Part 3

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.