conducting the wedding ceremonies of his son and
Calligone the torches are extinguished. This dream leads him to hasten
the marriage so distasteful to Clitophon and it would have been
consummated at once had not Calligone been kidnapped by Callisthenes
under the impression that she was Leucippe.[153] Then Clitophon had
persuaded Leucippe to let him spend the night with her and with the aid
of Satyrus was already in her bedroom. Leucippe’s mother who had just
had a dream that a robber with a naked sword was playing the part of
Jack the Ripper with her daughter, rushed in and interrupted the
amour.[154] Later on, Leucippe and Clitophon on the same night have
similar dreams. A goddess appears and warns each that their love must
not be consummated until the goddess decks the bride and opens her
temple to the bridegroom. This apparition makes them postpone the rites
of Aphrodite.[155] In Book VII Sostratus, Leucippe’s father, sees in a
dream an apparition of Artemis who tells him that he will find Leucippe
and Clitophon in Ephesus. He goes to Ephesus then on a sacred embassy
and finds that Artemis does not lie.[156]

This tendency to a repeated use of the same device for forwarding the
plot is seen in greater extravagance and exaggeration in the use of
apparent deaths. Leucippe is supposed to meet violent death three times,
twice before the eyes of her lover, once in vivid narrative told to him
in prison. First she is sacrificed by brigands by being disembowelled
before an altar. Second she is beheaded on the deck of a ship by black
pirates and her head tossed into the ocean. Third she is murdered by an
assassin hired by Melitte.[157] In the first two cases ghastly details
make the executions seem real, but Leucippe always survives and
reappears with a plausible but exotic story. Surely in this exaggeration
Achilles Tatius is using thinly veiled satire of the device of
improbable reappearances in the Greek romance.

The same exuberance appears in the use of the forensic speeches, of
long, mythological narratives and of wordy descriptions. All these will
be considered in the study of the style of the romance. Two more
technical devices of the plot must be mentioned here: the use of résumés
and the usual happy ending. Book VIII is crowded with résumés: Clitophon
tells all his adventures to Sostratus and the priest of Artemis.
Leucippe relates to Sostratus how the pirates decapitated another woman
in her place. Finally Sostratus relates to his daughter and to Clitophon
the romance of Callisthenes and Calligone.[158] The romances of both
pairs of lovers, Clitophon and Leucippe, Callisthenes and Calligone, are
concluded by happy weddings. And among the leading characters only
Melitte suffers final disappointment. Achilles Tatius ironically grants
her at least one memorable embrace on a prison floor!

The character drawing is much less elaborate than the plot. While plot
and counterplot of the two romances interplay, the young hero Clitophon
and the beautiful Leucippe are more or less conventional figures who
move glamorously, weeping, fainting, dreaming, voyaging, through
preposterous adventures. But Callisthenes, the secondary hero, is far
more interesting than Clitophon because his character shows startling
development. And Melitte, though she plays the part of temptress, is a
great human creation.

In Book II Callisthenes first appears as a wealthy orphan, who is
notoriously dissipated and extravagant. Wishing to marry beauty and
having a strange streak of romanticism he asked Sostratus for the hand
of the beautiful Leucippe although he had never seen her. Rejected by
Sostratus as a suitor because of his bad reputation he plotted vengeance
in his willful and violent way. He journeyed to Tyre, saw Calligone at a
festival, mistook her for Leucippe, fell in love at first sight, hired
some gangsters to kidnap her and sailed off with his prize.[159]
Callisthenes does not reappear until in the end of Book VIII Sostratus
tells the story of his reform.[160] On the voyage Callisthenes found
himself madly in love with Calligone, revealed to her that he was no
pirate but a wealthy Byzantine noble, offered her honorable marriage and
a large dowry, and promised to respect her chastity as long as she
desired. At Byzantium, love transformed him so that he appeared
courteous, virtuous, self-controlled. He showed great respect for his
elders. He was no longer extravagant, but became philanthropic. He gave
large contributions to the state. He trained for military service and
won distinction in actual warfare. In this changed guise he secured
Sostratus as an advocate to persuade Hippias to give him the hand of
Calligone, whose chastity he had scrupulously respected. Eros thus
salvaged Callisthenes and then rewarded him.

