Mythological Narratives: The Bold and Faithful Heroines of the Greek Novel 311052869X, 9783110528695

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Anna Lefteratou Mythological Narratives

MythosEikonPoiesis

Herausgegeben von Anton Bierl Wissenschaftlicher Beirat: Gregory Nagy, Richard Martin

Band 8

Anna Lefteratou

Mythological Narratives The Bold and Faithful Heroines of the Greek Novel

ISBN 978-3-11-052732-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-052869-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-052751-3 ISSN 1868-5080 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Στον πατέρα μου, Σπύρο

Preface and Acknowledgements This book originates from a revised doctoral thesis written at University of Oxford and funded by the generosity of the Loverdos Foundation and the Academy of Athens. The dissertation was defended at Corpus Christi College in August 2010. The most inspiring, long-term, resilient, and patient reader of this book has been Ewen Bowie, who has my eternal gratitude and admiration. I am equally grateful to Tim Whitmarsh who has read through different drafts of the dissertation and the book manuscript and offered insightful and provoking feedback. The initiator of the theme of this monograph is Alain Billault, the supervisor of my DEA thesis on Heliodorus, to whom I am deeply grateful for the French aspect of ‘mythe’. Equally important for this project has been the support of Silvia Montiglio, who read different drafts of my recognition chapters, and whose encouragement has meant a lot to me. I also owe much to the editor of the MythosEikonPoiesis Series, Anton Bierl, who has been extremely supportive and receptive of the notion of ‘myth’ suggested in this book. I would also like to extend my thanks to the anonymous reviewers of this book and the audiences in Lisbon and Oxford and to those colleagues and friends, who have been behind this book in multiple ways: Nora Charitou, Despoina Evangelakou, Jonas Grethlein, Fotini Hadjittofi, Stephen Harrison, Owen Hodkinson, Elena Iakovou, Larry Kim, Nick Lowe, Despoina Magka, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, Stelios Panayotakis, Tanya Pollard, Magda Rachioti, Gabriela Ryser, Leyla Seyfullah, Estelle Strazdins, Aldo Tagliabue, Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, and Thanasis Vergados. I also want to thank Mary-Beth Robinson for proofreading the manuscript and improving my English - needless to say that whatever negligence remains is mine alone. I am also thankful to Katharina Legutke the Project Editor at De Gruyter for her support and patience. Particular thanks goes also to my lifelong teacher Véronique Perl. Last but not least at all, I want to thank Oleg for his patience and my children, Marilena and Nikolas, for sparing me from many sleepless nights the last year by sleeping through. Throughout this book I have used the following editions: for Chariton, Reardon (2004b); for Xenophon of Ephesus, O’Sullivan (2005); for Achilles Tatius, Garnaud (1991); for Longus, Morgan (2004); for Heliodorus, Rattenbury, Lumb, and Maillon (2003 [1935]); for the fragmentary novels, Stephens and Winkler (1995). I have adopted the Latinate spelling of Greek names and modified translations and citations accordingly. For Chariton’s, Xenophon’s, Achilles Tatius’, and Heliodorus’ novels I have used the translations from Reardon (2008 [1989]), slightly adapted; for Longus’ novel I have used Morgan (2004). Translations of other texts, unless otherwise stated, are mine. In the analysis I cite both the English and the Latin names of Authors and Works; in the footnotes and in DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-201

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 Preface and Acknowledgements

the Index I use the abbreviations of LSJ. Discussion of folktale material is facilitated by reference to ‘Aarne-Thompson’ (AT) Tale Types, The types of the Folktale, 1910, translated and enlarged by Stith Thompson, 1961 and expanded by HansJörg Uther as The Types of International Folktales, 2004. This book is dedicated to my father, Spyros Lefteratos, the first reader of my first sci-fi novels, when at the elementary school, and the one who bought me, as soon as I could read, the complete Children’s Greek Mythology – the best birthday-present ever! Anna Lefteratou, (CRC EDRIS, University of Göttingen-Heidelberg University)

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements   1 Introduction  Women’s Tales   1 Coming to Terms with  ‘Myth’   9 ‘Intertext’   15 ‘Megatext’   17

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 25 The bold and virginal: Iphigenia  1.1 The myth of Iphigenia   25 1.1.1 In the visual arts   26 1.1.2 In literature   31 1.2 The Iphigenia mythological megatext   43 1.3 The faithful maidens of Eros and Thanatos   48 1.3.1 Chariton   48 1.3.2 Xenophon of Ephesus   55 1.3.3 Achilles Tatius   63 1.3.4 Longus   78 1.3.5 Heliodorus   80 1.4 Iphigenia in focus   101  108 The bold and unfaithful: Phaedra  2.1 The myth of Phaedra   110 2.1.1 In the visual arts   110 2.1.2 In literature   114 2.2 The Phaedra mythological megatext  2.3 Phaedra in the Greek novel   129 2.3.1 Chariton   129 2.3.2 Xenophon of Ephesus   131 2.3.3 Achilles Tatius   141 2.3.4 Longus   151 2.3.5 Heliodorus   155 2.4 Phaedra in focus   170

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 Contents

The bold and the faithful: Penelope and Helen   176 3.1 The myth of Penelope   177 3.1.1 In the visual arts   177 3.1.2 In literature   181 3.2 The myth of Helen   188 3.2.1 In the visual arts   188 3.2.2 In literature   191 3.3 The Penelope/Helen mythological megatext   198 3.4 Reading Penelopes as Helens   204 3.4.1 Chariton   204 3.4.2 Xenophon of Ephesus   230 3.4.3 Achilles Tatius   245 3.4.4 Longus   262 3.4.5 Heliodorus   271 3.5 Penelope and Helen in focus   298  310 Epilogue  Mythological afterthoughts   311 Metaliterary reflections   315 Epimythion   318 Bibliography 

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Index locorum notabiliorum 

 349

Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum 

 354

Introduction La signification, est tout entière dans la relation dynamique qui fonde simultanément plusieurs mythes ou parties d’un même mythe, et sous l’effet de laquelle ces mythes, et ces parties, sont promus à l’existence rationnelle, et s’accomplissent ensemble comme les paires opposables d’un même groupe de transformations. (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le cru et le cuit, 23.1)

