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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 by Various

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843




[Footnote 59: "In the _royal_ character"--"[Greek: grammasin
Aithiopikois oy demotikois, alla basilikois]." This distinction between
the royal and popular system of hieroglyphics, as well as the etiquette,
before mentioned, of inscribing the title of the king within a circle or
oval, is borrowed, as need hardly be mentioned, from the monuments of
Egypt.]

The cavalier thus eulogized by Calasiris is of course Theagenes, who,
after thrice encompassing in due form the tomb of Neoptolemus, at length
reaches the Temple of Apollo; but, during the performance of the
ceremonial, it falls to his lot to receive the torch with which the
altar is to be kindled from the hand of Chariclea, and love at first
sight, mutual and instantaneous, is the result. The aid of Calasiris is
again invoked by both the lovers; and the good old gentleman, whose
knowledge of the Ethiopian hieroglyphics, by enabling him to decipher
the mysterious inscription on the fillet, has put him in possession of
the true parentage of Chariclea, (which he does not, however,
communicate to Charicles,) at once resolves to contrive their elopement,
being further stimulated thereto by Apollo in a dream--the agency of
dreams, it should be remarked, being introduced on almost every possible
occasion throughout the narrative, and their dictates in all cases
religiously acted upon by the parties interested. A passage is procured
on board a Phoenician ship opportunely lying in the Crissaean Gulf, the
nearest point of the coast to Delphi; and the abduction of Chariclea
having been effected by apparent violence by the companions of
Theagenes, the trio set sail for Sicily, the fugitives passing as the
children of Calasiris. The voyage is at first prosperous; but the ship
happening to touch at Zacynthus, the beauty of Chariclea attracts the
eye of a noted pirate named Trachinus, who, when the vessel resumes her
course, pursues and captures her after a long chase, and turning the
crew adrift in the boat,[60] and carries his prize, with his three
captives, to the coast of Egypt, where he prepares a feast on the beach,
from the materials furnished by the rich cargo of the Phoenician ship,
in honour of his intended nuptials. Calasiris, however, whose genius
seems ever fertile in expedients, has contrived to possess the mind of
Pelorus, the pirate lieutenant, with the belief that he is the object of
the fair captive's preference; and his assertion at the banquet of his
claims gives rise to a furious conflict among the intoxicated pirates,
ending in the slaughter of the whole party except Pelorus himself, who
in turn falls by the sword of Theagenes. Calasiris, who had prudently
retired to a safe distance till the fighting was over, is now on the
point of coming forward to aid Chariclea in the care of her wounded
lover, when he is anticipated by the arrival of the robbers, by whom, as
related at the commencement of the story, he sees his proteges carried
off.

[Footnote 60: The capture of the vessel has furnished the subject of a
painting by Raffaelle and Giulio Romano.]

Before this recital, however, had been brought to a close,
Nausicles,[61] the master of the house, returns, and the cause of his
absence is explained. An Athenian mistress whom he had brought from
Greece had fallen into the hands of the freebooters; and Nausicles,
having procured the aid of a body of Persian troops from the governor of
the district, had proceeded against the buccanier settlement in order to
recover her. On reaching the island, however, they find only Theagenes
and Chariclea, Cnemon and Thermuthis having just started on their voyage
of discovery; and Nausicles, disappointed of finding her whom he sought,
(and who was no other than the faithless Thisbe, slain, as above
related, in the battle,) conceived the idea of claiming Chariclea in her
place by way of indemnity; while Theagenes was sent off to Memphis by
the Persian officer, who deemed that his beauty and noble bearing would
make him an acceptable addition to the household[62] of the Satrap
Oroondates. The lovers are thus again separated, and Chariclea is in
despair; but, on arriving at the house of Nausicles, she is of course
immediately recognised and reclaimed by Calasiris. Cnemon, who seems to
have as extraordinary a genius for sudden friendships as the two
heroines in the "Rovers," marries the fair daughter of Nausicles after a
few hours' courtship, and at once sets sail with his father-in-law for
Greece, having ascertained from him that the detection of his enemies
had now made his return safe:--And Calasiris and Chariclea, disguised as
beggars, set out in search of the lost Theagenes. That luckless hero
had, meanwhile, been re-captured on his road to Memphis, by his, old
friend Thyamis, who, having escaped (it does not exactly appear how)
from the emissaries of his treacherous brother, with whom the attack on
the island proves to have originated, is now at the head of another and
more powerful body of the buccanier fraternity, in the district of
Bessa. He receives Theagenes with great cordiality, and, having beaten
off an attack from the Persian troops, takes the bold resolution of
leading his lawless followers against Memphis itself, in order to
reclaim his right to the priesthood, while Oroondates is engaged on the
southern frontier in withstanding an invasion of the Ethiopians. Arsace,
the wife of the satrap, who is acting as vice-regent for her husband,
unprovided with troops to repel this sudden incursion, proposes that the
two brothers shall settle the ecclesiastical succession by single
combat; and a duel accordingly takes place under the walls of Memphis,
in which Petosiris is getting considerably the worst of it, when the
combat is interrupted by the arrival of Chariclea and Calasiris, who
thus witnesses the spectacle foretold by the oracle--(the dread of
seeing which had driven him into voluntary exile)--his two sons aiming
at each other's life. The situation is a well-conceived one, and
described with spirit. Calasiris is recognised by his penitent sons, and
himself resumes the priesthood, the contested vacancy in which had been
occasioned only by his absence and supposed death. The lovers are
received as his guests in the temple of Isis, and all seems on the point
of ending happily, when Calasiris, as if the object of his existence had
been accomplished in the fulfilment of the oracle, is found the same
night dead in his bed.

