15. Ten days had now passed since the madness came upon Leucippe, and there was no improvement in her malady. On one occasion, however, while asleep, she uttered these words in her dream: “It is through you that I have lost my senses, Gorgias.” When morning came, I told Menelaus what she had said, and enquired if there were any Gorgias in the place. As we walked out, a young man came up to us and, addressing me, “I come,” he said, “to be the salvation of you and your beloved. (yvvη, both here and in several other passages, is used in the sense of a prospective wife, like the German Braut. This cannot be exactly rendered in English by any of the ordinary equivalents of yvvη, so that it must be expressed by alternatives or circumlocutions.)” I was struck dumb at this and thought that he must be divinely sent to me. “You do not happen to be Gorgias, I suppose?” said I. “No,” said he, “but Chaereas. It is Gorgias that has been your undoing.”
I could not but shiver at this, and said, “What is this undoing, and who is Gorgias? Some god communicated to me his name in the night; it is for you to be the interpreter of the heavenly message.”
“Gorgias was,” he said, “an Egyptian soldier: now he is no more, but has become the victim of the buccaneers. He fell in love with your chosen, and being naturally an expert in drugs, he prepared a love-philtre and bribed your Egyptian servant to take it and mix it in Leucippe’s drink: but the servant by a mistake administered the philtre undiluted, and it had the effect of producing madness. All this was told me yesterday by Gorgias’ servant, who was fighting by his side against the robbers; it seems that good fortune has kept him safe for you; he asks four pieces of gold to cure her, for he says that he possesses another preparation of drugs which is an antidote to the former.”
“May God bless you,” said I, “for this service you are rendering to us! Please bring hither the man of whom you speak.” He departed on this errand, while I went in to find my Egyptian, and I beat him about the face with my fist more than once or twice, shouting and saying to him, “ Tell me, what did you give to Leucippe? What is it that has made her mad?” He was greatly frightened, and related to us the whole story just as Chaereas had told it to us; so we shut him up in prison and kept him there.
16. Meanwhile Chaereas came back, bringing his man with him, and I addressed myself to both of them: “ Here are your four pieces of gold as a reward for your good tidings; but listen to what I have to say about the remedy. You see how a drugged potion has been the cause of the girl’s present evil state; it cannot surely be without danger to add yet further drugs to organs already drugged. Tell us then of what ingredients it is composed, and make it up here in our presence; if you will do this, there will be a reward of four more gold pieces for you.”
“Your fears are quite justified,” said he; “but the ingredients are quite common and all harmless to take; I will myself drink a portion equal to hers.” So saying, he sent someone out to buy them and bring them back, naming each; and when they had arrived, which was in no long time, he pounded them all up before our eyes and divided the compound into two parts. “I will myself drink the one first,” he said, “and the other I will give to the maiden. After she has taken it she will sleep the whole night through, and when morning comes she will arise at once from her sleep and from the disease.” So he first took his portion of the drug, and bade the rest be given her to drink in the evening. “But I,” he added, “must go away and rest, as the drug requires.” With these words he departed, taking the four gold pieces I had given him. “I will give you the other four,” I said, “on her recovery.”
17. So when the time came to give her the medicine, I poured it out and prayed over it thus: “Drug, child of earth, gift of Aesculapius, bring true thy promises; be more fortunate than I and save me my dearest. Overcome that other cruel and savage philtre.” When I had thus conjured the medicine I kissed the cup, and gave it to Leucippe to drink; and she, as the man had predicted, soon lay fast asleep. I sat by her, and addressed her as though she could hear my words; “Will you really regain your senses once more? Will you know me again? Shall I hear again that dear voice of yours? Give me some token of hope, now, in your sleep, just as yesterday you rightly divined the name of Gorgias. Happier are you while at rest; when awake, you suffer the misfortune of madness, while your dreams have sound sense.” Thus did I harangue Leucippe, as though she could hear me, and at last appeared the dawn for which I had prayed so long; Leucippe spoke, and the word she uttered was “Clitophon.” I jumped up, went to her, and asked her how she was; she seemed to know nothing of what had happened, but was astonished to see her bonds, and asked who had fettered her. Seeing her in her senses again, I was overjoyed to confusion and undid the bonds, and then related to her the whole course of events; she was quite ashamed when she heard it; she blushed, and could hardly be persuaded that she was not still beside herself. I therefore did my best to comfort and calm her, and paid the fee for the drug with the utmost good will. All the money which we had provided for our journey was safe; that which Satyrus had happened to tie up in his girdle when we were shipwrecked had not been taken from him by the robbers, and neither he nor Menelaus had lost any of their possessions.
