Book 8

1.1. We were just about to sit down and discuss these matters when Thersander came in great haste to the temple, bringing certain witnesses, and in a loud voice said to the priest, "I call these men to witness that you are unlawfully removing from his bonds a man condemned to death, sentenced by the laws to die.

1.2. And you have a slave of mine, a lustful woman, mad after men: see that you keep her for me." But I, stung to the soul at the words "slave" and "lustful woman," could not bear the wounds of these utterances, but while he was still speaking I said, "You are a thrice-bought slave yourself, and mad and lustful; but she is

1.3. free and a virgin and worthy of the goddess." When he heard this, he said, "Do you even abuse me, you prisoner and convict?" and struck me across the face very violently, and added a second blow, and streams of blood ran from my nostrils; for the blow had all his fury in it.

1.4. When he struck a third time, off his guard, his hand happened to strike against my teeth about the mouth, and, wounded in his fingers, he barely drew his hand back, crying out; and my teeth avenged the outrage to my nose, for they wounded the fingers that struck, and his hand suffered what it had done.

1.5. He, crying out at the blow much against his will, drew back his hand and so ceased; and I, seeing what an injury he had, made no show of it, but, playing the tragedian over the tyranny I had suffered, filled the temple with my shouting.

2.1. "Where shall we flee any longer from the violent? Where shall we run for refuge? To what god, after Artemis? In the very sanctuary we are beaten, in the precincts of the holy curtain we are struck. Such things happen only in lonely deserts, where there is no witness, no human being; but you play the tyrant in the very sight of the gods.

2.2. And the safety of sanctuaries gives refuge even to the wicked; but I, who have wronged no one, having become a suppliant of Artemis, am beaten at the very altar, while the goddess, alas,

2.3. looks on. The blows fall upon Artemis. And the drunken outrage does not stop at blows, but one even receives wounds on the face, as in war and battle, and the floor is defiled with human blood. Are these the offerings one pours out to a god? Are these not the doings of barbarians and Taurians, and of the Artemis of the Scythians? Only among them is a temple so bloodied. You have made Ionia a Scythia, and in Ephesus the blood of the Taurians flows.

2.4. Take a sword too against me. And yet, what need of iron? Your hand has done the work of a sword. This murderous and bloodstained right hand has done such deeds as come from the blade."

3.1. As I shouted this, the crowd of those present in the temple gathered around; and they reviled him, and the priest himself was not ashamed to do such things so openly and in the temple. And I, taking courage, said, "Such things, men, I have suffered, though I am free and from a city of no small note, plotted against in my life by this man, but saved by Artemis, who has shown him to be a false accuser.

3.2. And now I must go out and wash my face outside; for I would not do this here, lest the holy water be defiled with the blood of outrage."

3.3. Then, with difficulty, they dragged him off and led him out of the temple. And as he went he said only this: "Your fate is already decided, and before long you will pay the penalty; but as for this false virgin, this courtesan, the syrinx will avenge her."

4.1. When at last he had departed, I too went out and cleansed my face. It was the hour of dinner, and the priest received us very kindly. But I could not look at Sostratus with straight eyes, conscious of how I had treated him; and Sostratus, seeing the scratches of my eyes, which I had suffered at his hands, was likewise ashamed to look at me; and Leucippe for the most part looked at the ground,

4.2. and the whole banquet was one of shame. But as the drinking went on and Dionysus little by little appeased our shame—for he is the father of freedom—the priest was the first to begin to speak, saying to Sostratus, "Why do you not tell us, stranger, what the story about you is? For it seems to me to have some not unpleasant entanglements; and such tales are especially suited to wine."

4.3. And Sostratus, glad to seize the pretext, said, "The part of the tale that concerns me is simple: that my name is Sostratus, my race Byzantine, that I am this man's uncle and this girl's father; but the rest of the story, whatever it is, tell yourself,

4.4. my son Clitophon, with no shame at all. For even if anything painful has befallen me, it is least of all your doing, but rather the spirit's; and besides, the telling of deeds now past delights, rather than grieves, one who no longer suffers them."

5.1. So I recounted everything of the journey from Tyre: the voyage, the shipwreck, Egypt, the herdsmen, the carrying-off of Leucippe, the false belly at the altar, Menelaus's trick, the love of the general, Chaereas's drug, the robbers' seizure, the wound in the thigh—and I showed the scar.