[Footnote 61: He is called "A merchant of Naucratis," though resident in
Chemmis. But Naucratis, as we find from Herodotus, (ii. 179,) "was of
old the only free port of Egypt; and, if any trader came to one of the
other mouths of the Nile, he was put upon oath that his coming was
involuntary, and was then made to sail to the Canopic mouth. But, if
contrary winds prevented him from doing this, he was obliged to send his
cargo in barges round the Delta to Naucratis, so strict was the
regulation." Amasis was the first king who had permitted the trade of
the Greeks at this port, [ib. 178,] and the restriction appears to have
been continued under the Persian rule.]

[Footnote 62: The establishment of household slaves or _Mamlukes_ seems
to have been nearly on the same footing with the ancient as with the
modern Persians.]

The loss of their old protector soon involves them in a fresh maze of
troubles. Thyamis, indeed, whose elevation to the high priesthood seems
to have driven his former love for Chariclea out of his head, still
continues their friend; but Arsace, the haughty consort of the satrap,
who is represented as a princess of the royal blood of Persia, and a
prototype of Catharine of Russia in her amours, has already cast her
eyes on Theagenes, whose personal attractions seem on all occasions to
have been as irresistible by the ladies as those of the fair partner of
his wanderings by the other sex.[63] Under pretence of removing them
from the temple during the period of mourning for Calasiris, they are
lodged in the palace of the satrapess, where the constancy of the hero
is exposed to a variety of perilous temptations, but comes forth, of
course, unscathed from the ordeal. The love of ladies thus rejected has
been prone, in all ages and countries, particularly in Egypt since the
days of Yusuf and Zuleikha,[64] to turn into hatred; and Arsace is no
exception to this long-established usage. Theagenes is accordingly
thrown into a dungeon, and regularly bastinadoed under the
superintendence of a eunuch, in order to instill into him proper notions
of gallantry; while an attempt on the life of Chariclea, whom Arsace has
discovered not to be his sister, fails through the mistake of an
attendant, who delivers the poisoned goblet intended for her to Cybele,
the princess's nurse and confidante, and the contriver of the plot.
Chariclea, however, is condemned on this pretext to be burned alive as a
poisoner; but the flames recoil before the magical influence of the gem
_Pantarbe_, which she wears in her mother's ring; and before Arsace has
time to devise any fresh scheme for her destruction, the confidential
eunuch of Oroondates, to whom the misdeeds of his spouse had become
known, arrives from the camp of Syene with orders to bring the two
captives to the presence of the satrap. Arsace commits suicide in
despair; but the escort of the lovers, while travelling along the banks
of the Nile, is surprised by a roving party of Ethiopians; and they are
carried to the camp of Hydaspes, by whom they are destined, according to
Ethiopian usage, to be hereafter sacrificed to the sun and moon--the
national deities of the country, as first-fruits of the war. A long
account is now introduced of the siege and capture of Syene by the
Ethiopians, and the victory of Hydaspes over Oroondates, which occupies
the whole of the ninth book; and though in itself not ill told, is
misplaced, as interrupting the narrative at the most critical point of
the story. Peace is at last concluded between the belligerents; and
Hydaspes, returning in triumph to his capital of Meroe, holds a grand
national festival of thanksgiving, at which the victims are to be
sacrificed. The secret of her birth had, however, been revealed to
Chariclea by Calasiris before the elopement from Delphi, and when on the
point of being led to the altar, she suddenly throws herself at the feet
of the Queen Persina, and, producing the well-remembered token of the
fillet and the ring, claims the protection of her parents. The
recognition of the mother is instantaneous, but Hydaspes, who had always
believed that the child to which his queen gave birth had died in early
infancy, remains incredulous, till his doubts are removed by the
evidence of Sisimithres, who identifies Chariclea as the child which he
had confided, ten years before, to the care of Charicles. At this
juncture Charicles himself appears, having come to Egypt to reclaim his
lost child from Calasiris, and thence having been sent on by Oroondates
to the court of Ethiopia:--and the denouement, as far as the heroine is
concerned, is now complete. Theagenes, however, still remains doomed,
and Hydaspes seems unwilling to relinquish his victim; but, after an
interval of suspense, during which he incidentally performs various
exploits rather unusual in a man in momentary expectation of death,[65]
he is spared, at the vehement intercession of Persina, to whom Chariclea
has revealed her love for the young Thessalian. The voice of the people,
raised in acclamation at this deed of clemency, is ratified by the
approbation of Sisimithres and the Gymnosophists, and all difficulties
are now at an end. The betrothal of Theagenes and Chariclea is publicly
announced; and, at the termination of the festival, they return in state
into the city, with Hydaspes and Persina, as the acknowledged heirs of
the kingdom.

