Elizabeth Hazelton Haight

“ Hero and heroine are so beautiful that they can be compared only to great works of art: Chaereas resembles the pictures and statues of Achilles, Nireus, Hippolytus, Alcibiades. Callirhoe is now Aphrodite incarnate, now Artemis. Love is enflamed by their great beauty and enters through their eyes at their first sight of each other. Chaereas is proud and arrogant because of his looks and so passionate that he is unrestrained in his anger when he believes Callirhoe false. The kick which he gave his bride is a blot on his character which the reader finds harder to condone than Callirhoe did. ”

“ For the function of the Greek romance in the second and third centuries A.D., when the universal rule of the Roman Empire gave scant scope for great oratory or tragedy under the blessings of an enforced peace, was to entertain and to edify. The Greek romance substituted for the adventures of the mind new themes: the excitements of passion, the interests of travel, and the consolations of religion. It was lifted out of the ranks of the trivial and the second-rate by its great central theme: that there is such a thing as true love; that weighed in the balance against it all the world is nothing ”

“ Notable first of all are the shifting scenes, for the action moves rapidly from Syracuse, to Miletus, to Caria, to Babylon, to the sea, to Tyre, to the island of Aradus and then at last back to Syracuse after the full circle of adventures. The contrast between the free Greek city of Syracuse and the oriental kingdoms is constantly emphasized, but it is the love of adventure for adventure’s sake that spices the narrative. ”

“ And when the Great King is to decide whether Chaereas or Dionysius is to be her husband, all Babylon becomes a court-room as the people discuss the rival partners. At the end of the romance, all the harbor of Syracuse is filled with men to watch the ship come in, and when Chaereas and Callirhoe are revealed on it, the crowd bursts into tears. ”

“ Summer brings the adventures of the trap-ditch and the Tyrian pirates. Autumn has its vintage and the menace of the Methymnaean roisterers. Winter houses and separates the lovers until Daphnis makes bold to go fowling. Spring returning, Daphnis finds a purse and wins his shepherdess’ hand. Summer passes in tending the flocks and making love. Then as autumn again brings the vintage the lord of the manor comes to his estate. There follows the recognition of Daphnis as his son and soon Chloe is found to be as noble. ”

“ No less important is the usual Greek peripeteia, or reversal of fortune, for hero and heroine are repeatedly reunited only to be separated anew; together or separately they are rescued from one catastrophe only to be plunged into a worse danger. Calasiris’ long narrative resembles not only the minstrel’s songs at the court of Alcinous of old far-off divine events, but also the messenger’s speeches in tragedy wherein events too horrible or too complicated to be presented on the stage are told with a realism which starts the imagination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the True History is a satire of travellers’ tales, this epitome, Lucius or Ass, is primarily a satire of magic and magic rites. Just as in the True History not only epic poets and historians were parodied, but philosophers came in for their share of ironic comment, so in Lucius or Ass satire is directed not merely against magicians, but also against corrupt priests and frail women. The satire is of the earth, earthy, very near the folk-story from which it may have originated. Lucius or Ass is Everyman in his credulity, gullibility and bestiality. ”

“ There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon, where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth does not wax spectre-pale and die ”

“ Religion plays so important a part in the romance that it demands a full treatment. Chariton’s novel is dominated by two cults: the worship of the abstract goddess Fortune, the worship of the goddess of love, Aphrodite. At the end of Book I Callirhoe, just after she has been sold as a slave, in a soliloquy, upbraids cruel Fortune for all her troubles, for the goddess made her lover her murderer, surrendered her to tomb-robbers and now has let her be sold as a slave. Again Callirhoe, when she finds that she is pregnant, reproaches Fortune for letting her bear a child to be a slave. ”

“ The god of the vintage must always have his share of honor in the country.
So because the gods are omnipresent in country life, religion is as much a part of the set of the romance as is locality. For the monotony which might result from the single background of the great estate near Mytilene in Lesbos is varied not only by descriptions of fair garden, pastures, trees, hills, seashore, but by the mystic vicinity of the cave of the Nymphs, the pine-tree of Pan, the grapevine of Dionysus and over all the unseen flying Eros shooting his darts. ”

