The Greek Romances of Heliodorus, Longus and Achilles Tatius / Comprising the Ethiopics; or, Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea; The pastoral amours of Daphnis and Chloe; and the loves of Clitopho and Leucippe

by Achilles Tatius; of Emesa Heliodorus; Longus

He concludes this part of his subject by saying; "these writers, therefore, may fairly be considered as constituting a distinct class from those more strictly Oriental—not only in birth but in language and ideas; and as being in fact the legitimate forerunners of modern novelists."

The first to imbibe a love for fictitious narrative from the Eastern people among whom they dwelt, were the Milesians, a colony of Greeks, and from them this species of narrative derived the name of "Sermo Milesius."[1] A specimen of the Milesian tale may be seen in the Stories of Parthenius, which are chiefly of the amatory kind, and not over remarkable for their moral tendency. From the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor, especially from the Milesians, it was natural that a fondness for Fiction should extend itself into Greece, and that pleasure should produce imitation. But it was not until the conquests of Alexander, that a greater intercourse between Greece and Asia became the means of conveying the stores of fiction from the one continent to the other.

The Romance writers, who flourished previous to Heliodorus, are known only from the summary of their compositions preserved to us by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth century. We subjoin their names and the titles of their works:—

Antonius Diogenes wrote "The incredible things in Thule;" Iamblicus, the "Babylonica," comprising the formidable number of sixteen books; in addition to which there is the "Ass" of Lucian, founded chiefly upon the "Metamorphoses of Lucius."

The palm of merit, in every respect, especially "in the arrangement of his fable," has been universally assigned to Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, who flourished A.D. 400; "whose writing," says Huet, "the subsequent novelists of those ages constantly proposed to themselves as a model for imitation; and as truly may they all be said to have drunk of the waters of this fountain, as all the Poets did of the Homeric spring."

The writers of Romance, posterior to Heliodorus, who alone are worthy of note, are Achilles Tatius, who is allowed to come next to him in merit; Longus, who has given the first example of the "Pastoral Romance;" and Xenophon, of Ephesus.

Having alluded to the various writers of fictitious narrative, our farther remarks may be confined to Heliodorus, Longus, and Achilles Tatius. With the work of the author of the "Ethiopics" are connected some curious circumstances, which shall be given in the words of an Ecclesiastical Historian, quoted by the writer of the article in Blackwood.

Nicephorus, B. xii. c. 34, says—"This Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca, had in his youth written certain love stories, called 'Ethiopics,' which are highly popular, even at the present day, though they are now better known by the title of 'Chariclea;' and it was by reason thereof that he lost his see. For inasmuch as many of the youths were drawn into peril of sin by the perusal of these amorous tales, it was determined by the Provincial Synod, that either these books, which kindled the fire of love, should themselves be consumed by fire, or that the author should be deposed from his episcopal functions; and this choice being propounded to him, he preferred resigning his bishoprick to suppressing his writings.—Heliodorus," continues the reviewer, "according to the same authority, was the first Thessalian Bishop who had insisted on the married clergy putting away their wives, which may probably have tended to make him unpopular; but the story of his deposition, it should be observed, rests solely on the statement of Nicephorus, and is discredited by Bayle and Huet, who argue that the silence of Socrates, (Eccles. Hist. B. v. c. 22), in the chapter where he expressly assigns the authority of the 'Ethiopics' to the 'Bishop' Heliodorus, more than counterbalances the unsupported assertion of Nicephorus;—'an author,' says Huet, 'of more credulity than judgment.' If Heliodorus were, indeed, as has been generally supposed, the same to whom several of the Epistles of St. Jerome were addressed, this circumstance would supply an additional argument against the probability of his having incurred the censures of the Church; but whatever the testimony of Nicephorus may be worth on this point, his mention of the work affords undeniable proof of its long continued popularity, as his Ecclesiastical History was written about A.D. 900, and Heliodorus lived under the reign of the sons of Theodosius, fully 500 years earlier."

Of the popularity of his work in more recent times, the following instances may be given. "Tasso," says Ghirardini, "became acquainted with this Romance when it was introduced at the Court of Charles the IXth of Prance, where it was read by the ladies and gentlemen in the translation made by Amiot. The poet promised the courtiers that they should soon see the work attired in the most splendid vestments of Italian poetry, and kept his promise, by transferring to the heroine Clorinda (in the tenth canto of the 'Gerusalemme') the circumstances attending the birth and early life of the Ethiopian maiden Chariclea."

"The proposed sacrifice and subsequent discovery of the birth of Chariclea have likewise," observes Dunlop, "been imitated in the Pastor Fido of Guarini, and through it, in the Astrea of D'Urfé.