But these lapses into over-refined phrases, laborious symmetry and decorative rhetoric are less of a barrier to a modern reader than is his syntax. His sentence structure in general is not paratactic as is so much of Chariton and of Xenophon, but complex. Moreover these complex sentences are often exceedingly long with a kind of agglutinative accumulation of participial constructions that demands re-reading for comprehension. Yet he can be simple and pellucid in rapid narrative and emotional crises as the final Book shows. And it is just because much of his narrative is so exciting that we fall into resentful criticism when Homer nods in dull drowsiness.[133]
Although we cannot date the Aethiopica more exactly than somewhere in the third century (probably in the first half), the romance reflects in general the life of the times in which Heliodorus lived. The east daubs its brilliant colors upon the story as the power of oriental rulers impinges on the life of the Greeks. The absolutism of the Great King of Persia is the model for minor courts of viceroys and their queens who demand of their subjects and captives the obeisance that they must render to their Super-Ruler. Military officers and eunuchs are the descending steps in this hierarchy of tyranny.
Adventures center in war and travel. Cities and tribes revolt. Heroes must display military virtues. Merchants, priests and women travel widely, braving the dangers of storms at sea and of attacks by pirates. Women have found a new freedom and are leaders in courage and endurance as the story of Chariclea shows. Women take part in banquets and religious ceremonies as well as in adventures. Romantic friendship between men and admiration of young men’s beauty are a counterpart of the famous relation between Hadrian and Antinous. Slaves and captives may become court favorites or be subjected to indignities, imprisonment, torture.
The times are characterized too by an eager search for the new, the unfamiliar, by scientific curiosity, by an interest in art. So descriptions of strange countries and peoples, accounts of strange adventures and sights are part of the novelist’s stock in trade. He describes vividly the island city in the Nile’s delta, its water-ways through the reeds, its cave refuge with its secret entrance; or he gives a technical account of the engineering processes by which a city is besieged by threat of inundation; or he pictures such a curiosity in the animal world as a giraffe. Works of art are featured with admiring care: Theagenes’ embroidered robe and its clasp, Chariclea’s robe and its girdle, the amethyst ring with its carved scene, the painting of Perseus and Andromeda, nude, shining, chained to the rock.
And part of the picture of the times centers in man’s quest for new values for life itself. Ethical standards for conduct are weighed and emphasized in contrasts between Greeks and barbarians. Aspiration towards the higher life is portrayed in the worship of the gods and its ceremonials and in the philosophical discussions in which the priests take part. The Gymnosophists and Calasiris share a large humanity.
The primary interests of the romance, however, far outweighing its philosophy and its adventures, is love. Once more two enchanting young people meet at a festival of a god, fall in love at first sight, plight their troth, accompany each other through world-wide adventures, preserve their faith and their chastity and for their piety are at last united in perfect happiness. Theagenes and Chariclea join Chaereas and Callirhoe, Habrocomes and Anthia, Clitophon and Leucippe, Daphnis and Chloe in the undying annals of true love. And the reader closes Heliodorus’ novel with Cnemon’s comment:
“I am at feud with Homer, father, for saying that love, as well as everything else, brings satiety in the end; for my part I am never tired either of feeling it myself, or hearing of its influence on others; and lives there the man of so iron and adamantine an heart, as not to be enchanted with listening to the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea, though the story were to last a year?”[134]
V
THE ADVENTURES OF LEUCIPPE AND CLITOPHON
BY ACHILLES TATIUS
“Every romance,” says Aristide Calderini in writing of the Greek novels, “represents successively a new advance or a new type in its genre. Now the closest affiliation is with history, now with pastoral poetry, now with philosophy. While certain common elements persist, the general pattern of the whole changes; often the content is varied; often the limits.”[135]
The variation within this new form of literature is richly illustrated by the novel we are now to study, the one which was probably written last of the extant Greek Romances as Chariton’s was the first. This is The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon of Achilles Tatius.