“Who could worthily tell of the appearance of the courtroom then? What dramatist ever produced so incredible a situation on the stage? Indeed, you might have thought that you were in a theater, filled with a multitude of conflicting passions.”[61] In another passage Mithridates says Fortune has forced the lovers to enact a very sad tragedy.[62] New comedy contributed types of characters (particularly the slaves), spicy dialogue and at least two quotations.[63] The influence of history and especially of Herodotus is apparent in the use of local history, in narratives of adventure, in depiction of the adulation of the eastern sovereign, in the reflection of the great struggle between the west and the east. The influence of the rhetorical schools is seen in the court scenes which in both their cases and speeches are strangely like those of the _Controversiae_ of Seneca and the _Declamationes_ of Quintilian. All these different literary forces combined to produce a style of narration in Chariton which is at the same time simple and ingenuous, yet rhetorical. His startling baroque effects are achieved by just this variation from simple concise epic narrative with strong Homeric coloring, to intense dramatic moments of high tragedy, to comic scenes of slaves’ intrigues, to love passages which before had found expression only in poetry. Probably Chariton learned the effective use of parallelism, contrast and surprise from the schools of rhetoric, but he wields all his various tools with such success that he has carved out a new form of literature in his prose romance. III _THE_ EPHESIACA _OR_ HABROCOMES AND ANTHIA _BY XENOPHON OF EPHESUS_ “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: Love’s not Time’s Fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.” Shakespeare’s famous CXVI sonnet is the lyric _credo_ of those who believe that love can triumph over adversity, old age and even death itself. The lines just quoted are the quintessence of lyric romance. Suppose now that the romantic novel or the modern cinema wishes to feature this same theme: “True love lasts.” How would either one convey the idea? I am going to show you by a concrete and melodramatic illustration. Here is a script for it.[64] A young Greek who has been seeking over the world his kidnapped bride has come to Sicily, his resources nearly gone. An old fisherman Aegialeus gives him hospitality. It is night. The young man and the old man tell each other their sad love stories. The old man is now speaking: