My hope in writing on the Greek Romances is that I may lure readers back to them. My essays aim to be guideposts pointing the way. I venture to suggest that along with my book readers should peruse at least four novels of different types for which good translations are available. These are Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe by Warren E. Blake (beautiful in English and format) and three volumes of The Loeb Classical Library: Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, Lucian’s True History (in Lucian vol. I) and the Latin novel which combines the different Greek types into one great synthesis, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. If I can win new readers for these my favorites, my writing will be as successful as it has been happy!
It is a pleasure once again to express grateful thanks to publishers and authors who have allowed me to quote material. I am indebted to the Harvard University Press for its courtesy in allowing me to quote freely from volumes in The Loeb Classical Library; to the Clarendon Press, Oxford for the use of material from R. M. Rattenbury, “Romance: the Greek Novel,” in New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, Third Series, from F. A. Todd, Some Ancient Novels, from J. S. Phillimore, “Greek Romances” in English Literature and the Classics, and from The Works of Lucian of Samosata translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler; to Longmans, Green and Co., for the use of a quotation from F. G. Allinson, Lucian Satirist and Artist; to the University of Michigan Press for the use of Warren E. Blake’s translation of Chariton; to the Columbia University Press for permission to quote from S. L. Wolff’s The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction; and for generous permissions for quotations from Professor M. Rostovtzeff and Professor B. E. Perry.
My writing has been greatly facilitated by the cooperation of the staff of the Vassar Library, especially of Miss Fanny Borden, Librarian, who has provided me with a study in the Library, patiently borrowed many books from other libraries for me and shown unfailing interest in my work. A constant stimulus to my writing has been the appreciation of my colleagues and students expressed in invitations to read different chapters of this volume to the Classical Journal Club and to the Classical Society. Finally my profound gratitude is due to the donors of the funds which made possible the publication of these Essays.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE [I. The Greek Romances and Their Re-dating.] 1 [II. Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe.] 14 [III. The Ephesiaca or Habrocomes and Anthia by Xenophon of Ephesus.] 38 [IV. The Aethiopica of Heliodorus.] 61 [V. The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius.] 95 [VI. The Lesbian Pastorals of Daphnis and Chloe by Longus.] 119 [VII. Lucian and his Satiric Romances: the True History and Lucius or Ass.] 144 [VIII. A Comparison of the Greek Romances and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.] 186 [Index] 203
ESSAYS ON
THE GREEK ROMANCES
I
THE GREEK ROMANCES AND THEIR RE-DATING
The term “Greek Romances” is applied to long stories in Greek prose, written from the end of the first to the beginning of the fourth century before Christ and later imitated by Byzantine writers. It was one of these last, Nicetas Eugenianus, who prefixed to his own romance a prelude of verses which described their content:
“Here read Drusilla’s fate and Charicles’—
Flight, wandering, captures, rescues, roaring seas,