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It is difficult to conceive for what purpose the character of Calligone, the sister and fiancée of Clitophon, is introduced among the dramatic personae.
In the mean time, as Calligone is given up for lost, Sostratus, who has heard of his daughter's attachment to Clitophon, but not of the elopement, writes from Byzantium to give his consent to their union; and diligent enquiries are made in every direction for the runaway couple, till information is at length obtained that Clitophon has been seen in Egypt.
The charm and value of the Calligone lie more in the warmth and clearness with which the expressive beauty of single natural phenomena is described than in the abstract discussion.
An understanding is at last effected between them, and Clitophon is in sad perplexity how to defer or evade his approaching nuptials with his sister-bride, when Calligone is most opportunely carried off by a band of pirates employed by Callisthenes, a young Byzantine, who, having fallen in love with Leucippe from the mere report of her beauty, and having been refused her hand by her father, has followed her to Tyre, and seeing Calligone in a public procession chaperoned by Panthia, has mistaken her for Leucippe!
He begins by informing his hearer, that he is the son of Hippias, a noble and wealthy denizen of Tyre, and that he had been betrothed from his childhood, as was not unusual in those times, to his own half-sister Calligone: but Leucippe, the daughter of Sostratus, a brother of Hippias, resident at Byzantium, having arrived with her mother Panthia, to claim the hospitality of their Tyrian relatives during a war impending between their native city and the Thracian tribes, Clitophon at once becomes enamoured of his cousin, whose charms are described in terms of glowing panegyric: "She seemed to me like the representation of Europa, which I see in the picture before me her eye beaming with joy and happiness her locks fair, and flowing in natural ringlets, but her eyebrows and eyelashes jetty black her complexion fair, but with a blush in her cheeks like that faint crimson with which the Lydian women stain ivory, and her lips like the hue of a fresh-opened rose."
The result of this ordeal is, of course, triumphant; and Thersander, overwhelmed with confusion makes his escape from the popular indignation, and is condemned to exile by acclamation as a suborner of false evidence; while the lovers, freed at length from all their troubles, sail for Byzantium in company with Sostratus; and after there solemnizing their own nuptials, return to Tyre to assist at those of Callisthenes and Calligone.
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