26. I still kept silent, my head bowed to the ground, and after a little while she went on in changed mood: “What I have just, said, my dearest, has been the utterance of anger and grief; what I am now going to say comes from the prompting of love. Though I be angry, yet I burn; though I be insulted and despised, still I love. Come to terms now and pity me; no longer do I ask for length of days and a long life’s wedded love, which I was unhappy enough to dream of, in your company. Now one embrace will be enough for me. I ask but for a little medicine for my long disease; quench but for a moment, the fire with which I burn. If I raged against you without restraint, forgive me, my dear; an unhappy love becomes actually mad. I know that I am lost to all sense of shame — but I feel no shame in speaking openly of Love’s mysteries: I speak to one who is already an adept in them. You know what I suffer; other men have never seen that god’s darts, and none can clearly discern the shots of his bow, save that lovers alone recognize the wounds suffered by their kind. I still have this day, and this day only, and I claim the fulfilment of your promise. Remember Isis, respect the oaths you swore before her altar; if you had been willing to be my lover, as there you swore, I would have recked nought of ten thousand Thersanders. If, now you have found Leueippe, marriage with another woman is no longer possible for you, I willingly grant you even this. I know I am beaten; I ask for nothing more than I am able to obtain. All sorts of miracles happen to my hurt: even the dead come to life. Cruel sea, to let me sail safely over thee, and then, after bringing me safe home, to work my deeper destruction by twice giving up thy dead. It was enough for Leucippe to be alive for Clitophon to desist from his grief; and now here is that savage, Thersander, with us. You have been beaten, Clitophon, before my eyes, and I was unhappy enough not to be able to help you. Did blows rain upon that face, ye gods? Surely Thersander must have been blind. Now I beseech you, my lord Clitophon — you are the lord of my heart — surrender yourself to me now for the first and last time: the few short moments will be to me like many days. If you agree to this, may you never lose your Leucippe, may she never even falsely (As when she was first apparently ripped up by the buccaneers and afterwards apparently decapitated by the pirates.) seem to die again. Do not despise my love: through it all your great happiness has come. It has given you back Leucippe; for if I had never fallen in love with you, if I had not brought you hither, Leucippe would still have been dead as far as you are concerned. Yes, Clitophon, there are such things as the gifts of Fortune! When a man finds a treasure, he always honours the place of its discovery; he puts up an altar, he brings an offering for sacrifice, he puts a garland upon the ground; you have found with me the treasure of love, and do you do nothing to requite the good it has brought you? Imagine that Love is speaking thus to you through me: ‘Grant this favour to me, Clitophon, who will lead thee into my mysteries: do not depart and leave Melitte without initiation; her fire too is from me.’ Then listen how I have taken care for all that concerns you. Soon shall you be loosed from these bonds, however little Thersander likes it, and you shall find a place of refuge for as long as you desire with a foster brother of mine. There in the morning wait for Leucippe to come to you; she said that she was going to spend the night in the country looking for herbs, in order to cull them by moonlight. (The moon was almost a necessity for conjuring of this kind (Theocritus ii. 10), and herbs plucked by its light far more efficacious (Horace, Sat. I. viii. 21). — In modern magic herbs gathered at night on St. John’s Eve are very powerful. See also note (1) on p. 289.)That was how she tricked me: for I asked her, thinking her a woman from Thessaly, for a philtre to be used upon you. What else could I do after all my failures but have recourse to herbs and magical drugs? That is the only resort for hopeless lovers. As for Thersander (I tell you this to assure you on this point too) he flung away from me out of the house in a rage, and has hurried to visit one of his friends; I cannot but think that some god has sent him away from here in order that I may be successful in gaining from you this last boon. Then do you give yourself to me
27. After these subtle arguments — Love is a fine master of rhetoric — she loosed my bonds and kissed my hands, and placed them, first on her eyes and then upon her heart, (Lieb Liebchen, leg’s Handchen aufs Herze mein; Ach, horst du, wie’s pochet im Kammerlein? HEINE.) saying: “You see how it leaps and its flutterings betoken anguish and hope — soon may they betoken pleasure — and seems by that very leaping to cry your mercy.” As she loosed my fetters and threw her arms about me, now all in tears, I felt the claims of humanity too strong for me, and I was really afraid that the god of love would visit his wrath upon me; and besides I felt that I had regained Leucippe, and was in the near future about to be rid of Melitte, and that anything that might take place could not possibly be regarded as a marriage, but only as medicine to an aching heart. I made no attempt therefore to escape from her encircling arms, and when she embraced me closer I did not resist her embraces, and soon all happened as Love would have it; nor did we feel at all the lack of a due couch or of any of the other accessories of pleasure. Love needs no teaching other than his own, and is an admirable improviser; he can make any place a proper spot for the celebration of his mysteries. And as regards such enjoyment, that which has not been too carefully prepared is better far than the meticulously elaborated; it has in itself its own genuine and natural pleasure.