18. While all this was going on there came from the capital against the robbers a larger force, which settled their business and razed their town to the ground. The river freed from the buccaneers’ violence, we proposed to sail to Alexandria, and Chaereas was to accompany us; for he had become on friendly terms with us on account of the information he had been able to give us about the philtre. He was of the Island of Pharos by birth and a fisherman by trade; he had served in the fleet sent against the buccaneers, and had taken his discharge after the conclusion of the war. Long had boats been absent from the Nile, (Owing to its having been long infested by the pirates, who had now been destroyed.) but the river was now thronged with passengers, and the whole presented a delightful spectacle — the singing of the boatmen, the rhythm of the oars, and the procession of the boats; it was like a great fair, and the whole of our voyage seemed to be on a river keeping festival. That was the first occasion on which I drank the water of the Nile without mixing it with wine, as I wished to test its excellence as a drink; wine spoils its character. I filled a transparent glass with it, and saw that in the matter of limpidity (Excellent water as it is, this is not at the present day one of its characteristics, though the slight opacity is quite harmless, and can to some extent be made to settle.) it vied with, nay, it defeated the vessel that contained it; to the taste it was sweet and cool enough to be delightful, whereas some of the Greek rivers with which I compared it are so cold as to be painful. For this reason the Egyptian does not feel the need of the juice of Bacchus, and fears not to drink the water without mixture. I was also surprised at the manner in which they drink it: they do not draw it in the usual way, nor use vessels to drink it from, having a vessel provided by nature — their hand. If one of them, while on ship-board, is thirsty, he leans his face forward over the side above the river, and then, making a hollow of his hand, plunging it beneath the surface, and filling it with water, he jerks it up into his mouth and does not miss the mark; his open mouth awaits, receives and keeps it when it is thrown, and then shuts, not allowing it to fall out again.
19. I also saw another beast, a denizen of the Nile, which is even more celebrated for its strength than the hippopotamus: it is called the crocodile. Its form partakes both of that of a beast and that of a fish; it is of great length from head to tail, though it is not proportionately broad. Its hide is wrinkled and scaly, the skin of its back black and hard as stones, whereas that of its belly is white; it has four feet, with curved, bandy legs, like those of a tortoise; its tail is long and thick, like the solid part of its body; unlike that of other animals, it is the bony continuation of the spine, of which it is indeed an integral part. On the upper side it is divided into cruel spines, like the teeth of a saw; the animal uses it like a scourge against its prey, striking with it anything against which it is struggling, and i
nflicting several wounds with a single blow. Its head grows directly on to its shoulders, forming with them a single straight line; for a neck is not one of the gifts with which it has been favoured by nature. Its eyes are more grim and staring than those of a horse; it is generally in the condition of having its mouth wide open. For the rest of the time, when not agape, that part of the beast is a head; but when it yawns after its prey, it is all mouth. It lifts its upper jaw, keeping the lower one rigid. So wide apart do they go that the opening reaches all the way to the shoulders and the entrance to its belly is visible. (Compare the description of the beast about to attack Andromeda in III. vii.) Its teeth are numerous, placed one behind the other; they are said to be identical in number with the days God gives light to for a year — a mighty crop to spring up in the field of its jaws! When it comes up from the river on to the land, you would be surprised at the creature’s enormous strength if you observed the way it drags its body.
