Before this recital, however, had been brought to a close, Nausicles,[[61]] the master of the house, returns, and the cause of his absence is explained. An Athenian mistress whom he had brought from Greece had fallen into the hands of the freebooters; and Nausicles, having procured the aid of a body of Persian troops from the governor of the district, had proceeded against the buccanier settlement in order to recover her. On reaching the island, however, they find only Theagenes and Chariclea, Cnemon and Thermuthis having just started on their voyage of discovery; and Nausicles, disappointed of finding her whom he sought, (and who was no other than the faithless Thisbe, slain, as above related, in the battle,) conceived the idea of claiming Chariclea in her place by way of indemnity; while Theagenes was sent off to Memphis by the Persian officer, who deemed that his beauty and noble bearing would make him an acceptable addition to the household[[62]] of the Satrap Oroondates. The lovers are thus again separated, and Chariclea is in despair; but, on arriving at the house of Nausicles, she is of course immediately recognised and reclaimed by Calasiris. Cnemon, who seems to have as extraordinary a genius for sudden friendships as the two heroines in the "Rovers," marries the fair daughter of Nausicles after a few hours' courtship, and at once sets sail with his father-in-law for Greece, having ascertained from him that the detection of his enemies had now made his return safe:—And Calasiris and Chariclea, disguised as beggars, set out in search of the lost Theagenes. That luckless hero had, meanwhile, been re-captured on his road to Memphis, by his, old friend Thyamis, who, having escaped (it does not exactly appear how) from the emissaries of his treacherous brother, with whom the attack on the island proves to have originated, is now at the head of another and more powerful body of the buccanier fraternity, in the district of Bessa. He receives Theagenes with great cordiality, and, having beaten off an attack from the Persian troops, takes the bold resolution of leading his lawless followers against Memphis itself, in order to reclaim his right to the priesthood, while Oroondates is engaged on the southern frontier in withstanding an invasion of the Ethiopians. Arsace, the wife of the satrap, who is acting as vice-regent for her husband, unprovided with troops to repel this sudden incursion, proposes that the two brothers shall settle the ecclesiastical succession by single combat; and a duel accordingly takes place under the walls of Memphis, in which Petosiris is getting considerably the worst of it, when the combat is interrupted by the arrival of Chariclea and Calasiris, who thus witnesses the spectacle foretold by the oracle—(the dread of seeing which had driven him into voluntary exile)—his two sons aiming at each other's life. The situation is a well-conceived one, and described with spirit. Calasiris is recognised by his penitent sons, and himself resumes the priesthood, the contested vacancy in which had been occasioned only by his absence and supposed death. The lovers are received as his guests in the temple of Isis, and all seems on the point of ending happily, when Calasiris, as if the object of his existence had been accomplished in the fulfilment of the oracle, is found the same night dead in his bed.
The loss of their old protector soon involves them in a fresh maze of troubles. Thyamis, indeed, whose elevation to the high priesthood seems to have driven his former love for Chariclea out of his head, still continues their friend; but Arsace, the haughty consort of the satrap, who is represented as a princess of the royal blood of Persia, and a prototype of Catharine of Russia in her amours, has already cast her eyes on Theagenes, whose personal attractions seem on all occasions to have been as irresistible by the ladies as those of the fair partner of his wanderings by the other sex.[[63]] Under pretence of removing them from the temple during the period of mourning for Calasiris, they are lodged in the palace of the satrapess, where the constancy of the hero is exposed to a variety of perilous temptations, but comes forth, of course, unscathed from the ordeal. The love of ladies thus rejected has been prone, in all ages and countries, particularly in Egypt since the days of Yusuf and Zuleikha,[[64]] to turn into hatred; and Arsace is no exception to this long-established usage. Theagenes is accordingly thrown into a dungeon, and regularly bastinadoed under the superintendence of a eunuch, in order to instill into him proper notions of gallantry; while an attempt on the life of Chariclea, whom Arsace has discovered not to be his sister, fails through the mistake of an attendant, who delivers the poisoned goblet intended for her to Cybele, the princess's nurse and confidante, and the contriver of the plot. Chariclea, however, is condemned on this pretext to be burned alive as a poisoner; but the flames recoil before the magical influence of the gem Pantarbé, which she wears in her mother's ring; and before Arsace has time to devise any fresh scheme for her destruction, the confidential eunuch of Oroondates, to whom the misdeeds of his spouse had become known, arrives from the camp of Syene with orders to bring the two captives to the presence