Part 9

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 and Aphrodite for a young girl’s worship in which Aphrodite made young Rhodopis break her oath of chastity but Artemis changed her into a spring in the very cave where she lost her virginity. Yet Achilles Tatius presents no such deep-seated reverence for the goddess of Love as that which permeates Chariton’s romance.

Artemis of Ephesus is rather the deity who dominates Tatius’ story. She appears in dreams to the heroine and to Leucippe’s father.[194] In her name Leucippe rebukes Thersander for insulting a virgin in the city of the Virgin Goddess.[195] Sostratus arrives at Ephesus as the head of a sacred embassy in honor of Artemis and so finds his daughter.[196] Leucippe has taken refuge in the temple of Artemis and in that temple at last she and Clitophon are reunited.[197] Here the villain of the piece Thersander brutally attacks Clitophon.[198] Thersander’s lawyer in court makes insulting slanders about the fact that Clitophon and Leucippe probably defiled the temple by an amour there.[199] But Artemis is proved to be no liar, and there is implicit recognition of her protection of Leucippe though Achilles Tatius does not end with thanksgiving to her. Her cult forms an objective background of religious tradition for the action. No deep religious feeling for her is manifested.

There is no more aspiration to god in the other cults which are mentioned incidentally: of Apollo, Hercules of Tyre, the god of the lower world, Pan. And the cruel goddess Fortune is berated only occasionally. Superstition recognizes omens in the world of nature: the eagle stealing the sacrifice, the hawk pursuing the swallow.[200] Oracles are respected.[201] And the ordeals of Pan’s pipes and the Styx’s water receive general credence. Festivals to the gods are celebrated.[202] But religion seems rather a matter of scrupulous regard for ritual than communion with god or relief to the soul.

As we compare the romances of Chariton and Achilles Tatius we find that not only has the main interest shifted from love and worship to incidents and adventures. An even greater change has come about in the style. Homeric simplicity has given way to rhetorical elaboration. Tatius may well have been a ῥήτωρ as the scholiast Thomas Magister states, for his whole style is dyed in the rhetoric of the schools and the speeches delivered in the various lawsuits in the plot are masterpieces of rhetoric.

Among his acknowledged literary debts, however, he credits most to epic, for he quotes Homer once[203] and alludes to him five times[204] and he refers to Hesiod twice.[205] The messenger speeches in tragedy undoubtedly suggested the slave’s dramatic narrative of the death of Charicles in a riding accident.[206] Both the New and the Old Attic Comedy contributed much to his humor: the New in the comic literary contest of the slaves Conops and Satyrus who deride each other under cover of fables;[207] and the Old in the Aristophanic priest of Artemis who “was no poor hand at speaking, and as good at quip and gibe as the plays of Aristophanes.”[208] But the training of the rhetorical schools outweighs all other influences. About half of Books VII and VIII is devoted to the trial of Clitophon for adultery and self-confessed murder. The court sits in Ephesus with a jury and a presiding judge, but their functions are vague. The prosecution speaks first, Thersander and his ten lawyers, whose speeches fortunately are not reported. Clitophon answers them by a false narrative accusing himself of the murder of Leucippe and involving Melitte. Clinias gets the floor and tells the true story: that Clitophon desires only to die, that he deserves pity rather than condemnation and must be regarded as insane.

In the wild confusion that follows, Thersander’s counsel shouts for a sentence of murder, Melitte offers her slaves to be questioned on her innocence and demands that her husband produce Sosthenes who is probably the murderer. Thersander in a long speech answers Melitte’s challenge about Sosthenes with the result that the presiding officer pronounces sentence of death on Clitophon but postpones Melitte’s case. Clitophon is just on the point of being tortured for evidence when the arrival of a sacred embassy to Artemis postpones the case of Melitte and the execution of Clitophon.

Only after the work of the embassy is finished is the case resumed. Then Thersander speaks first, demanding the execution of the sentence. He condemns the priest who has released Clitophon and says he has usurped the function of giving refuge to criminals which belongs to Artemis. He adds foul personal abuse. He presents a second charge against Melitte for adultery and a third against his slave girl Leucippe and her father. The priest in his reply deserves the epithet “Aristophanic” which he has won, for he pays Thersander back in his own coin of abuse only clothing it in the wit of Aristophanes with all his double-meaning of words, his biting attack. And his own arguments point the irony of the situation: Thersander clapped Clitophon in jail before he was allowed to defend himself. He charged him with murdering Leucippe but the young lady is alive!

