Analysis of The Adventures of Chaereas and Callirhoe, A Happy Ending
[In the following excerpt, Schmeling examines Chariton's use of historical materials, his skill in creating plot and interesting characters, and his use of contrast and irony.]
I INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Had Chariton been trying to write a kind of history or historical reflections of the fifth-fourth-century b.c. Greek world, we could fault him for tampering with facts, confusing rulers, and failure to understand the great movements of peoples and events. On the other hand, however, in antiquity even the great Greek historian Herodotus and the eminent Roman historian Livy were most interested in conveying an overall impression or reflection of the period under consideration. Such criticism would hardly be appropriate here, for Chariton places his work within the genre of prose fiction and then gives it an appropriate dramatic and historical setting in time and place; he goes on to name names. It is obvious that he is not writing of his own age, the age of iron Romans, but of the Golden Age of Greece. In our survey of the historical aspect of Chariton's dramatic world, we are not seeking to push back the boundaries of darkness or even to find the earliest date or the latest possible date for Chariton himself. That task awaits other men.
Just as soon as Chariton has introduced himself and his subject in the first chapter of Book 1, we learn something about Hermocrates, father of the heroine: he is the very one who as head of the Syracusan forces defeated the Athenian expeditionary forces in 413 b.c. near Syracuse, in what must rank as one of the most tragic (in the wider sense) of all battles between countrymen. Hermocrates' rival for power at Syracuse was Ariston, father of the novel's hero, Chaereas. According to Thucydides (6.35-41), the chief domestic opponent of Hermocrates was one Athenagoras. But this apparent contradiction is not damaging to Chariton's story. The person of Hermocrates sets the dramatic date and milieu; the exact name of his rival (perhaps he had many others), who after all did not defeat the Athenians, adds nothing to the story. For Chariton's novel it is most important, however, to provide both heroine and hero with famous and noble, if unhistorical, parents. Chariton might, on the other hand, be confusing Ariston the Syracusan (unhistorical) with Ariston of Corinth, of whom Thucydides (7.39) has high praise as a naval captain in the Syracusan battle against Athens.
The next name of historical importance to meet us in the novel is Dionysius (Bk. 2), governor of Miletus, a port city in southwestern Asia Minor, to which Callirhoe had been taken by force. Chariton describes Miletus as a city owing allegiance to the Persian king. It is not clear whether Chariton describes Miletus after its revolt in 412 b.c. or as a partially free city within the Persian empire. His description of Miletus is somewhat confusing.
Dionysius falls in love with our heroine Callirhoe and believes that she is pregnant with his child; in fact it is Chaereas's. Before Callirhoe leaves Asia Minor and returns to Syracuse with Chaereas, she entrusts the raising of her child to Dionysius of Miletus. This is an extraordinary episode and peculiar in view of Callirhoe's strong instincts of love for her child. Perhaps Chariton is here following a tradition or myth about Callirhoe which requires him to write this episode. Or we could have at this point an historical intrusion or contamination. Chariton knew of another Dionysius, an historical one, Dionysius I, who was ruler of Syracuse (405-367 b.c.), had married an unnamed daughter of Hermocrates, and then succeeded Hermocrates to the highest position of power. The infant son of Callirhoe and Dionysius of Miletus surely took his father's name, Dionysius. Chariton tells us (2.9-11) that this son of Callirhoe will one day return to Syracuse, meet Hermocrates, and (it is implied by Chariton) succeed him as Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse. According to Chariton then, Callirhoe's son and not her husband will follow after Hermocrates. The many occurrences in Greek history of the name Dionysius make this historical section of Chariton's work very difficult to construe. Then too, our writer may have been following a written source of the legends of Hermocrates' family, or perhaps even a legend of Callirhoe.
Another historical contamination may lie hidden under that peculiar episode (Bk. 1, Chap. 4) in which Chaereas kicked Callirhoe in the stomach (she was pregnant and did not lose the child, indicating that the severity of the kick was slight and that she fainted from the horror of it, not its force). The action of kicking his wife is too much out of character for Chaereas who does nothing like that, or any other rash act even resembling that, in the whole book. Like Callirhoe's giving her child to Dionysius, Chaereas's kicking is obviously a literary contamination brought in from some unknown source which Chariton followed. Chariton failed, however, to integrate these deeds of his leading actors into the makeup of their character or rationalize them as being consistent with his actors' other deeds. Braun suggests that Chariton added the episode of kicking for one of two possible reasons. First, Chariton imitated Herodotus in many places, and this is one of the stories told in Herodotus (3.32) and borrowed by Chariton. Second, Chariton used the story told by Herodotus but trusted that his readers would see behind it the recent death of Nero's pregnant wife, Poppaea, who was kicked to death by the emperor.
Evidence to support or deny the existence at this time of a satrap of Caria named Mithridates (Bk. 3) is very thin. But the historian Ctesias, to whom veracity is no more a paramount virtue than it is to Chariton, records that Statira, wife of Artaxerxes Mnemon, made one Mithridates a satrap. Chariton introduces us also to two famous historical personages in Babylon, King Artaxerxes Mnemon (Artaxerxes II) and his beautiful wife Statira (Bks. 4 and 5). When Chaereas and Callirhoe sailed from Syracuse, they left Hermocrates alive; we know he died in 408 b.c. When Callirhoe arrived in Babylon she found Artaxerxes Mnemon on the throne. We know that he ruled from 404-363 b.c. (or 358 b.c.). Some years later when Chaereas and Callirhoe returned to Syracuse, they found Hermocrates still alive. By all historical reckoning he should have been dead. The twentieth-century mind in its quest for truth is satisfied only when it knows the names and dates of all the players. Chariton, on the other hand, delighted to focus his reader's attention at once on the character; we, on the other hand, do not care to study the character until we have him adequately classified. In attempting to put Chariton in the best light, we can see that the discrepancy in his chronological sequence is in error by no more than one generation.
The last historical event we wish to consider is the revolt of Egypt (Bks. 6, 7, 8) from Artaxerxes Mnemon's Persian empire; this revolt is the cause which effects the final reunion of Chaereas and Callirhoe. The French scholar Grimal claims that Chariton is so confused at this point that he has the Egyptians revolting under Artaxerxes II when they should have revolted under Artaxerxes I, who crushed their uprising in 455 b.c. The German scholar Schmid also thinks that Chariton is confused, but that he must mean the Egyptian revolt of 389-387 b.c. It would now be very difficult to ascertain to which Egyptian rebellion Chariton referred, because the Egyptians seem to have been in a constant state of rebellion from Persian rule. Artaxerxes Mnemon assumed the throne of Persia on the death of Darius in 404 b.c. Almost immediately his own brother Cyrus led a revolt against him, and, as Manetho tells us, Amyrtaeus II also rebelled and set up a separate kindom in Egypt which lasted six years. In all likelihood this is the revolt which plays such a large part in the work under consideration. Grimal and Schmid were apparently nodding. Chaereas joined in the revolt on the side of the Egyptians and took command of a band of three hundred Greek mercenaries who had already been in the fight. Chariton's report of Greek mercenaries fighting in the East agrees well with what other historians recorded. In his Anabasis Xenophon of Athens tells the story of ten thousand Greeks fighting for Cyrus against Artaxerxes Mnemon, and Cornelius Nepos tells us that the Athenian Chabrias (d. 357 b.c.) fought as a soldier of fortune for the Egyptian king.
While Chariton's use of historical materials is at times faulty in detail and annoying in its lack of specific references to time, place, people, or events, we must ask ourselves if he intended his work to be any different from what we have. Our conclusions must be that he wanted to give his novel a general historical setting with just enough specific detail and fact to put the action and characters in the familiar world, and to give an air of reality, but not so much that it could destroy the make-believe world into which the author slowly entices his readers.
Of the writers of imaginative prose fiction few had the unassuming honesty of Chariton to step forward and tell their stories without disguising them as something else. Lucian the satirist (b. 120 a.d.) took these writers to task in his True History. He singled out Ctesias (tragic historian), Iambulus, and Antonius Diogenes (romancers of a sort) for special scorn. They all write fiction, claims Lucian, but are hesitant to publish it in that form. They choose history or travelogues as a cover-up for fiction, and then are bold enough to claim the fictions are true because they themselves saw the events portrayed.
In an earlier section we spoke of this low repute in which prose fiction was held. It is difficult to appreciate all of Lucian's barbs hurled at the above three writers because their works are not extant. But we can look at the disguises of several novels that are extant (Cf: Chap. 3). In his novel The Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon, Achilles Tatius did not write the story on his own authority but claimed that he saw a painted picture of the whole tale, which one of the protagonists, Cleitophon, explained to him. This literary device, as mentioned above, is called ecphrasis and means literally a rhetorical explanation and exposition of a work of art. The author can cite good rhetorical precedent and escape the stigma that prose fiction carried. The history of ecphrasis goes back to Vergil and thence all the way to Homer. In his pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe, Longus adopted a similar disguise as Achilles Tatius, and claimed that his prose work was really a verbalization of a splendid and moving painting he had seen in Lesbos.
The disarming simplicity and straightforward approach of Chariton to his subject and to his audience would have been welcomed by Lucian. It is hoped that the modern reader will feel the same.
II THE DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS
Chariton probably intended for us to see The Adventures of Chaereas and Callirhoe as a work of prose fiction for the stage; hence, we will deal with it in those terms. It seems obvious that he presented his work to us as a series of dramatic or theatrical confrontations connected by enough narrative to tell a continuous story. Within each act he built up special dramatic scenes, which are not climaxes or false climaxes, but structures of particular tension which would work well as episodes on the stage. He tried to put together scenes where emotions were apparent; his descriptions were graphic and full of visual impact, which the reader was expected to translate to the theatre. In the theatre of today the spectators see all; nothing is left to their imagination. In the ancient Greek theatre almost no action took place on the stage which was reserved for verbal artistry. Action of any kind was reported to the audience by the chorus or one of the ubiquitous messengers. Recognizing this, Chariton knew that he could “stage” his novel because the audience (or reader) was accustomed to (or rather expected) to use its imagination for action scenes and then hear enough narrative to connect them.
The reader of Chariton's work should also be aware of his consistent attempts to stir the emotions of the reader. The contemporary American or European reader with his senses jaded by overexposure to violence, passion, and animal sex, will find here a weak appeal to his emotions. It is difficult to brush away centuries of the novel and look objectively at the first one. One of the emotions Chariton did try to awaken was curiosity and wonder (admiratio). Such is not in vogue in modern novels. He attempted to do this by presenting to the reader a series of mirabilia, descriptions of events and people worthy of stirring admiratio in the reader.
III ACT I (BOOKS 1-3.2): A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN
In a manner resembling Greek Old and New Comedy and also Roman Comedy, the narrator (frequently a slave in comedy, but here the author) stepped forward and introduced himself, his chief characters, and the nature of the work, as though it were a dramatic prologue:
My name is Chariton of Aphrodisias, secretary to Athenagoras the lawyer, and my story is all about a love affair that started in Syracuse. … There is this magnificent creature called Callirhoe … her beauty is known far and wide from where come her suitors—lords and princes. … And also there is this incredibly handsome young man, Chaereas, a veritable image of Achilles.
As soon as Chariton had taken his own bow, he moved immediately to the story, not like so many other ancient writers in medias res. Unlike Greek audiences who knew all the plots of tragedy and comedy, Chariton's audience had to be informed in detail right from the beginning. Chariton even had to explain who Hermocrates, Callirhoe's father and a famous general, was. This was not an enlightened fifth-century b.c. Athenian audience; it was a mixed group, culturally, socially, and economically. The detailed introduction was thus called for and in fact required.
Chariton pointed out that the fathers of the handsome leading actors were political rivals, and hinted that should their children become lovers, family feuds would stand in their way. We think immediately of Shakespeare's Capulets and Montagues and the tragedy of their children in Romeo and Juliet. As children of politically important people in Syracuse, Chaereas and Callirhoe naturally took part in the festival of Aphrodite which included a public procession (Bk. 1, Chap. 1). We must remember that Greek women did not usually appear in public except at religious functions or public sacrifices. Marriages were arranged by family contracts, but the progress of the story and the love-at-first-sight episode required a physical encounter. Chariton was either not interested in pursuing the family feud or lacked the technical skill to handle one story with two main plots. We are the poorer for it.
The shy Callirhoe and the athletic Chaereas meet as the procession of boys walks by that of young girls; it was love at first sight, if what they experienced can be called love. Perhaps admiration is a choicer word. Love at first sight is a motif we will see repeated by Anthia and Habrocomes in Xenophon of Ephesus and by Achilles in Dictys's Romance of Troy (Bk. 3.2); the motif of lovers meeting first in religious settings is found also in Xenophon of Ephesus and in Callimachus's Acontius and Cydippe (see also Parthenius 1.1 and 32.2). It seems that Chariton was operating within a literary tradition. In each other Chaereas and Callirhoe recognized immediately nobility and virtue. These qualities were apparent from their faces and radiated from their eyes. Ancients believed, for better or worse, in a study of appearances called physionomics, which was raised to the level of a science: by the outward appearance of an individual his fellowmen could judge his inner character, virtues, and lineage. Aristocrats looked like aristocrats and were separated by nature from lesser beings.1
Easily, perhaps too easily, Chariton wrote that the would-be lovers met at a festival and procession for Aphrodite. It is legitimate to ask, why at an Aphrodite festival? She was not a patron deity of Syracuse; she was not a celebrated goddess in the city; there were no major temples of Aphrodite in Syracuse. A review of the topographical evidence shows no minor temple of Aphrodite in Syracuse. Only deities considered important in that city would have festivals of great splendor, which incidentally had to be paid for by the public treasury. Because the Greeks had so many deities in their pantheon, we tend to overlook their individualistic natures and functions. But Aphrodite was a major deity, worthy of a procession, and relevant to a story written by a man from Aphrodisias, where she was the eponymous deity of the city. We thus would like to suggest at the outset that, while Chariton set his story in Syracuse and used famous people from it, he was actually thinking of Aphrodisias and transferred his personal experiences from there to Syracuse. While this supposition is hard to support with hard evidence, it does not seem that Chariton had any firsthand knowledge of Syracuse, and in fact was mistaken to believe it had a temple to Aphrodite. A glance at an ancient map of Aphrodisias2 shows that Chaereas, leaving either the amphitheatre or the baths, would naturally encounter on the narrow residential streets a procession of girls leaving the temple of Aphrodite. Such an encounter is hard to imagine in Syracuse.
