Landing in Sidon after a storm, an unnamed narrator visits the local temple, to make an offering of thanks to Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of love.

He is unexpectedly answered by a handsome young man, Clitophon, who explains that he is a case in point: he has suffered many blows at the hands of Love.

Clitophon consoles his friend, and after attending Charicles’ funeral he returns to the house determined to make an amorous approach to Leucippe.

When Leucippe and Panthea stop to examine a peacock trying to attract his mate, Clitophon launches into a philosophical discussion with a slave of his household, Satyrus, about how love is a fundamental force of nature.

On board they meet Menelaus, an Egyptian who has just completed three years’ exile in Phoenicia[3] for accidentally killing his male lover in a boar hunt.

Here Clitophon attempts to make love to Leucippe, but she rebuffs him, claiming that Artemis told her in a dream that she must remain a virgin until they are formally married.

V. They arrive at Alexandria via the ‘Sun Gate’ and travel through the city from south to north, amazed by its beauty, its size and the number of its inhabitants.

Gradually they close the distance, but when they get near, the pirate captain takes Leucippe bound onto the deck and yells out: ‘Is this the prize you seek?’ He then cuts off her head and throws the rest of her body overboard.

However, Satyrus tells Clinias that there is a rich young widow of Ephesus, Melite, who has been importuning Clitophon for four months to accompany her home.

In tears, she visits Clitophon in the storeroom, accusing him of being a ‘wet blanket’, of offering her only the pleasure of seeing him, of teasing her more cruelly than a pirate.

When Clinias visits the prison again, Clitophon tells him the story of the new inmate and also that he has resolved to revenge Leucippe's apparent death by confessing to the murder himself, citing Melite as his accomplice.

Clinias prays to the gods for help, and all seems lost when the high priest of Artemis approaches, leading a sacred embassy from Byzantium.

The crowd drag away Thersander, who yells out that Clitophon is already condemned to death and Leucippe's claim of virginity will be proven false in the grotto of the ‘Pan pipes’.

If she is a real virgin a beautiful note will be played on the Pan pipes, and if not a groan is heard and after three days the priestess enters and finds the girl gone.

The following day Sostratus and the high priest perform the sacrifices of the sacred embassy, and Thersander then demands the return of Clitophon to the court.

Thersander interrupts, issuing two challenges: one to Melite to swear an oath in the sacred water of Styx, that she has not had sexual relations with Clitophon during the period in which he was away.

Thersander disappears from Ephesus, and after the statutory delay of three days, fails to renew his claim against Clitophon, and so the court's order for his execution lapses.

[8] If this dating is accepted for the earliest surviving copy of the romance, then its original composition may plausibly be pushed back to the end of the first century.

[9] All attempts to date the novel based on its vague internal historical references or on stylistic grounds have so far failed to win general acceptance.

First noticed by Altheim,[15] the statement in IV.18.1 that from Alexandria a large military force was dispatched to raze the city of the bucoli to the ground, is also described in Dio Cassius (LXXI.12.4) and in the Historia Augusta (Marc.

The first appraisal of this work comes from Photius’ Bibliotheca, where we find: "the diction and composition are excellent, the style distinct, and the figures of speech, whenever they are employed, are well adapted to the purpose.

To this Photius added a moralistic bias that would long persecute the author: "the obscenity and impurity of sentiment impair his judgment, are prejudicial to seriousness, and make the story disgusting to read or something to be avoided altogether."

Past scholars have passed scathing comments on the work, as in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica which brands the novel's style artificial and labored, full of incidents "highly improbable", and whose characters "fail to enlist sympathy".

Achilles Tatius takes pleasure in asides and digressions on mythology and the interpretation of omens, descriptions of exotic beasts (crocodiles, hippopotami) and sights (the Nile delta, Alexandria), and discussions of amorous matters (such as kisses, or whether women or boys make better lovers).

His descriptions of confused and contradictory emotional states (fear, hope, shame, jealousy, and desire) are exemplary ("baroque" conceits such as these would be frequently imitated in the Renaissance).

There are also several portrayals of almost sadistic cruelty (Leucippe's fake sacrifice and, later, decapitation; Clitophon chained in prison or beaten by Melite's husband) that share much with Hellenistic sculpture (such as the "Dying Gaul" or the "Laocoön and his Sons").

[18] The first English translation was William Burton's The Most Delectable and Pleasaunt History of Clitiphon and Leucippe, first published in 1597 and reprinted in 1923, when only 394 copies were printed.

[19] That translation was made by Abel Nascimento Pena, a professor of classics at the University of Lisbon,[20] and included a preface by Marília Pulquério Futre Pinheiro.

[22] A copy of Leucippe and Clitophon was held in the extensive library of the Byzantine provincial magnate Eustathios Boilas in the eleventh century.

Leucippe and Clitophon is the key source for The Story of Hysmine and Hysminias, by the 12th century AD Greek author Eustathius Macrembolites (or Eumathius).