BOOK V
1. After a voyage lasting for three days, we arrived at Alexandria. I entered it by the Sun Gate, as it is called, and was instantly struck by the splendid beauty of the city, which filled my eyes with delight. From the Sun Gate to the Moon Gate — these are the guardian divinities of the entrances — led a straight double row of columns, about the middle of which lies the open part of the town, and in it so many streets that walking in them you would fancy yourself abroad while still at home. Going a few hundred yards further, I came to the quarter called after Alexander, where I saw a second town; the splendour of this was cut into squares, for there was a row of columns intersected by another as long at right angles. I tried to cast my eyes down every street, but my gaze was still unsatisfied, and I could not grasp all the beauty of the spot at once; some parts I saw, some I was on the point of seeing, some I earnestly desired to see, some I could not pass by; that which I actually saw kept my gaze fixed, while that which I expected to see would drag it on to the next. I explored therefore every street, and at last, my vision unsatisfied, exclaimed in weariness, Ah, my eyes, we are beaten.” Two things struck me as especially strange and extraordinary — it was impossible to decide which was the greatest, the size of the place or its beauty, the city itself or its inhabitants; for the former was larger than a continent, the latter outnumbered a whole nation. Looking at the city, I doubted whether any race of men could ever fill it; looking at the inhabitants, I wondered whether any city could ever be found large enough to hold them all. The balance seemed exactly even.
2. It so fortuned that it was at that time the sacred festival of the great god whom the Greeks call Zeus, the Egyptians Serapis, and there was a procession of torches. It was the greatest spectacle I ever beheld, for it was late evening and the sun had gone down; but there was no sign of night — it was as though another sun had arisen, but distributed into small parts in every direction; I thought that on that occasion the city vied with the sky for beauty. I also visited the Gracious Zeus and his temple in his aspect as god of Heaven; and then praying to the great god and humbly imploring him that our troubles might be at last at an end, we came back to the lodgings which Menelaus had hired for us. But the god, it seems, was not prepared to assent to our prayers, but still another of the trials and exercises of Fate was in store for us.
3. This was the cause of it. Chaereas had for some time been secretly in love with Leucippe; that was the reason that he had informed us about the drug which had been administered to her; he was seeking an opportunity of beginning a close acquaintance with her, and desired to save her to his own advantage. Knowing that it was impossible otherwise to succeed in his desires, he contrived a plot. Being himself a sea-faring man, he got together a pirate-band of fellows of his own sort; and, after instructing them how they were to act, asked us to dinner at Pharos, (An island in the bay of Alexandria, famous for the lighthouse upon it.) professing that it was his birthday. We were but just leaving our door when an evil omen happened to us; a hawk chasing a swallow struck Leucippe’s head with his wing. At this I was somewhat disturbed, and, looking up to heaven, “What is this portent,” said I, “O Zeus, that thou displayest to us? If in very deed this bird (opvis, like οιωνός, can mean both a “bird” and an “omen.”) comes from thee, show us some other clearer augury.” Turning round (I happened to be standing by a painter’s studio) I saw a picture hanging there, the subject of which had a similar hidden significance, representing the rape of Philomela, the violence employed by Tereus, and the cutting out of her tongue. The whole story was fully represented in the picture, including the tapestry, Tereus himself, and the fatal table. A serving-maid was standing and holding up the tapestry unfolded; Philomela stood near with her finger on it, pointing out the subjects of the embroideries; Procne was bowing her head to show that she understood what was being-pointed out to her; there was a savage look in her eyes and she had become furious at what she saw depicted there. The subject embroidered on it was the Thracian Tereus struggling with Philomela in a lustful strife; her hair was dishevelled, her girdle undone, her tunic torn, and her bosom half naked; with her right hand she aimed for Tereus’ eyes, while with her left she tried to draw her torn garments over her breasts. He held her in his arms, drawing her form towards him within them, and tightening his embrace round her, body to body; such was the picture of the tapestry which the painter had made. As for the rest of the painting, the women were shewing Tereus the remains of the feast in a basket, the child’s head and hands; their expression was a mixture of laughter and fear. Tereus was depicted leaping up from his seat and drawing his sword against the women; his leg was pressing against the table, which neither stood nor fell, but displayed the unstable balance of an impending fall.