The lovers met momentarily, exchanged glances, and immediately became love-sick. Chaereas was so taken by Callirhoe that he was barely able to walk home, “wounded mortally as though in battle.” Callirhoe was so ashamed (like all true maidens) and yet so in love she fell ill, not unlike Callimachus's Cydippe. Chariton tells us the gods have arranged all this—the chance meeting, falling in love, and the pain of love. It appears that Chaereas and Callirhoe were too beautiful and incurred the wrath, or at least hostility, of the gods. The technical term for such hostility is phthonos, a type of envy. Many in the ancient world (Herodotus and Sophocles being among the most famous) felt that a man who did not know himself (i.e., that he was not a god) was in danger of incurring the anger of the gods. King Midas would be a good example. Even after the lovers get together they move incessantly from one trouble to another, apparently the playthings of Fortune, but in reality the objects of the gods's phthonos.
The present situation with both lovers sick and separated because of family feuds is highly unstable. At this point of crisis the assembly of the people of Syracuse (in the role of the chorus of tragedy) by gentle persuasion convinced the lovers' fathers to allow that there be a wedding. Arrangements for the marriage were made, and since the bride had few rights, she was the last to learn of it:
“Her knees were unstrung and her heart stopped.” On the spot she became speechless and a darkness poured over her eyes and she almost passed out … she recovered quickly … kissed Chaereas … and when she appeared in public, the assembled people were astonished and thought she was Artemis, the hunter goddess.
The opening line of the above quote Chariton took from Iliad 21; already in the first chapter of the first book Chariton associated his characters and novel with the epic tradition. This was continued in the second sentence above which was treated as a formula (i.e., a repeated phrase) in the best epic style. Each time the heroine was about to faint, Chariton employed this same phrase. In the last sentence Callirhoe was compared to Artemis; in the previous quoted section we saw that Chaereas was compared to Achilles. Chariton frequently compared his leading characters to mythical figures, and even certain situations, in which his characters found themselves, to situations from mythology. Because it is easily apparent that Chariton and the other Greek novelists relied very heavily on the use of elements from myth and epic for comparisons, descriptions, and metaphors, we will point out only what seems to be the best usages. Most of the analogues from myth in Chariton are illustrative, some symbolic, employed to try to heighten the reader's perception of the scene. “At their best they provide the vivid parallel—the graphic analogue—that enable the reader to visualize almost as if physically present either the person or the situation with which the author is concerned.”3
The story goes on:
The wedding of Chaereas and Callirhoe was very similar to that of Peleus and Thetis which happened long ago in Pelion. The god of Envy was here as earlier the goddess Strife had been in Pelion.
The analogue from myth played an important and influential role here also. By comparing Thetis's wedding to Callirhoe's, Chariton not only represented the wedding of the latter as having the splendor of the former, but he also illustrated symbolically that Callirhoe's wedding was, like Thetis's, merely the starting point for a series of misfortunes for herself and her child. The analogue forebodes danger and bad luck. Chariton placed the god of Envy at the wedding of Callirhoe so that the reader should understand that the evil about to befall Callirhoe was due to the jealousy of certain gods because of her beauty. No further description of the wedding is given, nor does Chariton offer a picture of the wedding chamber and its blushing bride. Instead, the scene changes immediately, and we are given a picture of a group of suitors licking their wounds after losing Callirhoe. They were furious that she rejected them, and married Chaereas as soon as she had met him. One suitor in particular, the prince of Rhegium, was furious:
“If she had married one of us [suitors], I would not be so enraged. Suitors for the hand of a pretty girl win and lose, just like victors and losers in athletic games. Chaereas has affronted me by winning the race and not even entering the contest. We here pined away at her door and spent sleepless nights waiting to get a glimpse of her coming in or out; we bribed her attendants and nurses; we gave ourselves to her as slaves.”
The motif of suitors waiting outside the door of a young girl's house was well-used by classical writers from the fourth century b.c. to the first century a.d. A lover who pined away at his mistress's door was called an exclusus amator, or locked-out lover. It is such a popular motif and one with such a long history that Frank Copley was able to devote an entire book to tracing it through classical literature.4 Copley has isolated seven variable ingredients which constitute the maximum number of elements in the exclusus amator motif. Rarely will a writer use more than several of these in any one occurrence of the motif: (1) lover's passage through the streets; (2) repulse at the door; (3) lament of the lover; (4) drunkenness; (5) garland left at the door; (6) verses written at the doorway; and (7) lover's vigil at the locked door.
From the passage of Chariton quoted above, we can easily identify his use of the exclusus amator motif. This motif was reserved almost exclusively for poetry and drama-in-poetry; its employment here in prose points to Chariton's desire to associate his work with the poetic mode. The motif of the lover's constant attention and commitment of himself as his mistress's slave will bear fruit many centuries later in the romances of courtly love; the idea that a group of suitors are contestants like athletes in a game will bear fruit in those same centuries as jousts.
As a group, the former suitors of Callirhoe were hurt, offended, and even ashamed, and they plotted to take vengeance on the newly married pair. Because of the power of Hermocrates in Syracuse, they planned to attack under disguise, and then, not against Callirhoe who was “not the kind to think low thoughts,” but against Chaereas who “was trained in the gymnasia, has no experience in love, and [is] an easy target for jealousy.” Chaereas, according to plan, was called out of town to his father's estate where it was reported that Ariston was hurt. Callirhoe was left at the new couple's house (as was fitting), and Chaereas ran to aid his father. While he was absent, the bitter suitors at night decorated Callirhoe's doorway with wreaths and garlands, sprinkled perfumes all around, poured much wine on the ground, and set around half-burned torches. All of these were traditional witnesses of a nightlong vigil of exclusi amatores and also of wild orgies. Chaereas returned shortly, and on seeing the scene, imagined the worst and accosted Callirhoe and accused her of unfaithfulness. For her part she literally shamed him into changing his first impressions. It is obvious, however, that this quick temper and jealousy on the part of Chaereas is a foreshadowing of evil to come. The suitors saw this quality in Chaereas even before Callirhoe recognized it. The suitors, led by the prince of Agrigentum, were not easily put off, however, and, operating under the same assumptions as expressed by Chariton that “a woman who thinks she is in love is easily duped by her boyfriend,” first hired a young man to gain the confidence and bed of Callirhoe's most trusted maid, and then an old actor to work on the jealous nature of Chaereas. The young man arranged to come to Callirhoe's house late at night and gain admittance through the good offices of the captivated maid. At the same time the old actor got the ear of Chaereas and informed him, under the mask of reluctance, that his wife was unfaithful, that he was a cuckold, and that if he wanted proof all he had to do was to watch his front door late that night. Chaereas, the jealous, was completely taken in by the suitors' plan and set up the watch over his own door.
The motif of the jealous and suspicious husband, and sometimes of the cuckold, setting a trap for his wife was repeated often in late Latin and medieval literature. On seeing the young man enter his house, Chaereas could not endure the insult and rushed forward only to scare off the intruder before the scene took shape. Callirhoe was found sitting in the dark awaiting Chaereas, and she ran to meet him as he approached. He greeted her with a swift kick to the stomach which sent her sprawling:
Callirhoe lay on the floor and did not move. She exhibited all the signs of death. The whole population of Syracuse began to mourn, and the episode took on the appearance of the destruction of a famous city.
Chaereas tortured all the slaves until he sadly learned the truth; whereupon he attempted to kill himself but was prevented from so doing by Polycharmus, a friend, as Patroclus had been to Achilles.
The actors on the scene did not know that Callirhoe was alive, but the reader gets a hint that in fact she is. Chariton associated the present scene with a tragic episode from epic, the destruction of a city. Chaereas and Polycharmus became incarnate figures (analogues from myth) of Achilles and Patroclus. The vengeance contrived by the suitors against Chaereas is very similar to that of Don John, envious of Claudio's good fortune with Hero, in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It is highly unlikely, however, that the Bard knew Chariton. On numerous occasions our hero Chaereas tried to kill himself; he made an attempt on his own life at least twice before Callirhoe was buried. The prominence and fascination with death or apparent instances of death cannot be laid entirely to Chariton's literary creativity and interests. The attractiveness of suicide was found at this time especially among the Stoics, who made almost a cult ritual out of it, and the Christians who sought out martyrdom by various open demonstrations.
A. D. Nock has studied this peculiar attitude of the upper, middle, and lower classes and attributes it to various popular attitudes: a general fascination with death; the widespread notion and belief that the body is a tomb (sōma sēma); pessimism and a feeling that blind Fate rules the universe and, in particular, men's lives; the obsession surrounding suicide in legend and life; and finally, a desire for theatrical prominence, a desire to be noticed. In this section of Chariton and in those to follow, we see a predisposition and propensity for theatrical poses, in which disaster or near disaster always embraced thoughts of death. Our hero and heroine were ever prepared to die, to suffer all types of torments. Each one is quick to jump to the conclusion that, when anything goes amiss, his partner was dead but still chaste:
The Greek novel bears witness to the fascination exercised by the thought of invincible chastity and beautiful young persons facing pain with readiness, features which we will find later in the hagiographic romance.5
The murder was discovered immediately and Chaereas was indicted for murder. But he offered no defense; rather he condemned himself and asked to be stoned and thrown unburied into the sea. Hermocrates with no trace of malice understood apparently what happened and blamed it all on the criminal acts of the suitors. With Hermocrates at his side Chaereas was acquitted unanimously. It is worthwhile to note at this point the self-discipline exercised by Chariton in not presenting a full-blown courtroom scene full of speeches and distraught defendants. Greeks loved the actions of a court case, and litigation in Greek literature was a high-frequency motif. (Chariton did yield to the temptation of displaying his expertise in courtroom rhetoric in Bk. 5). Immediately after the acquittal, the efforts of all concerned focused on a magnificent funeral procession and burial in the rich splendor of gold and silver in a seaside tomb belonging to Hermocrates's family. This scene concluded with a foreboding remark by the author (i.e., the author and the reader alone knew what was happening):
Her tomb became a storehouse of rich treasure. But the gifts intended as an honor for the dead girl became instead the source of her future troubles.
In his description of Callirhoe's funeral Chariton had bystanders remark how much she looked like the sleeping Ariadne, which was not, however, merely another example of Chariton's analogues from myth. According to ancient stories, Ariadne, daughter of King Minor and Pasiphaë, helped Theseus escape the labyrinth after he had killed the Minotaur. After fleeing to the island of Naxos, Theseus abandoned Ariadne (while she slept), and Dionysus rescued and married her. Chariton here (1.6) pictured Callirhoe as the sleeping Ariadne (sleeping bride). At 3.3 he repeated the mythic analogue of Ariadne: Callirhoe was the stolen Ariadne (stolen bride). Dionysus, according to Chariton's version, had stolen Ariadne at Naxos. At 8.1 he again repeated the Ariadne motif: Callirhoe was compared with the forgotten Ariadne (forgotten bride) whom Theseus deserted. It is obvious from the frequency of comparisons between Ariadne and Callirhoe that the reader was intended to see Callirhoe as a type of Ariadne, and that while Callirhoe was a somewhat unfamiliar character she was brought into focus, universalized, and delineated nicely by the simile.
The plot of the story continued (1.7) with the introduction of Theron, a local pirate and cutthroat and his band of men, who determined to give up petty thefts and risk everything on one night's work of tomb-robbing. Theron had seen the riches buried with Callirhoe, and, with the promise of this great wealth, ordered his men to rob the tomb late at night. Digging tools and a boat were quickly made ready. The motif of suspended animation in which Callirhoe lived has a later parallel in Archistrates' daughter in Apollonius of Tyre (Chap. 24). Finally, Callirhoe awakened; she immediately recognized the inside of the tomb and remembered Chaereas's all but fatal kick. While bemoaning her fate, she wondered if Chaereas buried her so quickly because he had found another girl. It is one of the rare displays of jealously by Callirhoe. Shortly, she heard the tomb-robbers dig in and wondered if death in this grave was worse than what the villains outside had in store for her. The first robber rushed in only to be terrified by what he called a ghost. This graphic image of a spooky cemetery is a good example of Chariton's subtle humor. But Theron was a man of steel (and so was the sword he carried), and the tomb did not scare him. He walked in armed with a sword and brought Callirhoe out.
Theron realized that this girl would bring a good price in the slave market and announced that he would spare her, but a comrade disputed the wisdom of such an act:
“We already lead a dangerous life. You probably can sell her at a very handsome price, but let us rather take only the rich treasure from the tomb. The gold and silver have no eyes and tongue and will not tell anyone how we got them. Let us kill her here and now.”
