Complete Works of Achilles Tatius

by Achilles Tatius

  20. Thersander then, when he first hoped to be successful in his passion, was wholly Leucippe’s slave: but when he was disappointed of his hopes, he gave free rein to his anger. “Wretched slave,” he cried, striking her on the face, “miserable, love-sick girl; I heard all your ravings. Are you not delighted that I even speak to you? Do you not think it a great piece of good fortune to be able to kiss your master? No, instead of that, you give yourself airs and make yourself out to be mad. A harlot you must be, for it is an adulterer that you love. Since, then, you will not take me as a lover, you shall experience me as a master.”

  “Very good,” said Leucippe, “if you choose to play the tyrant, and I have to suffer your oppression; but you will never ravish me by violence. I call you to witness,” she said, turning to Sosthenes, “how I bear outrage; your treatment of me has been still worse.” Sosthenes, full of shame at being thus convicted of his wrong-doing, cried: “A good taste of the lash is what this trollop wants, and an experience of all kinds of tortures, until she learns not to look down on her lord and master.”

  21. “You had better listen to Sosthenes,” said Leucippe; “he gives you admirable advice. Set out your tortures, bring up the wheel. Here are my arms, (The victim was “spread-eagled” on the wheel, the hands and feet drawn as far apart as possible.) stretch them out. Bring your scourges too: here is my back, smite upon it. Bring your fire; here is my body, burn it. Bring also the sword; here is my neck, pierce it. Feast your eyes with a new sight; one woman contends against all manner of tortures, and overcomes all her trials. Then do you dare to call Clitophon an adulterer when you are an adulterer yourself? Tell me, pray, have you no fear of your own patroness Artemis, that you would ravish a virgin in the virgin’s (Diana of the Ephesians, who was in reality rather, I believe, a goddess of fertility than of chastity.) city? Queen, where are thy avenging arrows?”— “Virgin indeed!” cried Thersander. “The ridiculous impudence of the baggage! You a virgin, who passed night after night among a gang of pirates! I suppose your pirates were eunuchs? Or was the pirates’ lair a Sunday-school? Or perhaps none of them had eyes?”

  22. “Virgin I am,” said Leucippe, “even after passing through Sosthenes’ hands; if you do not believe me, ask him. He was the real brigand to me: the others had more command over their passions than both of you, and none of them shewed the brutal lust that you shew. If you behave like this, here is the true pirates’ lair. Do you feel no shame in acting as the pirates never dared to act? You do not seem to realize that by this very shamelessness of yours, you are piling up the greater eulogies for me; if you kill me now in your mad passion, people will say; ‘Here is Leucippe, who remained a virgin after falling among buccaneers, who remained a virgin after her abduction by Chaereas, who remained a virgin after passing through the hands of Sosthenes!’ This would be but little; I shall have a still greater meed of praise; ‘She remained a virgin even after her encounter with Thersander, who is more lecherous than any robber; if he cannot gratify his lust, he kills its object!’ Take up then all your instruments of torture, and at once; bring out against me the scourges, the wheel, the fire, the sword, and let Sosthenes, your counsellor, take the field with you. I am defenceless, and alone, and a woman; but one shield I have, and that is my free soul, which cannot be subdued by the cutting of the lash, or the piercing of the sword, or the burning of the fire. That is a possession I will never surrender; no, not I: and burn as you will, you will find that there is no fire hot enough to consume it!”

  BOOK VII

  1. AT these words Thersander was utterly distracted: he felt grief, anger, and the need of taking further counsel; the first, for his insulting repulse; the second, for his ill-success in his desires; and the third, because he was still in love. His soul there fore torn every way, he made no reply to Leucippe, but rushed from the hut. Although he flung away in a passion, he then allowed his mind the leisure to try to escape from the grievous quandary in which he found himself: and, after consulting Sosthenes, he went to the chief gaoler and asked that I might be put out of the way by means of poison. He could not persuade him, because the gaoler was afraid of the people’s vengeance, a predecessor of his having been found guilty of a similar poisoning and put to death: so he made a second request, that he would put a second inmate, in the guise of another prisoner, into the cell where I was lying shackled, with a view to learning my whole story by means of confidences made to him. The gaoler agreed, and the man was sent: he had had full instructions from Thersander, and he was to relate to me a story most artfully composed about Leucippe, to the effect that she had been killed by the contrivance of Melitte.