5.2. But when I came to Melite, I exalted my own part of the drama, recasting it toward chastity, and told no lie: Melite's love, and my chastity, how long she pleaded, how she failed, what she promised, how she lamented; I recounted the ship, the voyage to Ephesus, and how we both slept together, and—by this Artemis—how she rose from me as woman from woman.

5.3. One thing only of my own affairs I passed over: the shame I afterward felt with Melite. For I told even of the dinner and how I falsely accused myself, and brought the account to the sacred embassy, and said, "These are my affairs; but Leucippe's are greater than mine.

5.4. She has been sold, has been a slave, has dug the earth, has been robbed of the beauty of her head. You see the shearing of her hair."

5.5. And I went through each thing as it happened. And here, coming to Sosthenes and Thersander, I exalted her affairs still more than my own, meaning to gratify her in love while her father listened: how she bore every abuse to her body and every outrage save one, but for that one had endured all the rest. "And she has remained, father, such to this present day as you sent her from Byzantium.

5.6. And this is no praise of mine, that, having chosen flight, I did nothing of the very thing for which I fled; but it is her praise, that even in the midst of robbers she remained a virgin and overcame the great robber—I mean Thersander, the shameless, the violent.

5.7. We made our journey a study in self-restraint, father; for love pursued us, and it was the flight of a lover and a beloved; yet, having gone abroad, we became as brother and sister to one another. If there is any such thing as a man's virginity, I too have kept this toward Leucippe to the present moment; for she has long been in love with the temple of Artemis.

5.8. Mistress Aphrodite, do not be angry with us as one outraged; we did not wish the marriage to be fatherless. Now, then, the father is here; come you too, and be gracious to us at last."

5.9. As they heard this, the priest sat agape, marveling at each thing said, and Sostratus even wept whenever I came to Leucippe. And when at last I had finished, I said, "You have heard our affairs; but one thing I too ask to learn from you, priest, only this: what is it that Thersander, as he left, added against Leucippe, speaking of a syrinx?" "But you," he said, "have asked well; for though we know the matter of the syrinx, it is fitting all the same to fit it to the company; and I will repay your tale.

6.1. "You see this grove behind the temple. Here there is a cave forbidden to women, but not forbidden to pure virgins who enter; and a syrinx is dedicated a little within the doors of the cave.

6.2. Now if this instrument is also in use among you Byzantines, you know what I mean; but if any of you has had less acquaintance with this music, come, let me tell what it is, and the whole story of Pan.

6.3. The syrinx is many pipes, and each of the pipes is a reed; and the reeds all pipe together as if a single pipe. They are set in a row, one joined upon another.

6.4. The front and the back are of equal height, and however much the reeds fall a little short, the next after it is larger, and the next so much larger than the second as the third after it is larger than the second; and in proportion thus the rest of the choir of reeds keeps each equal to the one before, and the middle inside is the odd one out.

6.5. The cause of such an arrangement is the distribution of harmony. For the highest note is at the top, and as for what is first deep below, the outermost pipe at each horn received it; and as for the intervals of rhythm between the extremes, all the reeds between, each carrying its high note down to the one beside it, join it to the deep note of the last.

6.6. And whatever Athena's pipe says with the fingers, that the pipe of Pan plays with the mouth. But there the fingers govern the piping, while here the craftsman's mouth imitates the fingers; and there the piper, closing the other holes, opens one only, through which the breath flows down, while here he leaves the other reeds free and sets his lip only on the one he does not wish to be silent, and leaps now to one, now to another, wherever the harmony of the playing calls.

6.7. So his mouth dances about the pipes. Now the syrinx was at first neither pipe nor reed, but a fair maiden. So Pan was pursuing her in an amorous chase, and a thick wood received her as she fled; but Pan, springing in at her heels, stretched out his hand as if to seize her.

6.8. And he thought he had caught her and held her by the hair; but his hand held a tuft of reeds. For they say that she sank into the earth, and the earth bore reeds in her place.

6.9. So Pan, in his anger, cut the reeds, as having stolen away his beloved; but when afterward he could not find her, supposing the girl to be dissolved into the reeds, he wept over the cutting, thinking he had cut down his beloved.

