The Tale of Gabrocom and Antia

Children of noble Ephesian citizens, 16-year-old Gabrokom and 14-year-old Antia, are distinguished by their extraordinary beauty . The young man proudly and mockingly rejects the power of the almighty god Eros and incurs his anger. Having met by the will of a deity at a celebration in honor of the goddess Artemis with the beautiful Antia, Gabrok falls in love with her at first sight. The beauty of Gabrokom also strikes Anthia in the very heart, and both of them, hiding their love from loved ones, get sick from an excess of feelings. Parents excitedly seek clarification from the oracle and learn about the future fate of their children. They should get married, but they will have to endure a lot of troubles and sufferings, endure separation, defeat difficult obstacles and, while maintaining love and loyalty to each other, finally, happily reunite. Parents, having played a wedding, are in a hurry to send the young people to travel, so that, going towards inexorable fate, they could soon endure the inevitable suffering and come to a happy ending. The young couple, along with the faithful slaves Levkon and Rod, begins their journey. The terrible prophecy of the oracle immediately begins to be realized: Gabrokom and Antia, together with the rest, are shipwrecked; they are attacked by pirates and capture them.

A long series of adventures begins, where the beauty of the young couple serves as a source of suffering for them. The robbers fall in love with them and try to seduce them, the daughter of Apsyrt, the leader of the pirates, Manto seeks to captivate Gabrokom, but rejected by Gabrokom, slanders him, and Gabrokom, beaten up, is thrown into prison. Manto is getting married to Mirida ^{[ who? ]} and takes with him as a slave Antia with her faithful Levkon and Rod. Antia is subjected to all kinds of oppression by Manto, and when the owner Mirid falls in love with her, Manto first wants to kill her, and then sells it as a slave to the Lycian merchants. Again, Antia falls into a shipwreck, again she is captured by robbers led by the leader Hippo.

Antia undergoes many misfortunes. At first they want to sacrifice her to the god Ares , but she is freed by the noble commander Perilay, who defeated the robbers and fell in love with Antia immediately. He wants to marry Antia and takes her, desperate, to the city of Tarsus. Antia is ready to commit suicide rather than marry Peril, and begs the doctor Eudoxus to help her. Eudox for big money promises to give Antia a deadly poison, which she takes on her wedding day. But it was just a sleeping pill, and Antia, instantly plunged into a deep sleep, falls as if dead. She is mistaken for the dead and buried in the crypt, laying with her various jewels. The robbers open her grave to pick up the jewels; appearing just at the time when Antia comes to her senses, they take her along with them.

At this time, Apsyrt, the father of Manto, who slandered Gabrocom, finds out about his innocence, releases him from prison and, generously rewarding, releases him. Gabrocom immediately goes in search of Antia. On the way, Gabrokom meets the robber Hippotoy, the ambassador defeating his gang, they go further together and tell each other about their lives. Gradually, Hippo again gathers a gang around him and Gabrok from the story of the old woman Chrison learns about the fate of Antia. He immediately leaves Hippo to find at least the body of Antia.

The Antian sold by the robbers is bought, captivated by her beauty, by the Indian king Psammid and wants to make her his concubine, but Antia resorted to the patronage of the goddess Isis and begged Psmmid for a year of reprieve. During the journey of the Psammid to India on the Ethiopian border, he is attacked by Hippo with his gang, kills the Psammid, and Antiy is taken prisoner, but does not recognize her. One of Hippo's gang, having fallen in love with Antia, wants to take possession of it, but inadvertently stumbles upon a sword and dies. The robbers, considering Antia guilty of the death of their comrade, throw her into a hole as a punishment, where they put two ferocious dogs and, having closed the hole with heavy logs, they guard. The robber Amphin, who loves Anthia, having pitied her, slowly feeds the dogs every day, and they don’t touch her. In the end, the robbers, considering Antia dead, leave her in a pit and go further to Egypt . Amphine frees Antia, and together they come to the city of Copt.