BOOK VI
1. WHEN therefore I had done my best to give Melitte her cure, I said to her: “Now you must take care to ensure my safe escape, and to perform the rest of the promise which you made me about Leucippe.”
“Do not be anxious on her account,” she answered; “you can consider that Leucippe is already yours. But do you put on my clothes, and cover your face with this garment. Melantho will shew you the way to the door, and then, just outside, there is waiting for you a young man who has instructions from me to convey you to the house where you will find Clinias and Satyrus, and Leucippe will soon be there with you.” With these words, she dressed me up to resemble herself; and then, kissing me, “How much more beautiful still,” said she, “you look in these clothes; you are like the Achilles that I once saw in a picture. (He was concealed by his mother Thetis in female attire at the court of King Lycomedes in Scyros so that he might not have to go to the Trojan war, which would be fatal to him, but was discovered by choosing a helmet and spear from among an array of gifts set out for the maidens of the court.) I wish you good luck, my dearest; keep these garments to remind you of me, and leave me yours; when I put them on I shall still have the illusion of being in your embrace.” She then gave me a hundred pieces of gold, and called Melantho, who was her serving-maid and among those whom she could entirely trust; she had been sitting at the door. On her entry, she told her the arrangements that had been made about me, and bade her come back again to her directly that I was outside the house.
2. I thus slipped out. The warder of the cell made way for me, thinking that I was his mistress, at a sign from Melantho, and I passed through the empty passages of the house to a door which did not open on to the street; and there the young man received me who had been appointed by Melitte for this service. He was a freedman, one of those who had been with us on the voyage, (The voyage from Alexandria to Ephesus.) and I had made friends with him previously. Melantho then went back and found the warder just locking the doors of the cell; she told him to open them again, and after he had complied with her request, she went in, told Melitte of my safe evasion, and called in the keeper. He, as might only be expected, when he saw this extraordinary substitution, like that of the stag for the maiden in the fable, (When Iphigenia was about to be sacrificed to Diana at Aulis, as happened with Isaac and the ram. Hercher wished to omit the comparison as the note of a scribe, but it seems to me not unlike the style of our author.) stood struck dumb. “It was no distrust in you,” said Melitte to him, “lest you should be unwilling to let Clitophon out, that made me employ this stratagem, but so that in Thersander’s eyes you might be free of all bl
ame, as one not privy to the plot. Here is a present for you of ten pieces of gold — a present from Clitophon if you choose to stay here, or journey-money if you think it would be better to take flight.” Certainly, Mistress,” said Pasion (that was the warder’s name), “I shall agree to whatever you think best.” Melitte advised him to go away for a time, and afterwards, when the relations between her and her husband were restored to tranquillity, and the latter’s rage was calmed, to return. This was the course he actually followed.
3. As for me, Fortune, as usual, was hostile to me, and contrived a new plot against me; this was no less than to bring Thersander to meet me face to face. He had been persuaded by the friend to whom he had repaired not to sleep away from home, and, after dining, he was returning to his own house. It was the monthly festival of Artemis, and the whole place was full of drunken roysterers; the whole night long the entire market-place was occupied by crowds of people. I thought that this was my only danger; I never dreamed of another worse one that had been contrived for me.
For Sosthenes, the man who had purchased Leucippe, who had been dismissed by Melitte from his post as steward of the country estate, when he heard that his master had arrived, had remained on the estate, and had sought about how he might take vengeance on Melitte. In the first place he began by telling Thersander all about me — his was the slander that led to my capture — and then he came with a plausible story that he had made up about Leucippe. Unable himself to gain possession of her for his own purposes, he adopted the character of pimp to his master, in order to widen the breach between him and Melitte. “I have bought a girl, Master,” he said, “who is beautiful, aye a perfect miracle of beauty: believe it from hearsay, as though you actually saw her. I had been keeping her for you; I had heard that you were alive, and I believed it, because I desired it to be so. However, I did not make public my belief, in order that you might be able to catch my lady in the very act, and that a worthless paramour, a foreigner too, might not have the laugh of you. Yesterday my mistress took the girl from me, and purposed to send her away, but fortune has kept her for you, so that you will be able to get possession of this fair prize. She is now at the country estate, whither she has been sent for some object or other; if you like, I can shut her up before she comes back, so that she may be at your disposal.”
4. Thersander praised him for his suggestion, and bade him act accordingly. Sosthenes therefore repaired with all haste to the country estate, and after inspecting the hut where Leucippe was to pass the night, took two of the labourers, and ordered them to employ the arts of deception upon the serving-maids who were with Leucippe by calling them away and keeping them at a distance on the pretence of having something to communicate to them; then, taking two others, when he saw that Leucippe was alone, he burst in upon her, and, after gagging her, seized her and went off in the opposite direction to that in which the maids had gone. He took her to a cottage in a secret spot, and depositing her there, spoke as follows: “I have come bringing you a mass of good fortune; see that you do not forget me when you are happy. Do not be frightened at the way you have thus been carried off, or think that it portends any harm to you; it is the means by which my master is to become your lover.” Thunderstruck at the incredible nature of her misfortune, she kept silence, while Sosthenes went off to Thersander, who was just returning home, and related what he had done, at the same time praising Leucippe’s beauty to the skies in high-flown language, with the result that the latter was excited by his words as though by some fair vision, instinct with beauty; and as the festival was going to last through the night, and it was only half a mile to the country place, he bade the steward lead on and set out to visit her.