  The plot was composed by Thersander with this object: that if I were acquitted at my trial, I should believe that my loved one existed no more, and should therefore make no efforts to look for her; and Melitte was associated with her murder, so that I might not marry Melitte with the idea that she was still in love with me, thinking that Leucippe was dead, and so remain in the town and give constant anxiety to Thersander and prevent him from enjoying Leucippe at his ease, but should rather, as was natural, detest Melitte as the cause of my darling’s murder, and leave Ephesus once and for all.

  2. So the fellow became my cell-mate and began to play the part that had been taught him. Heaving a simulated groan, “What kind of life,” he said, “am I to live in future? How can I direct my course so as to be out of danger? An honest life has by itself done me no good at all: evil fortune has overwhelmed me, and the waters of fate are closing over my head. I suppose I ought to have guessed the kind of man my fellow-traveller was, and the sort of things he had been doing.” This he murmured to himself and other phrases like it, trying to get a conversation begun with me, so that I should ask him what his trouble was. However, I paid little attention to what he said between his groans; but one of our fellow-prisoners (for in misfortune man is a creature always inquisitive to hear about another’s woes; community of suffering is something of a medicine for one’s own troubles), said to him: “What was the prank that Fortune played you? I dare say you met with a piece of bad luck, and did nothing wrong, if I may judge from my own misfortunes.” So saying, he related his own story, the reason why he was in prison. However, I paid no attention to any of his talk.

  3. This concluded, he asked the other for the story of his troubles: “Now do you,” said he, “relate what happened to you.”

  “I happened yesterday,” replied the other, “to be leaving the town on foot; I was proceeding on the road to Smyrna. When I had gone about half a mile, a young man from the country came up: he hailed me and accompanied me a little way. ‘Where are you going?’ said he. ‘To Smyrna,’ said I. ‘So am I,’ he said, ‘by good luck.’ So from there we went on together, and there passed between us the usual conversation of people journeying together, and when we arrived at an inn, we took our mid-day meal in one another’s company. Then four fellows came and sat down with us: they too pretended to eat, but they kept casting glances at us and nodding and winking at each other. I suspected that they entertained some bad purpose against us, but I could not understand what their signs and nods meant: my companion, however, began to turn pale and ate more and more slowly, and was finally overcome with a fit of trembling. When they saw this, the men jumped up, and, over-powering us, quickly tied us up with leather thongs: one of them struck my companion on the head, and he, as if he had experienced a thousand tortures, began to blurt out, though no one had questioned him: ‘Yes, I killed the girl, and took the bribe of a hundred pieces of gold from Melitte, Thersander’s wife, which was the hire she gave me for the crime. Here is the money: why be the death of me and deprive yourselves of this chance of gain?’”

  I had not been attending previously, but when I heard the names of Thersander and Melitte, I started up, seeming to be stung to the heart by what he said as though by the sting of a gadfly: and I turned to him and said, “Who is Melitte?”

  “Melitte,” said he, “is a lady of the highest rank among those
of this place. She was in love with a certain young man — a Tyrian, they say — and this Tyrian happened to be in love with a girl whom he afterwards found as a bought slave in Melitte’s house. She, fired by jealousy, got hold of this girl by fraud and handed her over to the man with whom it was my bad luck to travel, bidding him put her out of the way. He did indeed commit the crime: but the unhappy I, who had never even seen him or taken any part with him in word or deed, was now being dragged away with him as if I were an accomplice. Worse still, when we had gone a little way from the inn, those who had arrested us accepted his hundred pieces of gold and let him go, while they dragged me hither before the magistrate.”