of the satrap. Arsace commits suicide in despair; but the escort of the lovers, while travelling along the banks of the Nile, is surprised by a roving party of Ethiopians; and they are carried to the camp of Hydaspes, by whom they are destined, according to Ethiopian usage, to be hereafter sacrificed to the sun and moon—the national deities of the country, as first-fruits of the war. A long account is now introduced of the siege and capture of Syene by the Ethiopians, and the victory of Hydaspes over Oroondates, which occupies the whole of the ninth book; and though in itself not ill told, is misplaced, as interrupting the narrative at the most critical point of the story. Peace is at last concluded between the belligerents; and Hydaspes, returning in triumph to his capital of Meroë, holds a grand national festival of thanksgiving, at which the victims are to be sacrificed. The secret of her birth had, however, been revealed to Chariclea by Calasiris before the elopement from Delphi, and when on the point of being led to the altar, she suddenly throws herself at the feet of the Queen Persina, and, producing the well-remembered token of the fillet and the ring, claims the protection of her parents. The recognition of the mother is instantaneous, but Hydaspes, who had always believed that the child to which his queen gave birth had died in early infancy, remains incredulous, till his doubts are removed by the evidence of Sisimithres, who identifies Chariclea as the child which he had confided, ten years before, to the care of Charicles. At this juncture Charicles himself appears, having come to Egypt to reclaim his lost child from Calasiris, and thence having been sent on by Oroondates to the court of Ethiopia:—and the denouement, as far as the heroine is concerned, is now complete. Theagenes, however, still remains doomed, and Hydaspes seems unwilling to relinquish his victim; but, after an interval of suspense, during which he incidentally performs various exploits rather unusual in a man in momentary expectation of death,[[65]] he is spared, at the vehement intercession of Persina, to whom Chariclea has revealed her love for the young Thessalian. The voice of the people, raised in acclamation at this deed of clemency, is ratified by the approbation of Sisimithres and the Gymnosophists, and all difficulties are now at an end. The betrothal of Theagenes and Chariclea is publicly announced; and, at the termination of the festival, they return in state into the city, with Hydaspes and Persina, as the acknowledged heirs of the kingdom.
Such is the general outline of the story, which, as will have been perceived, is far from deficient either in incident or in strikingly imagined situations; but the merit of the conceptions is too often marred by the mismanagement of the details, and the unskilful arrangement of the different parts of the narrative. Thus all the circumstances of the early history of Chariclea, and the rise of the mutual affection between her and Theagenes, and of their adventurous flight, are made known through a long episode awkwardly put into the mouth of a third person, who himself knows great part of them only at second-hand, and voluntarily related by him to one with whom his acquaintance is scarcely of an hour's standing. This mode of narration, in which one of the characters is introduced (like the prologue in an old play) to recount the previous adventures of the others, is in itself at all times defective; since it injures the effect of the relation by depriving it of those accessory touches which the author, from his conventionally admitted insight into the feelings and motives of his characters, is privileged to supply: whereas a speaker in the first person must necessarily confine himself, unless when narrating his own adventures, to the points which have fallen under his personal observation. In the present instance it is, moreover, needless, as the whole episode might as well have been told in the ordinary manner. The endless captures and recaptures of the lovers, who are continually bandied about from one set of pirates, robbers, or plundering soldiers to another, become, at length, wearisome from repetition; and the dramatic force of the conclusion, which would otherwise be highly effective, is weakened by the knowledge which the reader possesses, that Chariclea is all along aware of the secret of her own parentage, and that she has only to produce the fillet and ring in order to ensure her deliverance from the dreadful doom which appears to threaten her. The improbability of some of the incidents, and the awkward manner in which others are brought about, have been much objected to by modern critics, and it must be admitted that some better way might be found to dispose of personages whose agency was no longer needed, than to cut them off by sudden death, like Calasiris, or by the bite of a venemous serpent, like Thermuthis. But the mechanical art (as it may almost be called) of constructing a story was then in its infancy; and the violations of probability which have been laid to the charge of Heliodorus, are, after all, much less flagrant than those of Achilles Tatius, and infinitely less so than those of any of the other Greek writers of romance; nor would many of our modern novelists, perhaps, gain much by the comparison.
