In the wild confusion that follows, Thersander’s counsel shouts for a sentence of murder, Melitte offers her slaves to be questioned on her innocence and demands that her husband produce Sosthenes who is probably the murderer. Thersander in a long speech answers Melitte’s challenge about Sosthenes with the result that the presiding officer pronounces sentence of death on Clitophon but postpones Melitte’s case. Clitophon is just on the point of being tortured for evidence when the arrival of a sacred embassy to Artemis postpones the case of Melitte and the execution of Clitophon. Only after the work of the embassy is finished is the case resumed. Then Thersander speaks first, demanding the execution of the sentence. He condemns the priest who has released Clitophon and says he has usurped the function of giving refuge to criminals which belongs to Artemis. He adds foul personal abuse. He presents a second charge against Melitte for adultery and a third against his slave girl Leucippe and her father. The priest in his reply deserves the epithet “Aristophanic” which he has won, for he pays Thersander back in his own coin of abuse only clothing it in the wit of Aristophanes with all his double-meaning of words, his biting attack. And his own arguments point the irony of the situation: Thersander clapped Clitophon in jail before he was allowed to defend himself. He charged him with murdering Leucippe but the young lady is alive! Sopater, counsel for Thersander, next hurls insulting invective at the priest and whitewashes his noble client who has been betrayed by a faithless wife. Thersander then presents a formal challenge to Melitte and Leucippe to prove their chastity and on their acceptance of it, the court adjourns. Next day all reassemble at the cave of Pan and the spring of the Styx. The ladies are proved innocent. Thersander flees and then is sentenced to banishment. Clitophon—and Melitte—are acquitted. This summary of the procedure of the court in Ephesus shows what opportunity Achilles Tatius made for presenting the rhetorical speeches which he cherished. They are many. They are full of specious argument, personal attack, appeal to the emotions, attempted pathos which becomes bathos and genuine ἦθος. The speakers are true to type: the impassioned lover, the leal friend, the haughty, imperious, lustful noble, his sophistical lawyer, the Aristophanic priest. Such agonistic scenes must have entertained the reader of the time as much as they did the author. Actually this same favorite rhetorical style is also assigned to the characters in private life: Melitte in her impassioned speech to Clitophon in prison talks like a sophist, for Eros teaches even arguments![209]