6.10. So, gathering up the cut reeds as limbs of her body, and putting them together into a single body, he held the cuts of the reeds in his hands, kissing them as the girl's wounds; and he groaned amorously, setting his mouth to them, and breathed from above into the pipes while kissing them; and the breath, flowing down through the narrow passages in the reeds, made piping, and the syrinx had a voice.

6.11. So they say that Pan dedicated this syrinx here, and shut it up in a cave, and used to frequent the place and pipe upon the syrinx in his accustomed way. And in later time he gave the place to Artemis as a favor, making a compact with her that no woman should go down there.

6.12. So whenever anyone is charged with not being a virgin, the people escort her as far as the doors of the cave, and the syrinx judges the case. For the girl enters adorned in the appointed robe, and another shuts the doors of the cave.

6.13. And if she is a virgin, a clear and inspired melody is heard, whether the place has a musical breath stored up in the syrinx, or perhaps Pan himself pipes. And after a little the doors of the cave open of themselves, and the maiden comes forth crowned on the head with pine leaves.

6.14. But if she has falsely claimed her virginity, the syrinx is silent, and a wailing instead of music is sent from the cave, and at once the people depart and leave the woman in the cave; and on the third day a virgin priestess of the place, going in, finds the syrinx on the ground, but the woman nowhere.

6.15. Toward this, then, prepare how you yourselves may stand with fortune, and understand. For if she is a virgin, as I for my part would wish, depart rejoicing, having found the syrinx gracious; for it would never falsify its judgment. But if not—for you yourselves know what is likely, that she, against her will, has been amid so many plots—"

7.1. And at once Leucippe, before the priest could finish what came next, said, "As it seems to me, do not even say it; for I am ready to enter the cave of the syrinx and, without challenge, to be shut up." "You speak well," said the priest, "and I rejoice with you for your chastity and your fortune."

7.2. So then, when evening came, each of us went off to sleep where the priest had prepared; and Cleinias was not dining with us, that we might not seem burdensome to our host, but where he had been the day before, there he was that night too.

7.3. Yet I saw Sostratus somewhat troubled by the tale of the syrinx, lest we might be lying about the virginity out of shame before him.

7.4. So I gave Leucippe an unseen nod to take away her father's fear, knowing in what way she thought she could best persuade him. And she seemed to me to suspect the same, so that she quickly understood me. And even before my nod she was considering how she might most decorously present herself for the proof.

7.5. So, about to withdraw to sleep, embracing her father, she said to him quietly, "Take heart, father, about me, and trust what has been said. For, by Artemis, neither of us has told any lie."

7.6. The next day Sostratus and the priest were occupied with the sacred embassy, and the sacrifices were made ready, and the council too was present to share in the offerings; and there were many invocations of good omen to the goddess. And Thersander—for he too happened to be present—came up to the president and said, "Set down for tomorrow the cases concerning us, since some have already loosed the man you condemned yesterday, and Sosthenes is nowhere to be found." So the trial was set down for the next day, and we prepared ourselves, standing in very good order.

8.1. When the appointed day came, Thersander spoke thus: "I do not know with what argument to begin, or from where, nor whom to accuse first and whom second. For the things dared are many, by many, and none is second to any in magnitude; and all are bare of one another, and amid them I would not even know which to lay hold of in accusing.

8.2. For, my soul being overmastered, I fear that my speech may turn out incomplete, the memory of the other deeds dragging my tongue toward each. For the haste of the speech toward what is not yet said takes away the wholeness of what has already been said.

8.3. For when adulterers murder other men's servants, and murderers commit adultery with other men's wives, and brothel-keepers break up our sacred embassies, and harlots defile the most venerable of sanctuaries, and someone fixes the days, whether for slave women or for masters—what more could one do, when lawlessness and adultery and impiety and bloodshed are mingled together?

8.4. You condemned a man to death on whatever charges—for it makes no difference—and sent him bound to the prison to be kept for the sentence; but this man stands before you, clothed in a white robe instead of bonds, and the prisoner stands in the rank of free men. And perhaps he will even dare to lift up his voice and declaim something against me—rather, against you and your verdict.

8.5. Read the decree of the presidents and the counselors. Hear how you yourselves voted, and the written sentence about him. It was resolved that Clitophon should die. Where then is the executioner? Let him take this man and lead him off. Give the hemlock now.