Women’s Tales In one of the first paragraphs of Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, the reader encounters one of the most extensive and illuminating lists of mythical exempla in the five complete surviving Greek novels. The conversation evolves around one of men’s favourite topics: women, beautiful women. The protagonist, Clitophon, is talking about Eros with his friends Clinias and Charicles, when, in an attempt to dissuade his lover, Charicles, from marrying, Clinias bewails the calamities that await a man who desires a woman. Clinias’ line of argument is based not on his own experience or that of another person, but – to the great amazement of the modern reader, although probably not of the ancient – on mythology: 1.8.3–7: ‘Pity the prospective groom, it looks as if they’re sending him off to war.’ If you were uninstructed in the examples of poetry (μουσικῆς), you would not know of the plays (γυναικῶν δράματα) involving women, but as it is you could tell others how many mythic tales women have contributed to the stage (ὅσων ἐνέπλησαν μύθων γυναῖκες τὴν σκηνήν): Eriphyle’s necklace, Philomela’s banquet, Stheneboea’s slander, Aerope’s theft, Procne’s slaughter. Agamemnon desires the beautiful Chryseis, and it brings a plague on the Greeks. Achilles desires the beautiful Briseis and introduces himself to sorrow. If Candaules’ wife is fair, yet this same wife kills Candaules. The fiery torch, lit for Helen’s marriage, lit another fire hurled against Troy. The wedding of the chaste Penelope was the death of how many suitors? Phaedra loved Hippolytus and killed him; Clytemnestra hated Agamemnon and killed him. Oh women, women, they stop at nothing! They kill when they love, they kill when they don’t love ... and so much one could say about the beautiful ones, for beauty does offer some consolation in the midst of calamity, a stroke of luck in a losing streak. But if, as you say, she is not even pretty, it is a catastrophe redoubled.2

1 De Heusch 1965, 689–690, ‘Vers une mytho-logique’, on Lévi-Strauss’ Le cru et le cuit, comments on the author’s attempt to rationalise mythical thought as a ‘notion logico-mathématique’. This book is also inspired by the logic found in mythical tales and Lévi-Strauss’ mytho-logical grammar, but does not propose an anthropological study of the novel. 2 The translations are from Reardon 2008 (1989), slightly adapted, unless otherwise stated. DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-001

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 Introduction

Clinias’ enumeration is a compilation of tales about sex and blood, about ‘those bold and beautiful’ women of Greek myth, who were famous for the disastrous results of their love afairs. Having recently, and for the first time, been in ‘love at first sight’ with the exceptionally beautiful Leucippe, Clitophon listens reluctantly to his cousin’s mythical catalogue, for Clitophon takes a very different view on erotic matters. Later, during what might nowadays be called a ‘candlelight dinner’, and despite the presence of the whole family at the table, Clitophon and Leucippe listen to a song that creates a romantic atmosphere: 1.5.5–7: The song was Apollo’s complaint at Daphne’s running away from him, his pursuing and almost capturing her, how she was transformed into a tree and he wove her leaves into a wreath for him … so I (Clitophon) said to myself: ‘Look here, Apollo himself loves a virgin (ἐρᾷ παρθένου), unashamed of his love he pursues (διώκει) her while you hesitate, you blush, and exhibit an untimely self-control (σωφρονεῖς). Are you better than a god?’

Clitophon here summarises briefly the basic storyline of the well-known metamorphosis tale but emphasises desire and not violence. What Clitophon sees as the main commonalities between the myth and his own story are the male desire for a virgin (ἐρᾷ παρθένου) and the urge to pursue her in order to assuage that desire (διώκει). What better example could illustrate Clitophon’s burning heart? However, this is not an ideal love story but one of rape and metamorphosis that does not fit the prerequisites of ideal romance.3 Both Clitophon and Clinias use tales from mythology to address their own fictional lives, without regard to the different categories of myth (metamorphosis myths, myths from epic, myths from the stage, tales from historiography) but purely on the basis of their broader theme, women and Eros.4 Surprisingly, neither of these mythical programmatic paradigms – neither the contra- nor the pro-women – is meant to come true, and none is mirrored entirely in the plot: a few pages later, Clinias’ lover dies while riding a horse that was a gift from his boyfriend, and Clitophon, despite pursuing and eloping with Leucippe, 3 Cf. the metamorphosis myths as contrasting Chloe’s tale in Longus as discussed by Morgan 2004a, 7–10. 4 In Clinias’ examples above the major intertexts are the following: in Sophocles Eriphyle the heroine caused the death of her husband Amphiaraus after, her lover, bribed her with a lovely necklace. Philomela and Procne figure in Sophocles’ now lost drama Tereus; Aerope, wife of Atreus, stole the golden lamb and gave it to her lover Thyestes, figured in the now lost eponymous plays of Agathon and of Carcinus. Stheneboea is the adulteress in Euripides’ Bellerophon. Chryseis and Briseis were the cause of the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad; Helen and Penelope have, since Homer, been the embodiments of the adulteress and the chaste wife; Candaules’ wife figures in Hdt. 1.8.1. Phaedra figures in the surviving Euripides’ Hippolytoi and Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.



Women’s Tales 

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does not have sex with her until their actual marriage at the very end of the novel. Male love proves to be as perilous as heterosexual for Charicles, and Clitophon’s desire for Leucippe is not as destructive as Apollo’s desire for Daphne. Indeed, the story for which Clitophon and Leucippe are casting is not mythical but a novel, a tale whose main ingredient is the mutual coup de foudre of the two heterosexual protagonists in the beginning and their happy reunion in the end. Achilles Tatius, writing around the mid-second century CE and approximately 100 years after the ‘first’ novel, ought to have been aware of the generic constraints of the kind of story he is telling, which included, love, adventure, chastity, and marriage.5 The excerpt from Achilles Tatius above does not show the affinities of the novelistic story6 with myth but, rather, how broadly the term ‘myth’ relates to the plot of the Greek novels. Most of Clinias’ myths were associated with particular texts, but these were not always explicit. For a myth was a story that was not necessarily thought to belong to one genre but to a broader system of mythical vulgate. In the imperial times there was an ongoing dialogue between higher and lower genres and media, most of which dealt with myth in one way or another. The myths that Ps.-Apollodorus knew were transmitted through a set of texts already considered ‘classical’ and ‘canonical’, such as Homer or the tragedians, but these myths were also available in other formats. We know for example that Euripides’ tragedies circulated in the compact, reader-friendly form of summarised ‘Tales’.7 Famous plays were still performed in some parts of the Empire but mime and pantomime further disseminated and adapted the well-known stories.8 The visual arts made ample use of traditional myths as well, bringing them to anyone who had eyes to see. The opening up of myth so as to include a wide variety of tales made Greek myth the lingua franca among the elite, who used it to discuss not only literary but everyday topics. This common mythical ‘cultural currency’,9 or mythical vulgate, was shared among those with a solid background in Greek paideia and who, would have frequented at least the school of the grammarian, if not of rhetoric. The breadth therefore of the mythical vulgate suggests that it is impossible to deduce the ‘birth’ of the novel from one or another kind of myth, or indeed a myth-related genre, but an overview of the variety of sources and media. 5 See, e.g., Chew 2014. 6 The term ‘novelistic’ here means ‘proper to the genre of the Greek novel’. See Bowie 2008, 15 and De Temmerman 2014, 2 ‘novelistic fiction’. 7 Cf. The full title is Dicaearchus, ‘Hypotheseis/Tales of/from Sophocles’ and Euripides’ myths’. It may also be, as Rusten 1987 argues, that these ‘tales’ were composed in the first two centuries CE and falsely attributed to Dicaearchus, which strenghthens my suggestion that imperial audiences extensively read the popularised and summarised versions of epic and drama. 8 On dramatic performances see Jones 1993, on mime and pantomime see Hall 2013b. 9 The term in Cameron 2004, 221.