Melitte the widow of Ephesus is the most elaborately drawn character in
the romance. There is even a long personal description of her: she is as
beautiful as a statue with skin like milk, cheeks roses, hair thick,
long, golden, and about her the radiance of Aphrodite. Clitophon admits
he saw her with pleasure. Indeed she is so magnetic that the kisses she
was pleased to bestow on him stirred him.[161] She knew what she wanted
and how to get it. During four months she had to woo Clitophon though
she was rich and young and her husband has been lost at sea. Finally
since Clitophon was convinced that Leucippe was really dead, he yielded
and agreed to marry her, though on condition that they should not be
united until they arrived at Ephesus. She was as passionate as Clitophon
was cold. On the ship she made ardent love to him while he begged her to
philosophize on love’s nature. After Clitophon secretly received
Leucippe’s letter, he had to pretend illness to postpone the fulfillment
of her desires. Then Melitte sent for her so-called Thessalian slave
Lacaena (really Leucippe) and begged her to concoct a philtre that would
arouse Clitophon’s feeling. She is very outspoken about the fact that
Clitophon seems made of iron or wood; that indeed she seemed to love a
statue.[162] And she had the ability to express to Clitophon every
feeling she had without inhibition and in most picturesque language. At
her wedding breakfast in Alexandria she punned merrily about the
postponement of their union. “I’ve heard of a cenotaph but never before
of a cenogam.”[163] The bellying sail on the ship she compared to a
pregnant woman’s body; indeed she converted the whole ship into symbols
of marriage.[164] She also compared herself to thirsty Tantalus standing
by a river but not allowed to drink. She could match Clitophon’s
arguments and his quibbles did not deceive her: “You are playing the
sophist, dearest!” she commented. When from the discovery of Leucippe’s
letter to Clitophon and her husband’s safe return she knew that she had
lost Clitophon, she visited him secretly in prison and poured out on him
all her wrath and all her passion. Her denunciation of him as eunuch,
hermaphrodite, senile nonentity shifted to adoration; and passion
finally concentrated into so ardent and well argued an appeal for one
embrace that she was victorious. Clitophon admitted ironically that love
had taught her rhetoric and that he was vanquished, so he gave the
remedy to a sick soul and even on the prison floor enjoyed her![165]

Melitte was no less subtle and plausible in the speech in which she made
her peace with her enraged husband Thersander: Clitophon was only one of
many refugees whom she aided in memory of her husband lost at sea;
indeed she had helped Clitophon to find his wife.[166] When Thersander
challenged her by the ordeal of the water of the Styx, Melitte at once
accepted the test on a quibble because her husband had demanded from her
an oath that she had not fulfilled the rites of Aphrodite with the
stranger _during the time while he himself was abroad_. And it was just
that unfortunate stipulation which makes her last appearance in the
romance unforgettable. She is led out of the water of the Styx by the
judge, proved by indisputable ordeal a chaste woman! Achilles Tatius has
won his readers by this time to rejoice in Melitte’s vindication. For
besides charm and cleverness he has given her humanity and generosity.
She was always merciful to her slaves and was kindness itself to
Lacaena-Leucippe.[167] After she had won her desire, she contrived the
escape of Clitophon from prison dressed in her clothes, and financed by
her. She did not even forget the jailer, but gave him money to go away
for a time to avoid punishment.[168] Clitophon omitted in his final
narrative of his adventures his succumbing to Melitte[169] but he had
the grace to admit to himself her charms.

It is clear that in the ethics of the romance there is a new point of
view. Achilles Tatius is definitely less idealistic than Chariton in his
treatment of the erotic theme. As Rattenbury has pointed out:

