Clitophon gets a violent beating, to which he submits with the utmost
tameness, and is thrown into fetters by the enraged husband; and
though Melissa, on certain conditions, furnishes him with the means of
escape from the house in the disguise of a female, he again unluckily
encounters Thersander, and is lodged in the prison of Ephesus.
Leucippe, meanwhile, of whose unrivalled charms Thersander has been
informed by Sosthenes, is still detained in bondage, and suffers cruel
persecution from her brutal master; who, at last, having learned from
an overheard soliloquy her true parentage and history, as well as her
attachment for Clitophon, (of her relations with whom he was not
previously aware,) forms a scheme of ridding himself of this twofold
rival, by sending one of his emissaries into the prison, who gives out
that he has been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the
murder of Leucippe, who has been dispatched by assassins employed by
the jealous Melissa. Clitophon at once gives full credence to this
awkwardly devised tale, and determines not to survive his mistress, in
spite of the remonstrances of Clinias, who argues with much reason,
that one who had so often been miraculously preserved from death,
might have escaped also on the present occasion. But Clitophon refuses
to be comforted; and when brought before the assembly in the forum to
stand his trial, on the charge, (apparently, for it is not very
clearly specified,) of having married another man's wife, he openly
declares himself guilty of Leucippe's murder, which he affirms to have
been concerted between Melissa and himself, in order to remove the
obstacle to their amours, and now revealed by him from remorse. He is,
of course, condemned to death forthwith, and Thersander is triumphing
in the unexpected success of his schemes, when the judicial
proceedings are interrupted by the appearance of a religious
procession, at the head of which Clitophon is astonished by
recognizing his uncle Sostratus, the father of Leucippe, who had been