[6] ] The main street, according to Diodorus, was "forty stadia in length, and a plethrum (100 feet) in breadth; adorned through its whole extent by a succession of palaces and temples of the most costly magnificence. Alexander also erected a royal palace, which was an edifice wonderful both for its magnitude and the solidity of its architecture, and all the kings who have succeeded him, even up to our times, have spent great sums in further adorning and making additions to it. On the whole, the city may be fairly reckoned as the first in the world, whether for magnitude and beauty, for traffic, or for the greatness of its revenues."—"It comprehended," says Gibbon, speaking of it under the Roman Emperors, "a circumference of fifteen miles, and was peopled by 300,000 free inhabitants, besides, at least, an equal number of slaves."
Choereas, himself a native of the city, who had been called upon to take service in the late expedition against the buccaniers, does the honours of the locale to his new friends:—but he is not proof against the fatal charms of Leucippe, and resorts to the old expedient of procuring her abduction by a crew of pirates while on an excursion to the Pharos. The vessel of the captors is, however, chased by a guard-boat, and on the point of being taken, when Leucippe is brought on deck and decapitated by the pirates, who throw the headless body into the sea, and make their escape; while Clitophon stays the pursuit, to recover the remains of his mistress for sepulture. Clitophon now returns to Alexandria to mourn for his lost love, and is still inconsolable at the end of six months, when he is surprised by the appearance of Clinias, whom he had supposed to have perished when the vessel foundered at sea. Clinias relates that having, like the others, floated on a piece of the wreck, he had been picked up by a ship, which brought him back to Sidon; and as his absence from home had been so short as not to have been generally noticed, he had thought it best not to mention it, especially as he had no good account to give of his fellow-fugitives. In the mean time, as Calligone is given up for lost, Sostratus, who has heard of his daughter's attachment to Clitophon, but not of the elopement, writes from Byzantium to give his consent to their union; and diligent enquiries are made in every direction for the runaway couple, till information is at length obtained that Clitophon has been seen in Egypt. His father, Hippias, is therefore preparing to set sail for Alexandria to bring back the truant, when Clinias, thinking it would be as well to forewarn Clitophon of what had occurred in his absence, starts without delay, unknown to Hippias, and reaches Alexandria before him.
The intelligence thus received throws Clitophon into fresh agonies of grief and remorse: he curses his own impatience in carrying off Leucippe, when a short delay would have crowned his happiness; accuses himself anew as the cause of her death; and declares his determination not to remain in Egypt and encounter his father. His friends, Menelaus and Clinias, in vain endeavour to combat this resolve; till the over-ready Satyrus finds an expedient for evading the difficulty. A young "Ephesian widow," named Melissa, fair and susceptible, who has lately lost her husband at sea, and become the heiress of his immense wealth, has recently (in obedience to the above-mentioned invariable law of Greek romance) fixed an eye of ardent affection on Clitophon; and it is suggested by his friends that, by marrying this new inamorata, and sailing with her forthwith on her return to Ephesus, his departure would at once be satisfactorily explained to his father on his arrival, and he might return to his friends at Tyre after their emotions at the tragical catastrophe of Leucippe had in some measure subsided. After much persuasion, Clitophon accedes to this arrangement, with the sole proviso that nothing but the fiançailles, or betrothal, shall take place in Egypt, and that the completion of the marriage shall be deferred till their arrival in Ephesus—on the plea that he cannot pledge his faith to another in the land where his beloved Leucippe met with her fate. This proposal, after vehement opposition on the part of the amorous Ephesian, is at last agreed to; and Clitophon, with his half-married bride, sets sail for Ephesus, accompanied by Clinias; while Menelaus, who remains in Egypt, undertakes the task of explaining matters to Hippias. The voyage is prosperously accomplished; and Melissa becomes urgent for the formal solemnization of the nuptials; while Clitophon continues to oppose frivolous delays which might have roused the anger of a lady even of a less ardent temperament. Her affection, however, continues undiminished; but Clitophon, while visiting, in her company, her country residence in the neighbourhood of the city, is thunderstruck by fancying that he recognizes, in the disfigured lineaments of a female slave, said to be a Thessalian of the name of Lacoena, who approaches Melissa to complain of the ill-treatment she has received from the steward, Sosthenes, the features of his lost Leucippe. His suspicions are confirmed by a billet which Leucippe conveys to him through Satyrus; and his situation becomes doubly perplexing, as Melissa, more than ever at a loss to comprehend the cause of his indifference, applies to Leucippe, (whom she supposes to possess the skill of the Thessalians in magic,) for a love-charm to compel his affections, promising her liberty as a reward. Leucippe is delighted by the proof which this request affords of the constancy of her lover; but the preparations for his marriage with Melissa still proceed, and evasion appears impossible; when at the preliminary banquet, the return of her husband, Thersander, is announced, who had been falsely reported to have perished by shipwreck. A terrible scene of confusion ensues, in which Thersander,
—— "proceeding at a very high rate,
Shows the imperial penchant of a pirate."