[Footnote 63: In all the Greek romances, it seems almost inevitable that
all the male characters should fall in love with the heroine, and all
the females with the hero; and, this is, in some of them, carried to a
ludicrous degree of absurdity.]

[Footnote 64: The name of Potiphar's wife, according to the 12th chapter
of the Koran. The story of Yusuf and Zuleikha forms the subject of one
of the most beautiful poems in the Persian language, by Jami.]

[Footnote 65: One of these consists in pursuing a wild bull on
horseback, and throwing himself from the horse on the neck of the bull,
which he seizes by the horns, and then, by main force wrenching his neck
round, hurls him powerless to the ground on his back! Such an
achievement appears almost incredible; but it is represented, in all its
particulars, in one of the Arundel marbles, (Marmor. Oxon. Selden,
xxxviii,) under the name of [Greek: Tayrokathapsia], and is mentioned as
a national sport of Thessaly, the native country of Theagenes, both by
Pliny (Hist. Nat. viii. 45), and by Suetonius (Claud. cap. 21)--"He
exhibited," (says the latter writer,) "Thessalian horsemen who drive
wild bulls round and round the circus, and leaping on them when they are
weary, bring them to the ground by the horns."]

Such is the general outline of the story, which, as will have been
perceived, is far from deficient either in incident or in strikingly
imagined situations; but the merit of the conceptions is too often
marred by the mismanagement of the details, and the unskilful
arrangement of the different parts of the narrative. Thus all the
circumstances of the early history of Chariclea, and the rise of the
mutual affection between her and Theagenes, and of their adventurous
flight, are made known through a long episode awkwardly put into the
mouth of a third person, who himself knows great part of them only at
second-hand, and voluntarily related by him to one with whom his
acquaintance is scarcely of an hour's standing. This mode of narration,
in which one of the characters is introduced (like the prologue in an
old play) to recount the previous adventures of the others, is in itself
at all times defective; since it injures the effect of the relation by
depriving it of those accessory touches which the author, from his
conventionally admitted insight into the feelings and motives of his
characters, is privileged to supply: whereas a speaker in the first
person must necessarily confine himself, unless when narrating his own
adventures, to the points which have fallen under his personal
observation. In the present instance it is, moreover, needless, as the
whole episode might as well have been told in the ordinary manner. The
endless captures and recaptures of the lovers, who are continually
bandied about from one set of pirates, robbers, or plundering soldiers
to another, become, at length, wearisome from repetition; and the
dramatic force of the conclusion, which would otherwise be highly
effective, is weakened by the knowledge which the reader possesses, that
Chariclea is all along aware of the secret of her own parentage, and
that she has only to produce the fillet and ring in order to ensure her
deliverance from the dreadful doom which appears to threaten her. The
improbability of some of the incidents, and the awkward manner in which
others are brought about, have been much objected to by modern critics,
and it must be admitted that some better way might be found to dispose
of personages whose agency was no longer needed, than to cut them off by
sudden death, like Calasiris, or by the bite of a venemous serpent, like
Thermuthis. But the mechanical art (as it may almost be called) of
constructing a story was then in its infancy; and the violations of
probability which have been laid to the charge of Heliodorus, are, after
all, much less flagrant than those of Achilles Tatius, and infinitely
less so than those of any of the other Greek writers of romance; nor
would many of our modern novelists, perhaps, gain much by the
comparison.