The characters are of very different degrees of merit. Theagenes is as insipid and uninteresting as one of Walter Scott's well-behaved heroes; and his entreaties to Chariclea, in the final scene, no longer to delay making herself known to her parents, betray a most laudable instinct of self-preservation. The deeds of strength and valour which he is occasionally made to perform, seem rather to arise from the author's remembering that his hero must do something to support the character, than to result naturally from the situations in which he is placed, and his love of decorum is carried, on all occasions, to an absurd extent of prudery. "Le heros de la pièce est d'une sagesse qui a donné lieu à des railleries assez plaisantes," says Bayle; though the instance usually cited—a box on the ear, which he gives Chariclea, when she approaches him in her beggar's dress, under the walls of Memphis, and attempts to throw herself into his arms, is scarcely a fair one, as he does not at the time recognize his beloved under her unbecoming disguise. The character of Chariclea herself, however, makes ample amends for the defects of that of her lover; and this superiority of the heroine, it may be observed, is almost invariable in the early Greek romances. The masculine firmness and presence of mind which she evinces in situations of peril and difficulty, combined at all times with feminine delicacy, and the warmth and confiding simplicity of her love for Theagenes, attach to her a degree of interest which belongs to none of the other personages; and her spontaneous burst of grateful affection, on recognizing, at Meroë, the voice of her foster-father, Charicles, is expressed with exquisite tenderness. Of the subordinate characters little need be said. Charicles is a mere impersonation of benevolence and parental love; and Cnemon seems to have been introduced for little else than to tell his own long story, and listen to that of Calasiris in return. The old Egyptian priest, however, is a sketch of considerable merit. Like Scott's Peregrine Touchwood, though abundantly zealous at all times to serve his friends, he cannot find it in his heart to take any but the most round-about way of doing so; but he is never disconcerted by any of the untoward results of his schemes, and relates to Cnemon, with the most perfect self-complacency, the deceit which he had practiced on his confiding host, Charicles, in helping Theagenes to steal away his adopted daughter, and the various scrapes into which his protegés had fallen under his guidance. He has, moreover, pet theories of his own on the phenomena of the Nile, the cause of the roughness of the Ionian Sea, and various other matters, in which he indoctrinates Cnemon par parenthèse: he is an enthusiastic admirer and constant quoter of Homer, whose Egyptian birth (at Thebes the hundred-gated) he maintains with all the zeal of a Highlander defending the authenticity of Ossian; and, on the whole, we cannot but think the author has scarcely used him well, in not allowing him to live to see his efforts crowned with success, and to enjoy the honours which would doubtless have been heaped upon him at the court of Ethiopia.