  4. When I heard this trumped-up story of woe, I did not cry aloud nor weep; for I had neither voice nor tears in me. At once a great trembling took hold of all my body; my heart seemed turned to water, and I felt that there was but little of my spirit left in me. When I was slightly recovered from the paralysis (The literal meaning of the Greek is “when I was something sobered from the intoxication caused by his story”: but we use the metaphor of intoxication rather about joy than about grief.) occasioned by his story, I questioned him: “How did the hired murderer kill the girl, and what did he do with her body?” He, the sting once fairly planted and the work done for which he was sent to the prison, kept silence and answered me not a word. When I asked again, “Do you think,” said he, “that I was an accessory in the murder? All I heard from the miscreant was, that he had killed the girl: he did not tell me where or how.” Then came a flood of tears, making a vent for my grief through my eyes. It is like bodily blows — the weal does not come up at once; the bruise does not show directly after the stroke, but comes out suddenly after a little while. If a man gets a slash from a boar’s tusk he looks at once to find the wound but cannot find it, because it is deep-set, and, far down in the flesh, has slowly completed the incision made by the blow; but then suddenly a white streak appears, the precursor of the blood, which after a short interval wells to the surface and flows in abundance. Just in the same way, when the soul is smitten by the dart of grief, the spoken word directing the arrow, it receives the cutting wound: but the rapidity of the blow prevents the wound at first from opening, and keeps the tears far from the eyes. Tears may be considered the blood that flows from the wound of the soul: and after the biting tooth of grief has been for some time gnawing at the heart, only then does the soul’s wound begin to gape, and the portal of tears open in the eyes, and they gush out directly it is opened. So in my case; the news, attacking my soul like an arrow, had struck it to silence and shut off the fount of tears; but afterwards, when it had lain quiet for a time under its woe, they began to flow.

  5. I began therefore thus to commune with myself: “What god is it that has thus cheated me by a few moments of joy, and let me have just a glance at Leucippe only to form a new starting-point for miseries? I did not even satisfy my eyes — they were as far as my happiness extended — and take my fill even of gazing at her: all my happiness has been no more than that of a dream. Alas, Leucippe, how often have I seen you die! Have I ever been able to cease from bewailing you? Am I always to be mourning you, one death coming hot upon the heels of another? Yet on all the former occasions Fate was but playing a bad joke on me: this time she is jesting no longer. And now how wholly have I lost you! Each time then, when you falsely seemed to die, I had at least a little consolation; the first time, your whole corpse at least I thought I had, and the second time, all but your head, for me to bury: but now you have died a double death, life and body too. Two brigands’ bands did you escape, and now the contrivance of Melitte, a very pirate-venture of her own, has been your destruction. Accursed and wicked I, that kissed your murderess time and again, that joined with her in a crime-stained embrace, and that imparted to her, before you, the joys of Aphrodite!”

  6. As I was thus making moan, in came Clinias, and I related the whole story to him, telling him at the same time that I was resolved on self-destruction. He did his best to comfort me: “Who can know,” he said, “but that she will come to life again? Has she not died more than once and more than once been restored to life? Why so rashly resolve to die? There is plenty of time to do so at leisure, when you know for certain that she is dead.”

  “Your talk is folly,” said I: “how could one possibly learn anything with greater certainty than this? But I think I have found the best way to put an end to myself, and by it that accursed Melitte too will not escape altogether without vengeance. Listen to my plan. I had resolved, as you know, if my case came into court, to put up a defence against the charge of adultery. But I have now determined to act in a precisely contrary manner — to confess the truth of the charge, and to add that Melitte and I, deeply in love with one another, made the plot for the murder of Leucippe. Thus she too will be condemned, and I shall have a chance of getting rid of my life which I now but execrate.”