Theron was too greedy to heed the advice and, rejecting common sense, loaded the girl together with all the gold on board the waiting ship. From what is known from other sources tomb-robbers were a problem in the entire ancient world. Ancient tombs are today frequently upset by robbers, sometimes even by archaeologists. Pirates like Theron were another matter. Because pirates appear here and in most other ancient novels, but apparently had no real role in the first-second centuries a.d. when Chariton lived, we can suggest that Chariton was here making use of one of the genre's standard motifs, or else he added the pirates to give the story a late fifth-century b.c. Greek flavor.6
Theron was very solicitous about the health of his captive, as the pirates began their sea journey in the direction of Athens. He was constantly aware of the retail value of a well-kept maiden. Callirhoe began to feel sorry for herself and, without expressing openly her fear or dislike of Athens, said that she would rather die than be sold as a slave in Athens. We must remember that it was her father, as head of Syracusan forces, who so savagely routed the Athenians in 413 b.c. As the pirates continued to sail, they presently came near to the harbor at Athens, where many of the men wished to disembark and sell Callirhoe. Theron objected:
“Do not tell me that you do not know about the inquisitiveness, curiosity, and meddling of the men of Athens. They stand around all the time gossiping, suing people in court, grilling strangers and traders about everything under the sun. Athenian courts give us more to fear than those in Syracuse. We should rather go to Ionia [i.e., Asia Minor] where people are rich and know how to enjoy their wealth. Besides, I know people there.”
Almost straight east of Athens lies Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor, where the pirates put into port. Actually they dropped anchor about ten miles from Miletus so that Theron could slip into the city without notice. Theron dared not sell Callirhoe openly because the whole transaction would have aroused too much suspicion—she was so beautiful everyone would have recognized her as a member of some noble family. As it happened, Dionysius, governor of Miletus, was walking through the city, and the crowd of people around him attracted Theron's attention. Theron quickly learned who the important personage was and that he had recently lost his wife. What a golden opportunity, thought Theron. After conversing with Leonas, Dionysius's chief steward and guardian of his only daughter, who was in the retinue of the great man, Theron mentioned that he had a truly lovely lady of Sybaris for sale who would make a good nurse for the child—better for Leonas that Dionysius get a nurse for the child than a stepmother! Leonas decided that it would be worth his effort at least to look at the girl and arranged with Theron to meet him at Dionysius's country home. At her entry into the manor Leonas thought that Aphrodite had come down to earth and he agreed to pay her full price even though Theron had no registration papers for her. He feared that Theron would get another buyer. For his part Theron set sail for the high seas before his tricks could be discovered.
While Callirhoe sat all alone in her bedroom, she bemoaned her sad state and rehearsed (for the audience) all that had happened to her in the preceding days. This is the conclusion of Book 1. As the curtain falls, we see a weary and discouraged Callirhoe fall asleep. In her summary of events which took her from her bridal chamber to Dionysius's house, Callirhoe described her journey as a travel from one tomb to another: (1) her bridal chamber became a tomb when Chaereas kicked her; (2) she was buried in the family tomb; (3) the hold of Theron's ship was for her a tomb; and (4) because she was a slave and prisoner in Dionysius's house, it was as good as a tomb for her. This final scene in which Callirhoe falls asleep, again in a kind of tomb, is the type of graphic image which ties Chariton closely to drama. It is also good Charitonian irony to place Callirhoe back into a type of tomb (slavery) from which her hero, Chaereas, will one day rescue her. The audience knows about this future rescue, but Callirhoe does not. From this arises the irony. The presentation of the entire first book stands surprisingly simple and straightforward, while just beneath the surface lies a persistent use of irony.
IV ACT I (BOOK 2): THE COURTSHIP OF CALLIRHOE
Having ordered his chief assistants, Phocas and wife Plangon, to care for Callirhoe, Leonas set out for Miletus to announce his purchase to Dionysius, who was in the proper erotic mood, having just seen a vision of his wife. Dionysius had felt a terrible sense of loss at the death of his wife, and the fact that he dreamed of her frequently reflected more on his character than it did on the chance coincidence of the announcement of Callirhoe's purchase together with the dream of his wife. Somewhat later in this book (2.9) Callirhoe will have a similar dream of Chaereas, and, while it did not have any erotic impetus as such, it did influence in a real sense Callirhoe's relationship to Dionysius. Chariton structured this book on two instances of the same efficient motif: the husband's dream of his dead wife inclined him toward a new marriage; the wife's dream of her lost husband convinced her to seek a new alliance. Dionysius listened to Leonas's story of Callirhoe's purchase but objected to certain inconsistencies in his story. His training and nobility opposed any connection he might have with a slave:
“Leonas, slavery and a truly beautiful person are mutually exclusive terms. Poets teach us the beautiful people are children of the gods and also of noblemen. You must certainly mean that she is beautiful when compared with local farmers' daughters. But I approve of the purchase.”
When it was learned that Theron had already fled Miletus, Leonas was embarrassed by not being able to complete the transaction and have Callirhoe's purchase registered. Leonas's plans suffered at this point a small setback. Again we can see, through Dionysius's treatment of the Callirhoe affair, the strong relationship the ancient Greeks felt existed between the outer features of a person and his inner character and lineage. When the eye, the mirror of the soul, is beautiful, so is the soul. Beautiful inner character and outward features follow after a noble parentage only.
Meanwhile, back at Dionysius's country estate, Plangon, the wife of Phocas (chief assistant of Leonas) was seeing to the physical needs of Callirhoe. Standing in all her nude beauty, Callirhoe amazed even the maids of Dionysius's former wife:
“We thought Dionysius's first wife was a striking beauty. But she would hardly be worthy of acting as the servant of this girl.”
The irony of this statement is apparent immediately. Without telling the reader in so many words, Chariton was allowing the maids to rate and compare their former mistress with the new one. From the disparity of understanding arises the irony. The subsequent troubles of Callirhoe, like her earlier ones, began with her excessive beauty; every man desired her and set in motion great forces, which she could not control, to get possession of her. Even the various deities of Love and their opposite Envy, harbor jealousy of Callirhoe (phthonos), as she says: “The goddess Aphrodite is the cause of all my troubles.”
Plangon and Callirhoe visited the temple of Aphrodite, and the latter prayed that her beauty, the source of great trouble, might never again please any man. Such a prayer, however, was a request opposed to the nature of that deity to whom she was praying and was rejected out of hand. Because she had seen a vision of Aphrodite the night before, Callirhoe returned to Aphrodite's temple, just ahead of Dionysius, a constant attendant at her temple. Dionysius had left Miletus and was preparing to visit his country estate, which bordered on Aphrodite's temple. Aphrodite's nature as a primeval force rather than as a sophisticated and enlightened deity was exposed here in her adamant refusal to honor the wishes of Callirhoe. As Dionysius entered the temple and saw Callirhoe for the first time, he was literally struck; he fell in love at first sight. Before Callirhoe could convince him differently, he assumed she was an epiphany of Aphrodite, and he dropped to the ground to worship her. It is unclear at this point if we are to understand that Callirhoe was as beautiful as Aphrodite, or that Aphrodite had “blinded” Dionysius with her own beauty. Perhaps both are intended. The latter case, however, would present Aphrodite as a maddening, unthinking force, determined to make all men bow to her beauty and will. (Aphrodite affected Paris in the same way and caused the Trojan War.) Dionysius left the temple and departed for his estate, but the damage had been done: he was wounded by madness and desire caused by Aphrodite. In this episode of love, as in many other similar situations, Chariton consistently employed religious terminology to describe erotic events. It was an artistic way of reinforcing the religious and erotic blend in the nature of Aphrodite.
Like the great man he was, Dionysius showed all the signs of royal breeding and discipline the ancients expected from princes. He went about his normal duties and dealt with his new slave Callirhoe as though she were any other of his possessions. But his emotions almost tore apart that fine outer facade:
Though it was late at night Dionysius could get no sleep. His mind remained fixed in the temple of Aphrodite, as he recalled every detail of the person of Callirhoe. Even her tears aroused him. The battle between reason and passion was visible in his eyes; though his thoughts remained fixed on the matter of Callirhoe, his actions befitted a nobleman. He reasoned thus with himself: “Dionysius, prince of Ionia … are you not ashamed to act like a schoolboy in the midst of his first love affair … while you are in fact still mourning your dead wife? Are you not ashamed to come to your country estate, to wear your funeral dress in public, all as a disguise to allow you to marry without notice a second wife, who is a slave and whose chattel title you do not hold?”
Eros attacked Dionysius relentlessly until he was forced to go to Leonas to learn every bit of information known about Callirhoe. Leonas pretended not to know how deep the prince's feelings for his new slave went, and offered all his information about the case, and also offered to bring her to his rooms. At this point we get our first real glimpse at the high moral character and discipline of Dionysius. His restraint and refusal to order her at their first meeting in the temple into his bed gave a hint of his ethical bearing. On the next morning he arranged to meet her in the temple of Aphrodite but took along slaves as witnesses. He was again struck by her beauty; but after a long, clumsy, and uneasy silence, he begged her to tell the story of how she came to Miletus. Reluctantly, she gave her name but refused any more detailed information, claiming it in no way could be believed because of her present lowly state in life. Hinting that it would not alter his opinion of her even if he learned she had committed a heinous crime, the prince made his first mistake. She struck out at him immediately, eliciting a type of apology, and then continued to tell the whole story from her spurious death to her sale as slave in Miletus. An interesting omission is any mention of Chaereas: there is the intriguing possibility that it is a “Freudian omission,” signaling an unconscious desire for the prince; or perhaps the exclusion is based on fear of the prince. Whatever the reason, the omission is not entirely necessary for the plot or structure of the story. Callirhoe's retelling of the whole story reinforced the individual episodes of her adventures on the reader (audience) and emphasized the oral flavor, which Chariton seemed to favor.
Before dismissing her, Dionysius consoled Callirhoe and promised to help her, even though he recognized that Eros or Aphrodite was toying with him and torturing his libido, already in a shattered state because of the death of his wife. Curiously, Dionysius mentioned to Leonas that he has come to think of Callirhoe as a gift from Aphrodite, much as Helen had been for Menelaus. This is another analogue from myth, of which Chariton is so fond, and it adds a foreboding note of impending trouble. Helen had started a war; what could Callirhoe do? Because he now believed Callirhoe lost to him, Dionysius sank to such a low point that he swore to kill himself when she returned to her home and left Miletus. Suicide was another often repeated motif by Chariton who surely stressed the theatrical.
A penetrating look both into the workings of, and differences in, the prince's character and that of his chief steward Leonas is offered by the exchange between the two, immediately after Dionysius threatened suicide. Leonas felt that as lord and master of Miletus, Dionysius could force Callirhoe to bend to his will; furthermore, he owned her by right of purchase from Theron. The prince would have none of it and in fact turned on his chief steward and rebuked him in the strongest language. Though he cited many reasons for freeing his newest “slave,” the compelling reasons for freedom all had to do with the nature of his own moral character: it was not so much that Callirhoe deserved to be sent back to Syracuse; rather it was consistent with the high ethical standards he had set for himself. But Leonas did not understand Dionysius, and it was now obvious that Dionysius had not had much influence on the amoral Leonas. The steward was not his own man; he tried to anticipate the moves of his superiors and in this case (also in others), he misjudged them. The contrast of master and steward drawn by Chariton is excellent. Neither character is a mere foil to the other.
Another of Dionysius's servants who had some of her master's interests at heart and who, like Leonas, tried to please him without considering his best interests, was Plangon, wife of Phocas, and special attendant to Callirhoe. Plangon worked in her own way for Dionysius, never forgetting to watch out for herself and her husband, but her special area of competence was trickery. When Dionysius entrusted Callirhoe to her, Plangon believed that she had also been ordered to convince Callirhoe to marry him. Dionysius never intended that his words have such a nuance. But this servant, like others in Chariton and like very many in Greek New Comedy, was a trickster who frequently aided her master in all the wrong ways, namely by believing that her master had all the baser instincts that she had.
We believe that this episode, involving the tricks of a slave, represents a motif from Greek New Comedy and Roman comedy which became a standard pose for slaves in imaginative literature. To carry out her plan, which she believed to be consistent with Dionysius's wishes, Plangon seized on a chance remark of his about her husband and fabricated a story for Callirhoe: she claimed that Dionysius was so displeased with her husband, Phocas, that he was considering doing away with him. Plangon begged Callirhoe to intercede on their behalf with the prince, confirming that the prince would listen to a noblewoman like her. As Callirhoe presented her pleas for pardon of Phocas, Dionysius recognized what Plangon has been doing and planning, and he followed her lead. He pardoned both Phocas and Plangon, pointing out to Callirhoe that he was sparing them only on her account. Callirhoe was simply overwhelmed, and as she embraced Plangon, she was pushed forward by the latter toward Dionysius, who caught her and stole a kiss before releasing her. Callirhoe left, but Dionysius was now totally committed to loving her. His only avenue of approach to her now was the slave Plangon, to whom he offered freedom as a prize in return for helping him win Callirhoe.