4. “In my opinion,” said Menelaus, “we should not continue our journey to Pharos; for you may observe that we have had two bad signs, the touching of us by the bird’s wing and the threat which this picture implies. Those who profess to interpret signs bid us pay attention to the stories of pictures, if such happen to meet our eye as we set forth to our business, and to conclude that what is likely to happen to us will be of the same character as the event of the painted story. You see then how full of miseries is this drawing — unlawful love, shameless adultery, women’s woes; I therefore recommend you to desist from this expedition of yours.” His words seemed to me not without reason, and I prayed Chaereas to have us excused for that day; he left us in considerable displeasure, saying that he would return to us on the morrow.
5. Said Leucippe to me — all womankind is fond of stories—” What is the meaning of the subject of this picture? What are these birds? Who are those women and that vile man?” I began to relate to her the whole history: “They are the nightingale,” said I, “the swallow, and the hoopoe — all human creatures, and all birds as well; the man became the hoopoe, Philomela the swallow, and Procne the nightingale. Both these women had their home in Athens, and the man, Tereus, was Procne’s husband. One wife at a time, it seems, is not enough for a barbarian’s love, especially if opportunity occur for him to give rein to his wantonness; and this Thracian’s opportunity came through the natural affection of Procne, who sent her husband to bring her sister to her. He started on his journey still the husband of Procne, but he came back (Accounts differ as to the means Tereus employed to take Philomela from her father Pandion. The more usual one, apparently followed here, is that his was a genuine mission from Procne, who wished to see her sister; another relates that he told Pandion that Procne was dead, and that he wished to have Philomela, his deceased wife’s sister, in a second marriage.) the lover of Philomela, and by the way he made her a second Procne; then, fearing Philomela’s tongue, his bridegroom’s present to her was that she should be dumb, and he shore away the glory of her speech. But this profited him nothing; Philomela’s art provided her with a silent voice. She weaves a tell-tale tapestry, working her story into the threads; her hand takes the place of her tongue and sets out for Procne’s eyes what Procne should have learned by her ears — she
tells her sister of her sufferings by means of her shuttle. When Procne read of the deed of violence by means of the tapestry, she sought how she might take an overwhelming vengeance upon her husband. With two women, double was their wrath; they conspired together for one object, spurred on by jealousy (Strictly speaking it is the ζηλοτυπία which spurs on Procne, the vBpis which was the cause of Philomela’s revenge. But by a perfectly natural extension both are made to apply to each of the women.) and sense of violence done, and contrived a banquet even more hideous than the unhallowed nuptials; Tereus’ own child (Itys) was to be his dish; whose mother had been Procne before her fury; but now she had forgotten the pangs by which she gave him birth. So far greater were the agonies of jealousy than those of the womb; women care for nothing but to avenge themselves on him who has wronged their bed, even if they suffer in their revenge a woe equal to that which they inflict; and they balance the pain of what they suffer by the sweetness of the vengeance which they exact. So Tereus dined on this devils’ dish, while they carried to him in a basket the remains of his son with a mixture of fear and mocking laughter; he sees those remains, mourns for what he has eaten — he knew that he was the father of the very food he had swallowed; knowing it, he draws his sword and rushes upon the women, but the air receives them from his vengeance; he mounts with them, and like them becomes a bird. They still preserve the image of the passions they feel — the swallow flies, Tereus pursues; his hate is as great as ever, even when they are all clothed with wings.”
Complete Works of Achilles Tatius Page 10