  “Speak not so, (Either “speak words of better omen,” or “be silent.”)” said Clinias. “What? Could you bear to be condemned to death on the vilest of all charges, reputed a murderer and that the murderer of Leucippe?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, “is vile that hurts the enemy.” Shortly after we were engaged upon these discussions the chief gaoler removed the fellow who had been sent to tell the story of the sham murder, on the pretext that the magistrate had ordered him to be fetched to answer to the charges made against him. Clinias and Satyrus did their very best to dissuade me from my purpose, exhorting me to make no such statement as I had intended at my trial: but their efforts were of no avail. They therefore on the same day hired a lodging and took up their abode there, so as no longer to be living with Melitte’s foster-brother.

  7. On the following day I was taken to the court. Thersander had made a great show in his appearance against me, and had an array of no less than ten counsel, and every preparation for her defence had been made with great care by Melitte. When they had all finished their speeches, I asked to be allowed to speak too. “Every word,” said I, “that has been spoken by these lawyers, both those appearing for Thersander and for Melitte, is pure nonsense. I will declare to you the whole true story. Long ago I was in love with a maiden; she was a Byzantine by birth, and her name was Leucippe. I believed that she was dead — she had been carried off by brigands in Egypt — and then fell in with Melitte. A familiarity grew up between us, and from that country we came together hither, where we found Leucippe in the position of a slave belonging to Sosthenes, who was one of the bailiffs of Thersander’s country estates. How Sosthenes had obtained this free girl as a slave, and what were his relations with the brigands, I leave you to investigate. Now when Melitte learned that I had found my former mistress, she was afraid that I should again become attached to her, and began to plot to put her out of the way. I fell in with her schemes — there is nothing that stops me from revealing the truth — because she promised to make me lord and master of all her substance. I therefore hired a fellow to commit the murder; the price of it was a hundred pieces of gold. After his crime, he escaped, and from that time nothing more has been heard of him; as for me, love soon took its revenge: I felt remorse, I bewailed my crime; I was in love with her and I still am. This is the reason that I have accused myself, that you may send me after her whom I love. I can bear life no longer — I who am a murderer and still in love with the maiden whom I slew.”

  8. At this speech of mine all in court were struck dumb with astonishment at the extraordinary turn affairs had taken, Melitte most of all. Thersander’s advocates were already joyfully upraising a paean of triumph, while Melitte’s questioned her as to the statements that had been made. At some she professed to be overcome with surprise and distress; some she denied, others she confessed openly and clearly; she said that she knew Leucippe, and admitted the truth of what I said, except as regards the murder; to such an extent that her counsel, on account of most of her statements corroborating mine, began to suspect that she might indeed be guilty, and were at a g
reat loss what arguments to use in her defence.

  9. While the whole court was becoming a place of uproar, Clinias came forward. “Give me too leave to speak,” he said, “the case involves a man’s life.” Leave given, he began, his eyes full of tears: “Men of Ephesus, do not be too hasty to pass the death sentence upon a man who desires to die, the last remedy of the miserable; he has lied, accusing himself of the crimes committed by the guilty, in order that he may suffer the fate of the unfortunate. I will briefly relate to you the whole course of his troubles. He was in love with a maiden, as he told you; here his speech was true enough; and that brigands carried her off, and the part about Sosthenes, and the whole story that he told up till the murder, all has actually happened as he related.

  True it is that she has suddenly disappeared; I know not how, nor whether somebody has really murdered her, or whether she has been spirited away and is still alive; but this alone I do know, that Sosthenes was in love with her, that he afflicted her with divers torments, and he profited nothing by them, and that he consorts with brigands as his friends. Clitophon is a man who here, thinking that his mistress is no more, no longer cares to live, and this is why he has falsely accused himself of murder. Why, he has himself confessed that he longs for death, and that for grief for a maiden lost; consider, then, if it is really probable that one individual should kill another, and then desire to be united in death with his victim, finding life intolerable from his sorrow for the victim’s death? Was there ever so affectionate a murderer, or hatred so akin to love? Believe him not, I implore you in the name of heaven, believe him not, and do not put to death a man who deserves pity rather than punishment.