The characters are of very different degrees of merit. Theagenes is as
insipid and uninteresting as one of Walter Scott's well-behaved heroes;
and his entreaties to Chariclea, in the final scene, no longer to delay
making herself known to her parents, betray a most laudable instinct of
self-preservation. The deeds of strength and valour which he is
occasionally made to perform, seem rather to arise from the author's
remembering that his hero must do something to support the character,
than to result naturally from the situations in which he is placed, and
his love of decorum is carried, on all occasions, to an absurd extent of
prudery. "Le heros de la piece est d'une sagesse qui a donne lieu a des
railleries assez plaisantes," says Bayle; though the instance usually
cited--a box on the ear, which he gives Chariclea, when she approaches
him in her beggar's dress, under the walls of Memphis, and attempts to
throw herself into his arms, is scarcely a fair one, as he does not at
the time recognize his beloved under her unbecoming disguise. The
character of Chariclea herself, however, makes ample amends for the
defects of that of her lover; and this superiority of the heroine, it
may be observed, is almost invariable in the early Greek romances. The
masculine firmness and presence of mind which she evinces in situations
of peril and difficulty, combined at all times with feminine delicacy,
and the warmth and confiding simplicity of her love for Theagenes,
attach to her a degree of interest which belongs to none of the other
personages; and her spontaneous burst of grateful affection, on
recognizing, at Meroe, the voice of her foster-father, Charicles, is
expressed with exquisite tenderness. Of the subordinate characters
little need be said. Charicles is a mere impersonation of benevolence
and parental love; and Cnemon seems to have been introduced for little
else than to tell his own long story, and listen to that of Calasiris in
return. The old Egyptian priest, however, is a sketch of considerable
merit. Like Scott's Peregrine Touchwood, though abundantly zealous at
all times to serve his friends, he cannot find it in his heart to take
any but the most round-about way of doing so; but he is never
disconcerted by any of the untoward results of his schemes, and relates
to Cnemon, with the most perfect self-complacency, the deceit which he
had practiced on his confiding host, Charicles, in helping Theagenes to
steal away his adopted daughter, and the various scrapes into which his
proteges had fallen under his guidance. He has, moreover, pet theories
of his own on the phenomena of the Nile, the cause of the roughness of
the Ionian Sea, and various other matters, in which he indoctrinates
Cnemon _par parenthese_: he is an enthusiastic admirer and constant
quoter of Homer, whose Egyptian birth (at Thebes the hundred-gated) he
maintains with all the zeal of a Highlander defending the authenticity
of Ossian; and, on the whole, we cannot but think the author has
scarcely used him well, in not allowing him to live to see his efforts
crowned with success, and to enjoy the honours which would doubtless
have been heaped upon him at the court of Ethiopia.