Sopater, counsel for Thersander, next hurls insulting invective at the priest and whitewashes his noble client who has been betrayed by a faithless wife. Thersander then presents a formal challenge to Melitte and Leucippe to prove their chastity and on their acceptance of it, the court adjourns. Next day all reassemble at the cave of Pan and the spring of the Styx. The ladies are proved innocent. Thersander flees and then is sentenced to banishment. Clitophon—and Melitte—are acquitted.

This summary of the procedure of the court in Ephesus shows what opportunity Achilles Tatius made for presenting the rhetorical speeches which he cherished. They are many. They are full of specious argument, personal attack, appeal to the emotions, attempted pathos which becomes bathos and genuine ἦθος. The speakers are true to type: the impassioned lover, the leal friend, the haughty, imperious, lustful noble, his sophistical lawyer, the Aristophanic priest. Such agonistic scenes must have entertained the reader of the time as much as they did the author. Actually this same favorite rhetorical style is also assigned to the characters in private life: Melitte in her impassioned speech to Clitophon in prison talks like a sophist, for Eros teaches even arguments![209]

Long mythological narratives are another feature of Tatius’ style. The sight of a painting makes it necessary for him to relate the whole story of Procne and Philomela to Leucippe.[210] The stories of the origins of the two ordeals to prove chastity are told with equal detail. The discovery of wine is elaborately related in the Tyrian version on the occasion of the festival of Dionysus.[211] These are a few out of many illustrations.

Descriptive writing is employed as much as, perhaps more than, forensic or narrative. Indeed the purple patches almost overbalance plot, conversation and oratory. Works of art, setting for scenes, natural phenomena, the wonders of the world are introduced in highly colored digressions which are clearly the ekphraseis which the students of rhetoric were taught to compose and deliver.

Achilles Tatius apparently was enamored of wall-paintings. He describes with gusto five and alludes to another. The subjects of all are myths. Two are familiar types in the frescoes found at Pompeii: Perseus and Andromeda, Achilles in women’s clothes among the daughters of King Lycomedes. One description of a painting opens the romance, a votive painting of Europa in the temple of Astarte at Sidon.[212] Sidon is the first word of the novel and this story is introduced as a tribute to the city where the first scene was laid, for the stemma on the coins of Sidon is Europa on the bull, pictured almost as Tatius presents her. The picture is described in vivid detail even to the flowers in the meadow and the shifting colors of the sea. Posture and garb of Europa are vividly sketched in words for he sees her “seated on the bull like a vessel under way, using the veil as a sail.” The keynote of the picture and the point of its application for Tatius is the little flying Eros who leads the bull and laughs back at the transformed Zeus. “Look,” said Clitophon, “how that imp dominates over land and sea.” A young man standing by exclaims that he too has suffered much from love. These exclamations are the point of departure for the recounting of love adventures.

In Book III there is an equally long description of a painting by Evanthes in the temple of Zeus Casius.[213] The subjects are Andromeda and Prometheus and they seem to have been paired because both were chained to rocks, menaced by beasts and rescued by Argive heroes, Perseus and Hercules. Design, color, emotion are all described vividly and charmingly, but there is no point in the introduction of the paintings. The description of them is simply a purple patch of fine writing.

In Book V the description of a painting in a studio depicting the rape of Philomela had “a hidden significance.”[214] The whole story was represented: “the rape of Philomela, the violence employed by Tereus, and the cutting out of her tongue ... the tapestry, Tereus himself, and the fatal table.” Ugly realism, terror, insane laughter characterize the treatment. The hidden meaning is that the sudden sight of the picture is a bad omen threatening disaster which makes Clitophon postpone his journey to Pharos. The delay gives him a chance to tell the whole story of Philomela to Leucippe, for all women love myths.