One of the most interesting twists in the plot is disclosed at this point. It is brought about by Fortune, “who loves to do the unexpected, to act in a contrary fashion. And on this occasion she effects a situation which surprises everyone. The means she used are worthy of hearing.” Chariton stepped forward here and announced that he was going to relate something special, something the reader would want to hear. This address to the reader was used sparingly by Chariton, and then only when he wanted to attract special attention to something. This was probably parallel to an actor's aside to the audience in a drama. The scene he wished to describe was one suitable for drama and the stage—in fact, part of the scene came from a play of Euripides.
Now two months after her marriage to Chaereas, Callirhoe discovered that she was pregnant with his child. Plangon also had observed the slight swelling in her belly and suspected what Callirhoe then confessed. The reaction of the two women revealed clearly the difference in their characters. Plangon saw the unborn child as an ally in bringing about some kind of union between Callirhoe and Dionysius. Such a union would mean her freedom. Callirhoe, on the other hand, wanted no marriage partner other than Chaereas, and since she believed that the child would be born in Asia (not Greece), in slavery (not freedom), and far from her family, she was determined to have an abortion. This plan of Callirhoe was not so radical in the ancient world as we might think. While the later part of our century is experiencing a kind of sexual revolution, the ancient world required no such revolution to make abortion a standard practice of escaping from an otherwise ugly situation.7 In a soliloquy similar to Medea's (Euripides Medea 1019 ff.), Callirhoe lamented her fate and that of her unborn child. How much better it would be if the child would die before knowing slavery or hearing the terrible stories of his noble mother reduced to the status of a servant. In answer to her own soliloquy Chariton had Callirhoe take the speaking part of her own child and plead for his life:
“Are you really a Medea and is a Jason outraging you so that you will resort to actions similar to Medea's? What if he is a boy, and looks just like his father? There is every possibility he can live a happier life than you …[then in a prophetic mood] someday my child will sail back to Syracuse and tell his father and grandfather all about his mother's experiences. My son together with a fleet will rescue me and reunite his father and me.”
The analogue from myth is particularly graphic, for the reader was meant to see Callirhoe as a type of Medea, murderer of her children. The fact that Callirhoe does not go through with the threatened abortion probably reflected on the middle-class morality transferred from Chariton to the aristocratic expectant mother. The last two sentences in the above quote contain information that only Chariton and the reader should know. There was no way for Callirhoe to have guessed the denouement of this adventure story. It is reasonable to suggest that Callirhoe is revealing the outcome of the story to the reader, but does not herself understand the full import of what she was saying. Perhaps Chariton saw it as a kind of “inner aside” to the audience. Regardless of our interpretation of what is obviously out of place, Chariton was surely trying to hint at the final results of the plot and keep the reader informed to a much fuller degree than the characters. Chariton viewed his novel as a type of drama in which the playwright and audience know the full story, while the actors stumble into trouble. It was his favorite kind of irony. When Callirhoe finally went to sleep, she dreamed of her husband who said that he was placing the sole care of their son into her hands.
Plangon now began a cat-and-mouse game with Callirhoe, in which she urged her to have an abortion but said it in such a way that the opposite course of raising the child was always more appealing. By delaying day after day and throwing the dilemma at the distraught Callirhoe, Plangon was playing tricks for which slaves were famous. Chariton again moved back to a familiar motif. Finally, Callirhoe chose the easier of the two alternatives, the one in which she was the passive agent rather than the active: she would submit to a marriage with Dionysius. An aristocratic princess would have chosen suicide for herself and death for her foetus, but she did not have the bearing of an aristocrat. Callirhoe had only one final fear: that Dionysius might suspect the child was not his. But Plangon assured her that since she was only two months pregnant she could fool Dionysius into believing he had fathered a premature baby. In antiquity there was an often repeated maxim that you could always tell who was the mother of the child but not who his father was. In the Odyssey (1.213ff.), for instance, Telemachus says that he knows his mother but that it is only from reports that he has head that Odysseus is his father. Apparently this proverbial expression became a kind of motif which Chariton picked up and used here. Plautus also employed it in his comedy Amphitryo (195 b.c.).
V ACT I (BOOK 3-3.2): MARRIAGE OR BIGAMY
Only the first two chapters of the third book belong to Act I of Chariton's drama. Beginning with the third chapter Chariton went back to Syracuse to pick up the thread of the story concerning our hero, Chaereas, who had been left standing at Callirhoe's empty tomb. The content of the first book was largely marked by action; the second book was free of action and concentrated on psychological exploration on a relatively peaceful scene; the third book returns to action. Chariton was obviously alternating two kinds of approaches and trying to establish a tempo. Though both contained a built-in level of tension, the alternation of action and calm provided the reader with partial relief from what went on earlier. At the same time, as we see Plangon victorious over Callirhoe and Callirhoe resigned to take another husband (as far as she knows Chaereas was alive and this presented her with a certain moral problem), we are given a picture of Dionysius as a man bent on suicide, preparing his will.
As only a coarse slave can do, Plangon rushed to his rooms and blurted out that Callirhoe wanted to marry him at once. He fainted on the spot—not in the manner of a true-to-life despot but like a sentimental, middle-class peasant. The description of Dionysius passing out was almost a word for word verbal parallel with Callirhoe's fainting on hearing that Chaereas wanted to marry her (1.1). The phrases, which are all but identical, imitate Homer's epic descriptions and were employed by Chariton as formulae. The reader was obviously meant to associate the second use of the formula here with the first. Dionysius's fainting spell was so severe that he appeared dead to all those around him. Word quickly ran through the palace that Dionysius had died, and all, including Callirhoe, mourned him. Like Lazarus, however, he arose from the dead. Chariton was clearly attracted to the scheme of apparent death-resurrection: both Callirhoe and Dionysius fainted and appeared dead; Callirhoe was kicked, seemingly died, and was in fact buried. But none of them die. Chariton used this motif sparingly but in later writers, especially Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, apparent death-resurrection scenes are employed to a ridiculous degree. Perhaps Chariton started the tradition of such episodes, which brought a kind of dramatic tension to the story and allowed the writer to spend some time luxuriating in the emotion of that moment of death.
Dionysius quickly recovered and was assured by Plangon that he was not dreaming and Callirhoe still wished to marry him. The prince was ecstatic and acted like one of the young lovers (either free or slave) which we have learned to know in Greek and Roman comedy:
“Tell me what she said, exactly, in her own words. Do not leave any iota out, do not put in anything extra. Let me have her words verbatim.”
The audience or reader was never given Callirhoe's words verbatim, so that we must rely on what Plangon said they were. Callirhoe had consented to marry Dionysius, but she would hang herself if he wanted her only as a mistress. In her short speech to Dionysius, Plangon sandwiched in a clever condition:
“Think this marriage proposal over seriously with your advisors so that after you are married and have a child no one will ask you: ‘Are you, a prince, going to raise children which you fathered with a slave?’ She told me to tell you that if you do not want to be a father, you will never be her husband.”
Dionysius was so much in love with her body (and so, as the physionomicists argue, also with her character and soul) that he did not question the condition of being a father to her child. Of course Dionysius knew nothing of Callirhoe's first marriage or that she was at present two months pregnant. This was a real blemish on the otherwise spotless character of Callirhoe. Her deceit would haunt her for some time and force her later to be separated from someone she loved dearly. The prime mover of the deceit, Plangon, could be excused primarily on the grounds that she was a slave (and so thought like a slave), and secondly, because this deceit would result in her own freedom. The irony of the situation was brought off well, and the superior position of the reader reflected the irony of a good Greek tragedy. Callirhoe further asked Dionysius to swear before the gods that he would treat her kindly forever because, she added, “A lonely woman in a foreign land is at the mercy of all.”
It is one of the memorable lines from Chariton's pen. He swore his oath before Eros and Aphrodite, the latter being Callirhoe's patron saint. In order to ward off all suspicion about whether or not Callirhoe was a slave and to guard himself against possible actions from Hermocrates for mistreating her or forcing her against her will, Dionysius decided to marry her at a public ceremony in Miletus and provided a banquet for the entire city.
Before she left for Miletus, Callirhoe entered the temple of Aphrodite to pray that her deceit would go undetected. Callirhoe had developed a certain ambivalence toward Aphrodite because this deity was both her bane and her balm. Aphrodite, in one aspect of her nature, which was kindly, helped lovers to find each other. In another aspect, which was mysteriously violent, cruel, and animalistic, she drove lovers apart and into someone else's arms. Callirhoe visited the temple also because she was already feeling the first real pangs of conscience now that Dionysius has accepted, set the date, and was preparing the wedding bed. She had betrayed Chaereas and deceived Dionysius.
The first act closes as Chariton steps forward and addresses the audience:
Again, and even on this day, that demon, Envy, strikes out. The way all this happens I will tell just a little later, but right now I want to tell you what has been happening in the meantime in Syracuse.
Chariton did not want, or perhaps he was unable, to blend together the two plots which have now formed. We see here that just as stability and happiness returned to the life of Callirhoe, so did the demon Envy. When Callirhoe was happy and about to be the princess of Miletus, the gods became jealous and struck her down. At her first marriage we saw the same thing, where Envy (phthonos; here daimon baskanos) visited terrible punishment on the new bride. This theme of envious gods destroying the lives of seemingly favored humans stands clearly within the best traditions of Greek literature and history, and in a small way illustrates Chariton's affinity to that tradition.
Callirhoe's second marriage, which was bigamy even in Charion's time, placed a special tension on the plot. Though the dominant motif in this novel, as in the other four Greek works of the same genre, was erotic, and we are never allowed to forget that Callirhoe and Chaereas were constantly and in all places in their travels deeply in love with each other, there was a premium (outside of love and eroticism) placed on virtue and chastity. All the other heroines (as usual there is a different standard for heroes) in the remaining Greek novels remained chaste and preserved their virginity. Anthia in Xenophon of Ephesus's novel, like Callirhoe, married and then was separated from her husband. But she had nothing to do with other men. Chariclea in Heliodorus, Chloe in Longus, and Leucippe in Achilles Tatius, all met and were separated before they married. But each of these three remained a virgin until she married her betrothed. Thus it is that only Callirhoe was unfaithful to her husband.
It remains a possibility to argue that Callirhoe married Dionysius because she thought Chaereas was dead.8 She cannot, however, be defended on this ground, because she did not know for certain that Chaereas was dead until Phocas told her (end of Bk. 3). According to the time sequence of the plot, Callirhoe married Chaereas first, Dionysius second; seven months later she had her baby; shortly thereafter she learned from Phocas that Chaereas had been killed. In comparison with the other incredibly virtuous heroines of Greek romance, it is worthwhile to note that Callirhoe was not as virtuous as the rest. Apparently the standard of conduct for heroines in this genre was absolute chastity. Callirhoe was too human and real for such a high level of morality. Chariton obviously desired to make his heroine a three-dimensional character, though he realized that such a deviation in delineation of character types ran counter to the regular or accepted form. A look at the other heroines in Greek romance shows the reader that the character or persona of Callirhoe as drawn by Chariton was superior. She had the usual virtuous side to her nature, but she also had the darker side which leaned toward sex without love. She had the usual strength of romantic heroines, but also an unexpected and quite human weakness. Then too, in her future relations with Dionysius and Chaereas, her act of faithlessness developed an all-around tension in the story which is not to be found in the other Greek novels.
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I ACT II (BOOK 3.3-4): BAD TIMES FOR PIRATES AND HEROES
After Callirhoe's relatives and husband had sealed her tomb and returned home, Chariton did not mention any of them again until chapter three of the third book. To this point the adventures of Callirhoe dominated absolutely. Now Chariton retraced his steps and discussed all unfinished business in reverse chronological order: the last person from Syracuse to see Callirhoe and also her connecting link to that city was Theron, who was discussed first. Continuing backward in time, Chariton next related the adventures of Chaereas who saw Callirhoe just before Theron stole her from the tomb.
In their haste to escape the scene of the crime, the grave robbers had not resealed the tomb, whose open door greeted Chaereas as he came early in the morning on the day after the funeral. He had come to kill himself. His close inspection revealed that not only had the grave robbers got the gold but the corpse was also missing. It is evident that had the pirates not taken Callirhoe with them, Chaereas would have killed himself before ascertaining if she were alive. After all who looks for life in a tomb? The scene would thus have imitated Sophocles' Antigone and foreshadowed Romeo and Juliet. On reaching the empty tomb Chaereas first suspected that the gods had become so jealous of him that they had stolen her, as Dionysus had stolen Ariadne. The mythic analogue, as mentioned already, here makes Callirhoe a type of the stolen Ariadne (stolen bride). Casting about, Chaereas next wondered if his bride might not have been a goddess come to earth, who after a short time had to return to the home of the gods. Lastly, he grasped some measure of reality and realized that she had been stolen by grave robbers along with the gold. If this was true, it followed that she was still alive. Searchers ran off in all directions to discover what happened to Callirhoe, but it was Fortune, said Chariton, who could explain the disappearance of Callirhoe.
After the pirates had sold Callirhoe in Miletus, they set sail for Crete but were driven past it into the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. There we see them on board ship, lying ill and dying of thirst because the winds were unfavorable and provisions had run out:
Fate illustrated to the pirates that they had sailed earlier in fair weather because Callirhoe was with them on the ship. Nor were they allowed to die mercifully or quickly; even the dry land refused to welcome such wicked men. In the midst of a hoard of gold and riches the pirates were dying from a lack of fresh water—an extremely cheap commodity to good people. Among these villains Theron remained the most villainous: he stole water from his comrades and so lived while all the others died.
