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2 Callirhoe: Equal Protagonists As a tale that subjects hero and heroine alike to the caprices of Fortune, Callirhoe departs from the Homeric model of a hero singled out for divine enmity. In the last book of the Greek romance Callirhoe, as the reunited hero and heroine go to bed, the author marks the occasion with the language of the corresponding scene in the Odyssey: “they gladly came to the ancient rite of the bed” (369).1 Throughout Callirhoe the verse of Homer is on display thus, used mainly for purposes of ornament as if to enhance the dignity of prose narrative. In point of fact, Callirhoe and the Odyssey are constructed on completely different principles. If the Odyssey rules out the element of surprise (in the sense that the end of the hero’s trials is foretold and foreknown), Callirhoe consists of a long train of surprises, which is also to say that the action is governed not by any deity or deities but by the abstract and inscrutable force of Fortune. True, we are told in the prologue to the final book of Callirhoe that Aphrodite was responsible for the trials of both hero and heroine, trials she has now decided to bring to an end. Aphrodite was becoming reconciled to Chaereas, though earlier she had been intensely angered at his intemperate jealousy; for, having received from her the fairest of gifts, surpassing even that given to Alexander surnamed Paris, he had repaid her favor with insult. Since Chaereas had now made full amends to Love by his wanderings from west to east amid countless tribulations, Aphrodite took pity on him, and, as she had originally brought together this handsome pair, so now, having harassed them over land and sea, she resolved to unite them again. (361, 363) But that both should be persecuted over land and sea for a fault of the hero’s alone doesn’t seem to make sense.2 At the time of Chaereas’s original “insult” to Aphrodite in book 1—in a fit of jealousy he kicks his wife, nearly killing her—the text makes no reference to Aphrodite at all. The portrayal of Aphrodite in book 8 as the archi32 tect of the tale’s action serves simply as a rhetorical way of telling readers that the time for resolution has come. Throughout the tale to this point, we know no more of what will happen next than the principals themselves, and beyond the hope and expectation that the narrative builds up, we are not even sure of their eventual reunion. Never are we told that Aphrodite’s anger is the cause of their troubles and that when that anger is appeased the troubles will come to an end. In direct contrast to the Odyssey, Callirhoe keeps the knowledge of the future from the reader, a reader in this respect in the same position as the hero and heroine themselves. (We can be pretty sure, though, that none of their contemplated suicides will take place, for the simple reason that too much of the tale remains.) For narrative purposes we are the protagonists’ equals. Few mortals can boast of Poseidon’s enmity. That Odysseus won this enmity by the feat of blinding the god’s son makes it both a curse and a tribute to his nerve and guile. Among all mortals Odysseus is singled out—if you will, honored—by the second greatest of the gods, as he is singled out by Athena as her favorite. (As the intelligence of Athena takes advantage of the mightier god’s distraction in book 1 of the Odyssey, we have the sense that the triumph of brains over brute force is being enacted all over again.) Fortune, on the other hand, causes trouble for everyone. In the Homeric universe the enmity of a god is a thing to be propitiated, but there is no propitiating Fortune, the general nemesis of humanity; and while it is true that the greatness of the Homeric hero places him in a kind of exposed position by attracting the notice of the gods, the Homeric universe contains no such equalizing force as Fortune, which overthrows the high and raises up the low. Just as it plays no favorites, Fortune marks no one as the special object of its enmity. Unlike Poseidon, Fortune after all is not a person with special loves and hates, but merely a personification. And Fortune, not Aphrodite, drives events in Callirhoe. “I cannot trust...

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