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 Introduction

On the other hand, Clinias’ and Clitophon’s mythical analogues imply that the available mythical vulgate was slightly problematic for the new genre. Despite the opening of the mythical as a category to include all possible erotic tales, Greek myth was unable to provide the novel with such a thing as a tale of mutually faithful love that ends happily. Had Euripides’ Andromeda survived, we might have witnessed an antecedent of such a tale, since the play apparently opens with Perseus’ coup de foudre and ends with his marriage to the Ethiopian princess.10 However, besides this fairytale-like couple, none of the more successfully-married mythical chaste celebrities, such as Penelope and Alcestis, are in the bloom of youth. Nor do these domesticated heroines travel extensively, like the female characters encountered in the novel or the unfaithful but volatile Helen.11 Nor does New Comedy provide a crystal-clear ideal of chaste heterosexual love, and rape, instead of mutual love at first sight, was often the reason to marry the girl.12 Nor is Hellenistic poetry characterised by such an obsession with mutual love and chastity, with the possible exception of the story of ‘Acontius and Cydippe’, which indeed focuses on mutual desire, but not on virginity and even less so on adventure.13 Clitophon then requires all his rhetorical skill to convert the popular myths of seduction and rape into ‘romantic tales’, so as to fit his presumably ‘ideal’ love for Leucippe. Thus, Clinias’ list of ‘bold and beautiful’ women should be re-labelled ‘bold, beautiful and faithful’ to correspond to the novelistic heroines. The effect is

10 Aélion 1988, 183, Gibert 1999 (2000), and Wyles 2007, 178. For Euripides’ interest in romantic young couple-love see Trenkner 1958, 57, listing Andromeda, Antigone, Helen, Meleager, and Oenomaus. 11 Penelope welcomes Odysseus after 20 years of absence; Euripides has Alcestis sacrifice herself after bearing Admetus two children. 12 For rape see Rosivach 1998, 41. For New Comedy and the novel see Corbato 1968, Borgogno 1971, Crismani 1997, Lowe 2000, and most importantly Brethes 2007. An update of relevant scholarship is Létoublon and Genre 2014, 354–56. There may be structural similarities between New Comedy and the Greek love novel, but the ideal of love represented in each is diametrically different, since the couple achieves a happy ending by their own means and not as part of some family arrangement. Rape and producing children outside wedlock were common ‘love plots’ in some plays, e.g. Men. Sam., Ter. Eun., Plaut. Cist., for which see Pierce 1994. 13 The ties with Hellenistic lore were emphasised by Rohde 1960 (1876) and Lavagnini 1921. It may be that ‘Acontius and Cydippe’, has a posteriori some of the characteristic elements of the novelistic love scenario as argued by Rosenmeyer 2001, 111, but this is, as it stands, a unique case. Also, a large number of pre- or Hellenistic lovestories do not contain many ‘ideal’ love scenarios, e.g. Antimachus’ Lyde or Hermesianax’ Leontion, for which see Gutzwiller 2007, 46. For a review of erotic pre-novel literature as not directly relevant to the kind of love scenario in the novels see also Konstan 1994, 139–88, especially his observations regarding New Comedy, epic, and tragedy.



Women’s Tales 

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somewhat like what the Orpheus and Eurydice myth does for Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute (1792), being programmatic for Pamina’s and Tamino’s ordeals in the underworld. And yet the libretto does not mention Orpheus but presumes that the audience can deduce it, because they are steeped in both classical literature and adaptations thereof, such as Gluck’s Orfeo (1774) from 20 years earlier. Moreover, just as in the novel a mythical background serves to highlight the differences, rather than the similarities, between myth and the novelistic plot, the opera uses Orpheus’ and Eurydice’s unhappy saga as a negative analogue for the victorious and happy romance of Tamino and Pamina.14 In both cases the mythical erudition of the audience matters. This book is about the use and function of myth in the five extant ideal Greek novels. These prose texts were written between the mid-first and the mid-fourth centuries CE; all tell of the erotic adventures of a girl-boy pair of lovers who are separated, tempted and threatened by other suitors before finding each other again.15 These are Chariton’s Callirhoe (c. 50 CE), Xenophon’s Anthia and Habrocomes or Ephesiaca (between 65 and 98 CE?), Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (c. 150 CE), Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe or Lesbiaca (c. 200CE?) and Helidorus’ Chariclea and Theagenes or Aethiopica (c. 350 CE).16 Mythology in the novel has long been thoroughly explored from a ritual and religious point of view; myths and their relevant intertexts have also been extensively analysed in recent years.17 And yet the religious, ritual, and intertextual approaches, because they tend to focus on the (socio-religious) origin(s) or the (literary) model(s) of the new genre, do not do justice to the complex role myth plays in it. In this analysis I will not investigate a particular mythical/literary genre but mythical tales that belong to the wider intertextual pool of imperial literature and whose popularity is well attested in literary as well as in visual sources. As intertextual analysis shows, Homer’s Odyssey and Euripides’ so-called ‘escape tragedies’ and the Hippolytus were among the novelists’ favoured myths.18 This is not surprising since both the epic and the dramatic poet were the two cor14 Van Den Berk 2004, 126. 15 I maintain the titles here that point to the girl-boy tale that was characteristic of the genre, as argued by Whitmarsh 2005a. 16 I follow here Bowie 2002 with the exception of Heliodorus. Bowie 2002 opts for a mid-third century dating for the Aethiopica but Morgan 1982, Chuvin 1990, 321–25, Bowersock 1994, 146, and Futre-Pinheiro 2014 suggest as more plausible the mid fourth century. 17 See below section on ‘Myth’. 18 For the preponderance of Homeric and Euripidean intertextuality see Fusillo 1991 (1989). See also Bowersock 1994, Goldhill 2001, 11. On Homer and Euripides see Zeitlin 2001, Kim 2010, 7. For the reception of E. IT see Hall 2013a, 122. For details for each myth see the relevant chapters below. For the novel and tragedy see the overview in Billault 1998a.