Small works of art also are described lovingly and minutely: a rock-crystal goblet carved in a grape-vine,[215] a jewelled necklace.[216] These enrich the setting as scattered flowers enrich the backgrounds of Renaissance tapestries. It is as though Achilles Tatius like Corinthian potters or Renaissance artists had such an _horror vacui_ that empty spaces in design were intolerable and interstices had to be crowded with beautiful small objects. This is due in part to an observant eye that saw and recorded detail. The specific and the graphic are his tools for clarity. The story of the attempted amour of Clitophon and Leucippe is vivified by a plan of the house as clear as the drawn plans in many modern detective stories.[217] The garden in which Clitophon’s love-making is once set is described elaborately with its porticoes, trees, vines, flowers, spring and birds.[218] The storm at sea in its violence and coloring is as lurid as a Turner, and its effects on the shipwrecked passengers are described with a true psychology of terror and panic.[219]

The long description of the storm is justified by the vital significance of the shipwreck for the plot, but what of the write-ups of the wonders of the world which are constantly introduced? The beautiful description of Alexandria with its pharos is brief and pardonable as this was the birthplace of the author. But only the love of novelty of the times and bad taste seem to explain the perpetrations of wordy descriptions of the Nile, the phoenix, the hippopotamus, the elephant and the crocodile![220] The romance at times tends to become a natural history. Wolff becomes so out of patience with “the damnable iteration” of irrelevancies in _Clitophon and Leucippe_ that he can hardly calm himself to analyze them in suggestive groups: irrelevancies of plot, of characterization, of setting, of science and pseudo-science. The only justification for such irrelevancies Wolff finds in “a common basis with paradox. Both defeat expectation.... In both its phases,—irrelevancy and paradox—this element of _the unexpected_, prominent in the form as in the matter of the Greek Romances, deserves attention. To turn aside to the irrelevant; to strain suspense by retarding the expected outcome; to introduce by the way—all unlooked for—as many bizarre, ironical, paradoxical situations and dazzling phrases as possible; and finally to ‘spring’ an issue which is itself a surprising combination of opposites—all these would seem to be consistent results of adopting the unexpected as the principle of the genre.”[221]

After all this is said in criticism of Achilles Tatius’ exuberant style and unlimited digressions, we go back to his fundamentals: a clear plot, living human beings, vivid settings for them, and exciting adventures. Achilles Tatius knew his age and for its disillusions he wrote with ironic tolerance of human frailty and for its weariness he emphasized the excitement of adventure and the stimulus of the unexpected. To me his successes chalk up to a longer list than his failures and I end with Phillimore:

“What a strange thought—that an Alexandrian with the names of Achilles Tatius (what a pair!), atticizing _con furore_ in the reign of Diocletian, should write a story which delighted the Byzantine Middle Ages and can still be read with interest and amusement!”[222]

VI THE LESBIAN PASTORALS OF DAPHNIS AND CHLOE _BY LONGUS_

The very title of Longus’ romance shows a new departure. These Lesbian Pastorals in four books form the only pastoral romance in Greek that is extant. Compared with the other romances that of Longus is unique in type, characters, setting and structure. Theocritus is the pervading influence. Most of the leading characters are not nobles but serfs. Even the young hero and heroine are brought up as shepherds until at the end they are recognized as children of the great. City life plays little part in the plot. The changing seasons make the set. Only a few adventures disturb the serenity of the hills and pasturelands: an onset of pirates, a local war and (of course!) the usual kidnappings. Country gods are worshipped. The music of Pan’s pipes is the accompaniment of the story.

Of the author we know nothing. Longus “is not mentioned by any other writer before the Byzantine age, and himself mentions no historical name or event.”[223] From internal evidence of his novel we see that he knew Mytilene well; he was familiar with Greek and Roman literature and with works of art; he had received a sophist’s training in the rhetorical schools. He wrote probably in the second century A.D., before Achilles Tatius.

The early editions and translations show why Longus was so influential in Elizabethan England and indeed in the modern European literatures. The first edition of the Greek text was published by the Junta Press in Florence in 1598, but before that the romance had received its first printing in Amyot’s French translation in 1559 and in the first English translation by Angell Daye in 1587. This “earliest English version” which was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth was more of an adaptation than a translation. Its title-page demands perusal: