Many of the letters are from women; and in these, especially, Alciphron reveals the daily life of the Athenians. We see the demimonde at their toilet, with their mirrors, their powders, their enamels and rouge-pots, their brushes and pincers, and all the thousand and one accessories. Acquaintances come in to make a morning call, and we hear their chatter,--Thaïs and Megara and Bacchis, Hermione and Myrrha. They nibble cakes, drink sweet wine, gossip about their respective lovers, hum the latest songs, and enjoy themselves with perfect abandon. Again we see them at their evening rendezvous, at the banquets where philosophers, poets, sophists, painters, artists of every sort,--in fact, the whole Bohemia of Athens,--gather round them. We get hints of all the stages of the revel, from the sparkling wit and the jolly good-fellowship of the early evening, to the sodden disgust that comes with daybreak when the lamps are poisoning the fetid air and the remnants of the feast are stale.
We are not to look upon the letters of Alciphron as embodying a literary unity. He did not attempt to write one single symmetrical epistolary romance; but the individual letters are usually slight sketches of character carelessly gathered together, and deriving their greatest charm from their apparent spontaneity and artlessness. Many of them are, to be sure, unpleasantly cynical, and depict the baser side of human nature; others, in their realism, are essentially commonplace; but some are very prettily expressed, and show a brighter side to the picture of contemporary life. Those especially which are supposed to pass between Menander, the famous comic poet, and his mistress Glycera, form a pleasing contrast to the greed and cynicism of much that one finds in the first book of the epistles; they are true love-letters, and are untainted by the slightest suggestion of the mercenary spirit or the veiled coarseness that makes so many of the others unpleasant reading. One letter (i. 6) is interesting as containing the first allusion found in literature to the familiar story of Phryne before the judges, which is more fully told in Athenaeus.
The imaginary letter was destined to play an important part in the subsequent history of literature. Alciphron was copied by Aristaenetus, who lived in the fifth century of our era, and whose letters have been often imitated in modern times, and by Theophylactus, who lived in the seventh century. In modern English fiction the epistolary form has been most successfully employed by Richardson, Fanny Burney, and, in another genre, by Wilkie Collins.
The standard editions of Alciphron are those of Seiler (Leipzig, 1856) and of Hercher (Paris, 1873), the latter containing the Greek text with a parallel version in Latin. The letters have not yet been translated into English. The reader may refer to the chapter on Alciphron in the recently published work of Salverte, 'Le Roman dans la Grèce Ancienne' (The Novel in Ancient Greece: Paris, 1893). The following selections are translated by the present writer.
FROM A MERCENARY GIRL
PETALA TO SIMALION
Well, if a girl could live on tears, what a wealthy girl I should be; for you are generous enough with them, any-how! Unfortunately, however, that isn't quite enough for me. I need money; I must have jewels, clothes, servants, and all that sort of thing. Nobody has left me a fortune, I should like you to know, or any mining stock; and so I am obliged to depend on the little presents that gentlemen happen to make me. Now that I've known you a year, how much better off am I for it, I should like to ask? My head looks like a fright because I haven't had anything to rig it out with, all that time; and as to clothes,--why, the only dress I've got in the world is in rags that make me ashamed to be seen with my friends: and yet you imagine that I can go on in this way without having any other means of living! Oh, yes, of course, you cry; but you'll stop presently. I'm really surprised at the number of your tears; but really, unless somebody gives me something pretty soon I shall die of starvation. Of course, you pretend you're just crazy for me, and that you can't live without me. Well, then, isn't there any family silver in your house? Hasn't your mother any jewelry that you can get hold of? Hasn't your father any valuables? Other girls are luckier than I am; for I have a mourner rather than a lover. He sends me crowns, and he sends me garlands and roses, as if I were dead and buried before my time, and he says that he cries all night. Now, if you can manage to scrape up something for me, you can come here without having to cry your eyes out; but if you can't, why, keep your tears to yourself, and don't bother me!
From the 'Epistolae,' i. 36.