Leucippe and Clitophon

The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon (Ancient Greek: τὰ κατὰ Λευκίππην καὶ Kλειτoφῶντα), written by Achilles Tatius in the 2nd century AD, is the second-longest of the five surviving Ancient Greek romances, and the only one to exhibit genuine humour.

Quotes

Book I

• Sidon is a city beside the sea. The sea is the Assyrian; the city is the metropolis of Phoenicia; its people are the forefathers of Thebes.
  • Book I, 1, 1 Incipit (tr. John J. Winkler)

• I saw a picture hanging up which was a landscape and a seascape in one. The painting was of Europa: the sea depicted was the Phoenician Ocean; the land, Sidon. On the land part was a meadow and a troop of girls: in the sea a bull was swimming, and on his back sat a beautiful maiden, borne by the bull towards Crete. The meadow was thick with all kinds of flowers, and among them was planted a thicket of trees and shrubs, the trees growing so close that their foliage touched and the branches, intertwining their leaves thus made a kind a continuous roof over the flowers beneath. The artist had also represented the shadows thrown by the leaves, and the sun was gently breaking through, here and there, on to the meadow, where the painter had represented openings in the thick roof of foliage. The meadow was surrounded on all sides by an enclosure, and lay wholly within the embowering roof; beneath the shrubs grass-beds of flowers grew orderly—narcissus, roses, and bays; in the middle of the meadow in the picture flowed a rivulet of water, bubbling up on one side from the ground, and on the other watering the flowers and shrubs; and a gardener had been painted holding a pick, stooping over a single channel and leading a path for the water.
  The painter had put the girls at one end of the meadow where the land jutted out into the sea. Their look was compounded of joy and fear: garlands were bound about their brows; their hair had been allowed to flow loose on their shoulders; their legs were bare, covered neither by their tunics above nor their sandals below, a girdle holding up their skirts as far as the knee; their faces were pale and their features distorted; their eyes were fixed wide open upon the sea, and their lips were slightly parted, as if they were about to utter a cry of fear; their hands were stretched out in the direction of the bull. They were rushing to the water’s edge, so that the surge just wetted their feet: and they seemed to be anxious to run after the bull, but to be afraid of entering the water.
  The sea had two different tinges of colour; towards the land it was almost red, but out towards the deep water it was dark blue: and foam, and rocks, and wave crests had been painted in it. The rocks ran out from the shore and were whitened with foam, while the waves rose into crests and were then dashed into foam by breaking upon the rocks. Far out in the ocean was painted a bull breasting the waves, while a billow rose like a mountain where his leg was bent in swimming: the maiden sat on the middle of his back, not astride but sideways, with her feet held together on the right: with her left hand she clung to his horn, like a charioteer holding the reins, and the bull inclined a little in that direction, guided by the pressure of her hand. On the upper part of her body she wore a tunic down to her middle, and then a robe covered the lower part of her body: the tunic was white, the robe purple: and her figure could be traced under the clothes—the deep-set navel, the long slight curve of the belly, the narrow waist, broadening down to the loins, the breasts gently swelling from her bosom and confined, as well as her tunic, by a girdle: and the tunic was a kind of mirror of the shape of her body. Her hands were held widely apart, the one to the bull’s horn, the other to his tail; and with both she held above her head the ends of her veil which floated down about her shoulders, bellying out through its whole length and so giving the impression of a painted breeze. Thus she was seated on the bull like a vessel under way, using the veil as a sail; about the bull dolphins gambolled, Cupids sported: they actually seemed to move in the picture. Love himself led the bull—Love, in the guise of a tiny boy, his wings stretched out, wearing his quiver, his lighted torch in his hands: he was turning towards Zeus with a smile on his face, as if he were laughing at him for becoming a bull for his sake.
  • Book I, 1, 3–13 (tr. S. Gaselee)
    • This picture may be compared with the short description in Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, 101 seq.:
      A Lydian maiden in her web did portray to the full
      How Europe was by royal Jove beguiled in shape of Bull.
      A swimming bull, a swelling sea, so lively had she wrought
      The lady seemed looking back to landward and to cry
      Upon her women, and to fear the water sprinkling high,
      And shrinking up her fearful feet.
      —Arthur Golding, The XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso: Entituled, Metamorphosis (1567)

