Decoding the Erōtes: Reception of Achilles Tatius and the Modernity of the Greek Novel

2021 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-492
Author(s):  
Nicolò D'Alconzo
Keyword(s):  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Greek Novel

Lollianos and the desperadoes

1980 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 155-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Religion And Literature ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
New Novel ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
Greek Novel ◽  
The Sacrifice

‘Without exaggeration and oversimplification little progress is made in most fields of humanistic investigation.’ With this disarming quotation from A. D. Nock, Albert Henrichs begins his book-length interpretation of P. Colon, inv. 3328. In the same spirit of humanistic progress, I would like to reconsider some aspects of the text and to offer a different assessment of its place in the history of religion and literature.The fragments are from three pages of a hitherto unknown Greek novel, Lollianos'Phoinikika. Frags A and B luckily include book-ends, from whose subscriptions we know the author and title of the work. Frag. C is just scraps which yield no continuous sense. Frag. A brokenly and confusedly mentions youths, women dancing, (furniture?) being thrown off the roof, sobriety, kissing, and then, in a slightly more intelligible scene, the male narrator's loss of virginity with a woman named Persis, her gift to him of a gold necklace which he refuses, the assistance of one Glauketes in taking the necklace elsewhere, and finally what seems to be a confrontation between Persis' mother and the two lovers. This last is similar to Achilles Tatius ii 23–5. Achilles Tatius also offers the closest parallel to frag. B, a ghastly description of human sacrifice and cannibalism. This scene is the focus of most of Henrichs' interpretation and I will limit myself to it in the present article.The central question raised by this new novel fragment is how to assess the relative importance of religious and literary parallels. Is thePhoinikikato be regarded as a document in religious or in literary history, or perhaps somewhere on the borderland of both? There has been a lively discussion in the last half century of the thesis that the ancient novels were written and read as religious documents, deriving their basic structure and many details from the myths and cults of particular religions. Henrichs devotes most of his book to arguing that the sacrifice scene in Lollianos is inspired by an actual rite, probably of a Dionysian character, and that thePhoinikikaserves to illuminate a little-known corner of religious history. His views are based on an extensive collection of liturgical, mythical and ethnological parallels concerning oath rituals, the sacrifice of children, cannibalism, and face-painting. Of all the parallels cited, the two which are closest in every way to Lollianos are Achilles Tatius iii 15 and Cassius Dio lxxi 4. On the strength of these Henrichs asserts that Lollianos' description of a ritual murder represents, more or less directly, the cultic practice of the Egyptian Boukoloi. Without postulating a religious message for thePhoinikikaas a whole, Henrichs does claim that this scene yields valuable information about the structure of ancient mystery rituals (78 n. 6) and that these new fragments support the methodological correctness of Kerenyi's and Merkelbach's approach to the ancient novels.

scholarly journals Naïve Justice in the Ancient Greek Novel

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Bruce D. MacQueen
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Real ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Greek Novel

This article discusses three trial scenes from three different ancient Greek novels (by Chariton, Achilles Tatius, and Longus), in which naïve justice seems to be deliberately subverted. The titular concept of “naïve justice” is defined here in terms borrowed from Aristotle’s Poetics, where the term “double resolution” is used, disparagingly, of plots in which the good characters are all rewarded and the bad characters all punished. The argument is made that the trial scenes under discussion should raise doubts in the reader’s mind as to which of the parties is truly guilty, and which is truly innocent. This can be seen as a reflection of unexpectedly mature ethical sensibilities on the part of these often-underestimated writers, who seem to have grasped that the “double resolution” may make the reader feel good, but has little to do with the real world.

Physiology and Medicine in a Greek Novel: Achilles Tatius'Leucippe and Clitophon

1969 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. G. McLeod
Keyword(s):  
Military Force ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Physiological Explanation ◽  
Greek Novel ◽  
Fourth Book ◽  
Technical Terms

In the fourth book of Achilles Tatius' romance the young and beautiful heroine Leucippe collapses suddenly. When she is approached by the hero Clitophon she leaps to her feet, strikes his face, kicks his friend, and has to be overpowered and tied up. Several chapters later we learn that this behaviour had in fact been caused by an overdose of an unnamed aphrodisiac. In the meantime, however, bystanders, consisting of members of an Egyptian military force, have decided thatμανία τιςis the trouble, and proceed to diagnose with all the confidence of laymen the cause of her madness.Their diagnosis takes the form of an ostensibly straightforward physiological explanation in carefully ordered (if rhetorical) phrases and employing technical terms.

