Melitte the widow of Ephesus is the most elaborately drawn character in the romance. There is even a long personal description of her: she is as beautiful as a statue with skin like milk, cheeks roses, hair thick, long, golden, and about her the radiance of Aphrodite. Clitophon admits he saw her with pleasure. Indeed she is so magnetic that the kisses she was pleased to bestow on him stirred him.[161] She knew what she wanted and how to get it. During four months she had to woo Clitophon though she was rich and young and her husband has been lost at sea. Finally since Clitophon was convinced that Leucippe was really dead, he yielded and agreed to marry her, though on condition that they should not be united until they arrived at Ephesus. She was as passionate as Clitophon was cold. On the ship she made ardent love to him while he begged her to philosophize on love’s nature. After Clitophon secretly received Leucippe’s letter, he had to pretend illness to postpone the fulfillment of her desires. Then Melitte sent for her so-called Thessalian slave Lacaena (really Leucippe) and begged her to concoct a philtre that would arouse Clitophon’s feeling. She is very outspoken about the fact that Clitophon seems made of iron or wood; that indeed she seemed to love a statue.[162] And she had the ability to express to Clitophon every feeling she had without inhibition and in most picturesque language. At her wedding breakfast in Alexandria she punned merrily about the postponement of their union. “I’ve heard of a cenotaph but never before of a cenogam.”[163] The bellying sail on the ship she compared to a pregnant woman’s body; indeed she converted the whole ship into symbols of marriage.[164] She also compared herself to thirsty Tantalus standing by a river but not allowed to drink. She could match Clitophon’s arguments and his quibbles did not deceive her: “You are playing the sophist, dearest!” she commented. When from the discovery of Leucippe’s letter to Clitophon and her husband’s safe return she knew that she had lost Clitophon, she visited him secretly in prison and poured out on him all her wrath and all her passion. Her denunciation of him as eunuch, hermaphrodite, senile nonentity shifted to adoration; and passion finally concentrated into so ardent and well argued an appeal for one embrace that she was victorious. Clitophon admitted ironically that love had taught her rhetoric and that he was vanquished, so he gave the remedy to a sick soul and even on the prison floor enjoyed her![165]
Melitte was no less subtle and plausible in the speech in which she made her peace with her enraged husband Thersander: Clitophon was only one of many refugees whom she aided in memory of her husband lost at sea; indeed she had helped Clitophon to find his wife.[166] When Thersander challenged her by the ordeal of the water of the Styx, Melitte at once accepted the test on a quibble because her husband had demanded from her an oath that she had not fulfilled the rites of Aphrodite with the stranger during the time while he himself was abroad. And it was just that unfortunate stipulation which makes her last appearance in the romance unforgettable. She is led out of the water of the Styx by the judge, proved by indisputable ordeal a chaste woman! Achilles Tatius has won his readers by this time to rejoice in Melitte’s vindication. For besides charm and cleverness he has given her humanity and generosity. She was always merciful to her slaves and was kindness itself to Lacaena-Leucippe.[167] After she had won her desire, she contrived the escape of Clitophon from prison dressed in her clothes, and financed by her. She did not even forget the jailer, but gave him money to go away for a time to avoid punishment.[168] Clitophon omitted in his final narrative of his adventures his succumbing to Melitte[169] but he had the grace to admit to himself her charms.