The author appears to take especial delight in accounts of costumes, processions, sacrifices, &c.; the details given of which are often valuable in an antiquarian point of view; and his information upon these subjects, as well as of the manners of the country in which the scene is laid, as far as our knowledge of the present day will enable us to decide, is extremely correct. One of the most curious morceaux of this sort, is a minute description of the complete armour for horse and man, worn by the élite of the cavalry in the army of Oroondates; and which, though probably taken from that used by the troops of the Sassanian monarchs cotemporary with Heliodorus, is equally applicable to the period at which the scene is laid; since numerous passages in ancient authors show, that from the earliest time up to the Mohammedan conquest, the Persian nobles and heavy cavalry used panoply as impenetrable as the European chivalry of the middle ages. Among the other scattered traits of manners, it will be remarked as singular, according to the ideas of the present day, that open piracy and robbery are neither spoken of as disreputable, nor as attaching any slur to those who exercised them; insomuch, that the notoriety of Thyamis, having been a chief of freebooters, is not regarded as any obstacle to his assumption of the high-priesthood. But this, it will be found, was strictly in accordance with the manners of the ancient Greeks, among whom piracy was so far from being looked upon in any other light than that of an honourable profession, that Nestor himself, in the third book of the Odyssey, asks his guests, Telemachus and Mentor, as an ordinary question, whether business or piracy was the object of their voyage. But the Bucoli (herdsmen or buccaniers,) over whom Thyamis held command, should probably, notwithstanding their practice of rapine, be regarded not so much as robbers as in the light of outlaws, who had taken refuge in these impenetrable marshes from the yoke of the Persians; and their constant conflicts with the Persian troops, as well as the march of Thyamis upon Memphis, confirm the opinion that this was the intention of the author. That these vast marshes of the Delta were in fact, throughout the period of Persian rule in Egypt, the strongholds of Egyptian independence, admits of abundant demonstration from the Greek historians:—it was here, in the mysterious island of Elbo, that Amyrtæus, (called by Thucydides "the king of the marshes,") held out after the reconquest of Egypt by Megabysus, B.C. 454, "for they could not take him on account of the great extent of the marsh; besides which, the marshmen are the most warlike of all the Egyptians."[[66]] This view of the subject has, at least, the advantage of placing Thyamis in a more respectable light than that of a mere marauder; though his mode of life under either supposition, would be considered, according to modern notions, as a strange training for the sacerdotal office.
Few if any works of fiction have enjoyed so long and widely diffused a celebrity, as the Ethiopics. Whatever credit may be attached to the story preserved by Nicephorus, of the deposition of Heliodorus from his see, it at least affords evidence of the high popularity of the work, even during the lifetime of the author; and we have the personal testimony of Nicephorus himself, that in his own time, five centuries later, it was still regarded with undiminished favour. Down to the fall of the Greek empire, its style and incidents continued to furnish a model to all the wretched scribblers who attempted the composition of romances—nor was its fame confined within the limits of the language in which it was written. It found a place in the famous library of Matthias Corvinus at Buda; and the dispersion of that celebrated collection on the capture of the city by the Ottomans after the battle of Mohácz, in 1526, first made it known to western Europe: the first edition by Obsopœus,[[67]] (printed at Basle in 1534,) having been taken in MS. which fell into the possession of a soldier on this occasion. Among the literati of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its popularity seems almost to have equalled that which it had enjoyed in its native country. Tasso, as has already been noticed, borrowed from it the episode of Clorinda—and Racine (one of whose early productions was also founded upon it) was, in his younger days, so enthusiastic an admirer of it, that when the volume was taken from him by his tutor at Port-Royal, he replied that it mattered little, as he knew the whole by heart! The numerous translations, however, which have appeared in various languages, particularly in French and English, are little calculated to add, by the merits of their execution, to the favour of the work; one English poetical version in particular, by Lisle, published in 1527, is one of the most precious specimens of balderdash in existence—a perfect literary curiosity in its way! Of the others, we need mention only the French one of Amyot, (1558,) not for its merits, but from the author's having been rewarded by Henry II. of France with the nomination to an abbey—as if in tardy compensation to Heliodorus, in the person of his literary representative, for the see from which the authorship is said to have caused his expulsion.
The exploits of these and other paladins of the Kaianian dynasty, the heroic age of Persian history, are now known to us principally through the Shah-Nameh of Ferdousi, a poem bearing date only at the beginning of the eleventh century; but both this and its predecessor, the Bostan-Nameh, were founded on ballads and ραψωδιαι of far distant ages, which had escaped the ravages of time and the Mohammedans, and some of which are even now preserved among the ancient tribes of pure Persian descent, in the S.W. provinces of the kingdom. Sir John Malcolm (History of Persia, ii. 444, note, 8vo. ed.,) gives an amusing anecdote of the effect produced among his escort by one of these popular chants.