“My second charge is against Melitte, for adultery; and I shall not have to speak at great length against her, as it has been already resolved that the enquiry shall be conducted by putting her serving-maids to the question. I therefore claim them for this purpose; if, under the torture, they deny that they knew that this gaol-bird kept company with her for a long time, and actually held a husband’s place, not a mere gallant’s, in my house, then I will retract all charges against her. But if the contrary proves to be the truth, I claim that, as the law directs, she must lose her dowry, which then becomes my property, and that her paramour must suffer the punishment meted out to adulterers; which is death. So that for whichever crime he suffers, adultery or murder (as he is clearly guilty of both), he will escape his due while he pays the penalty of his crime; whichever death he dies he will avoid the other which he ought to undergo. The third part of my charge is against my slave-girl and this hoary impostor who sets out to be her father; but I will keep that till later on, after you have given your verdict against these others.” With these words he ended his speech.
9. The bishop then came forward. He was no poor hand at speaking, and as good at quip and gibe as the plays of Aristophanes, and he began his speech with much humour, touching in a jesting vein on Thersander’s own lecherous depravity. “This (In the whole of the first part of the good bishop’s speech there is a series of double meanings, insinuations, and plays upon words which are not without wit, but, like the discussion at the end of Book II., are not pleasing to Northern and Christian ears. I shall not point out the allusions in notes; they are to be found in almost every sentence down to the end of § 5.) filthy abuse,” he cried, “in the presence of the goddess, of those who have led respectable lives, is a sign of unclean lips! This fellow’s tongue is full of wickedness in more ways than one. When he was a boy he consorted with many men of standing, and indeed on this he spent all the period of his youthful bloom: he put on a look of high seriousness, and counterfeited discretion, making himself out to be passionately devoted to the training in the way he should go, and laudably submitting and subjecting himself to those who made it their business to be his masters. Yes, and he left his father’s house and hired a little out-of-the-way hovel, where he took up his abode: and there he practised his fine art and was also always ready to receive and associate with himself those who were able to give him what he wanted. He was certain that in this manner he was developing the powers of his soul: [but all was in a reality a cloak for his wickedness (See note on the Greek text. Besides the ineptitude of the insertion, it spoils the balance between the accounts of the young Thersander’s spiritual and bodily development.): and then we used to see him in the public places of exercise too; how carefully he would anoint his body for the fray, with what agility he would grip the pole, and how in the wrestle, he never shrank from contact with youths who were almost men; such was the training to which he devoted his body. All this was when he was in the flower of his early years: when he came to associate with men, he unveiled all that had previously been hidden. The rest of his body became no longer suitable for the pursuits in which it had formerly been engaged, but he sharpened his tongue to wickedness and employed his lips for the grossest purposes: there was none whom he would not use it to defile, his shamelessness appearing openly on his countenance, and he has even gone so far as publicly and brutally to revile one who has been honoured by you with the priestly office. If I had happened to live anywhere else, and had not passed all my days among you, I might have found it necessary to give you an account of myself and of my life: but since you know how remote has been my way of life from the slanders which he has uttered against me, let me discourse to you at greater length upon the actual charges which he brings against me. ‘You have set free,’ he says, ‘one condemned to death’: and on this ground he has called me the hardest names, terming me ‘autocrat’ and all the other grandiloquent nonsense which he was able to trump up against me. But the autocrat is one who in this case has done his best to save not merely those who have been falsely charged, but persons who have done no wrong whatever, and who have been condemned neither by the government nor by the voice of the people. Tell me, Thersander, what was the law by whose authority you originally threw this young man, a foreigner, into gaol? Which of the presiding justices had condemned him? Which court had ordered him to be put into chains? Suppose for a moment that he had been guilty of all the crimes in your catalogue, yet must he be first be judged, conclusive evidence brought against him, and he be allowed an opportunity to defend himself: let the law, which is above you and everybody else, be the one to fetter him: before judgement has been given, no man has such powers over any other. Come then, shut up the law-courts, do away with the councillors’ benches, turn out the officers: every word of your address to the Lord Chief I could with greater justice apply in your disfavour. Come down, my Lord, in Thersander’s favour: you are the Chief Justice in name alone. He does your office — nay, more than yours; for you have your assessors, without whom you can come to no decision, and you never exercise your legal power until you have taken your seat on the bench; you have never in your own house condemned a man to chains: while our good friend here combines all functions in one — people, government, judge, officer, all combined. Yes, he gives sentence, he decides his case, he orders people into chains at his own house, and further, he chooses the evening for the time of his court of law: a pretty thing is a juryman that sits at night! And now he dares to bawl repeatedly, ‘You have set free Clitophon who was condemned to death?’ How, death? Condemned for what? Tell me the charge on which he was capitally condemned. ‘He was condemned for murder,’ says he. Very well then, he has committed murder: but upon whom? Come, you see his victim, the very one whom you said had been slain; now you can hardly dare to accuse Clitophon of murder. This is not the girl’s ghost: the god of death has not sent her back here merely to confute you. Two murders lie at your door: by your lies and slanders you have done your best to kill the girl, the youth by your actions. Worse, you were on the very point of actually making an end of her; we know all about your doings on your country estate. But the great goddess Artemis has saved them both: she has saved her from the hands of Sosthenes, and him from yours: Sosthenes you have got out of the way, that you might not be convicted in flagrante: but do you feel no shame now that it is definitely proved that in the course of your prosecuting speech you have made false accusations against both these foreigners? Gentlemen, I think I have said enough to defend myself against Thersander’s ridiculous abuse: — as for the defence of these foreigners, I propose to allow them to speak for themselves.”