Clitophon gets a violent beating, to which he submits with the utmost tameness, and is thrown into fetters by the enraged husband; and though Melissa, on certain conditions, furnishes him with the means of escape from the house in the disguise of a female, he again unluckily encounters Thersander, and is lodged in the prison of Ephesus. Leucippe, meanwhile, of whose unrivalled charms Thersander has been informed by Sosthenes, is still detained in bondage, and suffers cruel persecution from her brutal master; who, at last, having learned from an overheard soliloquy her true parentage and history, as well as her attachment for Clitophon, (of her relations with whom he was not previously aware,) forms a scheme of ridding himself of this twofold rival, by sending one of his emissaries into the prison, who gives out that he has been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Leucippe, who has been dispatched by assassins employed by the jealous Melissa. Clitophon at once gives full credence to this awkwardly devised tale, and determines not to survive his mistress, in spite of the remonstrances of Clinias, who argues with much reason, that one who had so often been miraculously preserved from death, might have escaped also on the present occasion. But Clitophon refuses to be comforted; and when brought before the assembly in the forum to stand his trial, on the charge, (apparently, for it is not very clearly specified,) of having married another man's wife, he openly declares himself guilty of Leucippe's murder, which he affirms to have been concerted between Melissa and himself, in order to remove the obstacle to their amours, and now revealed by him from remorse. He is, of course, condemned to death forthwith, and Thersander is triumphing in the unexpected success of his schemes, when the judicial proceedings are interrupted by the appearance of a religious procession, at the head of which Clitophon is astonished by recognizing his uncle Sostratus, the father of Leucippe, who had been deputed by the Byzantines to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, at the Temple of Diana, for their victory over the Thracians. On hearing the state of affairs, he furiously denounces the murderer of his daughter; but at this moment it is announced that Leucippe, whom Thersander had believed to be in safe custody, has escaped, and taken refuge in the Temple of Diana!
The interest of the story is now at an end; but much yet remains before the conclusion. Thersander, maddened at the prospect of being thus doubly baulked of his prey, throws gross aspersions on the purity of Leucippe, and even demands that Clitophon, in spite of his now manifest innocence, shall be executed in pursuance of the previous sentence! but the high-priest of Diana takes the lovers under his protection, and the cause is adjourned to the morrow. Leucippe now relates the circumstances of her captivity:—the Alexandrian pirates, having deceived their pursuers by beheading another captive dressed in her garments, had next fallen out with and murdered their base employer Choereas, and finally sold her for two thousand drachmas to Sosthenes: while from Sostratus, on the other hand, Clitophon receives tidings that his long-lost sister Calligone is on the point of marriage to Callisthenes, who, it will be remembered, had carried her off from Tyre by mistake for Leucippe, (having become enamoured of the latter without ever having seen her,) and on the discovery of his error, had made her all the amends in his power by an instant transfer of his affections. Thus everything is on the point of ending happily; but the sentence passed against Clitophon still remains unreversed, and Thersander, in the assembly of the following day, vehemently calls for its ratification. But the cause of the defendant is espoused by the high-priest, who lavishes on the character and motives of Thersander a torrent of abuse, couched in language little fitting his sacred character; while Thersander shows himself in this respect fully a match for his reverend antagonist, and, moreover, reiterates with fresh violence his previous charge against Leucippe. The debates are protracted to an insufferably tedious length; but the character of Leucippe is at last vindicated by her descent into a cavern, whence sounds of more than human melody are heard on the entrance of a damsel of untainted fame. The result of this ordeal is, of course, triumphant; and Thersander, overwhelmed with confusion makes his escape from the popular indignation, and is condemned to exile by acclamation as a suborner of false evidence; while the lovers, freed at length from all their troubles, sail for Byzantium in company with Sostratus; and after there solemnizing their own nuptials, return to Tyre to assist at those of Callisthenes and Calligone.