8.6. He is already dead by the laws; he is a convict overdue. What do you say, most venerable and orderly priest? In what sacred laws is it written that one should snatch from the sentence those condemned by the council and the magistrates and handed over to death and bonds, and loose them from their bonds, and make yourself more authoritative than the presidents and the courts?

8.7. Rise from your seat, president, yield your office to him, and the court too; you are no longer master of anything; nothing is in your power to vote against the wicked, and today whatever is resolved is undone. Why do you stand, priest, with us as one of the many?

8.8. Go up and sit on the throne of the president, and you judge for us henceforth—rather, command tyrannically; let no law be read to you, nor any verdict of a court, nor consider yourself a human being at all; be worshiped along with Artemis;

8.9. for you have snatched away her honor too. To her alone is it permitted to save those who flee to her, and that before a court's verdict. But the goddess has never loosed anyone in bonds, nor freed from punishment one handed over to death. The altars are for the unfortunate,

8.10. not for the wrongdoers. But you free even those who are bound and release the condemned. So you have outdone even Artemis. Who has made the sanctuary a prison? A murderer and an adulterer with the pure goddess—alas, an adulterer with the virgin. And there was with him too a licentious woman, run away from her master.

8.11. For her too, as we saw, you received, and they had one hearth with you and a banquet, and perhaps you even slept with them, priest, having made the sanctuary a lodging. The house of Artemis has become a haunt of adulterers and a harlot's chamber.

8.12. Such things scarcely happen in a brothel. This, then, is my one argument against them both. The one I demand should pay the penalty for his arrogance, the other I order to be handed back to the sentence. My second contest is against Melite for adultery; against her I have no need of words, for it has been resolved that the examination be made in the torture of the maidservants.

8.13. So I demand these women; and if, under torture, they say they do not know that this convict was with her a long time, and stationed in my house in a husband's place, not only in an adulterer's, I release her from all charge. But if the contrary, I say that she must, according to the law, forfeit her dowry to me, and that he must undergo the penalty owed to adulterers; and that penalty is death. So that, whichever way this man dies, as an adulterer or as a murderer, being liable on both counts, even having paid the penalty he has not paid it.

8.14. For having died, he owes yet another death. My third argument is against my slave woman and this venerable actor of a father, which I reserve for later, when you have condemned these others."

9.1. So, having said this, he ceased; and the priest came forward—he was not unable to speak, and had especially studied the comedy of Aristophanes—and himself began to speak, very wittily and in comic style fastening upon his lewdness, saying, "To revile in such an unseemly way, before the goddess, those who have lived well, is the mark of an unclean mouth.

9.2. And this man, not here only but everywhere, has a tongue full of outrage. And yet, when he was young, he associated with many respectable men and spent his whole prime upon this. He looked grave and pretended to chastity, feigning to be in love with culture, and to those who used him for this end he always cringed and lay down beneath them.

9.3. For, leaving his father's house and hiring himself a little alley-room, he kept his lodging there, declaiming Homer for the most part, but making companions of all who were useful to him for what he wished. And so he was thought to be exercising his soul; but this was really a pretense of villainy.

9.4. Then in the gymnasia too we saw how he oiled his body and how he handled the strap, wrestling especially with the more manly of the young men with whom he grappled; so has he used his own body.

9.5. These things, then, while he was in his bloom; but when he came to manhood, he uncovered all that he then concealed. And of the rest of his body, having passed his prime, he took no care, but sharpens his tongue alone for wantonness and uses his mouth for shamelessness, outraging all, carrying his impudence on his face—he who was not ashamed so ignorantly to slander, in your presence, the man honored by you with the priesthood.

9.6. But if I had happened to live somewhere else and not among you, I should need words about myself and my way of life; but since you are well aware that my life is far from this man's slanders, come, let me speak to you about the charges against me.

9.7. 'You loosed,' he says, 'a man condemned to death,' and over this he made a great outcry, calling me a tyrant and all the tragedy he heaped upon me. But it is not he who saves those falsely accused who is a tyrant, but he who condemns those who have done no wrong, with neither council nor people having condemned them.

9.8. Or by what laws, tell me, did you first shut up this foreign young man in prison? Which of the presidents condemned him? What court ordered the man to be bound? Granted that he had done all the wrong you say, yet let him first be judged, let him be convicted after having a share in speech. Let the law, which is master of you and of all, bind him.