10. An advocate., who was a speaker of considerable merit and also a member of the council was just rising on behalf of Melitte and myself, when another lawyer, called Sopater, who was counsel for Thersander, jumped up before him. “No,” he cried, “it is now my turn to address the court against this adulterous couple, good Sir Nicostratus” (that was my counsel’s name) “and then your turn will come; what Thersander said was directed against the bishop alone, and he did nothing more than touch upon that part of the case which deals with the gaol-bird. When I have finished shewing that he is twice over liable to the capital punishment, it will then be your business to attempt to palliate the charges brought against him.” Thus he spoke with frantic gesticulation and wiping his face: then he went on, “We have all been hearers of the bishop’s farcical ribaldry while he indulged in the most brutal, shameless, trumped-up accusations against Thersander, and all the first part of his speech, which was nothing but calling Thersander back the same names that Thersander had called him. Yet every word that Thersander said was true; the bishop did actually release a criminal from his chains, receive and entertain a harlot, and consort with an adulterer; and as for the shameless false charges he brought when he represented in the worst light Thersander’s way of life, he refrained from no calumny in the course of them. (I doubt whether the text is here sound. Sopater is more likely to say: �
��As for the complaints that the bishop made that he was being falsely accused by Thersander — the bishop’s own speech simply teemed with false accusations.”) I should have thought the most necessary priestly quality of all was a pair of lips clean of guile, to use his own expression against himself. As for the high-flown rhetoric of his speech, after the farcical part was over, when he began to speak openly and no longer in riddles, so grievously angered that we had caught a lecher and thrown him into chains, I was very greatly astonished, and wondered what the price could be that was high enough to arouse in him this excess of zeal. But I fear one may suspect the truth: he had taken note of the faces of this scandalous pair, the adulterer and his punk: she is young and pretty, and he is a pretty stripling too, with his cheeks still soft, and one still available for the bishop’s pleasures. Which (όποτέρα, feminine, is a subtlety that cannot be rendered into English.) of them was it, reverend sir, whose charms won you over? You slept all in the same place, you tippled all together, and there was no spectator of how you passed your night. I greatly fear that Artemis’ temple has been made by you into the temple of Aphrodite, and we shall have to sit in judgement on your priesthood, to decide if you are worthy of your cloth.
“As for Thersander’s way of life, all here know how that from his first youth it was elegant and discreet; and how, when he came to years of manhood, he married in accordance with the direction of the law, but unfortunately made a mistake in his estimation of the character of his wife, for he found her not what he had hoped, but had put too much trust in her birth and material position. It is like enough that earlier in her married life she misconducted herself with several lovers, but was able to conceal her relations with them from her excellent husband; but at the end of her career she threw off even the pretence of modesty and filled up the cup of impudence. Her husband had to go abroad for a long stay, and she considered this a suitable opportunity for unfaithfulness. She found a youth who may be described as a sort of male prostitute — perhaps the most wretched part of the business is that the lover she selected is one of those who ape manhood when they are among women, while they count as women among men. Well; it was not enough for her to put aside all fear and live openly with him in a foreign country, but she must needs bring him here over that wide stretch of sea, sleeping with him and exposing her unseemly lust on the boat for all to see. Oh, think of an adulterous intercourse with its shares both on sea and land, drawn out all the way from Egypt to Ionia! Does a woman fall? Then it is but for a single day: or, if the sin be repeated, she hides what she has done and conceals it from the eyes of all: but Melitte does not merely proclaim her unfaithfulness in the market place (Literally, “to the sound of the trumpet.”); she has it put abroad by the town-crier! All Ephesus knew of her gallant; she had thought no shame to import him hither from abroad, trafficking in a lover as though he were merchandise, buying him and bringing him hither as a pretty bit of cargo! ‘But I thought,’ says she, ‘that my husband had perished.’ Certainly; if he is dead, you are quit of the charge against you. In that case there is nobody to be injured by the adultery, nor can a marriage be outraged when there is no husband. But if the marriage has not come to an end, owing to the fact that the husband is still alive, then an act of robbery is committed upon it by the corruption of the wife by a third party. Exactly as much as if the marriage did not exist there would be no adulterer, so, as it does exist, an adulterer there must be.”