5. I was meanwhile going on, clad in Melitte’s garments, and suddenly without any warning fell in with them face to face. Sosthenes was the first to recognize me; and, “Hulloa,” he cried, “here is the gallant coming roystering to meet us, and actually with your wife’s spoils upon him.” Now the young man who was acting as my guide was a little in front, and when he saw what was going to happen, he ran away, his fear preventing him from taking time to warn me. Thersander’s companions, when they spied me, laid hands upon me, and he himself raised so great a commotion that a crowd of the revellers collected. Thersander then took to more and more violent language, shouting all kinds of abusive terms at me, and calling me now adulterer, now thief; he then haled me off to the prison and handed me over to the constables, laying an information of adultery against me. I cared nothing for all this, the insult offered to me by the fetters and the abusive words: I felt confident that at the hearing I should be able to clear myself of the charge of adultery, and to prove that my marriage had been open and public; but I was still afflicted with fear in the matter of Leucippe, because I had not yet definitely recovered her. The mind is ever inclined to be a prophet of ill, because we are seldom successful in the presages of good fortune that we make; I had therefore no consoling thought about Leucippe, but was full of suspicions and fears. Such was my uncomfortable state of mind.
6. Thersander, after thrusting me into the gaol, started with all rapidity on his journey to Leucippe. Arriving at the cottage where she was, they found her lying on the ground and turning over in her mind what Sosthenes had said to her; the expression of her face shewed the presence together in her both of grief and fear. For I do not think that it is rightly said that the mind is entirely invisible: it can be accurately discerned in the face as in a mirror. When it is in a state of delight, it causes the appearance of joy to shine from the eyes; when in sorrow, it contracts the face in a manner that tells of the disaster that has occurred. So when Leucippe heard the doors open, and a light was struck within, she looked up for a moment, and then let her eyes drop again. Thersander, after obtaining this cursory sight of her beauty, sudden as a flash of lightning, for the chiefest seat of beauty is in the eyes, found his whole heart set on her and stood spell-bound by the sight, waiting for her to look up again at him. But as she still kept her eyes fixed on the ground, “Why look down, maiden?” said he. “Why waste the loveliness of your eyes upon the earth? Rather let it sink deep into mine.”
7. On hearing these words, she burst into tears; and her tears too had a peculiar beauty of their own. Tears set off the eye and make its character more prominent: if it be ugly or coarse, they make it less pleasing still; if it be handsome, the pupil jet-black and surrounded by the white into which it insensibly shades, it becomes like a rich fountain spring when it is bedewed with tears. The brine of the tear-drops coming down into the white of the eye makes it rich and shining, while the black takes on from the same cause a deep purple hue; it comes to resemble a violet, while the rest of the eye is like a narcissus, and the tears which are rolling within the eye almost seem to smile. Such were Leucippe’s tears, which overcame her very grief and made it into beauty; if they could have solidified after they had fallen, the world would have possessed a new variety of amber. (Ordinary amber was fabled to be derived from the tears of the Ήeliades weeping for their dead brother Phaethon.) When Thersander saw her thus, he was struck dumb with her beauty and maddened by the sight of her grief, and his own eyes filled with tears. Indeed tears are by their very nature exceedingly provocative of a beholder’s pity; those of a woman in particular have the more magic in their effects in proportion as they are the more abundant; be the woman fair, and he that sees her lover, his eye too cannot remain unmoved, but copies her weeping. Since, in the case of the beauteous, their beauty is in great part in their eyes, it therefore proceeding thence to the eyes of the beholder makes its home there and draws forth the fount of tears. Both — the beauty and the tears — are received into the lover’s being: the beauty he takes to his heart, but his tears he keeps in his eyes, and hopes that it will be apparent that he is in such a state; even if he could wipe them away, he will not do so, but keeps them hanging there as best he may, and fears lest they should disappear before they have had their effect. He will even refrain from moving his eyes, so t
hat the tears may not too quickly fall before the beloved sees them: he thinks that they form a true witness that he loves. This was the case with Thersander: he wept partly because he felt some human compassion, as was only natural, and partly to make a shew to Leucippe that he was weeping too because she wept. He therefore whispered to Sosthenes: “Do you look after her for the present — you see in how sorrowful a plight she is — and I will retire, though much against my will, so as not to trouble her: when she has come to a calmer state, I will then put my arguments before her. And you, maiden, be of good cheer; I will soon cure you of these tears.” Then, as he was going out, he spoke again to Sosthenes; “See that you give her a good account of me, and come to me in the morning when you have put all right.” With these words he left the cottage.
Complete Works of Achilles Tatius Page 13