Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius

Other Greek novels open in poleis, before swiftly shunting their protagonists out of them and into the adventure world. Why does Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon open in a house (with no sign of any political apparatus), and stay there for almost one quarter of the novel? This article explores the cultural, psychological, and metaliterary role of the house in Achilles, reading it as a site of conflict between the dominant, patriarchal ideology of the father and the subversive intent of the young lovers. If the house principally embodies the authoritarian will of the father to order and control, it nevertheless provides the lovers with opportunities to re-encode space opportunistically as erotic. The house cannot be reconstructed archaeologically (Clitophon is too flittish a narrator for that), but it is nevertheless clearly divided into different qualitative zones—diningroom, bedrooms, garden—each of which has its own psychosocial and emotional texture, its own challenges, and its own resources. Achilles' modelling of the house may reflect Roman ideas of domestic aristocratic display, and perhaps even the influence of Roman literature (particularly love elegy).

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The Role of the Ekphrasis in Plot Development: The Painting of Europa and the Bull in Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon

Mnemosyne ◽

10.1163/156852507x165856 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 60 (1) ◽

pp. 87-101 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bridget Reeves

Keyword(s):

The Novel ◽

Achilles Tatius ◽

Shed Light

AbstractThis article examines the effectiveness of the ekphrasis of Europa and the bull which is placed at the beginning of Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, in order to shed light on its role in the development and progression of the plot in the novel. Although some critics have discussed the ekphrasis' anticipatory effectiveness with regard to the main characters, Leucippe and Clitophon, nevertheless much more can be said about the function of the set-piece description as a tool for foreshadowing events which transpire for the hero and heroine. In addition, this article demonstrates that the ekphrasis depicting Europa and the bull is not limited to prefiguring the actions of the main narrative as previously believed, but seems to act as a template for the plots of all of the mini-episodes that occur in the novel. By way of a table at the end of this article I present the template and the features common to the Europa-ekphrasis and to each of the mini-episodes in order to illuminate further the set-piece description's anticipatory effectiveness.

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Dionysus as Jesus: The Incongruity of a Love Feast in Achilles Tatius'sLeucippe and Clitophon2.2

Harvard Theological Review ◽

10.1017/s0017816014000224 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 107 (2) ◽

pp. 222-240 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Courtney J. P. Friesen

Keyword(s):

Early Christianity ◽

Tenth Century ◽

Second Century ◽

Valuable Insight ◽

The Novel ◽

Second Sophistic ◽

Achilles Tatius ◽

Ancient Novel ◽

The New Testament ◽

The Relationship

A relationship between Achilles Tatius and Christianity has been imagined from at least as early as the tenth century when theSudaclaimed that he had converted to Christianity and been ordained as a bishop. Modern scholarship has found this highly improbable; nevertheless, attempts to explore connections between his late second-centuryc.e.novel,Leucippe and Clitophon, and early Christianity continue. In recent decades, within a context of renewed interest in the ancient novel, scholars of early Christianity have found a wealth of material in the novels to illuminate the generic development and meaning of Christian narratives in the New Testament and beyond. Less attention, however, has been given to the ways in which the novels respond to and incorporate themes from Christianity. Achilles Tatius's etiological myth of wine and its associated harvest festival inLeuc. Clit. 2.2 represent a particularly striking point of contact between Christianity and the Greek novel. In the first section below, I systematically review the narrative and ritual parallels betweenLeuc. Clit. 2.2 and the Christian Eucharist and conclude that they are too striking to be accidental or to have gone unnoticed by an ancient reader with knowledge of Christianity. Although these similarities have been pointed out, their meaning and consequences have received comparatively little attention from scholars either of the novel or of early Christianity. Thus, in the subsequent sections of this study I contextualize these parallels within second-century Christian and non-Christian literary and religious culture. My contention is that an exploration of the relationship betweenLeuc. Clit. 2.2 and the Christian Eucharist will provide valuable insight both into the larger project of Achilles Tatius and into the relationship between early Christianity and its contemporary context, particularly the Second Sophistic.

