Such is the story which Phillimore characterizes as “a breathless succession of improbable incident.”[143] The settings move with the same cinematic rapidity which Chariton employed: from Sidon to Berytus, to the sea and shipwreck, to Pelusium and Alexandria, to Ephesus and the great court scene, to Byzantium and back again to Tyre.
In one point particularly the structure of the plot differs from Chariton’s and indeed from the plots of all the other Greek Romances. The author in the beginning hands over the story to a narrator, the hero, Clitophon, who then tells the events in the first person. Very soon, however, the reader has forgotten this device: so many other characters are given the floor to relate their own tales. And at the end the author too has forgotten this beginning, for Clitophon does not round up his narrative with a polite farewell. He does not even explain how he happened to be at Sidon where he started the tale. And the author does not express his appreciation of the entertainment Clitophon has given him.[144]
The chief interests of the romance are again love, adventure and religion. There are two love-stories of primary interest instead of one. Yet the bulk of the plot turns on adventure rather than on sex or worship. And delight in adventure adds to the typical travellers’ tales a flaming curiosity which demands description of many strange novelties.
In general the technical devices common to all the romances are used. There is much conversation. There are many soliloquies. Clitophon upbraids himself for swerving from Calligone to Leucippe.[145] Later he bemoans Leucippe’s fate when she has been kidnapped by the blacks.[146] Leucippe, sold as a slave, laments her whole sad love-story while lustful Thersander is eavesdropping outside the door.[147] Clitophon, on hearing in prison the false story that Leucippe has been murdered by Melitte, voices his horror over her death and over the fact that he had kissed her slayer.[148] These soliloquies are employed to reveal the intense feelings of hero and heroine at emotional crises.
Three letters are used. The first is a brief business letter which serves to develop the plot, for in it Sostratus writes to his brother Hippias that he is sending his daughter Leucippe and his wife Panthea to him for safe-keeping until the war between the Byzantines and the Thracians is over.[149] The other two are love-letters. One is Leucippe’s to Clitophon telling him that she has been sold as a slave, begging for ransom money, wishing him happiness in his coming nuptials with Melitte, and assuring him she is still a virgin. The other is Clitophon’s answer declaring that he has “imitated her virginity, if there be any virginity in men,” begging her not to judge him until he can explain all, but to pity him.[150] Leucippe’s letter is found by Melitte and helps motivate the plot in its emotional aspects, for it works Melitte up through jealousy and despair to such passionate ardor that she persuades Clitophon to sleep one night with her.[151]
Oaths are not important in the structure of the plot. Once Leucippe swears to her father by Artemis that she has told him a true story about being still a maid.[152] Dreams are frequent and are significant. Four are reported which are vital factors in the plot. Clitophon’s father dreams that while he is conducting the wedding ceremonies of his son and Calligone the torches are extinguished. This dream leads him to hasten the marriage so distasteful to Clitophon and it would have been consummated at once had not Calligone been kidnapped by Callisthenes under the impression that she was Leucippe.[153] Then Clitophon had persuaded Leucippe to let him spend the night with her and with the aid of Satyrus was already in her bedroom. Leucippe’s mother who had just had a dream that a robber with a naked sword was playing the part of Jack the Ripper with her daughter, rushed in and interrupted the amour.[154] Later on, Leucippe and Clitophon on the same night have similar dreams. A goddess appears and warns each that their love must not be consummated until the goddess decks the bride and opens her temple to the bridegroom. This apparition makes them postpone the rites of Aphrodite.[155] In Book VII Sostratus, Leucippe’s father, sees in a dream an apparition of Artemis who tells him that he will find Leucippe and Clitophon in Ephesus. He goes to Ephesus then on a sacred embassy and finds that Artemis does not lie.[156]
This tendency to a repeated use of the same device for forwarding the plot is seen in greater extravagance and exaggeration in the use of apparent deaths. Leucippe is supposed to meet violent death three times, twice before the eyes of her lover, once in vivid narrative told to him in prison. First she is sacrificed by brigands by being disembowelled before an altar. Second she is beheaded on the deck of a ship by black pirates and her head tossed into the ocean. Third she is murdered by an assassin hired by Melitte.[157] In the first two cases ghastly details make the executions seem real, but Leucippe always survives and reappears with a plausible but exotic story. Surely in this exaggeration Achilles Tatius is using thinly veiled satire of the device of improbable reappearances in the Greek romance.
The same exuberance appears in the use of the forensic speeches, of long, mythological narratives and of wordy descriptions. All these will be considered in the study of the style of the romance. Two more technical devices of the plot must be mentioned here: the use of résumés and the usual happy ending. Book VIII is crowded with résumés: Clitophon tells all his adventures to Sostratus and the priest of Artemis. Leucippe relates to Sostratus how the pirates decapitated another woman in her place. Finally Sostratus relates to his daughter and to Clitophon the romance of Callisthenes and Calligone.[158] The romances of both pairs of lovers, Clitophon and Leucippe, Callisthenes and Calligone, are concluded by happy weddings. And among the leading characters only Melitte suffers final disappointment. Achilles Tatius ironically grants her at least one memorable embrace on a prison floor!
The character drawing is much less elaborate than the plot. While plot and counterplot of the two romances interplay, the young hero Clitophon and the beautiful Leucippe are more or less conventional figures who move glamorously, weeping, fainting, dreaming, voyaging, through preposterous adventures. But Callisthenes, the secondary hero, is far more interesting than Clitophon because his character shows startling development. And Melitte, though she plays the part of temptress, is a great human creation.
In Book II Callisthenes first appears as a wealthy orphan, who is notoriously dissipated and extravagant. Wishing to marry beauty and having a strange streak of romanticism he asked Sostratus for the hand of the beautiful Leucippe although he had never seen her. Rejected by Sostratus as a suitor because of his bad reputation he plotted vengeance in his willful and violent way. He journeyed to Tyre, saw Calligone at a festival, mistook her for Leucippe, fell in love at first sight, hired some gangsters to kidnap her and sailed off with his prize.[159] Callisthenes does not reappear until in the end of Book VIII Sostratus tells the story of his reform.[160] On the voyage Callisthenes found himself madly in love with Calligone, revealed to her that he was no pirate but a wealthy Byzantine noble, offered her honorable marriage and a large dowry, and promised to respect her chastity as long as she desired. At Byzantium, love transformed him so that he appeared courteous, virtuous, self-controlled. He showed great respect for his elders. He was no longer extravagant, but became philanthropic. He gave large contributions to the state. He trained for military service and won distinction in actual warfare. In this changed guise he secured Sostratus as an advocate to persuade Hippias to give him the hand of Calligone, whose chastity he had scrupulously respected. Eros thus salvaged Callisthenes and then rewarded him.