The Gymnosophists through their leader Sisimithres refused to witness human sacrifice and foretold that this one would never be consummated. Chariclea begged them to stay and hear her case. (She had recognized Sisimithres’ name as that of the one who had given her to Charicles at Catadupa). Chariclea declared that she was a native, not a foreigner, and produced her fillet and her jewels, among them the mystic ring, Pantarbé. Sisimithres narrated his part in her story. Hydaspes was puzzled over how he could have a white child, but Sisimithres explained that Persinna at the time of conception had fixed her eyes on a picture of the naked, white Andromeda. When the picture was brought in as evidence, Chariclea’s resemblance to its Andromeda was found startling. Moreover a birthmark of a black ring around Chariclea’s arm attested her black blood.
The people now refused to have Chariclea sacrificed, but the fate of Theagenes still hung in the balance. Chariclea begged that if he were to be sacrificed, she might perform the deed. (Apparently she planned to carry out a kind of suicide pact.) Hydaspes thought his daughter was insane and sent her into a tent with her mother while he received ambassadors and their gifts of victory. His nephew Meroebus brought a mighty athlete. Hydaspes as a joke gave him in return an elephant, but also promised him the hand of Chariclea. The Axiomitae presented a giraffe, an animal so strange that it terrified some of the natives. Moreover, one bull and two horses broke their fetters and dashed madly around the inside of the circle of guards. Theagenes mounted another horse, pursued the bull, wore it out and finally downed it. The enchanted spectators now demanded that he be matched with the champion Meroebus. Him too he vanquished. Oroondates crowned Theagenes as victor, but nevertheless prepared to sacrifice him.
At that moment ambassadors from Syene arrived with a letter from Oroondates. He begged that a young woman captive be sent to him with her father who was one of the ambassadors. This was Charicles. He recognized Theagenes and accused him of having stolen his daughter at Delphi. Theagenes revealed that Chariclea was the one demanded. Sisimithres told the rest of the story. Chariclea rushing out of the tent begged Charicles to forgive her elopement. Persinna told Hydaspes that she had learned that Chariclea was betrothed to Theagenes.
Sisimithres speaking not in Greek but in Ethiopian for all the people to hear ordered Hydaspes to submit to the will of the gods who had saved the two young lovers and who did not approve of human sacrifice and exhorted him to end human sacrifices forever. So Hydaspes asked the people to observe the will of the gods and to sanction the marriage of Theagenes and Chariclea. This they did. Then Hydaspes consecrated the two as priest and priestess of the Sun and the Moon and on their heads he placed the mitres which he and Persinna had worn as symbols of their offices. Thus was fulfilled the oracle:
“In regions torrid shall arrive at last;
There shall the gods reward their pious vows,
And snowy chaplets bind their dusky brows.”
Then a great procession escorted them to Meroe there to fulfill the more mystic parts of wedlock.
In this brief re-telling of Heliodorus’ long story, certain striking features of his structure appear. Geography and ethnography are important as in the other novelists. The eastern basin of the Mediterranean is the center of the adventures, the district which for centuries was the scene of the conflict for power between many nations. As in Xenophon, many geographical details are given, often with little accuracy.[110] As Maillon points out, imagination and fantasy falsify the historical and geographical allusions. Heliodorus gathers everything that can satisfy the taste for the strange and the marvellous. At a time when the critical spirit was so little developed in the historians, a writer of romance would naturally produce marvellous narratives and vague descriptions. Heliodorus confuses the Ethiopia of Herodotus with that of the Ptolemies and imagines an Ethiopian empire which did not exist during the domination of Egypt by the Persians.[111] As in Chariton, the superiority of the Greeks over the barbarians is part of the author’s faith.
In the development of the plot Heliodorus makes his set more unified, less cinematic than Xenophon had done. The scene of action lies almost entirely in Egypt with a shift to Ethiopia for the final climax. This Egyptian set is to be sure varied by different local scenes: the Nile, an island village in its delta, towns such as Chemmis, Memphis, Syene and Philae, the battle-fields of Bessa and Elephantine, but nearly the whole plot develops in Egypt. The exceptions are in the sub-plot presented in Cnemon’s narrative of his life-history which is laid in Athens, and in Calasiris’ long account of his visit to Delphi. These however are clearly set off as insets in the unity of the Egyptian scene.