Two Novels from Ancient Greece by Chariton

Author:Chariton [Chariton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62466-016-0
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Book 7

[1] When everyone was leaving with the king to fight against the Egyptians, no one told Chaireas what he was supposed to do. He was not the king’s subject and was, in fact, the only free man in Babylon at that time. He was pleased since he assumed that Callirhoe was also staying, so the next day he went to the palace looking for his wife. When he saw the palace closed up and many guards at the gates, he went around the whole city looking high and low. As if on the edge of sanity, he kept pestering his friend Polycharmos with questions. “Where’s Callirhoe? What’s happened? I mean, she can’t have marched off to war too.”

Unable to find Callirhoe, he began to search for Dionysios, his rival in love, and came to his house. A man came out and in all apparent sincerity* told him exactly what he had been coached to say. Dionysios, it turns out, wanted Chaireas to lose all hope of marrying Callirhoe and not stay around for the trial, so he had devised the following scheme. When he departed for the battle, he left the man behind to give Chaireas the news that because the Persian king needed allies, he had sent Dionysios to collect an army to fight the Egyptian king and, in order to secure his loyal and eager service, he had rewarded him with Callirhoe.

When Chaireas heard this, he immediately believed it, for a man in the midst of misfortune is easy to deceive. He tore his clothes and pulled out his hair, and as he beat his chest, he said, “Faithless Babylon, what a terrible host you’ve been. You hold nothing for me. And what a great judge. Turns out he’s pimped out another man’s wife. A wedding in wartime! And here I was, preparing for the trial, completely convinced that I would get to present my case. But I’ve lost by default, and Dionysios didn’t have to utter a word to win.

“Well, his victory won’t do him any good. Callirhoe won’t go on living, not now that Chaireas has survived and she’s separated from him. Sure, she was fooled the first time, but that was because she thought I was already dead. So what am I waiting for? I should be killing myself in front of the palace, spilling my blood on the judge’s door. The Persians and Medes212 need to know what kind of verdict their king has rendered here.”

Polycharmos saw that he could not provide consolation in the face of the disaster and that Chaireas could not be saved. “You’re my best friend,” he said, “and I tried before to keep your spirits up. I managed to stop you from getting yourself killed many times. But now I think you’ve got the right idea. In fact, I’m not only not going to stop you, I’m now actually ready to die with you. But we have to figure out what would be the best way to go,

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