The leading defects observable in this romance are obviously the glaring improbability of many of the incidents, and the want of connexion and necessary dependence between the several parts of the story. Of the former—the device of the false stomach and theatrical dagger, by means of which Menelaus and Satyrus (after gaining, moreover, in a moment the full confidence of the buccaniers,) save the life of Leucippe when doomed to sacrifice, is the most flagrant instance; though her second escape from supposed death, when Clitophon imagines that he sees her head struck off by the Alexandrian pirates, is almost equally liable to the same objection; while in either case the deliverance of the heroine might as well have been managed, without prejudice either to the advancement or interest of the narrative, by more rational and probable methods. The too frequent introduction of incidents and personages not in any way connected with, or conducive to the progress of the main plot, is also objectionable, and might almost induce the belief that the original plan was in some measure altered or departed from in the course of composition. It is difficult to conceive for what purpose the character of Calligone, the sister and fiancée of Clitophon, is introduced among the dramatic personae. She appears at the beginning only to be carried off by Callisthenes as soon as Clitophon's passion for Leucippe makes her presence inconvenient, and we incidentally hear of her as on the point of becoming his bride at the conclusion; but she is seen only for a moment, and never permitted to speak, like a walking gentlewoman on the stage, and exercises not the smallest influence on the fortunes of the others. Gorgias is still worse used: he is a mere nominis umbra, of whose bodily presence nothing is made visible; nor is so much as his name mentioned, except for the purpose of informing us that it was through his agency that the love-potion was administered to Leucippe, and that he has since been killed in the action against the buccaniers. The whole incident of the philtre, indeed, and the consequent madness of the heroine, is unnatural and revolting, and serves no end but to introduce Choereas to effect a cure. But even had it been indispensable to the plot, it might have been far more probably ascribed to the Egyptian commander Charmides, with whose passion for Leucippe we were already acquainted, and who had, moreover, learned from Menelaus that he had little chance of success by ordinary methods, from the pre-engagement of the lady to Clitophon.
Nor are these defects compensated by any high degree of merit in the delineation of the characters. With the exception of Leucippe herself, they are all almost wholly devoid of individual or distinguishing traits, and insipid and uninteresting to the last degree. Menelaus and Clinias, the confidants and trusted friends of the hero, are the dullest of all dull mortals—a qualification which perhaps fits them in some measure for the part they are to bear in the story, as affording some security against their falling in love with Leucippe, a fate which they, of all the masculine personages, alone escape. Their active intervention is confined to the preservation of Leucippe from the bucoli by Menelaus, and a great deal of useless declamation in behalf of Clitophon before the assembly of Ephesus from Clinias. Satyrus, also, from whose knavish ingenuity in the early part of the tale something better was to be expected, soon subsides into a well-behaved domestic, and hands his master the letter in which poor Leucippe makes herself known to him at Ephesus, when she imagines him married to Melissa, with all the nonchalance of a modern footman. Clitophon himself is hardly a shade superior to his companions. He is throughout a mere passive instrument, leaving to chance, or the exertions of others, his extrication from the various troubles in which he becomes involved: even of the qualities usually regarded as inseparable from a hero of romance, spirit and personal courage, he is so utterly destitute as to suffer himself to be beaten and ill treated, both by Thersander and Sostratus, without an attempt to defend himself; and his lamentations, whenever he finds himself in difficulties, or separated from his ladye-love, are absolutely puerile. As to the other characters, Thersander is a mere vulgar ruffian—"a rude and boisterous captain of the sea,"—whose brutal violence on his first appearance, and subsequent unprincipled machinations, deprive him of the sympathy which might otherwise have been excited in behalf of one who finds his wife and his property unceremoniously taken possession of during his absence; while, on the other hand, the language used by the high-priest of Diana, in his invectives against Thersander and his accomplices, gives but a low idea of the dignity or refinement of the Ephesian hierarchy. But the female characters, as is almost always the case in the Greek romances, are far better drawn, and infinitely more interesting, than the men. Even Melissa, though apparently intended only as a foil to the perfections of Leucippe, wins upon us by her amorous weakness, and the invincible kindness of heart which impels her, even when acquainted with the real state of affairs, to protect the lovers against her husband's malpractices. Leucippe herself goes far to make amends for the general insipidity of the other characters. Though not a heroine of so lofty a stamp as Chariclea, in whom the spirit of her royal birth is all along apparent, she is endowed with a mingled gentleness and firmness, which is strongly contrasted with the weakness and pusillanimity of her lover:—her uncomplaining tenderness, when she finds Clitophon at Ephesus (as she imagines) the husband of another, and the calm dignity with which she vindicates herself from the injurious aspersions of Thersander, are represented with great truth and feeling, and attach a degree of interest to her, which the other personages of the narrative are very far from inspiring.