Chariton was very fond of contrasts, and the above paragraph illustrates it nicely. The sea was for villains and the dry land was for the innocent. This was perhaps a natural sentiment for a man from the interior of Asia Minor. His contrast of riches, for which all strive but do not necessarily need, and water, which all need but normally do not strive for, is the simplistic kind of moral equation, like black and white, which we see Chariton make quite frequently. A contrast which dominates all others and which illustrates Chariton's approach (feeling) toward his characters is that of innocence-guilt. Guilty persons are awarded retribution in proportion to their crime, while innocent people, though buffeted by Fate, find a happy ending. Thus the punishment of Theron is more severe than that meted out to his comrades, because he was the instigator of the crime.
In his search for Callirhoe, Chaereas came upon Theron's derelict ship, found all the treasure from his bride's tomb, and rescued Theron, who was unknown to Chaereas, from certain death. His capture here was a kind of deus ex machina. Theron, who never lost his balance, no matter how bad the situation became, claimed to be a passenger on board, who was spared by the gods because of his piety. Back in Syracuse Hermocrates and others prepared an inquest to learn the facts in the case. This scene was made for Chariton: he described the weeping and wailing, tearing of hair, beating of breasts. The people were lost in sorrow because Callirhoe was now surely lost. Again Chariton luxuriated everywhere in unrestrained emotions. After Chaereas had told how he found the ship and Callirhoe's funeral equipment, Theron was brought forward in chains, followed by the wheel, the rack, fire, and whips. These are ominous signs—especially to an audience who recognized them. Theron claimed that his name was Demetrius and that he had been only a passenger on the boat from Crete and had not known that his comrades were pirates. The assembled crowd like the chorus in Greek tragedy sympathized with him. But a certain fisherman in the crowd testified that, prior to Callirhoe's burial, he had seen Theron in the harbor area of Syracuse. The sympathies of the crowd quickly turned against Theron, and he was ordered tortured until he told the whole truth. Theron did not go over the whole story, which we have heard at least twice before, but he filled in only that information which the audience (not the reader) and the principals, Chaereas and Hermocrates, could not know. Such restraint at this point in not retelling the whole story again illustrates that Chariton has firm control of his characters and their actions. In the Greek novels this kind of restraint was not customary.
For the first time now there was hope in Chaereas's heart that, even though Callirhoe had been sold into slavery, he would find her alive. Theron had admitted selling her in Miletus, but Hermocrates did not feel it was safe to allow Theron to accompany Chaereas there to point out her buyers. Instead, Theron was impaled on a pike in front of Callirhoe's tomb. The punishment of Theron is particularly gruesome and unparalleled in the remainder of the book. The Greek word here for “to impale” is marvelously graphic, anaskolopizein. The image behind the word is “to skewer,” “to fix on a pole.” That fine Greek spirit which we think of as striving for all things beautiful obviously had a darker side. Throughout the episodes in which he had taken part, Theron had never been painted as a real villain. He robbed Callirhoe's tomb, but in so doing, probably saved her from certain death by starvation. Rather than kill her, he sold her in Miletus. As his fellow pirates lay dying of thirst, he did steal extra portions of water. This was hardly a villainous act. In view of this, the punishment does not fit the crime. Perhaps it is intended that we see the tortures inflicted on Theron to make him tell the truth as a type of ordeal, which Theron could not pass or go through because of an evil flaw in him, not articulated by Chariton.
Here in Book 3.4 with the death of Theron we have a major turning point. Theron to this time had been the dominant male figure, but he had failed his ordeal. Chaereas now begins his ordeal, which will not end until the novel does. In a steadily rising crescendo Chaereas makes his voice and authority heard above those of his friends and enemies, and at the conclusion of the story will pass through the final ordeal and take his place among other Greek heroes like Hermocrates, his father-in-law, to whom he is constantly compared (as equal) or contrasted (as a lesser being). In Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius heroes were subjected to different kinds of ordeals, namely ordeals to test and prove or disprove chastity. The ordeals in Chariton stressed manliness and the qualities we associate with heroes. We should expect this because Chariton was writing of characters who look back toward, and find precedents in, earlier Greek history, epic, and drama. Later Greek novelists turned away from heroes of action to passive heroes of love. Ordeals of valor yielded to ordeals of chastity. The man of heroic reputation was later not as important as the hero with a reputation as a virgin.
Chaereas prepared to set sail immediately for Miletus, and the city government of Syracuse agreed to pay for the expeditionary expenses. The parents of Chaereas tried to force him to delay sailing because of the rough winter seas. He was so torn between Callirhoe and his parents' wishes that he attempted one of his many suicides. The unrestrained and uncritical suicide attempts at every turn of ill-fortune, plus the immediate despair in difficult situations, show clearly that just below the surface of reality lay a well of emotions. If reality was scratched even in the slightest, the emotions welled up and spilled over. Chariton did not expect, nor would he have got it had he expected it, intellectual judgment from his audience. He realized from beginning to end that his readers were happiest with a sentimental work.
Both Chaereas and his double Polycharmus set sail for Miletus in the face of their parents' pleas and an outpouring of sentimentality: “The whole town exploded with prayers, tears, moans, encouraging shouts, fear, courage, despair, and hope.” The journey of Chaereas, his departure from his home, the act of leaving or deserting his parents, all these were calculated to appeal to the emotions of the middle-class audience. In defense of Chariton there are many early classical precedents of such emotional leave-taking scenes: quickly to mind come Dido's farewell to Aeneas; Laodamia's good-bye to Protesilaus; Hero and Leander; Circe and Odysseus; and Aegeus and his son Theseus.
Chaereas's ship followed in the tracks, as it were, of Theron and arrived at the same country estate of Dionysius, where our heroes visited the temple of Aphrodite. There they saw a statue of Callirhoe before which Chaereas fainted (in the exact words of Callirhoe's and Dionysius's faint—a formula). After learning that Callirhoe has become Dionysius's princess, Chaereas breaks into one of his frequent soliloquies of despair. This one, however, displays a little of Chariton's humor:
“Though many bad things have happened to me, I never expected Callirhoe to marry again—not even after I had died. … Then if she had only married someone whose station was below mine, I could have rescued her. But how can I buy her back from a man who has more money than I have. If I approach her I could be put to death as an adulterer of mine own wife!”
Such a contrived plot as the love triangle of Chaereas-Callirhoe-Dionysius is what the ancient rhetoricans called a controversia, an imaginary situation, which is frequently a lawsuit, but which can be argued well on both sides. A controversia is really a rhetorical exercise and a fabricated case which young law students can argue about for practice. It is roughly like the cases in our moot court. An example of a controversia from antiquity is this: “The punishment for rape is that the woman may demand the man's death or make him marry her. A man raped two women in one night. The first wants him executed; second wants to marry him.”9
For the first time in this novel the story-plot now becomes complicated, and we realize that Chariton has set several forces into action at the same time. After Chaereas's ship docked, Phocas, one of Dionysius's trusted servants, inquired about the strangers and learned their identity. Realizing the danger for Dionysius and ultimately for himself, Phocas recruited some barbarians (i.e., non-Greeks) to destroy the ship and its sailors. Chaereas and Polycharmus are caught and sold as slaves in Caria (southwest Asia Minor). Dionysius meanwhile had learned all about Chaereas from Callirhoe, caught talking in her sleep. Like dreams, talking in one's sleep was always regarded as the truth being exposed through the agency of a deity. This shock for Dionysius, however, was set aside at the birth of his son. For the time being Callirhoe also put the matter of her former husband out of her mind.
To insure that Plangon did not disclose the real father of Callirhoe's son to Dionysius, Callirhoe begged the prince to set Plangon free. This is only one of the many requests Dionysius granted Callirhoe, as he reveled in the thought of having had a child by her. Thank offerings were made to Aphrodite, and the whole household of the prince made a pilgrimage to her temple. After Dionysius had made a public offering to Aphrodite, Callirhoe and Plangon went privately into the temple and prayed:
“Though you have not given Chaereas back to me, I thank you for having given me a mirror image of him in my young son. … Perhaps someday people will say that he is a greater man than Hermocrates was.”
After this Callirhoe broke down, cried, and rehearsed all her past bad experiences. It appears here that Chariton is again thinking of Callirhoe's son as the famous Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse. (The tyrant was in reality Hermocrates' son-in-law, not his grandson.)
At the temple the priestess of Aphrodite told Callirhoe about the visit of a man who fit the description of Chaereas. Because Callirhoe knew Dionysius was jealous and would investigate the matter, she mentioned the priestess's discussion of Chaereas to him. Suspecting a plot at his country estate, Dionysius threatened everyone with torture, but Phocas admitted he knew all the facts in the case and related them to Dionysius before anyone was hurt:
“It is really nothing serious, master. In the beginning it sounds bad, but do not worry. Wait until you hear the outcome. It ends well for you. A warship came here from Syracuse and demanded that we give back Callirhoe.”
Dionysius, who seemed disposed to such acts, fainted again, and the fainting is once more described in the same words as the three earlier faintings (i.e., by the formula). This speech of Phocas to Dionysius, in which he told him not to worry about the first events but to trust that all would turn out well for him, was taken almost directly from the repertory of tricks played on masters by the servants in Greek New Comedy and Latin comedy: slaves first report the bad news, enjoy their masters' suffering, and then report the good. Dionysius soon revived and learned that the ship on which Chaereas had sailed and many of the hands were lost. His thanks to Phocas showed that he had practical understanding of situation ethics:
“You are a great and faithful servant. Because of you I still have my Callirhoe. While I would never have had Chaereas killed, I do not criticize you for having done it. It was merely the honest crime of a faithful servant. If there is any blame attached to you in this whole affair, it is a matter of negligence that you did not find out for certain if Chaereas was one of the dead.”
Hiding from Callirhoe the facts that Phocas instigated the attack on Chaereas's ship and that it was not certain he was dead, Dionysius had eyewitnesses tell her about the destruction of the ship. In a long tirade Callirhoe accused Aphrodite of bringing about Chaereas's death and then indulged in an emotional outburst of pity for her baby, her husband, and herself.
II ACT II (BOOK 4): CALLIRHOE FINDS SEVERAL NEW LOVERS
Excitement apart from action in the plot continued to grow throughout the fourth book, and it is apparent that the increasing complications are leading rapidly toward a highly unstable situation which must be resolved in some way.
To change the mood of Callirhoe and to remove Chaereas from her every thought, Dionysius suggested to her that she build a tomb for Chaereas. The constant reminder of the tomb would hopefully reinforce the idea that Chaereas was dead. Once hope for him was lost, she would no longer think of him. Dionysius persuaded her not to build the tomb near the temple of Aphrodite (he associated himself and his recent marriage with that temple) but in the city of Miletus where many people could see it. The funeral memorial was well attended and even Mithridates, governor of Caria, and Pharnaces, governor of Lydia, put in personal appearances. The picture of a grieving widow following a long and richly decorated funeral procession was used frequently by earlier classical writers (e.g., Petronius's “Widow of Ephesus”) and also by those who followed Chariton. As Mithridates, royal governor of Caria, had his first glimpse of Callirhoe, he also fainted. Chariton continued to play with ironic situations but sometimes his contrivances were too cute. Consider Callirhoe's speech at Chaereas's tomb:
“You first buried me in Syracuse, and now I am burying you in Miletus. … We have now buried each other but neither one of us has the body of the other before which to pay proper respects.”
Meanwhile, Chaereas and Polycharmus were working on a slave chain gang in Caria. But because Chaereas was too sick from worry over Callirhoe, faithful (every epic hero had a faithful friend) Polycharmus was doing the work of two men. Like Chaereas, Mithridates was described by Chariton as also wasting away for love and appearing thin and pale, like all good lovers. A prison break occurred in Chaereas's cell, and an overseer was killed, an act which caused the governor Mithridates to condemn all the men in that cell, even the innocent Chaereas and Polycharmus, to be crucified. As preparations for the crucifixion were carried out, Polycharmus cursed Callirhoe as the source of all their troubles. The head of the crucifixion squad, believing someone named Callirhoe was also in on the prison escape, took Polycharmus before Mithridates to learn what role she had played. After a proper amount of torture, Polycharmus confessed the whole story of Chaereas and Callirhoe and his part in it. Mithridates, of course, was already familiar with certain aspects of the case because he had attended Chaereas's memorial funeral. The order went out immediately to save Chaereas as he was about to mount the cross. Instead of rejoicing at his deliverance or fainting as others had done, Chaereas was sad and dejected because he was determined to die. He no longer had any desire to live. He exhibited the kind of pessimism we discussed in the second chapter above. His pessimism and apparently wasted existence could have been finally redeemed by love through death on the cross. From Mithridates Chaereas learned that Callirhoe has remarried and has had a child:
“Faithless Callirhoe, most wicked of women! Was I sold into slavery for your sake!”
The irony of the above passage becomes clear, if we recall that Callirhoe earlier lamented Chaereas's act of burying her quickly, which resulted in her being sold into slavery. The same night that Chaereas was rescued, we find Mithridates unable to sleep, plotting how he could best set Chaereas against Dionysius, and then how he might move in and steal the prize. The next morning Chaereas asked to be allowed to go to Miletus to fetch Callirhoe, but was advised by the governor not to go:
“If I thought it were good for you to go, I would aid you myself. … But fortune has given you a terrible role in a melancholy drama, and you must take care of your life. … You have had bad experiences up until now, and if you go to Miletus, I will not be able to protect you. … Do you seriously think Dionysius will surrender his wife to you just because you want her?… I suggest that instead of traveling to Miletus, you send her a letter, and I will see to it that it gets there.”