scholarly journals The Acts of John, the Acts of Andrew and the Greek Novel

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Jan N. Bremmer
Keyword(s):  
Acts Of The Apostles ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Married Life ◽  
Apocryphal Acts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Greek Novel

Since the 1930s, it has been observed that the Greek novel and the Christian Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA) display a series of similarities. This is not surprising, as the earlier AAA all belong to about the same period of time as the latest novels, except for Heliodorus, and derive from Asia Minor, the same area in which most of the surviving novels seem to have originated. Consequently, some of the similarities may well have been determined by the fact that the authors of the novel and the AAA lived in the same world. Yet there are clearly also scenes and motifs, which the AAA derived from the novel. In this contribution, I note the impact of the novel on the Acts of John and the Acts of Andrew and identify an influence from Chariton, Xenophon’s Ephesiaca and Achilles Tatius despite the fact that the novel ends in the reunion of the couple, who will enter now a happily married life with plenty of sex, whereas the couples in the AAA ideally end up in a chaste Platonic relationship. The surprising influence of the novel on the AAA may well be explained from a similar intended readership, that is, well educated higher-class women.

More Tears in Achilles Tatius (7.4.3–6)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Single Line ◽  
Delayed Effects ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Achilles Tatius

A further passage shows the imagination and craft of Achilles Tatius taken to a still greater degree, as he depicts the hero Cleitophon at the terrible crisis of believing his beloved to be dead. The narrative is suspended as the writer develops, at remarkable length, a psychological and physiological observation on delayed effects. Where Heliodorus had heaped up imagery with abundance, Achilles develops with skilled organization a single line of thought and imagery, developing it and enriching it as he goes. Rhythm plays a vital part in this remarkable union of tight order and inventive imagination. The expansion and the deployment of science have a Plutarchan element; but the fantasy and the tautness create something quite different out of rhythm.

Some Tears in Achilles Tatius (Achilles 6.7.3–7)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Self Control ◽  
First Person ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Mind

Another novelist provides in some respects a point in between Chariton and Heliodorus. His elaborate expatiation on tears and the lover put rhythm at the service of an intricate treatment of the mind and body, and a shrewd depiction of amorous self-control and manipulation. The first-person narrative adds a further stratum of sophistication to this handling of the speaker’s rival and enemy. Achilles Tatius demonstrates further, in contrast with Chariton, the range of possibilities for the exploitation of rhythm seen already in the difference of Chariton and Plutarch. Comparison with Heliodorus brings out Achilles’ elegance.

Sourcing Callirhoe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Whitmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Firm Boundaries ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Greek Novel

Chariton’s Callirhoe is the earliest extant example of the Greek novel. What preceding texts are there that resemble it? Martin Braun demonstrated in the 1930s that many of the motifs that we think of as characteristically novelistic are found in Josephus’s retelling of the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Does that tell us that Josephus was influenced by now-lost novels? Or that Jewish storytelling influenced the course of the novel? Or that these motifs were shared between Greek and Jewish culture, without firm boundaries of genre?

scholarly journals Complexes of Emotions in Joseph and Aseneth

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-155
Author(s):  
Tyler Smith
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Emotional Aspect ◽  
Complex Emotions ◽  
Jewish Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
Joseph And Aseneth ◽  
Greek Novel

The ancient Greek novel introduced to the history of literature a new topos: the “complex of emotions.” This became a staple of storytelling and remains widely in use across a variety of genres to the present day. The Hellenistic Jewish text Joseph and Aseneth employs this topos in at least three passages, where it draws attention to the cognitive-emotional aspect of the heroine’s conversion. This is interesting for what it contributes to our understanding of the genre of Aseneth, but it also has social-historical implications. In particular, it supports the idea that Aseneth reflects concerns about Gentile partners in Jewish-Gentile marriages, that Gentile partners might convert out of expedience or that they might be less than fully committed to abandoning “idolatrous” attachments. The representations of deep, grievous, and complex emotions in Aseneth’s transformational turn from idolatry to monolatry, then, might play a psychagogic role for the Gentile reader interested in marrying a Jewish person.

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