There is no more aspiration to god in the other cults which are mentioned incidentally: of Apollo, Hercules of Tyre, the god of the lower world, Pan. And the cruel goddess Fortune is berated only occasionally. Superstition recognizes omens in the world of nature: the eagle stealing the sacrifice, the hawk pursuing the swallow.[200] Oracles are respected.[201] And the ordeals of Pan’s pipes and the Styx’s water receive general credence. Festivals to the gods are celebrated.[202] But religion seems rather a matter of scrupulous regard for ritual than communion with god or relief to the soul.
As we compare the romances of Chariton and Achilles Tatius we find that not only has the main interest shifted from love and worship to incidents and adventures. An even greater change has come about in the style. Homeric simplicity has given way to rhetorical elaboration. Tatius may well have been a ῥήτωρ as the scholiast Thomas Magister states, for his whole style is dyed in the rhetoric of the schools and the speeches delivered in the various lawsuits in the plot are masterpieces of rhetoric.
Among his acknowledged literary debts, however, he credits most to epic, for he quotes Homer once[203] and alludes to him five times[204] and he refers to Hesiod twice.[205] The messenger speeches in tragedy undoubtedly suggested the slave’s dramatic narrative of the death of Charicles in a riding accident.[206] Both the New and the Old Attic Comedy contributed much to his humor: the New in the comic literary contest of the slaves Conops and Satyrus who deride each other under cover of fables;[207] and the Old in the Aristophanic priest of Artemis who “was no poor hand at speaking, and as good at quip and gibe as the plays of Aristophanes.”[208] But the training of the rhetorical schools outweighs all other influences. About half of Books VII and VIII is devoted to the trial of Clitophon for adultery and self-confessed murder. The court sits in Ephesus with a jury and a presiding judge, but their functions are vague. The prosecution speaks first, Thersander and his ten lawyers, whose speeches fortunately are not reported. Clitophon answers them by a false narrative accusing himself of the murder of Leucippe and involving Melitte. Clinias gets the floor and tells the true story: that Clitophon desires only to die, that he deserves pity rather than condemnation and must be regarded as insane.