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The two principal personages are represented as miracles of personal beauty; and the women fall in love with Habrocomas, as well as the men with Anthia, literally by dozens at a time: the plot, however differs from that of the others in marrying them at the commencement, and sending them through the ordinary routine of dangers afterwards.

One of these writers, Xenophon of Ephesus, the author of the "Ephesiacs, or Habrocomas and Anthia," is commended by Politian for the classical purity of his language, in which he considers him scarcely inferior to his namesake the historian: but the work has little else to recommend it.

In the "Hysminias and Hysmine" of Eumathius, a wretched production of the twelfth century, not only many of the incidents, but even of the names, as Sostratus, Sosthenes, and Anthia, are taken from Clitophon and Leucippe: and to so servile an extent is this plagiarism carried, that two books out of the nine, of which the romance consists, are filled with descriptions of paintings; while the plot, not very intelligible at the best, is still further perplexed by the extraordinary affectation of making nearly all the names alike; thus, the hero and heroine are Hysminias and Hysmine, the towns are Aulycomis, Eurycomis, Artycomis, &c.