9.9. For no one is more powerful than anyone without a trial. Shut up the courts, then, demolish the council chambers, expel the magistrates. For all that you have said to the president I seem more justly able to say, and truly, against you. Rise up before Thersander, president; you are president in name only.

9.10. This man does your work—rather, what not even you do. For you have counselors, and nothing is in your power without them; nor would you exercise any of your authority before coming to this throne, nor did you ever in your own house condemn a man to bonds. But this noble fellow becomes everything to himself:

9.11. people, council, president, magistrate. At home he punishes and judges and orders men bound, and the time of his trial is evening. A fine night-time judge indeed! And now he often shouts, 'You loosed a convict handed over to death.' What death? What convict?

9.12. Tell me the cause of the death. 'He was condemned for murder,' he says. Has he then murdered? Tell me, who is she whom he killed? Her whom you said had been done away with, you see living, and you would no longer dare to charge the same man with murder. For this is no phantom of the girl; Hades has not sent up against you the murdered woman.

9.13. So you are liable for two murders. For the one you killed in word, and the other you wished to kill in deed—rather, this one too you were about to kill; for we heard of your drama in the country. But great Artemis, the goddess, saved them both, snatching the one from the hands of Sosthenes, the other from yours.

9.14. And Sosthenes you spirited away, that you might not be caught in the act; and are you not ashamed that, accusing the strangers, you have been convicted of falsely accusing them both? Let this much be said for my part against this man's slanders; but the argument on behalf of the strangers I hand over to themselves."

10.1. When a man of no mean reputation as an orator, a member of the council, was about to speak on behalf of me and Melite, another orator forestalled him, by name Sopater, an advocate of Thersander, and said, "But mine, from here on, is the argument against these adulterers, most excellent Nicostratus"—for that was the name of my orator—"and then yours; for what Thersander said was aimed only at the priest, touching but lightly upon the part concerning the prisoner.

10.2. So when I have shown him liable to two deaths, then it will be your time too to clear away the charges." Having said this, and after playing the marvel-monger and rubbing his face, he said, "We have heard the priest's comedy, who acted out wantonly and shamelessly all his quarrels against Thersander.

10.3. And the prelude of his speech was reproaches against Thersander for what he said. But Thersander lied in nothing that he said against this man; for he did loose a prisoner and receive a harlot and connive at an adulterer; whereas the things he himself, rather, shamelessly slandered, tearing apart Thersander's life, are free of no slander.

10.4. It befitted a priest, if anything, to have a tongue clean of outrage—for I will use his own words against him; but what, after the comedy, he then performed as tragedy, so openly and no longer through riddles, complaining that we, having caught an adulterer, bound him, I have marveled greatly what so persuaded him to such zeal.

10.5. For one may suspect the truth. For he saw the faces of these wanton ones, the adulterer and the courtesan. For she is fair and young, and this stripling too is fair, and not yet grievous to the sight, but still useful for the priest's pleasures.

10.6. Which of these two bought you? For you all slept in common and got drunk in common, and no one was a spectator of your night. I fear lest you have made the temple of Artemis a temple of Aphrodite, and we shall be deciding about the priesthood, whether you ought to hold this honor.

10.7. But Thersander's life all know, orderly from his earliest age, with chastity; and that, coming to manhood, he married according to the laws, deceived in his judgment about his wife—for he did not find the woman he hoped—but trusting to her family and her substance.

10.8. For it is likely that she had sinned with certain others in former time too, and that a good man was unaware of those things. But the last act of the drama uncovered all her shame,

10.9. and is filled with shamelessness. For when her husband set out on a long journey abroad, she thought this a good opportunity for adultery, and finding a young harlot—for this is the greater misfortune, that she found such a beloved, who, toward women, imitates men, but, toward men, becomes a woman—so, with impunity, she was not content to be openly with him in the foreign land, but even brought him here, across so great a sea, sleeping with him and openly indulging her wantonness even in the boat, with all looking on.

10.10. O adultery divided between land and sea! O adultery stretched from Egypt to Ionia! One commits adultery, but for a single day; and if the wrong is done a second time, one steals the deed and hides from all; but she commits adultery not only under a trumpet but with a herald as well.