• As soon as I had seen her, I was lost. For Beauty’s wound is sharper than any weapon’s, and it runs through the eyes down to the soul. It is through the eye that love’s wound passes, and I now became a prey to a host of emotions: admiration, amazement, trembling, shame, shamelessness. I admired her generous stature, marveled at her beauty, trembled in my heart, stared shamelessly, ashamed I might be caught. My eyes defied me. I tried to force them away from the girl, but they swung back to her, drawn by allure of her beauty, and finally they were victorious.
  • Book I, 4 (tr. John J. Winkler); Winkler's translation quoted in Gina Welborn, The Heiress's Courtship (2014), p. 25

• Birds there were too: some, tame, sought for food in the grove, pampered and domesticated by the rearing of men; others, wild and on the wing, sported around the summits of the trees; some chirping their birds’ songs, others brilliant in their gorgeous plumage. The songsters were grasshoppers and swallows: the former sang of Aurora’s marriage-bed, the latter of the banquet of Tereus. There were tame birds too, a peacock, a swan, and a parrot; the swan fed round about the sources of the spring, the parrot was hung in a cage from the branches of a tree, the peacock spread his tail among the flowers, and there was a kind of rivalry between the brilliance of the flowers and the hues of the peacock, whose plumage seemed itself to consist of very flowers.
  • Book I, 15 (tr. S. Gaselee); quoted in Liz James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996), Ch. 4, p. 88

Book II

• First she sang Homer's passage about the boar fighting a lion, then a more lyrical song in praise of the rose. The gist of the song, in plain language, without the modulations of the music, would be as follows.
  If Zeus had wanted to place one flower as king over all the rest, the rose would reign supreme: jewel of the earth, a prodigy among plants, most precious of all flowers, the meadow’s blush, a stunning moment of beauty, the fragrance of Eros, invitation to Aphrodite; the rose luxuriates in fragrant petals, surrounded by the most delicate leaves, that ripple laughter as the West Wind strokes them.
  While she sang, I indulged a fantasy of her lips as a rose whose cup was reshaped in the form of a mouth.
  • Book II, 1 (tr. John J. Winkler); Greek quoted in R. S. Wright, A Golden Treasury of Greek Prose (1870), no. XLIX
    • The Homeric allusion to to Iliad, XVI, 823–26:
      And as a lion overmastereth in fight an untiring boar, when the twain fight with high hearts on the peaks of a mountain for a scant spring, wherefrom both are minded to drink: hard panteth the boar, yet the lion overcometh him by his might; even so from the valiant son of Menoetius, after he had slain many, did Hector, Priam's son, take life away, smiting him from close at hand with his spear.
      —A. T. Murray, The Iliad, Vol. 2, LCL (1925), p. 225

About

• The story of Clitophon almost brings before our eyes a bitter passion but a moral life, and the most chaste conduct of Leucippe astonishes everyone. Beaten, her head shorn, vilely used, and, above all, thrice done to death, she still bore all. If my friend, you wish to live morally, do not pay attention to the adventitious beauty of the style, but first learn the conclusion of the discourse; for it joins in wedlock lovers who loved wisely.
  • Photius or Leo the Philosopher, Anthologia Palatina, IX, 203 (tr. W. R. Paton)

• Don't begin with the Leucippe and Clitophon and the Daphnis and Chloe, but read first the more serious works of the great age of Greek literature.
  • Michael Psellos, advice to the student; quoted in F. A. Todd, Some Ancient Novels (1940), p. 1

• Leukippe should astonish, beguile, repel, and linger with a peculiar aftertaste.
  • John J. Winkler, in B. P. Reardon, ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels (1989), p. 174

Epitomes

• In it is declared the History of Europa, the Countrey and parents of Clitiphon, the comming of Panthia and Leucippe from Byzantium to Tyrus: the manner how Clitiphon fell in love with Leucippe: the discourse of Clinias concerning women: the unfortunate death of Charicles.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The First Booke. The Contents

