Callirhoe Epiphanes: Women as Sites of Divine Presence

The interpenetration of divine and human worlds is further recognized in a perhaps more surprising way, through human beings who convey the like­ness of divine presence to an extraordinary degree.

Unveiling Callirhoe and loosening her hair, [Theron] opened the door and told her to go in first. Leonas and all in the room were struck with amazement at the sudden apparition, as if they had set eyes on a goddess; for rumor had it that Aphrodite could be seen (Em^aivEo6ai) in the fields. (Chaer. 1.14.1)

When the women had eaten, Plangon said to Callirhoe, “Come to Aphrodite’s shrine and offer up a prayer for yourself. The goddess makes her appearance here; and, beside our neighbors, people from the city come here to sacrifice to her. She listens especially to Dionysius, and he has never failed to stop at her shrine.” They then told her of the ap­pearances of the goddess, and one of the peasant women said, “Lady, when you see Aph­rodite you will think that you are looking at a picture of yourself.” (Chaer. 2.2.5-6)

Ever since the classical period, Greek religious art had shown a strong preference for an idealized naturalism in the depiction of the gods. The great images of classical antiquity were renowned for their lifelike appear­ance, and Hellenistic art developed this naturalism. Philostratus (Imagines 2.1), describing what purports to be an ancient painting of Aphrodite at Neapolis, sees

an Aphrodite, made of ivory, [whom] delicate maidens are hymning in delicate myrtle groves. The chorister who leads them is skilled in her art, and not yet past her youth; for a certain beauty rests even on her first wrinkle, which, though it brings with it the gravity of age, yet tempers this with what remains of her prime.

A fourth-century rhetor describes Praxiteles’s sculpture of Eros in similar­ly animated terms:

The Eros, the workmanship of Praxiteles, was Eros himself, a boy in the bloom of youth with wings and bow. Bronze gave expression to him, and as though giving expression to Eros as a great and dominating god, it was itself subdued by Eros; for it could not endure to be only bronze, but it became Eros just as he was. You might have seen the bronze losing its hardness and becoming marvelously delicate in the direction of plumpness and, to put the matter briefly, the material proving equal to fulfilling all the obligations that were laid upon it. It was supple but without effeminacy; and while it had the proper color of bronze, it looked bright and fresh; and though it was quite devoid of actual motion, it was ready to display motion; for though it was fixed solidly on a pedestal, it deceived one into thinking that it possessed the power to fly. It was filled with joy even to laugh­ter, the glance from the eyes was ardent and gentle, and one could see the bronze coming under the sway of passion and willingly receiving the representation of laughter....And what wonderful bronze it was! For as one looked a ruddy color shone out from the ends of the curls, and when one felt the hair it yielded as though soft to the touch. As I gazed on this work of art, the belief came over me that Daidalos had indeed wrought a dancing group in motion and had bestowed sensation upon gold, while Praxiteles had all but put intelligence into his image of Eros and had so contrived that it should cleave the air with 56

its wings.

This delight in naturalistic portraiture makes it easy for the novelists to make the same move in reverse: their heroines (less commonly, heroes) are described as animated statues, bringing the visual presence of the god to life.

As she made her way from the shrine to the sea, the boatmen were overwhelmed with awe on seeing her, as though Aphrodite herself were coming to embark, and with one accord they hastened to kneel in homage. (3.2.14)

Even strangers are paying you homage as a goddess. The other day two fine young men sailed by here, and one of them nearly expired at the sight of your statue, so like a god­dess on earth has Aphrodite made you. (3.9.1)

Epiphany might seem to be a form of hubris, but oddly (perhaps because Callirhoe is much too modest to claim any special status for herself), Char­iton treats it instead as a mode of divine presence. Callirhoe’s super-human beauty is the gift of Aphrodite herself, and, far from being jealous, the goddess takes it as a personal insult if humanity (both male and female) fails to acknowledge the fact. Despite her physical and emotional trials, then, Callirhoe’s journey is also a kind of triumphal progress for Aphro­dite, winning acclaim and recognition for the goddess’s powers from West to East and back again (8.1.3). We do not need to read the novels as Mys- terientexte to see that one of their underlying themes is to map the world­wide triumph of love’s divinity against even the most philosophical of op­ponents.

But there is an important caveat. Greek romance is pervaded with tham- bos, awe and wonder as the appropriate response to thaumata, marvelous events. Yet there are no actual miracles: all the apparent resurrections and miraculous escapes turn out to be illusions.^{[57] [58] The real site of divine en­counter is the human body; yet only the superstitious lower orders really see Callirhoe as Aphrodite herself rising from the waves:}

The humbler folk (to demodesteron) were persuaded that she was a Nereid who had risen from the sea or a goddess who had come from Dionysius’s estate: this was the gossip of the boatmen. (3.2.15)

Like the book’s elite characters, we (the author and readers) always know that the sense of epiphany is an illusion, albeit a beneficent one:

Khariton, as we remember, let Dionysios recover quickly from his instantaneous belief that Kallirhoe really was Aphrodite, while the other people believing in epiphany are all simple minds, servants, peasants, boat-men, ‘humbler’ city-dwellers, or the temple staff ex officio, whom author and reader may join in regarding with a touch of good-humoured • 58

irony.

When the well-meaning temple attendant describes the young man who “worships” (proskunein) Callirhoe “as a goddess” (3.9.1), we know - as Callirhoe does - that the stranger’s distress is caused by his recognition, not of Aphrodite but of his long-lost (and entirely human) wife. Callirhoe is always aware of the boundaries between mortal and immortal; in fact, Chariton goes out of his way to dramatize his heroine’s negative reactions to her celebrity status. Far from claiming divine honours, this teenage her­oine is painfully conscious of the disparity between her divine re-putation and her actual status as a slave. The epiphany motif thus takes on an added piquancy from the central romance theme of status reversal. It is precisely in the pathos of her followers that the presence of the goddess is most powerfully exhibited. At the same time, Chariton subtly reinforces the elite status of his heroes and heroine by underlining their superior understand­ing of the limits of enchantment: we and they always know that the gods do not in fact walk upon the earth in human form.

E.