Essays on the Greek RomancesHaight, Elizabeth Hazelton
History
Essays on the Greek Romances
Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton
Apuleius. Metamorphoses; Greek fiction -- History and criticism
This was the beginning of worse troubles, for while Apsyrtos was away on
business, his daughter Manto fell in love with Habrocomes and made
advances to him through a slave and a letter. When he refused to satisfy
her desires, for vengeance she accused him to her father of having tried
to rape her. Apsyrtos had Habrocomes flogged, tortured and cast into
prison. Anthia contriving a secret visit to her husband told him she had
been given as a slave to Manto and must accompany her to Syria, where
Manto’s newly acquired husband Moeris lived. The two slaves of
Habrocomes and Anthia, Leucon and Rhode, were sold into a distant land.
Manto to disgrace Anthia as much as possible married her to one of her
humblest slaves, Lampon, a goatherd. But Lampon pitying Anthia on
hearing from her own lips her story respected her and never made her his
actual wife. In Tyre Apsyrtos happened to find the love-letter which his
daughter had written to Habrocomes. Learning from it his unjust
treatment of Habrocomes he released him from prison, gave him his
freedom, and made him steward of his house.
Meanwhile in Syria Anthia’s fatal beauty had inflamed Manto’s husband
Moeris with a mad passion for her. He confided this to the goatherd
Lampon begging for his aid. Lampon to save Anthia went secretly and told
Manto her husband’s designs. Manto in jealous fury ordered Lampon to
kill the woman. In sorrow he told Anthia all and together they planned
that instead of killing her he should sell her as a slave in some remote
district. He managed to hide this transaction and saved her life by
selling her to some Cilician merchants. But their ship was wrecked in a
storm. A few (among them Anthia) came to land on a raft and after
wandering all night in the woods were captured by the brigand
Hippothoos.
Manto meanwhile wrote to her father a letter made up of truth and lies,
saying that the slave Anthia had been so troublesome she had given the
girl to a goatherd and afterwards when Moeris became enamored of the
woman, she had sold both the goatherd and his wife in Syria. Habrocomes
at once started out in search for Anthia and finding Lampon and learning
the true story from him, he set forth for Cilicia.
There, however, Anthia had been in great danger. Hippothoos and his
brigands were about to sacrifice her to Ares, but she was rescued by a
high police official of the district, Perilaos, who captured all the
brigands except Hippothoos. He took her to Tarsus and of course soon
fell in love with her. He offered her honorable marriage, wealth,
children and she fearing his violent passion forced herself to consent
but asked for a month’s delay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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