Chaereas composed a letter full of self-pity and pleaded with Callirhoe to return to him, her legitimate husband. This letter, along with a personal note for Callirhoe from Mithridates, was entrusted to Hyginus, who was to take along three slaves with mounds of gold for presents. The slaves, who were told that the gold was for the satrap Dionysius, were left with the gold in Priene while Hyginus went alone to scout out the situation in Miletus. Left without direction in Priene, the slaves began to squander the gold, attracted the attention of the busybody Greeks and even of the mayor, Bias, and were finally arrested as thieves. Chariton again makes a kind of racial slur about the inquisitiveness of the Greeks who were constantly interfering with the business of other people and confusing their plans.
Having received from Bias the slaves' gold (the slaves had told Bias all they knew: the gold was for Dionysius) and the unopened letters, Dionysius fainted dead away, again described in the exact same words as his and Callirhoe's earlier collapses. Dionysius kept the letters to himself and brought charges of attempted wife-stealing against Mithridates before Pharnaces, governor of Lydia and enemy of Mithridates. Lydia was on the immediate northern boundary of Caria, and their two governors were rivals. Pharnaces had another reason for coming to the aid of Dionysius: he also had seen Callirhoe at Chaereas's memorial funeral and was now in love with her. So Pharnaces wrote to Artaxerxes, king of all Persia and surrounding lands, to ask his help in dealing with this immoral conduct of one of his highest ranking officials. Chariton was obviously a student of political systems because he carefully traced the appeals of Dionysius through the proper administrative channels. Artaxerxes was not particularly pleased to have to deal with such a thorny problem, but he (like so many others!) was especially eager to get a look at this international beauty named Callirhoe. And so Artaxerxes was added to the list of Callirhoe's suitors: Chaereas, Dionysius, Mithridates, Pharnaces, and now Artaxerxes. The list of suitors is almost as long as it was in the beginning of the novel, when all the young men were eager to catch Callirhoe, and the prize fell to Chaereas.
All interested parties were ordered to Babylon, Artaxerxes's capital, for trial. After Mithridates learned from Hyginus what had gone wrong in Miletus, he hesitated (in fact, he thought of revolting) to go to Babylon, but then started out anyway when he heard that Dionysius and Callirhoe were already on their way. Now Dionysius began to have second thoughts about his quest for justice. It occurred to him that Pharnaces and Artaxerxes might be helping him only to get an opportunity to try to steal his Callirhoe.
III ACT III (BOOKS 5-6): TRIAL BY JURY OR JUSTICE AND LOVE ARE BLIND
The fifth book opens with a brief summary of the first four books, and Chariton in the role of the author promises at this point to tie up the strings that bind the earlier episodes with the conclusion. Though Callirhoe had severed her connections with the many things Greek when she decided to marry Dionysius, her biggest break with her former life occurred here when she crossed the Euphrates River, which Callirhoe clearly indicated was a barrier between things Greek in the West and things Persian in the East. Now that she no longer saw the sea, she completely lost all orientation and sense of belonging. While she lived at Miletus she had known that a common sea connected her to Greece and further to Syracuse. She expressed the same feeling of loneliness and isolation, which set in now that she was distant from the sea, much as Xenophon of Athens and his men felt in their Anabasis into Asia Minor to fight as mercenaries for Cyrus. For most Greeks of this time the sea apparently functioned as a kind of “security blanket.”
Callirhoe cursed cruel Fortune, kissed the ground on the west side of the Euphrates, and there boarded a ferry for the other side. Her action in kissing the ground marked a clearly defined line of separation between one life and another, between one kind of world and another. Callirhoe was obviously on a journey, but perhaps this trip to Babylon was only an outward symbol for her more important journey through life—from the uninitiated virgin of Syracuse to the mother and guiding spirit of the future ruler of Syracuse who blessed her son with her wisdom and experience. It was necessary therefore for her to have left Syracuse. Though he did not talk about Greek novels, Joseph Campbell finds this kind of symbolic journey in many literatures:
As we soon … see, whether presented in the vast, almost oceanic images of the Orient, in the vigorous narratives of the Greeks, or in the majestic legends of the Bible, the adventure of the hero normally follows the pattern: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return.10
While the regal procession of Dionysius and Callirhoe made its way to Babylon, Mithridates and Chaereas hurried to arrive and present their side of the case first. Introduced by Artaxates, King Artaxerxes's eunuch and chief advisor, Mithridates was, however, dismissed until Dionysius arrived. Rebuffed in this scheme, Mithridates plotted courtroom strategy with Chaereas and told him to remain in hiding in the courtroom and not to come out until called, no matter what the situation was. Mithridates told Chaereas that this was the only favor he would ask in return for his help in securing Callirhoe. Chaereas, however, bemoaned his fate which would not allow him to embrace Callirhoe though they were so close. Dionysius meanwhile had his hands full keeping sight-seers away from Callirhoe. Chariton (in his anti-Persian way) claimed that the beautiful wife of Dionysius was crushed by crowds because “barbarians are by nature madly romantic.”
Dionysius grew more and more apprehensive as they approached Babylon and the risky business of exposing Callirhoe to the gaze of many powerful men:
“Why did I bring Callirhoe to Babylon, a city full of men like Mithridates! I should have remembered that even in puritanical and conservative Sparta Menelaus could not guard Helen's bedroom door. A barbarian from Asia got to her. Just consider how many men like Paris there are among the Persians!”
All these rumors of the beautiful Callirhoe have now aroused the jealousy of the Persian women, who sent out the most beautiful Persian woman, Rhodogyne, to meet Dionysius and to embarrass and shame his wife. As Rhodogyne waited to welcome Callirhoe at the city's gates, Chariton described her as a woman dressed and set for a contest, a royal beauty prepared to challenge this foreign woman and rival. To avoid the peering eyes of the crowds along the way, Dionysius had drawn the curtains on Callirhoe's carriage, but was forced to open them and expose her now that they had been confronted by a royal welcoming committee.
In this contest, which Chariton has so carefully constructed, Callirhoe emerged in an instant as the victor. She had entered upon her ordeal with the best, the champion, the beauty chosen by the Persian women themselves, and now she emerged from the ordeal as the most beautiful woman in Greece and Persia. The Persians standing at the scene declared her the winner.
After delaying the trial for thirty days on religious grounds, Artaxerxes ordered the trial to begin. “Which of the Olympic Games ever held such suspense?” asked Chariton. With Artaxerxes presiding, the trial began; the letters of Chaereas and Mithridates were read first, and Dionysius, as plaintiff, was asked to present his opening and closing arguments. Mithridates, however, objected to conducting this trial without having the cause of all the trouble, Callirhoe, present. Heated arguments followed on both sides, Mithridates because he wanted to see Callirhoe, if only in court, Dionysius because he had not yet told his wife why they had made the long journey to Babylon. Because of the dispute the king ordered a recess, and Callirhoe learned the whole truth for the first time. During the following night she dreamed that she was back in Syracuse in the temple of Aphrodite, preparing to marry Chaereas, a propitious dream meant to encourage Callirhoe (and the reader) that all would turn out well in the end. Chariton made full use of the motif of the prophetic dreams, but he also perhaps used it too often. His employment of dreams established a tension between the present and frightening reality of the future with its promises for a better life. When Chariton wished to discourage certain actions of a character, he had him dream a foreboding dream; sometimes the dreams were apparently meant more for the readers than the players.
What followed now in the courtroom was Chariton's tour de force. He brought to bear on the speeches of Dionysius and Mithridates in the courtroom all the rhetorical expertise of which he was capable; he went to the bottom of the well of his education and ability and produced a drama (his own word) worthy of the Silver Age of Greek literature. Chariton followed the best Greek rhetorical form of his time and had Dionysius and Mithridates present the king (and the reader) with a perfect (rhetorically speaking) example of what was called iudicale genus dicendi (law court speech). Each speaker followed the established outline: exordium, narratio, probatio, conclusio.
SPEECH AND CHARGES OF DIONYSIUS
| Exordium (Introduction): | The crime of Mithridates was of the worst kind because, though he was a guest friend of his, he tried to steal his wife. Artaxerxes must punish Mithridates, the governor, for his actions because they reflected poorly on the great king. |
| Narratio (Case History): | Dionysius claimed that Mithridates fell in love with his wife when he visited them at the occasion of the ceremonial funeral for Chaereas. |
| Probatio (Evidence): | Bias was a witness to Mithridates's crime and the great king had seen the letters of Mithridates, which Mithridates claimed Chaereas wrote. |
| Conclusio (Summary): | It is obvious that Mithridates was guilty, for all the evidence pointed that way. He was a would-be adulterer who, by claiming to have raised Chaereas from the dead, dishonored his name. |
SPEECH AND REBUTTAL OF MITHRIDATES
| Exordium: | Mithridates claimed he had in the past always been a good governor and served the king well. These accusations of Dionysius were nothing but slander. Who would prefer the love of Callirhoe to the respect of the great king? How could Dionysius bring charges of adultery against anyone, when he bought his wife as a slave and did not even have her registration papers? |
| Narratio: | After rehearsing the whole case for the Persian court (a case the reader knew), Mithridates did not try to defend himself but rather brought countercharges of adultery against Dionysius. In fact, Mithridates pleaded with his opponent to withdraw his charges before it was too late, and he was convicted of adultery. |
| Probatio: | Mithridates said that his only concern through it all was to help Chaereas and he could prove his innocence by producing the perfect proof: a living Chaereas. |
| Conclusio: | Rather than summing up his case, Mithridates asked Chaereas to step forward. |
Pandemonium broke loose as did all the pent-up emotions of both sides including those of Chaereas and Callirhoe. It is the outpouring of emotions of all kinds which Chariton claimed to be the makings of a great drama:
Who could describe such a courtroom? Did any dramatist ever produce such a scene on any stage? An observer in the courtroom would have thought that he was in a theatre filled with emotions on every side: tears, happiness, amazement, sorrow, disbelief, prayer.
After Dionysius and Chaereas had almost come to blows, Artaxerxes dismissed the various parties, acquitted Mithridates, but announced that Dionysius and Chaereas would have to plead anew their case with regard to Callirhoe before him. Artaxerxes could not bear to see Callirhoe depart and entrusted her to his queen Statira, in whose keeping Callirhoe was given a chance to relax and was protected from the curious and the sight-seers. But there was one eager sight-seer in the audience whom Statira could not keep out, the king, who was now in love with Callirhoe.
After the tiring vicissitudes of his love affair with Callirhoe, Chaereas was at his wit's ends. This last turn of events had pushed his emotions to the breaking point. He turned on Aphrodite and almost cursed her, for it was she who had given Callirhoe to him, only to take her away. Then he added a curious comment about the nature of deities: “I built you a temple, and in it I made sacrifices to you. How could you then take Callirhoe from me?”
Chariton obviously had developed a do ut des (I give that you might give) relationship between his characters and their gods. The mortal gives something to the deity so that the deity will give something in return. This was not only a bold anachronism of the later forms of religious worship which do not belong in the fifth-century b.c. Greek world, but it gave some insight into Chariton's conception of the relationship between mortals and their gods. Fortune or Fate, while acting many times with no regard for mortals and sometimes treating mortals as toys for entertainment, could be influenced by the actions of pious people.
This book concludes with a short speech by Dionysius and then one by Chaereas, the two principals in the upcoming trial. It is a clever yet artistic way to jump off into the next book. The mood of tension was somewhat spoiled by yet another suicide attempt of Chaereas. Chariton's delineation of the King Artaxerxes was almost absolutely conditioned by his personal conception of the oriental despot, and he was almost certainly mistaken. Artaxerxes was an oriental despot who had no need to scheme to get Callirhoe; he would have simply taken her. Chariton pictured for us a rather kindly, middle-class, nonregal despot. In this book Chariton also offered us an interesting look at his view of justice in the ancient world. Neither the just nor the unjust (nor all the shades in between) get justice of any kind. Like Fate, Justice plays with her helpless mortals.
IV ACT III (BOOK 6): ARTAXERXES IN LOVE
The arguments as to who should get Callirhoe were on everyone's lips: she belonged to Chaereas, though he caused her death and buried her; she belonged to Dionysius because he rescued her, even if he did buy her as a slave. Some of the women even gave advice to Callirhoe whom she should marry. Since she was married to both men, it goes without saying that she herself was in a perfect position to judge her two husbands—to compare notes on them, as it were. Statira, on the other hand, would be happy to see Callirhoe go anywhere away from Artaxerxes who has been paying far too much attention to the Greek girl. Artaxerxes, afraid he would lose Callirhoe and never see her again, wrestled with himself about the proper course of action. Chariton continued to portray Artaxerxes, not as an oriental despot but as a middle-class property owner who was mired in petty details, observant of the feelings of everyone else except his own, ignorant of his own strength, unaccustomed to power, and timid. None of this reflects historical despots or despots in earlier literature. When King David desired Bathsheba, nothing was allowed to stand in his way; when Oedipus wanted Jocasta, his mother, as his wife, nothing, including legal and natural prohibitions, deterred him. Chariton's Artaxerxes was not made of that kind of fibre. In fact, it is not at all clear that Artaxerxes was at all times in command of the situation and cognizant of the ramifications of his own actions. The fault for this lies clearly with Chariton's delineation of his character.
Chariton developed an interesting love triangle of three men (Chaereas, Dionysius, Artaxerxes) with Callirhoe in the middle. As Chariton developed the action or plot he invariably paused at each main character (here there are four) and described the movements of each one, including each one's reactions to the main thrust of the plot, before he moved on to a new development or phase of the plot. Thus, at this time we see (1) Artaxerxes summoning Artaxates, his eunuch slave, and ordering him to postpone the trial thirty days so that he did not have to part with Callirhoe; (2) Dionysius cursing himself for bringing Callirhoe to Babylon; (3) Chaereas trying to commit suicide by starving himself; and (4) both Callirhoe and Statira worried by Artaxerxes's growing affection for the former.
After all the loose ends were tied up, Chariton proceeded. Artaxerxes began to worship at the altar of Aphrodite, and once he had acknowledged her supremacy over all the other gods, he found himself moved to plot with Artaxates to obtain Callirhoe for his own. For a time he considered whether or not Callirhoe might be a goddess come to earth to visit torments on him. The tone of the king's words and actions was one of pain caused by unrequited love. Chariton painted here a curious picture of the king: he was more like a pining poet than a despot: Artaxates suggested he seize the girl, but the king was seriously offended:
“Never suggest such a thing again! The very thought of seducing another man's wife is abhorrent to me. I know the laws of the land which I passed and which are applicable to me as well as to my subjects. I still have my dignity.”
At the suggestion of Artaxates that the king try to take his mind off Callirhoe by busying himself with other activities such as hunting, Artaxerxes staged an enormous royal hunt. It is obvious from this that Chariton had been reading Ovid's Remedia Amoris (Remedies of Love), in which Ovid advises distraught lovers to occupy themselves with many different entertainments (including hunting) until they are free of Love's terrible bonds. But the distraction failed, and Artaxates rationalized for the benefit of the king in good Sophistic fashion that the king had no real problem since Callirhoe was at that moment married to no one, but was in fact a widow. The king was pleased and agreed to follow Artaxerxes's lead, if (1) nothing was done against Callirhoe's will and (2) everything was done secretly. Artaxates saw a rosy future for himself at the king's court but, says Chariton, there was one serious problem:
Because Artaxates is a slave and eunuch, but especially because he is a barbarian, he thinks it is a simple matter to persuade Callirhoe. He has, in addition, no comprehension of Greek pride.
With the word “barbarian” Chariton implies not only the usual definition, (i.e., someone who does not speak Greek), but he means also someone who does not act in accordance with good Greek ethics. Artaxates was obviously a lesser being. Chariton's not infrequent slurs against Persians betrayed his obvious pro-Greek, anti-Persian bias. Though he lived in Aphrodisias, a part of the old Persian empire, he unequivocally aligned himself with the more recent Greek conquerors.
At the proper moment Artaxates proposed his scheme to Callirhoe, adding that when she had married the king and had many jewels and gold, she should not forget him, Artaxates, her real benefactor.
Artaxates includes himself in any future benefits to be derived from the union of Callirhoe and the king. Every slave who speaks on behalf of his master always recommends himself in addition, seeking his own advancement at every turn.
Chariton has clearly borrowed here the popular literary conception of the slave from New Comedy. In this genre the slave acts on behalf of the master only when his own case will be advanced. Artaxates also plays the role of the go-between the king and Callirhoe, a popular part for slaves in comedy (see Plautus). Chariton has simply transferred this role of the slave in comedy to the more serious scenes of ideal romance. But Callirhoe told the eunuch that she was not worthy of the great king and ran away. When she found herself alone, she repeated to herself (and thus to her reader) all the misfortunes that had befallen her. It is yet another summary of the story, a summary which betrayed Chariton's desire to keep in touch with certain conventions of oral epic. When Callirhoe mentioned suicide, Artaxates realized how untenable was his situation: since he had not won over Callirhoe, the king would be furious; the queen would hate him; Callirhoe had refused him; Chaereas and Dionysius would plot against him.
With the king becoming ever more insistent that he press Callirhoe for an affirmative answer, Artaxates delivered an ultimatum to her: either she submit willingly to the king or he would take her by force:
“Consider well your choices,” said the eunuch. “Your first husband, Chaereas, will love you and honor you even more, when he realizes that you have pleased the great king.” Artaxates believed what he said because he did not understand Greek character. All barbarians, it is well known, stand before their kings in fearful awe, believing them to be incarnate gods. The fact is that Callirhoe would not have married Zeus himself, preferring Chaereas to immortality.
Zeus had of course come down from Olympus and mated with Danae (begetting Perseus), with Europa (begetting Minos), with Leda (begetting Helen of Troy), but Callirhoe would have refused even his advances. In a very natural and unobtrusive manner Chariton made use again of the graphic analogue from myth, not merely as an example but rather as a symbol.
For the first time (Bk. 6.8) outside forces and movements, which were totally unrelated to the plot, moved across the path of the action: the Egyptians had revolted and sent a spearhead of forces as far East and North as Syria. The government in Babylon was in a state of alarm but reacted positively. Up until this last turn of events Chariton had kept his narrative directly concerned with the actions of the pair of lovers Chaereas and Callirhoe. This concentration focused on the two main characters, with almost complete disregard for extraneous events and characters, was a special mark of classical literature. From the classical standpoint the novel had reached its climax in the lovers' discovery that the other was still alive. From here to the final chapter the action was concerned with attempts to reunite the pair. The denouement of the novel was set, and a relaxation of the tension, which had built up since Callirhoe's apparent death, was realized. Chariton provided us with the traditional recognition scene with which all earlier fictional works (Homer's Odyssey, Euripides' Electra, Greek New Comedy, and Roman Fabula Palliata) most usually concluded or disentangled themselves. After this first recognition scene the lovers were parted for the last time, and a second recognition scene was required at the beginning of Bk. 8.
Artaxerxes organized his forces at hand and, ordering the outlying armies to follow as soon as possible, marched out against the Egyptians. Dionysius took his place in the line of march; Statira was instructed to follow along with Callirhoe in the king's personal baggage train.
IV ACT IV (BOOK 7): THE WAR
Book 5 produced the tension of the courtroom battle; Book 6 was more peaceful and concerned itself with characters moving to stronger positions; Book 7 was once again a violent section, full of war. In this alternation we can detect an attempt by Chariton to vary the tempo of his work, first by creating a highly unstable situation marked by disorder, and then by resolving at least partially the uncertainty and modifying the mood toward the subdued.
While Artaxerxes and Dionysius were engaged in making war, Chaereas searched throughout Babylon for Callirhoe. With two rivals for Callirhoe's hand, Dionysius got free of one, Chaereas, by letting slip the rumor that the great king had given Callirhoe to him in return for his help in the war against Egypt. To save Chaereas from cutting his own throat (his suicide attempts are seemingly without number), Polycharmus suggested that they join the army of the Egyptians and embarrass the King of Persia. The Egyptian king was delighted to receive Chaereas and made him one of his military advisors—after all he was the son-in-law of Hermocrates, one of the Greeks' most famous generals. At one particular briefing session when the king proposed to retreat from the area around Tyre, because the city itself had not been taken by storm, and to pull back to the fortified city of Pelusium on the coast just east of the Egyptian Delta, Chaereas stood up and opposed any kind of retreat. He was supported by many others and finally was given a command and an army to try to capture Tyre. In the Egyptian army he found a group of Greek mercenaries and from these chose three hundred to lead against Tyre. Promising to show the Tyrians the difference between Greeks and barbarians, Chaereas was elected general of the expeditionary force against Tyre. Chaereas (the spokesman here for Chariton) stressed the dissimilarity between Greeks and barbarians: Greeks were good fighters; one Greek was worth a barbarian regiment; Greeks came from noble and warlike ancestors; in warfare Greeks sought no personal riches, only glory and an undying fame (like that of Leonidas). Indeed it was to match Leonidas's three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae that Chaereas selected only three hundred Greek mercenaries. Further, in imitation of Herodotus and Thucydides, Chariton had his general Chaereas deliver an hortatory speech to his soldiers just before the battle.
Like Agamemnon and Odysseus before Troy, Chaereas tricked the Tyrians into opening the city gates and then slew the inhabitants:
Chaereas killed the Tyrian commander, attacked the others, and “struck them down on all sides; a terrible groan arose from the field” [Homer]. Like lions attacking an unguarded herd they rushed at the enemy. … Defenders ran from the city but found they could not retreat because the pile of corpses at the gates prevented them.
Chariton provided us with a marvelous blend of styles from Thucydidean prose to Homeric epic and epic simile. The movement of large forces of men, sieges of cities, and the smell of battle, all look back toward the Greek literary forms of epic and history. The quote from Homer and the use of one of his epic similes beg association with the epic. Still in mourning for Callirhoe, Chaereas, like an epic hero, refuses even now to wear victor's garlands. In his book Chariton moved vast forces from place to place, destroyed some forces and painted others as victors, striving to emulate all the while the classic pages of Xenophon of Athens, Thucydides, and Herodotus.
Meanwhile, Artaxerxes was filled with panic at the loss of Tyre and determined to make an all-out effort against the Egyptians. To free himself to move more quickly, Artaxerxes made the fateful decision to settle his baggage train together with Statira and Callirhoe on the island of Aradus, which lies three miles offshore and some miles north of Sidon in Phoenicia. As chance would have it, Aradus had a temple to Aphrodite. At that same time Chaereas was given command of a large contingent of the Egyptian navy because all men considered Greeks, especially Syracusans, to be the best sailors. With Chaereas in command of the fleet, the Egyptian king attacked the Persians on land but was severely repulsed, mostly because of the valor of Dionysius, who with a picked force of cavalry, cut off the Egyptian retreat and forced the Egyptian king to kill himself. After the ominous start of the war followed by its successful conclusion, Artaxerxes was so delighted, that he awarded Callirhoe as a war prize of booty to Dionysius.
We are reminded here of the great king of all the Greeks, Agamemnon, awarding Briseis to Achilles for valor and then later demanding her return. Likewise, Callirhoe was awarded to Dionysius, but he was never given the opportunity to take possession of her because of his overweening pride in thinking himself equal to the gods. Chaereas's fleet had been victorious over all the eastern Mediterranean and had captured Aradus with all the great king's baggage, his wife, and Callirhoe. Statira was extremely sad, for she believed that the whole Persian cause, including her husband, was lost. Callirhoe, captured now so many times, was beyond despair and begged for a sword to kill herself. Her Egyptian guard was “unable to console her or lend any assistance because he kept his distance from her. Barbarians have a kind of innate servility when confronted with royalty—especially of the Greek variety.” The Egyptian guard reported the events surrounding Callirhoe's behavior to Chaereas, who wondered at such noble actions.
V ACT V (BOOK 8): ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
The last book of this novel and the last act of this play opened with a short summary of the preceding action directed by Chariton to the reader. With a fairly heavy hand Chariton explained some of the refinements woven into the fabric of the novel's structure. His love for the ironic continues: Chaereas and Callirhoe were reunited, but because of jealous Fortune neither knew the other's whereabouts:
But Aphrodite has softened her opposition to Chaereas's former pride and unreasoned jealousy of Callirhoe. Chaereas's pride stirred the phthonos of the gods; his jealousy of Callirhoe aroused their anger. … By his countless sufferings and wanderings, however, he has now redeemed himself and reconciled himself to Aphrodite.
All's well that ends well:
I am confident that all my readers will be delighted with the final book of my novel. It will stand in stark contrast to the dramatic tension and tragedies of the earlier parts. Gone are pirates, slavery, courtrooms, battles, suicides. Here to stay are love and marriage.
As Chaereas was about to board ship and leave Aradus, deserting Callirhoe “as a kind of sleeping Ariadne,” his attention was directed toward the unidentified and noble slave girl. Immediately they recognized each other and just as immediately fainted. The good news was spread around at once, and crowds assembled around the couple, congratulating them. The reactions of the crowd were mirrors of the couple, and reflected their feelings. The crowd served also the function of the chorus from drama, and it relayed to the reader the general sentiments of the hero, heroine, and author. Chaereas delegated (to Polycharmus) his affairs of Ares (war) and devoted himself exclusively to the affairs of Aphrodite (love). Our hero thus reverted to form and became once again the new style hero of romance. The older type of hero of warfare like Achilles had no longer a permanent role in romantic epics like this. The work concluded, as it had begun, with a honeymoon experience. In the middle of telling their tales of woe to each other, an Egyptian officer interrupted to tell them that the Egyptian king was dead and King Artaxerxes with his army was pressing toward Aradus to rescue Statira. Chaereas, with his whole force, retreated to Paphos on Cyprus, where it was decided that all who wished it could accompany Chaereas back to Syracuse.
Before they set out for Syracuse, Callirhoe pleaded for Statira's release and transportation back to Artaxerxes. She informed Chaereas that it was Statira who had befriended her while a captive in Babylon. Needless to say, Statira was ecstatic and thankful when she learned of her release. Chariton had manipulated in this scene a very nice reversal of positions (a clear instance of Aristotle's dramatic peripeteia): the noble Callirhoe was now mistress over Statira; earlier in Babylon Statira had been mistress and Callirhoe the slave. Chariton made it perfectly clear to us that the Fates or Fortune, or whoever rules the universe, was fickle and not above humiliating the powerful or below exalting the lowly. To make the return trip to Artaxerxes, Chaereas appointed one Demetrius, an acquaintance of the great king, as commander of the returning ships, and in typical Charitonian overstatement and oversimplification characteristic of Greek romantic emotionalism, said “that no one went away without gaining his request from Chaereas.”