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 Introduction

nerstones of imperial Greek paideia and cultural identity. Besides, it is Homer and Euripides who are chiefly represented in the papyrological findings.19 It has long been acknowledged that Homer’s Odyssey shares with the novel the themes of love, suitor competition, and (contested) conjugal fidelity as embodied in the tales about Helen and Penelope.20 Further, the two extant Euripidean ‘escape tragedies’ treat the themes of adventure in faraway lands, such as the (near) sacrifices and successful escapes that are also common in the Greek novels, so that these partly foreshadow the later novelistic plot.21 Finally, the theme of male chastity is exemplified by the extremely popular myth of Hippolytus, which, besides its use in testing the male character’s faithfulness, also provides in Phaedra a negative doublet for the both love-stricken and chaste female protagonist.22 It may be accidental that only meagre papyrological support exists for the escape tragedies, for example the Helen or the Iphigenia plays, since other literary and visual evidence suggests that these plays were very popular during the Empire. 23 Given this intertextual predilection I will concentrate here on four myths that are tightly related to the story of the female novelistic protagonist: Iphigenia, Phaedra, Penelope and Helen. While these tales exemplify the transition from virginity to womanhood and explore the themes of suitor competition, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, even more importantly they include travel, adventures, separations, and happy reunions. These narratives were popular not only in the Greek novels. My approach is to consider a selection of instances of these four myths in such contemporary prose authors as Dio, Plutarch, Lucian, Maximus of Tyre, and Philostratus. These authors of the Second Sophistic are good testimonies to the ongoing Mythenkritik and will provide a broader background for how the novel uses myth. Although these works are not themselves novels, nonetheless they suggest a change in the treatment of erotic myths onto which was often appended a happy ending, such as the marriage of Helen and Achilles in Philostratus’ Heroicus. Next, I briefly inspect a pool of mythographers such as Ps.-Apollodorus, or more recherché manuals such as those by Parthenius, Antoninus Liberalis, or periegetes such as Pausanias. These works, too, show an interest in variants of traditional erotic tales that were contemporaneous with the novels; therefore, they are equally

19 Marrou 1948 and Cribiore 2001. 20 E.g. Fusillo 1991 (1989) and Reardon 1991, 132. 21 E.g. Trenkner 1958. 22 E.g. Smith 2007b. 23 Barrett 1964, 53 52 suggests that the selection represents a scholarly or educative initiative and not the taste of the times. For the popularity in imperial literature see Hall 2013a.



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important for understanding the novel’s attitude towards myth.24 Moreover, the novel’s own take on traditional mythology ought to be considered too, since each novelist bequeathed to his successors not only a love plot but also a model for merging the love and adventure plot with traditional myth. Equally, visual evidence is important. Like the frescoes and mosaics in private villas, love novels – as opposed to declamation, for example – were not meant for ‘public’ display but bear testimony to the kind of erotic tales favoured in the private sphere.25 To the best of our knowledge, the novels were for private degustation, whether in small or larger circles.26 It is not surprising therefore that mosaics and novels treat similar mythical themes, such as Hippolytus and Phaedra, Helen’s and Paris’ meeting, or Iphigenia’s escape by sea. Moreover, as the novel became more popular as a form, parts of the novelistic plot were taken as erotic themes to be represented among others on floors and wall paintings of private houses, as indicated by the second-century mosaics inspired by the Ninus Romance and the Parthenope.27 What these mosaics tell us about the property owners is their interest in love stories, mythical as well as novelistic. It is impossible in this study to take into consideration all the visual evidence available. However, given the prominence of visual culture in the novel and the chief role of ekphrasis in it, it would be methodological unsafe to exclude entirely the visual testimonies.28

24 Bowie 2008. 25 Gazda and Haeckl 1991. See Whitmarsh 2011, 11, for the novels not being a product of the civic Greek world as opposed to plays that were part of a performative context. 26 Very few things are known about who read the novels and how, and whether they considered them a genre at all. See Bowie 1994, Bowie 1996, Bowie 2003, Hunter 2008. For female readership see Haynes 2003. For embedded readers in Ancient Narrative and how they illustrate the ‘actual’ intended readership see e.g. Bartsch 1989, Morgan 1991, and Morgan 2009c. 27 Levi 1947, Hägg 2004 (1994). 28 For the role of ekphrasis see e.g. Billault 1979, Bartsch 1989, Goldhill 2007, Webb 2009. There are also some studies that examine novelistic scenes next to real works of art of the Empire: e.g. Pierre Grimal in his 1958 translation of Chariton for La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1458 n.1 compares Callirhoe’s funeral with the frieze of the Panathenaea from the Parthenon, cited in Billault 1979, 200. Also for Callirhoe’s statuesque erotic depictions see Elsom 1992, Egger 1994a, and Zeitlin 2003, esp. 70–80, esp. the theatrical dimension; for Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite and Callirhoe see Hunter 1994, 1075; for Anthia’s statuesque description and the Artemis figurines see Hägg 1983 (1980), 27; see also Zeitlin 2013 about the Andromeda representations in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. See Morales 2004, 33, 221 for Melite as a statue of Aphrodite. For Longus’ Dionysiac painting at 4.3.2 and the sanctuary of Dionysus in Athens (Paus. 1.20.3) see the speculative Laplace 2010, 86, note 7. For the opening of Heliodorus and the description of the mnesterophonia see Tagliabue 2015.