The author appears to take especial delight in accounts of costumes,
processions, sacrifices, &c.; the details given of which are often
valuable in an antiquarian point of view; and his information upon these
subjects, as well as of the manners of the country in which the scene is
laid, as far as our knowledge of the present day will enable us to
decide, is extremely correct. One of the most curious morceaux of this
sort, is a minute description of the complete armour for horse and man,
worn by the elite of the cavalry in the army of Oroondates; and which,
though probably taken from that used by the troops of the Sassanian
monarchs cotemporary with Heliodorus, is equally applicable to the
period at which the scene is laid; since numerous passages in ancient
authors show, that from the earliest time up to the Mohammedan conquest,
the Persian nobles and heavy cavalry used panoply as impenetrable as the
European chivalry of the middle ages. Among the other scattered traits
of manners, it will be remarked as singular, according to the ideas of
the present day, that open piracy and robbery are neither spoken of as
disreputable, nor as attaching any slur to those who exercised them;
insomuch, that the notoriety of Thyamis, having been a chief of
freebooters, is not regarded as any obstacle to his assumption of the
high-priesthood. But this, it will be found, was strictly in accordance
with the manners of the ancient Greeks, among whom piracy was so far
from being looked upon in any other light than that of an honourable
profession, that Nestor himself, in the third book of the Odyssey, asks
his guests, Telemachus and Mentor, as an ordinary question, whether
business or piracy was the object of their voyage. But the _Bucoli_
(herdsmen or buccaniers,) over whom Thyamis held command, should
probably, notwithstanding their practice of rapine, be regarded not so
much as robbers as in the light of outlaws, who had taken refuge in
these impenetrable marshes from the yoke of the Persians; and their
constant conflicts with the Persian troops, as well as the march of
Thyamis upon Memphis, confirm the opinion that this was the intention of
the author. That these vast marshes of the Delta were in fact,
throughout the period of Persian rule in Egypt, the strongholds of
Egyptian independence, admits of abundant demonstration from the Greek
historians:--it was here, in the mysterious island of Elbo, that
Amyrtaeus, (called by Thucydides "the king of the marshes,") held out
after the reconquest of Egypt by Megabysus, B.C. 454, "for they could
not take him on account of the great extent of the marsh; besides which,
the marshmen are the most warlike of all the Egyptians."[66] This view
of the subject has, at least, the advantage of placing Thyamis in a more
respectable light than that of a mere marauder; though his mode of life
under either supposition, would be considered, according to modern
notions, as a strange training for the sacerdotal office.

[Footnote 66: Thuc. i. cap. 110. The island of Elbo, according to
Herodotus, who gives a curious account of the Egyptian marshes and their
inhabitants, had been constructed of _cinders_, in long past times, by a
king who lay concealed for fifty years from the Ethiopians; but no man
knew its situation, till it was again brought to light, after having
been lost for five hundred years, by Amyrtaeus.]

Few if any works of fiction have enjoyed so long and widely diffused a
celebrity, as the Ethiopics. Whatever credit may be attached to the
story preserved by Nicephorus, of the deposition of Heliodorus from his
see, it at least affords evidence of the high popularity of the work,
even during the lifetime of the author; and we have the personal
testimony of Nicephorus himself, that in his own time, five centuries
later, it was still regarded with undiminished favour. Down to the fall
of the Greek empire, its style and incidents continued to furnish a
model to all the wretched scribblers who attempted the composition of
romances--nor was its fame confined within the limits of the language in
which it was written. It found a place in the famous library of Matthias
Corvinus at Buda; and the dispersion of that celebrated collection on
the capture of the city by the Ottomans after the battle of Mohacz, in
1526, first made it known to western Europe: the first edition by
Obsopoeus,[67] (printed at Basle in 1534,) having been taken in MS.
which fell into the possession of a soldier on this occasion. Among the
literati of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its popularity
seems almost to have equalled that which it had enjoyed in its native
country. Tasso, as has already been noticed, borrowed from it the
episode of Clorinda--and Racine (one of whose early productions was also
founded upon it) was, in his younger days, so enthusiastic an admirer of
it, that when the volume was taken from him by his tutor at Port-Royal,
he replied that it mattered little, as he knew the whole by heart! The
numerous translations, however, which have appeared in various
languages, particularly in French and English, are little calculated to
add, by the merits of their execution, to the favour of the work; one
English _poetical_ version in particular, by Lisle, published in 1527,
is one of the most precious specimens of balderdash in existence--a
perfect literary curiosity in its way! Of the others, we need mention
only the French one of Amyot, (1558,) not for its merits, but from the
author's having been rewarded by Henry II. of France with the nomination
to an abbey--as if in tardy compensation to Heliodorus, in the person of
his literary representative, for the see from which the authorship is
said to have caused his expulsion.

[Footnote 67: Of the later editions of the Greek text, the best are
those of Coray, Paris, 1804; and Mitscherlisch, Strasburg, 1797.]

* * * * *




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