The worship of Isis had been carried to the coast of Asia Minor by sailors and traders. In the empire both Artemis and Isis had statues in the Artemesion of Ephesus. The Egyptian cult, purified and penetrated with moral ideas, seems to belong to the second century A.D. From its very nature, the goddess Isis becomes as natural a protector of Anthia as is Artemis.[86] This synthesis of the two goddesses in one protectress of the heroine is a natural process of the philosophical thought of the time. In a modern novel or a cinema, better clarity would be attained for our non-philosophical minds if one goddess, Isis, was worshipped by Anthia and was the deity of her salvation. Apuleius achieved just this simplification in his novel by making Isis the one and only savior of his hero Lucius. To develop and sustain these three main interests of the story, love, adventure and religion, the usual devices of a plot are employed. The setting is cinematic in its many changes: Ephesus, the ocean, Samos, Rhodes, Tyre, Syria, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Egypt, Sicily, Italy, Rhodes again, back to Ephesus, and thrown in with the setting are many geographical details which are often wrong.[87] The characters are familiar types: the ravishingly beautiful hero and heroine, their perturbed parents, high officials (Perilaos and Psammis) who take the place of historical characters, faithful slaves, a wily procurer, a doctor, pirates, bandits. Dalmeyda has written a discriminating paragraph on the morality of the characters.[88] He says that of course all the characters of the romance do not attain the perfection of virtue of the two protagonists, but altogether the author shows us a gallery of persons without wickedness who are sympathetic and who have an air of honesty even in the exercise of the worst occupations. Manto, who falsely accuses Habrocomes of having wished to violate her and who has him cruelly tortured, is motivated by an overwhelming passion. Apsyrtos, her father, chief of the pirates, shows himself just and generous to the hero when he has discovered his daughter’s calumny. The slaves are devoted and faithful. Lampon to whom Manto gives Anthia as his wife is a rustic full of civility and goodness. The man who traffics in young girls to whom Anthia is sold shows a noble sympathy when she pretends to be afflicted with seizures. Hippothoos, a brigand chief, exercises his trade ruthlessly putting villages to fire and sword; he has a weakness too for handsome lads; but to Habrocomes he is a faithful and devoted friend. He renounces his passion for Anthia when he finds she is the wife of his friend and aids her in every way in her search for Habrocomes. It is this recognition of some good in every human being that gives Xenophon his large humanity.