It is clear that in the ethics of the romance there is a new point of view. Achilles Tatius is definitely less idealistic than Chariton in his treatment of the erotic theme. As Rattenbury has pointed out:
“Achilles Tatius seems to have felt that the fetish of chastity in the average romance was absurd, and tries to humanize romance by creating characters that are reasonably, not unreasonably, moral.... Leucippe comes through safe and sound, it is true, but it was by good luck rather than by good intention.” Clitophon is chaste as far as men can be and succumbs to Melitte only once. “Achilles Tatius,” continues Rattenbury, “did not exactly parody his predecessors, but it is suggested that by attempting to humanize romance he not only showed up the absurdities of the usual stories, but was also responsible for the overthrow of the literary form.... Achilles Tatius seems to have been to Greek Romance what Euripides was to Greek Tragedy. He broke down the conventions, and drove the essential and permanent elements to seek refuge elsewhere. The erotic element did not die, but found an outlet in ‘Love-Letters,’ a contemporary literary form of which Aristaenetus was an exponent in the fifth century, but the idealized love story of a superhumanly modest hero and heroine vanished, and Greek Romance hibernated until it was revived some centuries later by the Byzantine writers.”[170]
Not inconsistent with Tatius’ slightly ironic treatment of amours is his emphasis on the virtue of pity and his tendency to introduce long philosophical discussions of conduct or the nature of love. Clitophon’s story moves an Egyptian general to pity, tears and aid, for
“When a man hears of another’s misfortune, he is inclined towards pity, and pity is often the introduction to friendship; the heart is softened by grief for what it hears, and gradually feeling the same emotions at the mournful story converts its commiseration into friendship and the grief into pity.”[171]
In the midst of Thersander’s attempt to rape the weeping Leucippe, there is a long digression on tears and the pity they arouse.[172] Clinias appeals to the court not to put to death “a man who deserves pity rather than punishment.”[173] Leucippe, disguised as a slave, begs Melitte as a woman to pity a woman and to pity one once free, now through Fortune’s will a slave.[174]
Tatius has presented also in Callisthenes a picture of a noble young hero who was converted from the wildness of youth to self-control, respect, patriotism and service by chivalrous love.[175] And this portrait of Callisthenes becomes an embodiment of an ideal latent in the philosophical discussions of love which flavor the romance. “Love,” says Clitophon, “inspired by beauty enters the heart through the eyes.”[176] Later Clinias tells Clitophon that he is greatly fortunate in being able to see his lady, for when eyes of lovers meet, the emanations of their beauty wed in a spiritual union that transcends bodily embrace.[177] Clitophon, wooing Leucippe in a fair garden, discourses to her on the power of love over birds, creeping things, plants, even iron which responds to the magnet, over water (for Arethusa and Alpheus wed).[178] To cheer up Menelaus and Clinias on ship-board and divert them from their sorrows, Clitophon starts a philosophic discussion on love of women compared with love of men, untranslatable in its openness.[179] Menelaus takes up the cudgels for the love of men, probably much to Clinias’ satisfaction for he had previously denounced to his dear Charicles the love of women who, if they love, kill and had arraigned for his indictment Eriphyle, Philomela, Sthenoboea, Chryseis, Briseis, Candaules’ wife, Helen, Penelope, Phaedra, Clytemnestra![180]
The worship of the kiss is featured in an enchanting story of a magic charm breathed on the lover’s lips[181] and a fantastic assertion that if a maiden’s kiss is stolen, the maid is raped.[182] Moreover a code of love is presented, almost as detailed as Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, in instructions given by Clinias to Clitophon,[183] by the slave Satyrus to Clitophon,[184] by Clitophon in discussion with Menelaus.[185] A delightful part of this Art of Love is telling the Lady love-stories, for all womankind is fond of myths.[186] Magic too plays its part in the technique of love, for incantation works a charm for a lover;[187] philtres may bewitch the indifferent;[188] and ordeals test chastity.[189]
Closely akin to the philosophical discussions of love, its power, its art, its magic is the worship of Aphrodite, the mother of Eros. Yet there are few references to her cult. Her dominance is hinted: initiation into love makes Aphrodite the most powerful of gods.[190] Melitte wishes to have her nuptials on the sea, for Aphrodite is the sea’s daughter and she wishes to propitiate her as the goddess of marriage by thus honoring the sea, her mother.[191] Clitophon at the end of his separation from Leucippe prays to Lady Aphrodite to forgive the long delay in their union, for it was due to no insult to her and he begs her blessing on their marriage.[192] The story of the ordeal by the water of the Styx[193] is a merry tale of rivalry between Artemis and Aphrodite for a young girl’s worship in which Aphrodite made young Rhodopis break her oath of chastity but Artemis changed her into a spring in the very cave where she lost her virginity. Yet Achilles Tatius presents no such deep-seated reverence for the goddess of Love as that which permeates Chariton’s romance.