“Achilles Tatius seems to have felt that the fetish of chastity in the
average romance was absurd, and tries to humanize romance by creating
characters that are reasonably, not unreasonably, moral.... Leucippe
comes through safe and sound, it is true, but it was by good luck rather
than by good intention.” Clitophon is chaste as far as men can be and
succumbs to Melitte only once. “Achilles Tatius,” continues Rattenbury,
“did not exactly parody his predecessors, but it is suggested that by
attempting to humanize romance he not only showed up the absurdities of
the usual stories, but was also responsible for the overthrow of the
literary form.... Achilles Tatius seems to have been to Greek Romance
what Euripides was to Greek Tragedy. He broke down the conventions, and
drove the essential and permanent elements to seek refuge elsewhere. The
erotic element did not die, but found an outlet in ‘Love-Letters,’ a
contemporary literary form of which Aristaenetus was an exponent in the
fifth century, but the idealized love story of a superhumanly modest
hero and heroine vanished, and Greek Romance hibernated until it was
revived some centuries later by the Byzantine writers.”[170]

Not inconsistent with Tatius’ slightly ironic treatment of amours is his
emphasis on the virtue of pity and his tendency to introduce long
philosophical discussions of conduct or the nature of love. Clitophon’s
story moves an Egyptian general to pity, tears and aid, for

“When a man hears of another’s misfortune, he is inclined towards
pity, and pity is often the introduction to friendship; the heart is
softened by grief for what it hears, and gradually feeling the same
emotions at the mournful story converts its commiseration into
friendship and the grief into pity.”[171]

In the midst of Thersander’s attempt to rape the weeping Leucippe, there
is a long digression on tears and the pity they arouse.[172] Clinias
appeals to the court not to put to death “a man who deserves pity rather
than punishment.”[173] Leucippe, disguised as a slave, begs Melitte as a
woman to pity a woman and to pity one once free, now through Fortune’s
will a slave.[174]

Tatius has presented also in Callisthenes a picture of a noble young
hero who was converted from the wildness of youth to self-control,
respect, patriotism and service by chivalrous love.[175] And this
portrait of Callisthenes becomes an embodiment of an ideal latent in the
philosophical discussions of love which flavor the romance. “Love,” says
Clitophon, “inspired by beauty enters the heart through the eyes.”[176]
Later Clinias tells Clitophon that he is greatly fortunate in being able
to see his lady, for when eyes of lovers meet, the emanations of their
beauty wed in a spiritual union that transcends bodily embrace.[177]
Clitophon, wooing Leucippe in a fair garden, discourses to her on the
power of love over birds, creeping things, plants, even iron which
responds to the magnet, over water (for Arethusa and Alpheus wed).[178]
To cheer up Menelaus and Clinias on ship-board and divert them from
their sorrows, Clitophon starts a philosophic discussion on love of
women compared with love of men, untranslatable in its openness.[179]
Menelaus takes up the cudgels for the love of men, probably much to
Clinias’ satisfaction for he had previously denounced to his dear
Charicles the love of women who, if they love, kill and had arraigned
for his indictment Eriphyle, Philomela, Sthenoboea, Chryseis, Briseis,
Candaules’ wife, Helen, Penelope, Phaedra, Clytemnestra![180]

The worship of the kiss is featured in an enchanting story of a magic
charm breathed on the lover’s lips[181] and a fantastic assertion that
if a maiden’s kiss is stolen, the maid is raped.[182] Moreover a code of
love is presented, almost as detailed as Ovid’s _Ars Amatoria_, in
instructions given by Clinias to Clitophon,[183] by the slave Satyrus to
Clitophon,[184] by Clitophon in discussion with Menelaus.[185] A
delightful part of this Art of Love is telling the Lady love-stories,
for all womankind is fond of myths.[186] Magic too plays its part in the
technique of love, for incantation works a charm for a lover;[187]
philtres may bewitch the indifferent;[188] and ordeals test
chastity.[189]

Closely akin to the philosophical discussions of love, its power, its
art, its magic is the worship of Aphrodite, the mother of Eros. Yet
there are few references to her cult. Her dominance is hinted:
initiation into love makes Aphrodite the most powerful of gods.[190]
Melitte wishes to have her nuptials on the sea, for Aphrodite is the
sea’s daughter and she wishes to propitiate her as the goddess of
marriage by thus honoring the sea, her mother.[191] Clitophon at the end
of his separation from Leucippe prays to Lady Aphrodite to forgive the
long delay in their union, for it was due to no insult to her and he
begs her blessing on their marriage.[192] The story of the ordeal by the
water of the Styx[193] is a merry tale of rivalry between Artemis a

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