10.11. All Ephesus has known the adulterer; and she was not ashamed to bring this seductive beauty from the foreign land, having taken an adulterer aboard as merchandise. 'But I thought,' she says, 'that my husband was dead.'

10.12. Well then, if he is dead, you are clear of the charge; for there is no one who has suffered the adultery, nor is a marriage outraged that has no husband. But if the marriage is not dissolved by the husband's being alive, then she who was married is plundered by another's seducing her. For just as, were he not living, there would be no adulterer, so, he living, an adulterer there is."

11.1. While Sopater was still speaking, Thersander cut short his speech and said, "But there is no need of words. For I make two challenges, to this Melite and to her who is supposed to be the daughter of the envoy,

11.2. but is in truth my slave"; and he read out: "Thersander challenges Melite and Leucippe—for so I have heard the harlot is called: Melite, if she has not had intercourse in love with this stranger during the time I was abroad, to step into the water of the holy Styx and, having sworn the oath, be acquitted of the charges; and the other, if she happens to be a married woman, to be a slave to her master—for to slave women alone is it permitted to enter the temple of Artemis—but if she claims to be a virgin, to be shut up in the cave of the syrinx."

11.3. We at once accepted the challenge; for we knew what it would be. And Melite, confident that during the time Thersander was abroad nothing had passed between her and me except words, said, "But I too accept this challenge, and add still more myself; and the greatest is that I did not see at all either stranger or citizen come to intercourse with me during the time you name. What must you suffer

11.4. if you are convicted of false accusation?" "Whatever," he said, "the judges decide to assess as the penalty." On these terms the court was dissolved, and it was determined that the matters of the challenge should take place for us the next day.

12.1. The matter of the water of the Styx was thus. There was a fair maiden, by name Rhodopis, in love with hunting and the chase: swift of foot, sure of hand, with a girdle and a fillet and a tunic girt up to the knee, and the hair cut short like a man's. Artemis saw her and praised her and called her and made her a fellow huntress, and most of their quarry was in common.

12.2. And she even swore to remain forever, and to flee the company of men, and to suffer no outrage from Aphrodite. Rhodopis swore, and Aphrodite heard, and was angry, and wished to avenge herself on the girl for her disdain.

12.3. There was a young man of Ephesus, fair among the youths as much as Rhodopis among the maidens; they called him Euthynicus; and he too hunted as Rhodopis did, and likewise would not know Aphrodite.

12.4. So the goddess came upon both and gathered their huntings into one—for until then they had been apart; and Artemis was not present at that time. And Aphrodite, setting her son the archer beside her, said, "Child, you see this loveless pair, hostile to us and to our mysteries; and the maiden has sworn more boldly against me. You see them running together upon the deer.

12.5. Begin you too the hunt, first with the bold girl; and surely your shaft is the surer." Both stretched their bows, she upon the deer, and Love upon the maiden; and both hit their mark, and the huntress, after the hunt, was herself the hunted.

12.6. And the deer had the shaft in its back, but the maiden in her heart; and the shaft was to love Euthynicus.

12.7. And a second arrow he sent upon him too. And Euthynicus and Rhodopis saw one another, and at first each fixed their eyes, neither wishing to turn aside; but little by little the wounds of both were kindled, and Love drove them to this very cave, where the spring now is, and there they broke their oath.

12.8. Artemis saw Aphrodite laughing and understood what had been done, and dissolved the girl into water where she had dissolved her virginity. And for this reason, whenever anyone is charged with matters of love, stepping into the spring she is washed; and it is shallow, up to the middle of the shin.

12.9. And the judgment is this: having written the oath on a tablet bound with a thread, she puts it about her neck; and if she swears truly, the spring stays in its place, but if she swears falsely, the water swells and rises up to her neck and covers the tablet.

13.1. Having said this, as the time drew on toward evening, we went off to sleep, each apart. The next day all the people were present, and Thersander led the way with a beaming face, looking at us with laughter; and Leucippe was dressed in a sacred robe: a tunic reaching to the feet, of linen, a girdle about the middle of the tunic, a band about the head dyed purple-red, the feet unsandaled.

