Achilles Tatius apparently was enamored of wall-paintings. He describes with gusto five and alludes to another. The subjects of all are myths. Two are familiar types in the frescoes found at Pompeii: Perseus and Andromeda, Achilles in women’s clothes among the daughters of King Lycomedes. One description of a painting opens the romance, a votive painting of Europa in the temple of Astarte at Sidon.[212] Sidon is the first word of the novel and this story is introduced as a tribute to the city where the first scene was laid, for the stemma on the coins of Sidon is Europa on the bull, pictured almost as Tatius presents her. The picture is described in vivid detail even to the flowers in the meadow and the shifting colors of the sea. Posture and garb of Europa are vividly sketched in words for he sees her “seated on the bull like a vessel under way, using the veil as a sail.” The keynote of the picture and the point of its application for Tatius is the little flying Eros who leads the bull and laughs back at the transformed Zeus. “Look,” said Clitophon, “how that imp dominates over land and sea.” A young man standing by exclaims that he too has suffered much from love. These exclamations are the point of departure for the recounting of love adventures.
In Book III there is an equally long description of a painting by Evanthes in the temple of Zeus Casius.[213] The subjects are Andromeda and Prometheus and they seem to have been paired because both were chained to rocks, menaced by beasts and rescued by Argive heroes, Perseus and Hercules. Design, color, emotion are all described vividly and charmingly, but there is no point in the introduction of the paintings. The description of them is simply a purple patch of fine writing.
In Book V the description of a painting in a studio depicting the rape of Philomela had “a hidden significance.”[214] The whole story was represented: “the rape of Philomela, the violence employed by Tereus, and the cutting out of her tongue ... the tapestry, Tereus himself, and the fatal table.” Ugly realism, terror, insane laughter characterize the treatment. The hidden meaning is that the sudden sight of the picture is a bad omen threatening disaster which makes Clitophon postpone his journey to Pharos. The delay gives him a chance to tell the whole story of Philomela to Leucippe, for all women love myths.
Small works of art also are described lovingly and minutely: a rock-crystal goblet carved in a grape-vine,[215] a jewelled necklace.[216] These enrich the setting as scattered flowers enrich the backgrounds of Renaissance tapestries. It is as though Achilles Tatius like Corinthian potters or Renaissance artists had such an horror vacui that empty spaces in design were intolerable and interstices had to be crowded with beautiful small objects. This is due in part to an observant eye that saw and recorded detail. The specific and the graphic are his tools for clarity. The story of the attempted amour of Clitophon and Leucippe is vivified by a plan of the house as clear as the drawn plans in many modern detective stories.[217] The garden in which Clitophon’s love-making is once set is described elaborately with its porticoes, trees, vines, flowers, spring and birds.[218] The storm at sea in its violence and coloring is as lurid as a Turner, and its effects on the shipwrecked passengers are described with a true psychology of terror and panic.[219]
The long description of the storm is justified by the vital significance of the shipwreck for the plot, but what of the write-ups of the wonders of the world which are constantly introduced? The beautiful description of Alexandria with its pharos is brief and pardonable as this was the birthplace of the author. But only the love of novelty of the times and bad taste seem to explain the perpetrations of wordy descriptions of the Nile, the phoenix, the hippopotamus, the elephant and the crocodile![220] The romance at times tends to become a natural history. Wolff becomes so out of patience with “the damnable iteration” of irrelevancies in Clitophon and Leucippe that he can hardly calm himself to analyze them in suggestive groups: irrelevancies of plot, of characterization, of setting, of science and pseudo-science. The only justification for such irrelevancies Wolff finds in “a common basis with paradox. Both defeat expectation.... In both its phases,—irrelevancy and paradox—this element of the unexpected, prominent in the form as in the matter of the Greek Romances, deserves attention. To turn aside to the irrelevant; to strain suspense by retarding the expected outcome; to introduce by the way—all unlooked for—as many bizarre, ironical, paradoxical situations and dazzling phrases as possible; and finally to ‘spring’ an issue which is itself a surprising combination of opposites—all these would seem to be consistent results of adopting the unexpected as the principle of the genre.”[221]
After all this is said in criticism of Achilles Tatius’ exuberant style and unlimited digressions, we go back to his fundamentals: a clear plot, living human beings, vivid settings for them, and exciting adventures. Achilles Tatius knew his age and for its disillusions he wrote with ironic tolerance of human frailty and for its weariness he emphasized the excitement of adventure and the stimulus of the unexpected. To me his successes chalk up to a longer list than his failures and I end with Phillimore:
“What a strange thought—that an Alexandrian with the names of Achilles Tatius (what a pair!), atticizing con furore in the reign of Diocletian, should write a story which delighted the Byzantine Middle Ages and can still be read with interest and amusement!”[222]
VI
THE LESBIAN PASTORALS OF DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
BY LONGUS
The very title of Longus’ romance shows a new departure. These Lesbian Pastorals in four books form the only pastoral romance in Greek that is extant. Compared with the other romances that of Longus is unique in type, characters, setting and structure. Theocritus is the pervading influence. Most of the leading characters are not nobles but serfs. Even the young hero and heroine are brought up as shepherds until at the end they are recognized as children of the great. City life plays little part in the plot. The changing seasons make the set. Only a few adventures disturb the serenity of the hills and pasturelands: an onset of pirates, a local war and (of course!) the usual kidnappings. Country gods are worshipped. The music of Pan’s pipes is the accompaniment of the story.
Of the author we know nothing. Longus “is not mentioned by any other writer before the Byzantine age, and himself mentions no historical name or event.”[223] From internal evidence of his novel we see that he knew Mytilene well; he was familiar with Greek and Roman literature and with works of art; he had received a sophist’s training in the rhetorical schools. He wrote probably in the second century A.D., before Achilles Tatius.