11. Sopater was still speaking, but his speech was interrupted by Thersander, who cried: “There is no need of further talk. I make two challenges: one to Melitte here, and one to that girl who professes to be the daughter of the sacred ambassador, [with no further question of the torture which I mentioned a little time ago], but is really my slave.” And he began to read out:
“Thersander challenges Melitte and Leucippe — I think I have heard that is the harlot’s name. Melitte, if she has not had to do with this foreigner during the time that I was abroad, is to enter the sacred water of the Styx, take the oath and be cleared, if she can, of the charges brought against her. As for the other, if she is found to be a woman of whom man has had carnal knowledge, she is to remain in slavery to her proper inaster, for such women can only enter the shrine of Artemis if they are slaves; if however, she persists in declaring that she is a virgin, she is to be shut into the grotto of the pan-pipes.”
We at once accepted this challenge, having been sure that it would be made: and Melitte, who was encouraged by the fact that during the time of Thersander s absence abroad nothing more serious than words had passed between her and me, also complied. “Certainly,” she said, “I accept this challenge; and I will even add something to it on my own account; the most important part of which is that I never allowed anybody, whether citizen or foreigner, to enter into such relations with me during the time of which you speak. And now, what ought your penalty to be if you are proved to be a maker of false charges?”
“Whatever fine,” said he, “that the jury like to inflict.” These terms settled, the court broke up, and it was decided that the business of the challenge should be determined on the following day.
12. This is the story of the water of the Styx. There was a maiden fair to see, called Rhodopis, passionately fond of hunting and the chase. She was swift of foot and a sure shot: she wore a girdle and a cap, her tunic was girt up at the knee, and her hair was cut short like a man’s. Artemis once saw her, and was delighted with her pursuits; she summoned her, associated her with her in the chase, and many is the time that they hunted together: she took an oath that she would always remain with the goddess; that she would shun the company of men, and that she would never suffer the violence that Aphrodite inspires. Rhodopis swore: Aphrodite heard her, was wroth, and desired to punish the maid for her disdain. Now there was a young man at Ephesus, as fair among the striplings of that town as Rhodopis was among its maidens; Euthynicus was his name, and he was as passionate for the chase as was Rhodopis, and he too desired to know nothing of the power of Aphrodite. So the goddess was determined to attack them both, and brought to the same place the quarries they were hunting; for until that time they had never met, and on that occasion Artemis happened to be away. Aphrodite therefore sent for her son, the Archer; “My child,” said she, “seest thou this pair that reck nought of love and hate us and our mysteries? And the virgin has even sworn a rash oath against me. Seest thou too how they are both following the same hind? Do thou begin the sport and that with this too daring maid; and thy dart shall surely miss not its aim.” Both bend their bows — she at the hind, and Love at her; both hit, and after the quarry now is the huntress stricken. The hind received the arrow in its flank, the virgin in her heart; and her arrow was that she should love Euthynicus. Then Love shot another bolt, now at the youth; and then Euthynicus and Rhodopis saw one another. At first they kept their eyes fixed, each on the other, and neither could turn them away: little by little both their wounds began to burn, and then Love drove them to this very cave, where the spring now is, and there they belied their oath. Artemis saw Aphrodite laughing and understood what had happened, and she changed the maiden into a water-spring on the very spot where she had changed her virginity for womanhood. On this account, if a woman is called into question over affairs of love, she has to go down into the spring and bathe. Now the water is low, reaching only half way to the knee, and this is the procedure of the ordeal. She writes her oath on a tablet, which she then suspends by a string round her neck. If she has sworn a true oath, the spring remains in its place; but if she has perjured herself, the water boils up, rises to the height of her neck, and covers the written tablet.
We talked over these matters, and as it was now drawing towards evening, we retired, each to his own bed, to sleep.
Complete Works of Achilles Tatius Page 18