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 Introduction

Having thus outlined the literary and visual background of the novel’s milieu, I will examine the four myths about female heroines alongside the story of the novelistic protagonist. In what follows I suggest a different take on both myth and intertextuality via a structural and narratological analysis of the imperial mythical vulgate and the novelistic plot. The Greek novels, I argue, shape their plot according to the expectations of a readership well versed both in mythical and novelistic narratives. Taking the novel’s emphasis on mutual love and chastity as an indispensable constraint and means of achieving the happy ending, I will explore the four relevant, major mythical clusters about women, namely Iphigenia, Phaedra, Penelope and Helen, that occasionally foreshadow or contradict the novel’s own story. Using these as the backbone of my analysis I then explore their contribution to the articulation of the novelistic plot in order to show how a careful analysis of the mythical themes and motifs forms a kind of structural metalanguage that illustrates the readership’s expectations of the new genre: a kind of early myth-based novelistic grammar.29 The Greek novels are not at the centre of the literary production of the Second Sophistic and very little is known about their readership. However, the context in which they were written sheds some light on how they work their way around myth while maintaining their own generic characteristics. Because they flourished around the same time as the highbrow literature often used in public declamation, and because they did not lack in sophistication, the novels may help us understand the literary trends of the Empire, representing the missing link between written and oral or public and private literary culture. In an era in which traditional Greek myths served as hot topics for sophisticated virtuoso criticism, the novels provide an interesting insight into different receptions of the old tales. This book focuses on the novelistic manipulation of traditional lore, which in turn function as a metaliterary device for deciphering the plots of the novels. Nonetheless, before embarking upon the main examination of the texts, I revisit here two sensitive terms that appear frequently in the course of the analysis and which, like Clinias’ female mythical celebrities, have long been the subject of complex scholarly debate: ‘myth’ and ‘intertext’.

29 The structure of the novelistic plot in grammaritcal/syntactical terms was the focus of structuralists such as Todorov 1968 and his ‘grammaire du récit’, for modern novels.



Coming to Terms with 

 9

Coming to Terms with ‘Myth’ The novel has been thought to have strong ties to myth. But if the concept of myth is hard to grasp in genres that engage directly with traditional tales in a ritual context, such as tragedy, how much more difficult is to assess the relationship between myth and the novel! In the excerpt from Achilles Tatius above, we saw that myth is everywhere: novels contain myths from the epic or the stage, metamorphosis or aetiological or allegorical local myths such as the tale about the origins of the Nile in Heliodorus. Additionally, a supreme divinity often rules the plot, such as Aphrodite in Chariton or Artemis in Xenophon. The variety is great and almost beyond classification. Myths may appear as quotations from a particular text, as extensive embedded narratives, or en passant; they may be secular or sacred. However, it is not just the breadth of mythical allusions in the novel that prompts its association with ‘myth’ but also the admittedly similar plot pattern of the five extant Greek novels that occasionally gives the impression that they are five variations on a new kind of ‘myth’ one with a happy ending. Myth, then, is a delicate term to use, if not downright misleading. In this series that favours the interaction between Mythos, Eikon, and Poiesis, the term myth requires further elucidation. Thus, because I intend to use the word ‘myth’ and its cognates in my study, I want to briefly present the earlier takes on the term before explaining my own. Under the influence of the Ritualist School, myth in the novel was related to ritual, which implied that the novels had ‘sacred’ meaning. This point of view, with different variations, was adopted as early as Kerényi (1927) and carried further by Merkelbach (1962), who saw in these works an encrypted ‘sacred narrative’ about initiation.30 New alternatives to this view emphasise the cultural and religious contexts in which the novels were written: for example Beck (2003), Dowden (1999), and Bierl (2009) explore the religious echoes of imperial religion and rituals, such as initiation rituals, sacrifices, and rites of passage. Lalanne (2006), on the other hand, approaches the novel from an anthropological perspective, surveying its representation of teenagehood alongside the model ‘mythes de la jeunesse’, such as Artemis or Perseus. Whitmarsh (2011) has recently applied van Genepp’s tripartite initiation pattern with an eye to the organisation of the narrative around it and its contribution to the construction of a narrative imperial identity. And yet, despite the primary role of religion in the novel, most of the myths alluded to therein are erotic and not sacred. Thus, religion plays an 30 There is no reason here to review these opinions already challenged by Turcan 1963.

10 

 Introduction

auxiliary, not a protagonistic, role.31 With Lalanne (2006) and Whitmarsh (2011), 44 we shift towards a broader cultural and narratological spectrum where ‘the romances should be read in terms of “ritual poetics”, of literary strategy rather than of “serious” religious homiletics.’ Whereas myth and religio-cultural milieu are still investigated there are fewer attempts to study the Greek novel as a genre that emerged from local aetiological myths,32 as E. Rohde (1960 (1876)) and Lavagnini (1921) suggest. A recent take on local mythography, again from a cultural point of view, is provided by Whitmarsh (2013), who argues for an echo of ‘collections of local myths’ such as that of Parthenius in the Greek novel; he uses Longus as his chief example.33 Of course erudite novels – especially Longus and Achilles Tatius – present, among others, aetiological tales with an interest in local lore.34 However, the genre’s broader mythical orientation is the mythical koine understood by both the Greek and the Hellenised alike, and the local touches stand next to (and are probably overshadowed by) the mythical vulgate.35 Another persistent trend is to oppose the instances of the ancient notion of ‘mythos’ in the novel with the philosophically, and supposedly objectively defined, ‘logos’. Thus the Greek novel, according to some scholars, is a myth in the sense of falsehood or fiction because it narrates a story, which is a lie, or exactly the kind of tales by philosophers and sophists Xenophanes critisised. 36 B. E. Perry (1967), 38 further distinguishes between different shades of falsehood: ‘the real romance is falsehood (pseudos) only when judged by the alien standards of historiography, when judged with reference to its own standards as a literary 31 Zeitlin 2008, 94–98 convincingly demonstrates the difference between the Greek and the Christian novels when treating the divine and the role of Providence in the narrative. 32 As Ruiz-Montero 1996, 61 demonstrates; allthough support for this theory has waned. Under the same template could also be grouped the question about the oral sources of the novel as discussed by Ruiz-Montero 2003 and O’ Sullivan 1995; for a critique see Hägg 2004 (1994), who argues for a literary basis. 33 For other views on the ‘glocal’ identity of the Greeks during the period see Whitmarsh 2010a, 3. 34 Often they were even read as patria by later writers such as Nonnus, whose adaptation of Achilles Tatius’ novel focuses not only on the erotic material but also on these local details, e.g. Chuvin 2013 on the description of Tyre. 35 Lightfoot 1999, 263 argues that the novels and Parthenius’ Pathemata, besides the common erotic theme and the common interest in historiography and local legends, belong to ‘two different classes of narrative’, the Pathemata being ‘in the borderline between historia and mythos’, whereas the events in the novel ‘are more like a reduced vesion of historia combined with plasmata.’ 36 Cf. Perry 1967, 22–25 on Plato shaping Aristotle’s views of literature and the subsequent influence on the genre of the novel. See also the Reardon 1994, placing of Longus between mythos and logos. The main discussion is Buxton 1999 on Nestle 1942.