13.2. And she went in very decorously; but I, when I saw her, stood trembling and said to myself, "That Leucippe is a virgin I have believed, but Pan, dearest, I

13.3. fear. He is a god who loves virgins, and I dread lest you too become a second syrinx. But she fled from him as he pursued her in an open plain, and was pursued over a wide space; but you we have shut even within doors, as in a siege,

13.4. so that, if he pursues, you cannot flee. But, master Pan, be of good will and do not transgress the law of the place; for we have observed it. Let Leucippe come out to us again a virgin; you have this compact with Artemis; do not belie the virgin."

14.1. As I was saying this to myself, a musical melody was heard, and it was said that never had a clearer one been heard, and at once we saw the doors open.

14.2. And when Leucippe sprang out, the whole people shouted for joy and reviled Thersander; but what I became I could not say in words. So, having won this one most glorious victory, we went off, and proceeded to the second judgment, the Styx.

14.3. And the people transferred themselves in this way to this spectacle too; and there too everything was carried through. Melite put the tablet about her neck; the spring was clear and shallow; and she stepped into it and stood with a beaming face.

14.4. And the water remained as it was in its place, not springing up even the least bit above its usual measure. When the time appointed for staying in the spring had passed, the president took her by the hand and led her out of the water, Thersander having been beaten in two bouts; and being about to be beaten in the third too, he slipped away and fled to the house, fearing lest the people stone him.

14.5. For four young men were dragging Sosthenes along—two kinsmen of Melite, two servants; for Melite had sent these to seek him. And Thersander, understanding from afar, and knowing that he would inform on the matter if he were put to the torture, fled before it, and when night came slipped secretly out of the city.

14.6. And the magistrates ordered Sosthenes to be thrown into prison, Thersander having fled. So then we departed, having now utterly prevailed and being acclaimed by all.

15.1. The next day those who had this charge brought Sosthenes before the magistrates. And he, seeing himself led to the torture, told everything clearly—both what Thersander had dared and what he himself had assisted in; nor did he leave out even what they had discussed with one another privately about her before the doors of Leucippe.

15.2. And he was thrown again into prison, to pay the penalty; and they condemned Thersander to exile in his absence. And the priest received us again in the accustomed way.

15.3. And while we dined we told over both what we had happened to say the day before, and whatever was still wanting of what we had suffered. And Leucippe, since she no longer felt shame before her father, having been clearly found a virgin, recounted what had befallen her with pleasure.

15.4. When she came to Pharos and the robbers, I said to her, "Will you not tell us the story of the robbers of Pharos, and the riddle of the head cut off there, that your father too may hear? For this alone is wanting to the hearing of the whole drama."

16.1. "The robbers," she said, "having deceived an ill-fated woman, one of those who sell the things of Aphrodite for a wage—on the pretext that she was to be with a certain shipmaster aboard the boat—kept her on the ship, ignorant of the truth as to what she was there for, drinking quietly with one of the pirates;

16.2. and in word the robber was her lover. But when they had seized me, as you saw, and put me on the boat, and, having winged it with the oars, fled, seeing the pursuing ship gaining, they stripped off the ornaments and the clothing of the wretched woman and put them on me, and my own little tunics on her; and setting her on the stern, whence you, pursuing, might see, they cut off her head, and the body they threw, as you saw, into the sea, but the head, as it fell, they kept on the ship then.

16.3. For a little later they got rid of this too and threw it likewise, when they no longer saw the pursuers. I do not know whether they had prepared the woman beforehand for this purpose, or whether they had resolved to enslave her and sell her, as afterward they sold me too; but on being pursued, to deceive the pursuers, they slaughtered her in my place, thinking to make more from selling me than from her.

16.4. For this reason I saw Chaereas too pay a fitting penalty; for he was the very one who counseled killing the woman in my place and throwing her overboard.

16.5. But the rest of the crowd of robbers said they would not let me go to him alone; for he had already taken another body, which, when sold, would have given them a source of gain; and that, in place of the dead woman, I, being sold, should become common to them all rather than his alone.

16.6. When he objected, ostensibly pleading his rights and producing the agreements—that he had not seized me for sale but as his beloved—and said something rather bold, one of the robbers, acting well,

16.7. standing behind him, cut off his head. So he, having paid no blameworthy penalty for the seizure, was himself thrown into the sea; and the robbers, sailing two days, brought me I know not where and sold me to a merchant they were familiar with, and he to Sosthenes."