“ In diction and style, the marks of the true historian are frankness and truth, lucidity and simplicity. The preface should be in proportion to the subject. “The body of the history ... is nothing from beginning to end but a long narrative; it must therefore be graced with the narrative virtues—smooth, level, and consistent progress, neither soaring nor crawling, and the charm of lucidity.” “Brevity is always desirable.” ”

“ As the Cyrenaic is too drunk to answer questions, Hermes describes his virtues: he is pleasant to live with, congenial to drink with, a companion for amours, and an excellent chef! There was no bid for him!
Next two are put up together, the one who laughs and the one who cries. The first explains his laughter on the ground that all men and all their affairs are ridiculous; all things are folly, a mere drift of atoms. The weeper pities men because their lives are foreordained and in them nothing is stable; men themselves are mere pawns in the game of eternity and the gods are only immortal men. ”

“ The other writers of Greek romance begin at the beginning with a detailed account of the hero and heroine, their family, their background. Heliodorus in true epic style plunges us in medias res with his startling opening scene of a seascape where a ship rides at anchor, treasure-laden but not manned, where the shore is littered with the remains of a banquet, but strewn with corpses, where a young man lies wounded with a beautiful maiden 78 dressed as a goddess ministering to him. The reader is as amazed and puzzled at the sight as are the pirates who are peering down from the hills. ”

“ If you follow my advice, first of all I shall show you many works of men of old, tell you their wondrous deeds and words, and make you conversant with almost all knowledge, and I shall ornament your soul, which concerns you most, with many noble adornments—temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardour towards all that is sublime ”

“ The motive is love of fame though he claims that he wishes thus to teach men to despise death and endure torture. He plainly hopes that myths and a cult will arise around his memory. Indeed Theagenes has quoted a prophecy to that effect, but Lucian can match that oracle with another which orders all the Cynic’s disciples to imitate him even to the last leap into the flames. ”

“ Robbers broke in the tomb for the treasure just as Anthia awoke. They carried her off with them to Alexandria. No one else knew she was alive. Habrocomes heard from an old woman the story of Anthia’s death, of the pillaging of her tomb and the carrying off of her body. So leaving Hippothoos he started off alone by ship for Egypt hoping to find the brigands who had committed such sacrilege. The bandits had already sold Anthia to a rajah named Psammis, but Anthia saved herself from his amorousness by telling him that she was a consecrated priestess of Isis so he respected her. ”

“ When Chaereas is produced alive in the trial, he argues valiantly for the retention of his wife with some telling thrusts at Chaereas, but finally when he has lost his love, he bears his grief like a man, having remarkable self-control, treasuring Callirhoe’s affectionate letter as true solace, and devoting himself to her son. ”

“ Résumés of adventures are helpfully presented by important characters at different stages in the narrative. And after a hundred hair-breadth escapes, journeys end in lovers’ meetings as the oracle of Apollo had reassuringly predicted at the beginning of the romance.
In spite of the use of these conventions, the story has a lively and compelling interest. We are led to share the admiration and marvel of the characters themselves. We are moved by the pity which they often feel. Their piety induces in us reverence. We agree with their preference for Greeks rather than barbarians. ”

“ BY ACHILLES TATIUS
“Every romance,” says Aristide Calderini in writing of the Greek novels, “represents successively a new advance or a new type in its genre. Now the closest affiliation is with history, now with pastoral poetry, now with philosophy. While certain common elements persist, the general pattern of the whole changes; often the content is varied; often the limits.” [135]
The variation within this new form of literature is richly illustrated by the novel we are now to study, the one which was probably written last of the extant Greek Romances as Chariton’s was the first. ”

“ Our own age in America, bleeding internally from the agony of a war which it is powerless to end, fearful for its own menaced security, demands from the cinema not only temporary oblivion and excitement, but encouragement to believe that love lasts even unto death, that heroes ride again and are victorious, and that finally, by the help of God, the right will conquer. ”