The real hero of the romance is her father, the Ethiopian King Hydaspes, whose qualities she seemed to have inherited. He is the type of the good king, but beyond that he is very human. He has his humor so that when his nephew presents him with a gigantic athletic champion he smilingly gives him in exchange an elephant. He is generous to a defeated foe, freeing Oroondates and restoring him to his office so that the viceroy makes obeisance to him and calls him the most just of mortals. He follows tradition in preparing to offer to the gods foreign captives as human victims, but when convinced by the Gymnosophists of the inappropriateness of such sacrifice he leads his people to the right decision about abolishing it and happily crowns his daughter and her lover as new priests of a purified worship. Persinna his queen is a type of frustrated motherhood, timid enough to expose at birth her beautiful white baby for fear of the charge of adultery, but when her daughter is restored to her she glows with ardent parentalism and interprets Chariclea’s wishes to her husband. The characters in the sub-plot (Cnemon’s story) are less clearly delineated than those in the main narrative. The story serves however not merely to introduce Thisbe, who is useful for the main plot, but anticipates and prepares for certain main characters. Aristippus the betrayed husband, Demaeneta the wanton wife, Thisbe the corrupt maid and Cnemon the coveted youth parallel Oroondates, Arsace, Cybele and Theagenes himself. The far east opens up before us under the shadow of the Great King of the Persians. He never appears, but his viceroys, their lieutenants, their eunuchs work his will with the complete subservience which their act of obeisance symbolizes. Oroondates is a good fighter, but he is ready to desert secretly the city of Syene, which he has been defending, before terms of surrender had been concluded, to start another war in the name of the Great King. His will conveyed by letters must be law to his eunuch or his wife. This arbitrariness when imitated by his eunuch Euphrates becomes sadistic tyranny over prisoners given to his care. Arsace his wife finds her escape in intrigue and amours.[118] Highly over-sexed she stops at nothing to satisfy her passion as her wanton fancies shift from one desired lover to another. She has no mercy for Theagenes when he is obdurate or for Chariclea when she finds she is the object of Theagenes’ affections. Cybele her maid abets her machinations and her lust. Though her position as confidante recalls Phaedra’s nurse in the _Hippolytus_, her character reproduces all the venality, cunning and complaisance of the maids in new Attic comedy. Torture and murder are natural tools for success in her eyes and when she is hoist with her own petard, she dies asserting that she has been poisoned by the innocent girl whom she had hoped to make her victim. Arsace with her Cybele is a complete foil for the purity and loyalty of Chariclea.