Collected Ancient Greek Novels

Collected Ancient Greek Novels

Book title: Collected Ancient Greek Novels
Edited by: B.P. Reardon
Genre: ancient literature, ancient Greek novels
Published: July 8, 2008 by University of California Press
835 pages
My rating: 5/5

Collected Ancient Greek Novels presents in modern English translations nine complete prose narratives and several fragments commonly included in the genre of ancient Greek novels. These prose narratives were written in the first centuries of the common era. I’ve read B.P. Reardon’s seminal edition several times over the years, and it is always a pleasure. Needless to say, I love the ancient Greek prose narratives, especially the five romance novels.

Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe is most likely the earliest of the novels, possibly written in the first century CE. It also provided the model for the plot that the other romance novels follow. The two titular characters are a young couple of noble birth. They fall in love at first sight and get married. Chaereas’ jealousy leads him to kick Callirhoe, and to all appearances she dies from the attack and is buried. However, she wakes up after her funeral when pirates rob her grave and take her with them to be sold as a slave. After a long separation, during which time Callirhoe has to marry another man and thwart the advances of several other men, Chaereas wins her back and they return to their home town.

Xenophon of Ephesus’ An Ephesian Tale (also known as Anthia and Habrocomes after the main characters) has less literary merits than Chariton’s work, but it is an action packed read where the main characters are separated and wander around the Mediterranean, constantly harassed by pirates, bandits, and rival lovers. The novel also has a fascinating side character Hippothous who turns from a noble-born man to a bandit and back.

Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon makes fun of some of the conventions of the genre. Unlike in other novels, the female main character Leucippe does not fall in love with Clitophon at first sight. Instead, Clitophon must seduce her with elaborate and rather far-fetched narratives about love affairs between animals, plants, and bodies of water. After Clitophon succeeds, Leucippe doesn’t behave like the expected chaste heroines as she is willing to engage in a secret (unmarried) tryst with Clitophon. But after the attempt is thwarted by her mother, she becomes the model chaste novel heroine like those of the other ancient novels. Like in the other novels, the main characters are separated and have to repel the unwanted advances from rival lovers before they finally can have each other.

Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe is probably my favorite of the ancient novels. It’s a sweet love story of two innocent children and their growth into adults in a pastoral setting. Unlike in other novels, the main characters stay on the island of Lesbos and don’t travel around the known world. Instead, the story focuses on their bumbling attempts to learn about love and consummate their relationship - which naturally only succeeds after they are married.

Heliodorus’ An Ethiopian Story (also known as Chariclea and Theagenes after the main characters) is the longest and most complex of the novels. With its “in medias res” beginning (starting in the middle of the action) and complex flashbacks unraveling what happened before the start of the story, it is closest to the modern techniques of novel writing. It’s also my least favorite of the novels, partly because of the length, and partly because it’s the most serious of the novels. I prefer the novels that take themselves a little less seriously.

The other complete novels in this collection are not romance novels. Pseudo-Lucian’s The Ass was the model for the more well-known The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) by Apuleius, a Latin work from the second century CE. In both, a man is turned into an ass after a magical spell goes wrong. He has to suffer the torments people subject pack animals to until he can finally return to human form. The Greek original lacks the religious undertones of Apuleius’ work as well as some of the well-known incidents of Apuleius’ text, such as the Eros and Psyche narrative.

Lucian’s A True Story is probably world’s earliest science fiction/fantasy novel. Lucian of Samosata was a prolific writer of the second century CE, and besides A True Story, he wrote treatises and satirical dialogues. Over eighty of his works have survived. In A True Story, the main character embarks on a journey to the world’s end, and miraculous events take him to the Moon, where he witnesses the war between the inhabitants of the Moon and the Sun. He also lives in the stomach of a whale for some time and travels to the Island of the Blessed, where he meets dead heroes from the Iliad and Odyssey.

Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance is a historical novel about Alexander the Great, and one of the most popular books of antiquity. To modern tastes, the book's literary merits are debatable, as it is a hodge podge of letters, folktales, and fairytale-esque miraculous stories of Alexander’s travels. The book refers to real events of Alexander’s life but mixes up the order of the events (for example, by having Alexander visit Egypt before defeating Darius). As a historical source, it’s thus useless, and because the story jumps around so much, the plot isn’t particularly enjoyable either.

The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre has as its main character a fictious king of Tyre. Apollonius loses his wife at childbirth, becomes a merchant, and is later reunited with his daughter and wife (whose death was only apparent and not real – a typical trope in the novels). The novel uses similar plot devices and tropes as the romance novels, but instead of following one couple, there are actually two: in the first half, Apollonius and his wife, and in the latter half, Apollonius’ daughter and the ordeals she has to face.

Two ancient Greek novels have survived only as summaries written down by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century CE. Antonius Diogenes’ Wonders Beyond Thule is a travel narrative in the vein of Lucian’s A True Story, although the events in his book seem to have been more realistic. Iamblichus’ A Babylonian Story is closer to the romance novels, although its killer bees and magicians make it less realistic than the other romance novels.

There are also short fragments of several novels that seem to have told similar narratives as the extant novels. Unfortunately, the fragments are so short that it’s impossible to know what the full text would have been like, but they show that the novel genre was flourishing in the early centuries of common era with many texts that have not survived to our day.

Reardon’s edition of the ancient Greek novels is a great collection. If you’re interested in reading the earliest Western novels and learning more about them, I highly recommend this edition.