Coming to Terms with 

 11

genre, it is a legitimate artistic creation (plasma).’ Ruiz-Montero (1991) investigates the relationship between the fictional, non-myth-based but invented, narratives in the Progymnasmata and the novel and finds that they fits the rhetorical categories of fictional composition.37 However, the evidence from the Progymnasmata is often regarded as controversial since there is not always a clear division between the mythical (mythikai diegeseis) and the invented tales (plasmatikai diegeseis), not to mention that the very meaning of “mythos” is unclear.38 More cautiously, Webb (2009) emphasises the importance of the Progymnasmata in order to understand the rhetorical techniques used in the Greek novels and how oratory prepared imperial readers to exercise their imagination by training them to envision themselves in different situations. The novel, she argues, not only needs to make the fictional apparent but also to make the audience realise the artificiality of its own subject matter, moving thus further away from the category of plasmatikon.39 A different way of thinking argues that, if the novel’s plot is on the border between truth and fiction, then it must be a form of historiography, especially given that the second titles of the novels echo local manuals, such as Ephesiaca or Aethiopica. But even within the historiographical genre it is quite demanding to delineate where true and ‘truer’ histories lie, and Lucian, writing roughly in the same period as Achilles Tatius, makes this evident.40 This purported historicity, as Richard Hunter (1994) labels it, is not a clear indication of a struggle between historical and non-historical material in the novel.41 Rather, historicity points to a kind of pact made with the reader of a fictional work in prose, the medium par excellence of truthful narratives, such as historiography and philosophy. Morgan 37 E.g. Hermog. Prog. 2., gives four categories of speech: ‘one is the mythological, another is the fictional/imaginative, which they also call dramatic, such as the stories by the tragedians, then (comes) the historical, and last the political or the narrative about individuals.’ And yet it would have been impossible to say what exactly the terms πλασματικὸν and δραματικὸν have in common. Rohde 1960 (1876), 371, based on an obscure sophist, Nicostratus argued that there was a rhetorical category of ‘dramatic myth’; Tilg 2010a, 205 has convingincly contested the claim. 38 For the ‘afterlife’ of the term plasma see Bowersock 1994, 7. For the connection between fiction and rhetoric see Morgan 1993 and Webb 2009 esp. 154–168. I find Webb’s classification of πλάσμα restrictive in that she uses mainly the evidence from Nicolaus’ Prog. 11 9–13 to prove that πλάσμα, which she interprets as closer to the term ‘fiction’, describes things that ‘could have happened’, whereas myths describe unrealistic events. For the novel see also the discussion in Tilg 2010a, 204–08, opposing mythos to diegema, the supposed Charitonian term for this new fictional genre. 39 Webb 2009, 178–85. 40 Bowersock 1994. 41 For Chariton see Hunter 1994, for Heliodorus Bowersock 1994, 149–51 and Hägg 1987, 200–01; and Trzaskoma 2011.

12 

 Introduction

(1993), 187 has long argued for the importance of historiography in conceiving the contract of ‘fictional complicity’ between the author of a (quasi or not) historiographical text and his reader so as to accept a reading as – fictionally, historiographically, or factually – true.42 As with local myths, aetia or legends, historiographical details increase plausibility and encourage the contract between text and reader that allows him to enter its fictional universe.43 Still, although the novel uses the historiographical medium, namely prose, this does not make it more historical than mythical. Besides, prose was also the medium of philosophical dialogue, and Plato, dispite his disenchantment with poets and poetry, not only wrote ‘myths’ but also presented Socrates transposing Aesop’s prose ‘mythoi’ into verse.44 If, then, there is no concrete medium for ‘myths’, and Clinias lists Candaules’ wife alongside Phaedra and Penelope, we must acknowledge that the boundaries between history and myth are frail and that an exploration of the mythical in the novel does not necessarily contradict its historicical touches. For other scholars, the typical novelistic plot of loss and reunion was seen as ‘variations on a theme’.45 Just as Greek literature plays with variants of myths, the novels were similarly thought to be evidence for a tale’s deep structure. Reardon (1971) characteristically argued that the novel represents the ‘Hellenistic myth’. He follows Perry, for whom romance illustrates ‘the adventures or experiences of one or more individuals in their private capacities and from the viewpoint of their private interests and emotions.’ Such claims are partly endowed with Perry’s socialist point of view, since the reason for this isolation was the rise of a middle-class citizenry. Reardon saw the social origins of the novelistic plot as illustrating ‘the isolation of the individual in the world.’46 Reardon understood Perry’s social reading in psychoanalytical terms, and his understanding of the social anxiety of the era shows influence from the approach of Frye (1957), his contemporary, and Dodd’s (1951) treatment of the irrational.47 Recently Whitmarsh (2011)

42 Cf. the observations of Ni-Mheallaigh 2008, 406 about the fictional character of such pseudo-historiographical works as Dictys’ Ephemeris, side-by-side with Lucian’s True Histories. In her view, the Second Sophistic readers ‘were aware of the specious nature of this narrative technique’ just as they were aware of ‘plasmatic’ and still vivid rhetorical descriptions, as presented by Webb 2009 above. 43 Cf. Rifaterre 1993 (1990), xv, ‘verisimilitude is an artwork, since it is a verbal representation of reality rather than reality itself: therefore, verisimilitude, itself, entails fictionality’. 44 Pl. Phd. 60d1. Brisson and Naddaf 1998, 47 and Most 2012 with literature. 45 Cf. the title of Reardon 2004b. 46 The quotations from Perry 1967, 44-45 and Reardon 1969, 293. 47 Reardon 1991, 170–72. On Frye and psychoanalysis see Russel 1998, 91–93. On Reardon and Dodds see Dowden 2005, 24–25.