The beautiful and courageous Polyidus breaks the gang of Hippotoy by order of the prefect of Egypt, but Hippot himself again escapes persecution. The robber Amphinoma is met on the street by his former comrades, who had previously been captured, and they are giving him out with Antia Polyid. Polyid falls in love with Antia, and his wife, jealous of Antia, orders her slave to transfer her to Italy and sell her to the procurator, which he does. Anthony pretends to be sick with an epileptic disease, and the pimp sells it to Hippo, who also ended up in Italy. Hippo, after his gang was defeated, married a rich old woman and, quickly widowed, went to Italy to buy beautiful slaves and find Gabrocom, whom he loved, to share with him his inherited wealth.

Gabrok in search of Antia came to Egypt, where the Egyptian shepherds, seizing, sold him into slavery to the warrior Araks. The lecherous wife of Araks - Kyuno, captivated by the beauty of Gabrokom, pursues him with his love. Gabrokom in despair is ready to give in to her harassment, but Kyuno, in order to be free, kills her husband Araks, and then Gabrok in horror refuses her. Kyuno furiously accuses Gabrokom of killing Araks, and the young man is led to the prefect of Egypt, to Alexandria. Gabrokom is sentenced to death on the cross, but twice the deity saves the innocent Gabrokom from death, and then the prefect, having examined this case, is convinced of his innocence and is set free. After long obstacles, Gabrok first gets to Sicily , and then to Italy, where in the temple of Helios he eventually meets with Antia, with Hippo - a true friend and with Levcon and Rod, faithful slaves, now rich and free people, ready to give everything property to their masters - Gabrokom and Antia. Everyone returns to Ephesus and happily lives there until their death.

Unlike the earlier Khariton novel, Xenophon’s novel does not depend on the historiographic tradition, but it depends on the geographical tradition. You can see a lot of geographical descriptions and names in it, and the heroes constantly move from place to place, making travels, often not caused by any circumstances.

Xenophon is struck by the uneven presentation. There is speculation that the novel was written in ten books, but only five survived, representing an extract from Xenophon. Conducting this reduction was, apparently, not too experienced and skilled in such work, resulting in a large discrepancy between the books, both in volume and in artistry of presentation. Many adventures are set out in an abstract and therefore proportionality in parts of the novel is often violated, incomprehensible gaps or unjustified inserts appear. E. A. Berkova considers it probable that due to the inept reduction in the novel, there was a lot of incoherent and in the plot itself - many incomprehensible actions of the heroes appeared. ^[1] However, I. A. Protopopova notes that most modern scholars reject the hypothesis of epitomization ^[2] .

The composition of the novel is complicated by a number of plug-in episodes transmitted by the author in the form of stories, letters, prophetic dreams, etc. Such is the story of Hippotoy about his love for the handsome Hyperant, the story of the old fisherman Aegialea about his wife Telksinoe, poetic inserts in the form of divination and epitaph. ^[one]

Xenophon’s style is uneven: where it is concise, it is simple, dry and artless, in other places it is artistically peculiar and in many respects close to the traditions of a folk tale , which is also expressed in the deliberate simplicity of the images given to it and in frequent stylistic and verbal repetitions. Moreover, in his language there are many traces of sophistry . ^[3]

Applying accepted literary standards according to an already developed scheme and embellishing them with rhetoric , Xenophon at the same time significantly expanded the plot along the lines of introducing countless and unlikely adventures into it. ^[four]

Texts and Translations

• Greek text: Erotici Scriptores graeci. Vol. I (1858)
• In Collection Budé : Xénophon d'Ephèse . Les Éphésiaques ou Le Roman d'Habrocomès et d'Anthia. Texte établi et traduit par G. Dalmeyda. 3e tirage 2003. XXXIX, 154 p. ISBN 978-2-251-00346-7

Russian translations:

• The triumph of conjugal love over misfortunes, or the Adventures of Avrokom and Anfii. Ephesian story. Composition of Xenophon . / Per. with fr. V.P. M., 1793.283 p.
• Xenophon of Ephesus . The Tale of Gabrocom and Antia . / Per. S. Polyakova, I. Felenkovskaya, entry. Art. and note. S. Polyakova. M., Goslitizdat. 1956. 72 pp. 30,000 copies.

• Berkova E.A. Xenophon of Ephesus // Antique novel. M., 1969, p. 50-63.
• Protopopova I. Xenophon of Ephesus and the poetics of allegory . M .: Russian State Humanitarian University, 2001.470 pp. ISBN 5-7281-0329-4