A Handy Plot Summary of Gower's "Story of Apollonius"

from Larry Scanlon, "The Riddle of Incest: John Gower and the Problem of Medieval

Sexuality," in Re-Visioning Gower, ed. R.F. Yeager (Asheville, N.C., 1998), pp. 93-128.

The plot transverses at least three decades and the enormous distances of numerous sea voyages back and forth across the eastern Mediterranean from Tyre, Antioch, and Tarsus to Pentapolis, in North Africa and Mytilene in the eastern Adriatic. Yet each of these many journeys is repeated at least once, and these repetitions enable others, which make the narrative, for all of its expansiveness, almost claustrophobic. The story begins with the violent disintegration of the family of King Antiochus. After the death of his wife, a "worthy quene" (VIII.282), he forces himself repeatedly on their "piereles" daughter (VIII.288), who "couthe noght hir Maidenhede / Defende" (VIII.302-3). Because of the daughter's great beauty, the king is soon forced to deal with the problem of suitors. To prevent any possibility of marriage, he devises a deadly test: a riddle no one can answer. The many who try and fail are executed, their heads left "stondende on the gate" (VIII.364). Finally, no one else will try until Apollonius, a "lusti knyht" of "hihe mod" and "hote blood," hears "tidinges" of the test, and decides to attempt it, as much for the adventure as for love of the princess. Eloquent and accomplished in "every natureel" science, as soon as he hears the riddle he recognizes it as a veiled confession. He warns Antiochus: "It toucheth al the privete / Betwen thin oghne childe and thee" (425-26). Antiochus will not concede defeat, but neither will he execute Apollonius for fear of exposure. Instead, feigning magnanimity, he gives Apollonius a thirty-day grace period.

Apollonius sneaks back to Tyre immediately, then flees to Tarsus with ships laden with wheat. As it happens, Tarsus is in the grips of a famine, and hails Apollonius as its savior, erecting a brass statue of him in a public square. However, he soon receives word that one of Antiochus's henchmen had been looking for him in Tyre and he flees again. This time he is shipwrecked, loses all his goods, and ends up naked on the coast of Pentapolis, where he will find the royal wife he failed to find at Antioch. Rescued by a fisherman, he proceeds to the court and surpasses all the competitors at the athletic contests sponsored by the king. At the banquet which follows, he displays his virtuosity on the harp and his "vois celestial" (VIII.780). The princess asks that he become her tutor, and after some time in his tutelage she is smitten: "Thenkende upon this man of Tyr, / Hire herte is hot as eny fyr" (VIII.845-46). What attracts her is precisely what enabled him to solve Antiochus's riddle: "the wisdom of his lore," which testifies to his "gret gentillesse" (VI1I.789, 791). The circumstances of their betrothal also mirror the unhappy confrontation at Antioch. Apollonius emerges as the Princess's choice only after three other suitors have failed; and once again he gains access to a "privete" between father and daughter (VI1I.918), this time the secret letter the princess sends to the king to announce

Bot if I have Appolinus

Of al this world, what so betyde,

I wol non other man abide. (VI1I.898-900)

At Antioch the desires of the daughter were obliterated; at Pentapolis they are determinative. After the marriage the court receives word from Tyre that Antiochus and his daughter have been struck by lightning. Apollonius decides to return home with his now-pregnant bride.

At this point, the story is considerably less than half over, if we measure its length by its sheer number of lines. Yet what happens from this point onward bears almost no causal connection with what has gone before. With the death of Antiochus, the narrative element motivating Apollonius's wanderings disappear. Yet his wanderings continue and come to include his wife and daughter as well. What motivates these wanderings are random catastrophes which bear little relation either to the first part of the story or to each other. On the voyage to Tyre a storm causes Apollonius's wife to fall ill and apparently die. Her body is thrown overboard in a well-appointed casket, and it washes ashore at Ephesus where she is revived by a clerk who is a "gret Phisicien" (VIII.1164). Believing herself the sole survivor of the shipwreck, she enters the local Temple of Diana. Meanwhile, Apollonius diverts to Tarsus where he asks Strangulio, his closest friend from his earlier visit, to raise his daughter, Thais.

When Thais reaches the age of fourteen, Strangulio's wife, Dionise, jealous that Thais's beauty and accomplishments overshadow those of her own daughter, conspires to have her murdered. A bondman leads Thais to the shore, but when he unsheathes "his rusti swerd," her screams attract some passing pirates, who rescue her only to sell her to the master of a brothel in Mytilene. He expects great profits from both her virginity and her beauty, but her weeping so overpowers the desire of all prospective customers that she remains inviolate. She then offers him a deal: if he: will set her up as a tutor of young gentleman [sic], she will give him the proceeds. Believing Thais dead, Strangulio and Dionise stage a mock-burial to hide their guilt, a rich tomb of brass adorned with her image.

Apollonius returns to Tarsus shortly thereafter. He is heartbroken, but believes their deception. A storm on the return voyage drives his ship to Mytilene, but he will not leave his cabin "for pure sorwe" (VIll.1S99), and lies alone weeping. Athenagoras, the city's lord, suggests Thais be sent to cheer him up. After initially being unable to move him, she reveals her

circumstances and he realizes who she is. In the joy accompanying their reunion Athenagoras proposes to her, and both father and daughter accept. As Apollonius is about to return to Tarsus for revenge, a vision directs him to Ephesus, where he is reunited with his wife, now" Abesse" at the Temple (VIll.1849). They return to Tyre, and after Thais and Athenagoras are married, Apollonius revenges himself upon Strangulio and Dionise. The story ends with his ascension to the throne of Pentapolis after the old king dies.