Along with Demetrius he sent a letter for Artaxerxes explaining his actions in fighting with the Egyptians, his capture of Aradus, and now his return of Statira to Babylon. Callirhoe also had second thoughts about her earlier actions and felt now a certain responsibility toward Dionysius whom she had abhorred previously. In a letter, entrusted to Statira, secretly and without the knowledge of Chaereas, Callirhoe thanked Dionysius for rescuing her from pirates; she placed her son in his keeping to be raised by him, married to his daughter (by a previous marriage), and returned to Syracuse, when he had grown, to meet his grandfather, Hermocrates. She thus hid from Dionysius forever the fact that the boy was not his and from Chaereas the full circumstances surrounding the boy's birth and education in Babylon.
In an emotion-filled arrival, to which only a writer like Chariton can do justice, Artaxerxes welcomed home his wife, and Dionysius stoically bore his loss of Callirhoe. With his wife still in his embrace, Artaxerxes asked about Callirhoe, but, after reading Chaereas's letter, relayed to him by Demetrius, he understood that he also had lost her forever (to a Greek!): and said: “Chaereas must be a happy man. He is surely luckier than I am.”
For the second time Chaereas had successfully beaten back a set of suitors for Callirhoe's hand. It is more important for the nature of the hero in Chariton that he be a good lover, able to ward off suitors for his wife, than that he be a great warrior on the battlefield. As a composite figure of epic creatures such as Odysseus, Chaereas is a rather pale shadow. Such a comparison is necessary, if a bit unfair. Chariton was obviously comparing Cheareas with epic heroes of the past, and in the concluding scene of the novel where Chaereas reported (like a hero-rhapsode) all his exploits to the crowd assembled in the theatre at Syracuse, he was begging us to observe the new romantic hero of the age. With all the loose ends of the story tied up in Babylon, Chariton turned his attention to Syracuse where the armada of Chaereas was sailing into the harbor. One by one Chariton described the reunions of Chaereas and Callirhoe with their parents, and luxuriated in the emotions of the moment.
The homecoming of the pair of Syracusan lovers was interesting in that Chariton pictured it as the triumphant entry of a Roman general into Rome. The assembled crowds, i.e., the common people, milled about Chaereas and Callirhoe, asked questions, asked how they could help, acted solicitously about the pair's health, and as much as possible involved themselves in the actions and lives of their heroes. In a vicarious fashion they lived and relived the adventures and triumphant return. The crowds acted again like the chorus in a Greek drama and set the mood of rejoicing and jubilation at the safe return of the city's most famous residents.
Chariton, of course, was vitally interested in involving the common people in the action, as much as possible, for this same type of common people were his audience and readers. Chariton's station in life placed him much more with the common people than it did with Chaereas. The crowd rushed off to the theatre (where else to hear a drama), and pleaded with Chaereas to fetch Callirhoe and to tell the story of his adventures beginning after the death of Theron. They knew all that transpired before his crucifixion. Then they cheered with Chaereas's successes, they groaned and wept with his misadventures, and they gasped over his tales of war in Egypt and riches in Babylon. So Chariton's common people lived vicariously in the actions of Chaereas. With the crowd listening to Chaereas in the theatre, Callirhoe stepped out of the spotlight, and Chariton followed her to the temple of Aphrodite where she prayed to her protectress and benefactor. The story concluded as Callirhoe made her thank offerings to Aphrodite. The author from Aphrodisias has thus done justice to the fame of the eponymous heroine of his city. It is not with insubstantial evidence that we suggest that Chariton's novel itself is an aretology and thank offering to Aphrodite for having made Aphrodisias a prosperous and lovely city, beautiful enough even for her presence.
Notes
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Elizabeth Evans, Physionomics in the Ancient World. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society n.s. 59.5 (1969) passim and 73.
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National Geographic, June, 1972, pp. 768-69.
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See G. Steiner, “The Graphic Analogue from Myth in Greek Romance,” Classical Studies Presented to Ben Edwin Perry. Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 58 (1969), 123-37.
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Exclusus Amator: A Study in Latin Love Poetry (Madison: American Philological Association, 1956).
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A. D. Nock, Conversion, p. 200.
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See Henry Ormerod, Piracy in the Ancient World (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1924).
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On the widespread practice of abortion see W. Krenkel, “Erotica I: Der Abortus in der Antike,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock 20 (1971), 443-52.
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T. M. Rattenbury, “Chastity and Chastity Ordeals in Ancient Greek Romances,” Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society: Literature and History Section 1 (1926), 63, so argues. He is mistaken.
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G. M. A. Grube, The Greek and Roman Critics (London: Methuen, 1968), p. 259.
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Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (New York: World Publishing, 1956) [1949], p. 35.
Selected Bibliography
Those students of ancient fiction interested in a definitive bibliography will find these classical journals and periodicals admirable in every respect.
Engelmann, W. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum, 2 vols. Leipzig: Reisland, 1880. Bibliography for 1700-1878.
Klussmann, R. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum, 2 vols. Leipzig: Reisland, 1912. Bibliography for 1878-1896.
Lambrino, S. Bibliographie de l'Antiquité Classique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1951. Bibliography for 1896-1914.
L'Année Philologique, journal of classical bibliographical information, published yearly under joint sponsorship of French and American scholarly organizations.
Jahresberichte über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, succeeded in 1956 by Lustrum, both are journals of classical bibliographical information, published yearly by German scholars.
Primary Sources
1. Greek Texts:
Blake, Warren. Charitonis Aphrodisiensis de Chaerea et Callirhoe libri octo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938. Best critical edition.
D'Orville, Jacobus. Charitonis Aphrodisiensis libri octo. Amsterdam: Mortier, 1750. First critical edition; Latin translation and copious notes.
Hercher, R. Erotici Scriptores Graeci. Charitonis Aphrodisiensis libri octo, vol. 2. Leipzig: Teubner, 1859.
2. English Translations of Chariton:
Blake, Warren. Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1938. Only one available. Extremely accurate, but very wooden and uninspiring.
Becket, T. and De Hondt, P. A: The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe. Written originally in Greek by Chariton, now first translated into English, 2 vols. London: 1764. Earliest English translation.
3. Italian and French Translations:
Giacomelli, Michel Angelo. Di Caritone Afrodisieo. De' racconti amorosi di Cherea e di Callirroe libri otto. Rome, 1752, again in 1756; new edition in Parigi, 1781; new edition still in Italian in London: Richard Edward, 1792; new edition in Pisa, 1816.
Calderini, A. Le avventure di Cherea e Calliroe, Torino: Bocca, 1913.
Lacher, Pierre Henri. Histoire des amours de Chereas et de Callirhoë, 2 vols. Paris, 1763; new edition in the Bibliothèque universelle des Dames: Romans, tom. 6, 7, in Paris, 1785; new edition in Paris, 1797; reprinted in 1823.
Fallett, M. Les Aventures de Choerée et de Callirhoé. Amsterdam, 1775.
4. Translations of Other Ancient Novels:
Hadas, Moses. Three Greek Romances: Longus's Daphnis and Chloe; Xenophon of Ephesus's Ephesian Tale; Dio Chrysostom's Hunters of Euboea. New York: Doubleday, 1953.
Turner, Paul. Longus's Daphnis and Chloe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
Lamb, W. Heliodorus's Ethiopian Story. London: Dent, 1961.
Gaselee, Stephen. Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon. London: Heinemann, 1917.
Sullivan, John. Petronius's Satyricon. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
Lindsay, Jack. Apuleius's The Golden Ass. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1962.
Turner, Paul. Apollonius Prince of Tyre. London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1956.
Haight, Elizabeth. The Romance of Alexander. New York: Longmans, 1954.
Secondary Sources
1. Studies in Chariton:
Bartsch, Werner. Der Charitonroman und die Historiographie. Dissertation: Leipzig, 1934. Bartsch claims that ancient romance grew out of Hellenistic historical forms.
Blake, Warren. “Chariton's Romance—The First European Novel,” Classical Journal 29 (1933-34), 284-88. Written in A.D. 150, Chariton's novel is the first of that genre.
Calderini, A. Le Avventure di Cherea e Calliroe. Torino: Bocca, 1913. Long and detailed study of Chariton's place in Greek literature. Best philological study of Chariton and his sources.
Cobet, C. G. “Annotationes Criticae,” Mnemosyne 8 (1859), 229-303. Philological analysis of Chariton's Greek.
Gasda, Augustus. Quaestiones Charitoneae. Dissertation: Breslau, 1860. Philological analysis of Chariton's language.
Helms, J. Character Portrayal in the Romance of Chariton. The Hague: Mouton, 1966. Careful and detailed delineation of each character and type of character in the novel.
Papanikolaou, Antonios. Zur Sprache Charitons. Dissertation: Köln, 1963. Chariton's Greek indicates that he lived and wrote before the Christian era.
Perry, Ben. “Chariton and his Romance from a Literary-Historical Point of View,” American Journal of Philology 51 (1930), 93-134. A study of character delineation, irony, and humor in Chariton.
Petri, Remi. Über den Roman des Chariton. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1963. Unlike the other Greek romances, Chariton's work is not based on the rituals of mystery religions.
Rein, Edvard. Zum schematischen Gebrauch des Imperfekts bei Chariton. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Tiedealatemian Toimikuksia, 1927. By linguistic analysis Rein determines that Chariton imitated the Greek of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.
2. Studies in Ancient Romance Including Chariton:
Barnes, John. “Egypt and the Greek Romance,” Mitteilungen aus den Papyrussammlungen der österreichischen National Bibliothek n.s. 5 (1956), 29-36. Chariton is influenced by writers whose traditions go back to Alexandrian Egypt.
Braun, Martin. History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 1938. Greek Romance develops from more unsophisticated Egyptian Romances.
Giangrande, G. “On the Origins of the Greek Romance,” Eranos 60 (1962), 132-59. Alexandrian love-elegies are the source and origin of Greek Romance.
Helm, Rudolf. Der antike Roman. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1956. Review of Greek and Latin Romances.
Haight, Elizabeth. Essays on Ancient Fiction. New York: Longmans, 1936. Readable essays on ancient novels.
———. More Essays on Greek Romance. New York: Longmans, 1945.
Lavagnini, Bruno. Le Origini del Romanzo Greco. Pisa: Mariotti, 1921. Greek Romances arise in humble surroundings, based on popular local legends and myths.
McCulloh, William. Longus. New York: Twayne, 1970. A study of Longus's use of his Greek predecessors, and Longus's influence on later writers.
Merkelbach, Reinhold. Roman und Mysterium. München: Beck, 1962. Greek Romance has its origin in the ritual of Greek mystery religions.
Mittelstadt, M. C. “Love, Eros, and Poetic Language in Longus,” Fons Perennis: Saggi Critici di Filologia Classica raccolti in onore del. Prof. Vittorio D'Agostino. Torino: Baccola and Gili, 1971, pp. 305-32. Longus adapts Greek pastoral poetry to the new forms of romance.
Perry, Ben. The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. The single best book on the rise of prose fiction in antiquity. A sound grasp of the nature of Greek Romance.
Phillimore, J. S. “The Greek Romances,” in English Literature and the Classics, edited by C. S. Gordon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912, pp. 87-117. Greek romance is a product of a senile people, not of a mature civilization.
Rattenbury, R. M. “Chastity and Chastity Ordeals in the Ancient Greek Romances,” Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society: Literary and History Section 1 (1926), 59-71. When Greek Romance no longer portrayed chaste heroines, the genre died.
———. “Romance: Traces of Lost Greek Novels,” in New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, edited by J. U. Powell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933, pp. 211-57. Scholars must search early Egyptian writings for the sources of Greek Romance.
Reardon, B. P. “The Greek Novel,” Phoenix 23 (1969), 291-309. The age of the Greek Romance is the age of the professional writer, prose fiction, and the rise of the individual.
Rohde, E. Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1914. Before Perry, the best study of Greek Romance. Now much out of date. Excellent survey of the literary borrowings by Greek Romance writers from earlier Greek works.
Schwartz, E. Fünf Vorträge über den griechischen Roman. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1943. A study of narrative literature in Greece; emphasis on the historical side of Greek Romance.
Scobie, Alexander. Aspects of the Ancient Romance. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1969. A study, particularly in Apuleius, of paradoxography. A brief history of the rise and importance of the Greek novel.
Steiner, Grundy. “The Graphic Analogue from Myth in Greek Romance,” Classical Studies Presented to Ben Perry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969, pp. 123-37. The use of myth in Romance.
Trenkner, Sophie. The Greek Novella in the Classical Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958. The adaptation of folktales and indigenous Greek stories as motifs in New Comedy and Greek Romance.
Turner, Paul. “Novels, Ancient and Modern,” Novel 2 (1968), 15-24. The genre of the novel first appeared in Greece in the first century a.d., not in England in 1700. A defense of the quality of Greek novels.
Walsh, P. G. The Roman Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. An analysis of the mixed forms which led to the creation of the Satyricon and the Metamorphoses. Parenthetical statements about Greek novels.
Weinreich, Otto. Der griechische Liebesroman. Zürich: Artemis, 1962. Short history of Greek Romance, particularly stressing Heliodorus.
Wolff, Samuel. The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1912. The influence of certain Greek Romances on early English writers of fiction.
Two books unavailable for this study should be cited here: Tomas Hägg, Narrative Technique in Ancient Greek Romances. Stockholm: Acta Instituti Atheniensis Regni Sueciae, VIII, 1971; and Karl Kerenyi, Der Antike Roman. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971.
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