over a child, which as soon as born became the property of the master and part of the wealth of the estate. A slave also had no right to abort, destroying the master's property. In Chariton's novel we are made to forget all that, or to hold it of no account. The novelists of antiquity take more liberties with the social and moral order than Menander, who must soon compromise his interesting situations with prevailing moral normsa perennial weakness of situation comedy, as not of the situational novel. Kallirrhoe, the heroine of virtue, of
sophrosyne
*
,
takes a second "husband," commits bigamy or, rather, seduces (in some lights) a man who must really (if unwittingly) take the position of an adulterer (
moichos
) instead of a true husband. She also puts a large cuckoo in his nest. Kallirrhoe well and truly disturbs the bloodline and the flow of property, the orderly masculine "civilized" order of inheritance.
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Chariton's Kallirrhoe acts as if she were the real parent of her child and is never concerned by Roman law regarding marriage or childbirth or slavery. She learns how to grow out of mere dutiful virtue into a wiser self-preservation. In the terms of the world around her, she is a-moral or even immoral. Her rebirth from the tomb means she is no longer purely daughter or wife, but a moral being. She is a magnificent illustration of the Weldon dictum "the worse women behave, the better they get on." Kallirrhoe, instead of having to mope about the back kitchens as a slave, gets a fine new husband, a house and clothing, and access to money, as well as a father for her child. Aphrodite
approves
of Kallirrhoe, and supports her; Kallirrhoe always looks like Aphrodite herself.
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One sees how much better off Chariton is than Weldon; he does not have to re-invent Nature or fumble for new terms for "our mistress." The Goddess can be appealed to, represented, generalized about, and comically used in the narrative which supports the work of Aphrodite, the generative and redemptive creation, as Weldon is later to do. As in Weldon, males who try to meddle with or undo Aphrodite's operations are going to have to pay for it, whether or not they recognize retribution for what it is. The Goddess sees to it that Chaireas is punished for his violence to the wife Aphrodite gave him. On the track of Kallirrhoe, Chaireas is able to punish the bandits who abducted her, but when he gets warm in his search, Dionysius sees to it that Chaireas is spirited away and sold into slavery himself. He is nearly crucified before he starts recovering his fortunes again; at last he obtains a position by which he can hope to recover his lost wife. He does, of course, recover her, although during the law case in Persia where he appears against Dionysius, some of Kallirrhoe's female supporters are unromantically critical of him and sardonically warn her against returning to her childhood sweetheart:
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