Coming to Terms with 

 13

contested the idea of one shared novelistic plot. Thus, more emphasis has been placed on the individual character of each novel.48 Other scholars have connected the apparently shared plot pattern of the five ideal novels to the Aristotelian notion of ‘mythos’. Myth in this case is understood in formal terms as a story pattern. Such an approach can be found in the analysis by Lowe (2000) who, in an semi-evolutionary way, reconstructs the novel’s plot from earlier epic and dramatic plot structures.49 A less formal version of this approach is the intertextual study of epic and drama in the Greek novel, with often contradictory but interesting results: for example, Fusillo (1991) argues for a secularisation of myths and genres during their distillation in the novels; Paulsen (1992) opts for an inclusive interpretation of dramatic and epic genres as both myths and plots; and Cueva (2004) does not distinguish enough, in my view, between the genres in which myths appear but approaches the novel from an intertextual point of view without, however, highlighting the overall importance of myth as a category for fiction.50 The above exposé is far from exhaustive but indicates the complex status of myth in the Greek novel. The recent Introduction to the collection of myth-related articles from the ICAN IV at Lisbon by Futre-Pinheiro, Bierl, and Beck (2013), 7–47 is charac­­teristic in this respect. Despite their initial shared inspiration from the Ritualist School, Anton Bierl, Jan Bremmer and Fritz Graf all reach astonishingly different conclusions. The first argues for the novel’s being the ‘New Myth’ and inscribes the novel within a long tradition of Greek mytho-ritual poetics; Bremmer finds in the novel’s mythical tales a sophistic tour de force, characteristic of the taste of the times but without religious depth; Graf turns an eye towards the unobstructed continuation of Greek myth in late antiquity and sees the novels as interludes in this development, a ‘reaction to mythical narratives … prose instead of poetry, outstandingly good and beautiful or evil and nasty actors.’51 Not surprisingly, Bremmer and Bierl, and in another roundtable discussion Whitmarsh, take Achilles Tatius or Longus as their starting points, as do other scholars who want to relate novel to myth or mythos.52 Of course, in any discussion of the influence of myth, it is natural to take as starting point the corpus’ only two novels that explicitly refer to their

48 E.g. Montiglio 2012 and De Temmerman 2014. 49 This Aristotelian notion of mythos is already present in Reardon 1991. See Schmeling 1993, 269 challenging Reardon’s view of the Aristoteles based structuralism. 50 For a review see Whitmarsh 2005c. 51 The quotations are Bierl 10-11 Bremmer. 22; Graf 38 from Futre-Pinheiro, Bierl, and Beck 2013. 52 E.g. Laplace 1991 on Achilles Tatius, Reardon 2004a on Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus; Reardon 1994 on mythos and logos in Longus; Bierl 2013 on Longus and initiation and Whitmarsh 2013.

14 

 Introduction

nove­­listic plot as it were a myth-like tale.53 Yet, these novels were written in the heyday of the genre’s floruit and do not necessarily tell us how the genre uses myth. Rather they illustrate how later novelists manipulate myth, based not only on the source texts but also on their predecessors’ reworkings. The situation is complex indeed. That being said, the investigation of the ancient term ‘mythos’, which scholars often explore in the hope that it will eliminate the ideological and semasiological problems that surround the modern term ‘myth’,54 complicates the situation further. Not only is ‘mythos’ wide ranging in Greek literature, since the term is applied not only to Aesopic fables, Platonic myths and every other kind of mythical tale, but also (incoherently) to the five ideal Greek texts.55 The conflation of ‘mythos’ with ‘myth’ is the counterpart of a well-embedded binary opposition that contrasts the ‘mythical’ material, with other, supposedly non-mythical categories, such as ’logoi’, ‘mythoi’, ritual, or other.56 At this point, a compromise needs to be struck between the author of this book and her reader, both of whom are required to make some concessions about what each understands as ‘myth’ and/ or ‘mythos’ and to agree to use it as an inclusive category for all sorts of mythical tales, following Clitophon’s and Clinias’ example above. Without this first condition, an examination of the mythical in the Greek novels seems impossible. Walter Burkert famously defines myth as a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance.57 However, Clitophon’s and Clinias’ world is no longer that of the closed city-state but of the Roman Empire and of mythical synkretism. Thus, any inflexible definition of the term 53 Ach. Tat. 1.2.2, τὰ γὰρ ἐμὰ μύθοις ἔοικε; Long. 2.27.2, παρθένον ἐξ’ ἧς Ἔρως μῦθον ποιῆσαι θέλει. 54 Calame and Lloyd 2009, 507, ‘The narratives that we lump together under the modern, partly metaphorical, category of ‘myth’ – in contrast to the Greek word mythos, which denotes any form of discourse that is argued and thought out effectively’. 55 Cf. Char. 6.3.2 ‘ἐν μύθοις τε καὶ ποιήμασιν’ meaning poetic myth-based literature vs Callirhoe’s tale as myth at 2.4.7, ‘τῆς γυναικός μῦθόν μοι διηγῇ’. On the ambivalence of the ancient Greek term see Dowden 1992, 3–7 with further literature. For the Greek novels see Tilg 2010b. 56 Kirk 1970 believes in the utility of the term, while Calame and Lloyd 2009 challenge the binary opposition and deconstruct it. A more flexible position is taken by Buxton 1994, 219–20, who demonstrates the plurality of myth. 57 Burkert 1979, 23, ‘Myth is traditional tale applied, and its relevance and seriousness stem largely from this application. The reference is secondary, as the meaning of the tale is not to be derived from it, in contrast to fable, which is invented for the sake of its application, and it is partial, since tale and reality will never be quite isomorphic in these applications. And still the tale often is the first and fundamental verbalisation of complex reality, the primary way to speak about many-sided problems, just as telling a tale was seen to be quite an elementary way of communication.’



Coming to Terms with 

 15

would immediately exclude other expressions of it. Thus, when studying the intertextual presence of the mythical in the Greek novel, the above definition should be abstracted even further, so as to incorporate as many as of these mythical tales as possible. For the purposes of this study, ‘myth shall be understood as a traditional tale with a collective importance for a local (namely Greek) or a wider (namely Hellenised) community’, but not as part of any particular ritual context. This adapted definition from Walter Burkert is crucial for my approach here, since it combines the ‘traditional’ character of myth and its importance for the novel’s readership, although not in ritual but rather in narrative and cultural terms.58 Were myths not tales with wide reverbrations, the Greek novel would probably have no use for them besides sophistic embellishment. However, as we will see, in the novel, as throughout Greek literature, myth remains a continuous point of literary and cultural reference.