17.1. Then Sostratus too said, "Since, my children, you have recounted your tales, come, hear from me also what was done at home concerning Calligone, your sister, Clitophon,

17.2. that I may not be entirely without contribution to the storytelling." And I, hearing my sister's name, turned my mind very much to it and said, "Come, father, speak; only may you speak of one living." So he began to tell all that I have already related before—Callisthenes, the oracle,

17.3. the sacred embassy, the skiff, the seizure. Then he added that "having learned on the voyage that she was not my daughter, and that the whole undertaking had miscarried for him, yet loving Calligone exceedingly, he fell at her knees and said, 'Mistress, do not think me some robber or evildoer, for I am of good birth, by race a Byzantine, second to none; but love has made me an actor of piracy and weave these arts against you. So consider me your slave from this day; and I give you as a dowry, first myself, then as much as not even your father would have given you; and I will keep you a virgin as long as you please.' And saying this, and still more than this, he made the girl better disposed toward him.

17.4. And he was fair to behold, and fluent and most persuasive; and when he came to Byzantium, having drawn up a contract for a very great dowry and prepared everything lavishly—clothing and gold and all that goes to the adornment of prosperous women—he treated her well and honorably, keeping her undefiled, as he had promised, so that he had already won the girl herself.

17.5. And in all else too he showed himself most orderly and reasonable and chaste, and there was suddenly a marvelous change about the young man. For he would rise from his seat for his elders, and took care to be first in greeting those he met; and his former heedless lavishness, turned from its earlier prodigality into good counsel, he kept his magnanimity for those in need of receiving because of poverty, so that all marveled at his sudden passing thus from the worse to the very good.

17.6. And me, then, he won more than anyone, and I loved him exceedingly, and reckoned his former prodigality to be a marvelous magnificence of nature, not incontinence.

17.7. And there came over me too the thought of Themistocles, that he too, having seemed in his earliest years very dissolute, afterward surpassed all the Athenians in wisdom and manliness; and indeed I repented having spurned him, when he spoke to me about marrying my daughter.

17.8. For he attended on me greatly and called me father and escorted me about the marketplace, and did not neglect the exercises for war, but was very vigorously distinguished in horsemanship.

17.9. Now even in the time of his prodigality he rejoiced in these things and practiced them, but as in luxury and play; yet his manliness all the same and his skill were being nourished unawares; and at last his work came to its end in his enduring and versatile distinction in matters of war.

17.10. And he gave considerable sums of money to the city. And they put him forward as general along with me; whence he embraced me still more, showing himself obedient to me in everything."

18.1. "And when we had won the war by the manifestation of the gods, and, returning to Byzantium, while we were acclaiming Heracles and Artemis, were elected—I here to Artemis, and he for Tyre to Heracles—Callisthenes took my right hand and first recounted what he had done concerning Calligone.

18.2. 'But the things I did, father,' he said, 'were partly done by the nature of youth, by force, but the rest afterward by deliberate choice. For I have kept the girl a virgin to this point, and that while engaged in wars, in which no one puts off his pleasures.

18.3. Now, then, I have resolved to take her off to Tyre to her father and to receive the marriage from him according to law. If, then, he is willing to give me the girl, I will accept it with good fortune; but if he proves perverse and difficult, he will receive her back a virgin.

18.4. For I, having offered no contemptible dowry, would gladly take the marriage.' And I will read you the contract too, which I drew up before the war, asking that the girl be given in marriage to Callisthenes, reciting both his family and his rank and his deeds of valor in the wars.

18.5. For this is what was agreed between us. And I, when we have argued the appeal, have resolved first to sail across to Byzantium, and after that to Tyre." And having told these stories to one another, we slept in the

19.1. same manner; and the next day Cleinias came and said that Thersander had run off during the night; for he had made the appeal not as one who would contend, but wishing, with a pretext, to hold off the proof of what he had dared.

19.2. So, having waited the next three days, which was the appointed term, and going to the president and reading the laws, by which Thersander had no longer any case against us, we boarded a ship and, using a favorable wind, put in at Byzantium; and there, having celebrated our long-prayed-for marriage, we set out for Tyre.

19.3. Two days later we came and found my father about to celebrate my sisters wedding the next day. So we were present, both to sacrifice with him and to pray to the gods that my marriage and his alike might be kept with good fortune. And we resolved, after wintering in Tyre, to cross over to Byzantium.