• The description of the feast of Pr[ot]rygaeus Dionysius, and why he was honored for a God amongst the Tyrians. The pleasant discourse betweene Clitiphon and Leucippe. The first invention of purple, found out by a shepheard. After is declared the rape of Calligone by Callisthenes, a yoong man of Byzantium, whom he thought to have beene Leucippe: The wittie conference betweene Satyrus and Conops: The maner of Clitiphons comming to Leucippes chamber in the night, and how they were disturbed by Panthias dreame. The maner of the flight of Clitiphon & Leucippe from Tyre: how they sailed towardes Alexandria, and sell acquainted with one Menelaus an Aegyptian, who telleth the cause of his travelles, and the pleasaunt talke betweene them.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Second Booke. The Contents

• The description of their shipwracke, how Menelaus was cast on shore at Paralia, and how both the Lovers were driven on the coast of Pelusium: of their going towardes Alexandria, and how they were taken by theeves: the manner of their delivery from them: with their entertainment of Charmides: a cunning shift devised by Menelaus and Clinias, to save Leucippe which was appointed to bee sacrificed: the merry meeting againe of all these friendes, with the discourse of their daungers.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Third Booke. The Contents

• Charmides Generall of the army, falleth in love with Leucippe: he declare[t]h it to Menelaeus, craving his helpe therein: Leucippe falleth madde: Charmides by a notable stratageme of the theeves, with all his army was slaine: Leucippe is cured againe by Chaerea.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Fourth Booke. The Contents

• In this fift Booke is set foorth the rape of Leucippe by Cherea: the love of Melite towards Clitiphon: their sayling to Ephesus: After it sheweth how Sosthenes the steward of Melite, bought Leucippe of a Merchant which had redeemed her from Pyrates: how shee under the name of Lacena, unknown of Clitiphon, perceiveth his love to Melite: The returning home of Thersander Melites husband, whom she long since had thought to have perished in shipwracke.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Fift Booke. The Contents

• This Booke shewes, how Clitiphon by Melites means escapeth from Thersander, who before had laid him in hold, and how he was taken and brought backe againe, and cast into prison. Thersander falleth in love with Leucippe, and with Sosthenes helpe seeketh to win her favour: but still he is rejected by her.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Sixt Booke. The Contents

• In this Booke is declared, how Thersander cunningly deviseth means to brute abroad the death of Leucippe, whom he had shut up close in the Countrey: hee accuseth Clitiphon of the murther: Leucippe escapeth out of holde, and commeth into the temple of Diana: Sostratus comming to sacrifice to Diana, findeth his Nephew Clitiphon and his daughter Leucippe.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Seventh Booke. The Contents

• In the last Booke is to be seene the false accusations of Thersander, who for a just rewarde was banished his countrey. Clitiphon was freed, and afterwarde happily marryed to his beloved Leucippe, with many other descriptions happening in the same, as the description of the Pipe of Pan, and the fountaine of Styx.
  • W. Burton, Clitophon and Leucippe (1597), The Eight Booke. The Contents

Translations

• Annibale della Croce (Lyons, 1544) — last four books, into Latin

• L. Dolce (Venice, 1546) — into Italian

• Angelo Coccio (Venice, 1550) — into Italian

• F. de Belleforest (Paris, 1568) — into French

• Jacques de Rochemaure (Lyons, 1573) — into French

• Jean Baudouin (Paris, 1635) — into French

• L. A. Du Perron de Castera (Amsterdam, 1733) — into French

• Anonymous (1670) — into German

• D. C. Seybold (Lemgo, 1772) — into German

• F. Ast and G. Guldenapfel (Leipzig, 1802) — into German

Into English

• W[illiam] B[urton], The Most Delectable and Plesant Historye of Clitophon and Leucippe (London: Thomas Creede, for William Mattes, 1597)
  • See also: Times Literary Supplement (10 February 1905); reprinted in Samuel Lee Wolff, Greek Romances in Elizabethan Fiction (New York, 1912), Appendix C

• Anthony Hodges, The Loves of Clitophon and Leucippe (Oxford: William Turner for John Allam, 1638)

• Anonymous, The Amours of Clitophon and Leucippe (London: T. Bickerton, 1720)

• Rowland Smith, The Greek Romances of Heliodorus, Longus and Achilles Tatius, Bohn's Library (London, 1848)

• S. Gaselee, Achilles Tatius, LCL 45 (London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917)

• John J. Winkler, in B. P. Reardon, ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels (University of California Press, 1989)

• Tim Whitmarsh, Leucippe and Clitophon (Oxford World's Classics, 2003)