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Pseudo-Lucian’s Cnidian Aphrodite: A Statue of Flesh, Stone, and Words

Millennium ◽

10.1515/mill-2020-0005 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 115-138

Author(s):

Laura Bottenberg

Keyword(s):

Aesthetic Experience ◽

Literary Response ◽

Work Of Art ◽

Achilles Tatius ◽

Ancient Novel ◽

Verbal Strategies ◽

The Erotic

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyse a literary response to antiquity’s most alluring work of art, the Cnidian Aphrodite. It argues that the ecphrasis of the statue in the Amores develops textual and verbal strategies to provoke in the recipients the desire to see the Cnidia, but eventually frustrates this desire. The ecphrasis thereby creates a discrepancy between the characters’ aesthetic experience of the statue and the visualisation and aesthetic experience of the recipients of the text. The erotic mechanisms of the ecphrasis, simultaneously arousing and frustrating the recipients’ desire, mirror the effect of the statue on its viewers and disclose the erotic programmatics of the whole dialogue. The analysis shows that the Amores surpass the ongoing discourse on love from Plato’s Phaedrus to the ancient novel – and Achilles Tatius and Longus in particular. The Amores, like the nude statue of the Cnidia, threaten to cross all bounds of decency in sexuality.

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Mȳthoi Erōtikoi

Mnemosyne ◽

10.1163/1568525x-12342751 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 73 (6) ◽

pp. 999-1024

Author(s):

Ashli J.E. Baker

Keyword(s):

The Novel ◽

Achilles Tatius ◽

Frequent Presence

Abstract This article examines the role of Heracles as a mythical figure and god in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon in order to show the ways in which his representation shapes a reading of the novel. This analysis argues that Heracles, a frequent presence in L&C, is depicted as an erotic figure over a heroic one and that he, therefore, embodies the interweaving of myth, narrative, and eroticism captured in the phrase mȳthoi erōtikoi and thematized throughout the novel. Furthermore, I suggest that the novel’s emphasis on erotic Heracles not only influences the reader’s understanding of Clitophon, but also contributes to the novel’s disruption of the genre’s expectations around heteroeroticism, monogamy, and marriage as the telos of the plot.

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Achilles Tatius and Latin Elegy

Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels ◽

10.1093/oso/9780192894823.003.0005 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 121-187

Author(s):

Daniel Jolowicz

Keyword(s):

Love Elegy ◽

Achilles Tatius ◽

Latin Elegy ◽

The Way

Chapter 4 establishes the multiple connections between Achilles and Latin love elegy (especially Ovid), which he mobilizes as a principal weapon in his redefinition of the novelistic genre. This is especially in the first two books (during which time Clitophon attempts to seduce Leucippe), but also implicates the ‘antagonists’ Melite, Thersander, and Callisthenes. Section 4.2 demonstrates the importance of the contemptor amoris theme (as represented especially in Propertius 1.7 and 1.9). Sections 4.3, 4.3.1, and 4.4 establish the erotodidactic credentials of Clinias as they relate to elegy (4.4 focusing explicitly on the theme of consent), while Sections 4.5 and 4.6 do the same for Clitophon’s slave, Satyrus (with Section 4.6 focusing on the metaphor of servitium amoris). Section 4.7 homes in on the role of vision in the novel’s symposia and those in elegy (especially Heroides 16-17). Section 4.8 draws a connection between the way Achilles and Ovid aestheticize (and even eroticize) female distress (embodied in tears and fears). Section 4.9 focuses on the idea of love as a type of ‘theft’, and kisses as alienable possessions, in Achilles and elegy (Tibullus is prominent here). Section 4.10 is an extended reading of Clitophon’s refusal to have sex with Leucippe as modelled on Ovid’s description of a bout of impotence in Amores 3.7.

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