Reading Heliodorus' Aethiopica

Heliodorus' Aethiopica (Ethiopian Story) is the latest, longest, and greatest of the ancient Greek romances. It was hugely admired in Byzantium, and caused a sensation when it was rediscovered and translated into French in the 16th century: its impact on later European literature (including Shakespeare and Sidney) and art is incalculable. As with all post-classical Greek literature, its popularity dived in the 19th century, thanks to the influence of romanticism. Since the 1980s, however, new generations of readers have rediscovered this extraordinary late-antique tale of adventure, travel, and love. Recent scholars have demonstrated not just the complexity and sophistication of the text's formal aspects, but its daring experiments with the themes of race, gender, and religion. This volume brings together fifteen established experts in the ancient romance from across the world: each explores a passage or section of the text in depth, teasing out its subtleties and illustrating the rewards reaped thanks to slow, patient readings of what was arguably classical antiquity's last classic.

Tim Whitmarsh, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge,Ian Repath, Senior Lecturer in Classics, Swansea University

Tim Whitmarsh is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John's College. A specialist in the literature, culture, and religion of ancient Greece, he is the author of 9 books, including Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (Knopf
2015) and Dirty Love: The Genealogy of the Ancient Greek Novel (OUP 2018). He also edits the Oxford Classical Dictionary (5th edition). He has written over 80 academic articles, lectured across the world, and contributed frequently to newspapers such as The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement,
and the London Review of Books, as well as to BBC radio and television.


Ian Repath is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Swansea University, having held posts previously at the University of Warwick, the University of Nottingham, and the University of Wales Lampeter. He researches and teaches on ancient fiction, with a particular focus on the Greek novels, including
Heliodorus. Since the retirement of John Morgan in 2015, he has been leader of KYKNOS, the Centre for Research on the Narrative Literatures of the Ancient World, and has led the specialist MA in Ancient Narrative Literature.

1. Introduction: Reading Heliodorus, Tim Whitmarsh
2. Odyssean and Herodotean Threads in the Tainia of Heliodorus' Opening Chapters (1.1-5), Ewen Bowie
3. Visualizing Assemblages: Demaenete, Thisbe's Bed-Trick, and the Creation of Charicleia (1.15-17), Helen Morales
4. Thisbe's Intrigue: A Plot Between Deception and Illusion (1.15-17), Jonas Grethlein
5. Theagenes' Second Lament (2.4), Stephen Trzaskoma
6. Cnemon meets Calasiris (2.21-2), Alain Billault
7. Allegory and Recognition: The Egyptian Homer in Context (3.11.5-15.1), Lawrence Kim
8. The Mustering of the Delphians (4.19-21), Tim Whitmarsh
9. Calasiris on Zacynthus and his dream of Odysseus (5.17-22), Michael Paschalis
10. Life, the Cosmos, and Everything (5.26-34), Ken Dowden
11. On the Road Again (6.1-4), Silvia Montiglio
12. Charicleia's Dark Night of the Soul (6.8-11), David Konstan
13. Epic into Drama (7.6-8), Richard Hunter
14. Enter Arsace and her Entourage! Lust, Gender, Ethnicity, and Class at the Persian Court (Books 7 and 8), Froma Zeitlin
15. Sending the Reader Round the Bend (8.14-17), Ian Repath
16. The Siege of Syene: Ekphrasis and Imagination (9.3), Ruth Webb
17. To Infinity and Beyond (10.41.3), Tim Whitmarsh
18. History, Romance, Realism? (10.41.3), Ian Repath