Part 8

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.