‘Intertext’ So far, I have contrasted a more conventional notion of myth with its transformation by the time of the Greek novel. Here, I want to draw on another aspect of myth, its relationship with text.59 As Alexiou (2002), 164 observes: ‘myths do not die with the passage from orality to literacy; like Proteus they change shape and form.’ Oral storytelling, visual culture and ritual practices contribute to the diffusion of myth, but, for the era and the genre I am concerned with here, written texts were the primary means of transmission. However, not all novels are concerned with highlighting their debts to mythical tales.60 Despite the more meticulous intertextual annotation observed in some novels, such as in Chariton, where full Homeric hexameters are inserted into the main narrative, other novels do not always make their borrowings explicit. There are plenty of instances where the novels allude to mythical examples more sketchily or more subtly.61 Therefore, we 58 Cf. Whitmarsh 2011, 55. 59 A similar approach has been applied to Herodotus by Boedeker 2002 and Wesselmann 2011, esp. 8–14. But Wesselmann 2011 works with a twofold notion of myth, e.g. 42, both as ‘traditional tale about heroes’ and as ‘intertextual, epic or dramatic’ version of it, without always merging them under the same mega-textual template. 60 For the variety of intertexts see e.g. Hinds 1998; for intertextuality between genres see Harrison 2007. 61 Cf. the hanging of the adulturous wife: Phaedra in E. Hipp. 802, βρόχον κρεμαστὸν ἀγχόνης ἀνήψατο explicitly applied to Arsace in Hld. 1.8.3, ἀγχόνῃ προλήψομαι τὴν ὕβριν. Cf. a subtle allusion to Helen in Hld. 8.7.4, ὦ δαιμονία … τρύχουσα καὶ καταναλίσκουσα μάτην echoing E. Hel. 1285, τρύχουσα σαυτήν. For a thematic echo see for example the tablet hanging from

16 

 Introduction

find express allusions that range from a kind of ‘Alexandrian footnote’62 to moreor less-subtly suggested mythical intertexts, the meaning of which might have been more evident to an imperial audience, which, like Clinias and Clitophon, was continuously explosed to mythical vulgate.63 In Clinias’ examples above the thematic kernel of his recitation is the association between ‘female beauty’, ‘lust’ and ‘male death’. His invitation to Clitophon to add more examples to his own already extensive list shows the flexibility and compliance of these tales. Clinias’ choice of examples is adapted to a reading suited to his own cause, namely homosexual erotics. By including in his list the famously faithful Penelope or the innocent and submissive Chryseis and Briseis in order to show that, ultimately, all women are evil and dangerous, Clinias emphasises the dreary fate of their suitors. His selection and modification mainly demonstrates that any intertextual reading is unavoidably subjective and relevant to a particular discourse setting; its meaning is the outcome of the interaction between a narrative, its narrator, its addressee, and the overall context. Roman visual art, with its snippets of episodes from broader mythical tales, is characteristic of the kind of reading culture and interpretative practices one may encouter in the novels: a viewer of paintings scattered across different walls and floor surfaces of a villa, or of a frieze representing different episodes of a well-known story, ought to be able to reconstruct the rest from his own background knowledge.64 A merger of (intertextual mythical) horizons is prerequisite to understanding the gaps that could not be represented fully in visual art.65 A mythical vulgate was therefore a system that was shared between the members of the educated elite.66 Thus, the mythical allusions in the Greek novels need to be reconsidered via a more broadly understood thematic intertextual net that is based not only on verbatim allusions but also on the motifs, themes, and patterns that were inherent Phaedra’s hand and the one from Melite’s neck in E. Hipp. 856, τί δή ποθ᾽ ἥδε δέλτος ἐκ φίλης χερὸς ἠρτημένη; and Ach. Tat. 8.12.9, ἐγγράψασα τὸν ὅρκον γραμματείῳ μηρίνθῳ δεδεμένον περιεθήκατο τῇ δέρῃ. 62 See Ross 1975, 78 and the discussion in Hinds 1998, 8–9, 40, 58. 63 For the contribution of intertextuality to studying the cultural context see the analysis by Nicholson 2013. 64 E.g. Stewart 1977 on Laocoon and Tiberius, Bergmann 1994 on the Roman house as a ‘memory theatre’, where the audience had to retrieve from memory and fill in the gaps to make sense of the paintings and their sequence. See also Brilliant 1984 on narrative art. For modern cognitive approaches on how and what the readers remember from a story see for example Phillips 2015, 70–72 who observes that the slightest phrases or words can trigger particular situations and patterns in the brain. 65 On the shared background knowledge between text and its reader see Jauss 1982. 66 For the shapes and motifs in Roman Art as a system see also Hölscher 2000 (1987), who argues for an ongoing visual grammar.



Coming to Terms with 

 17

to those mythical texts. For an audience well versed in ‘myth-o-logical’ thinking, these motifs, themes and patterns would have been triggered by the subtlest allusion.67 What I understand as mythical structural intertextuality, i. e. the exploration of the relationship between the main storyline of the novel and the mythical tales from epic, drama, visual arts and other sources, requires a broadening of both the concept of reception procedure and of the devices of annotation that this entails. When dealing with myth in the first three centuries there was no such thing as a single authoritative text transmitting one myth, although there were ‘more standard’ and ‘less standard’ versions thereof. Scholarly intertextual approaches continusouly investigate the richness and diversity of these relationships,68 but beyond the intertexts, the overarching structure of these mythical texts has not, in my view, been studied sufficiently nor fully grasped.

‘Megatext’ For the purposes of the approach adopted here I will not rely on a one-to-one intertextual approach. Instead, I aim for an inclusive organisation and reception of the mythical material through various allusions to the myths in question in both lite­ rary and visual narratives. This endeavour will permit a better understanding of the literary horizons shared between the novels and their readers at the time the novel flourished. I will then attempt to reconstruct what I call the ‘mythical megatext’ that the imperial reader might have had to hand when asked to recall a particular myth or a particular detail of a myth. Expanding on the view of drama outlined in Segal (1983) the ‘megatext of a myth’ is namely ‘the totality of themes or songs that the poets (here the novelists) of an oral (and in the first centuries oral, visual and written)69 culture would have available in their repertories, but also the network of more or less subconscious patterns, or “deep structure” or “undisplaced forms”, which tales of a given type share with one another.’ All these different variations were condensed, not to a single version but to a more or less concrete pattern, a predefined selection and arrangement of possible scenarios, so that a reader versed in mythical literary texts would be able

67 For the reader fills in gaps see Culler 1975, 117 ‘The rule of siginificance’ and Iser 1978 on the reader’s role in deciphering the text. For how subtle allusions evoke myths, as well as texts and genres, see Conte 1986, 29, ‘Intertextuality, far from being a matter of merely recognizing the ways in which specific texts echo each other, defines the condition of literary readability.’ 68 Cf. the Helen myth in Chariton as analysed by Laplace 1980 and the mix of dramatic genres in Heliodorus as discussed by Paulsen 1992. 69 The quotation which I owe to S. Harrison, from Segal 1983, 176.

18 

 Introduction

to predict its outcome.70 To shift Saussure’s practical linguistic model between synchronie (parole) and diachronie (langue) onto a narratological level,71 we can argue that the mythical megatext includes a selection of the motifs, themes and patterns available from the vertical paradigmatic axis that included all the possible manifestations of a myth. Choosing to tell one version did not mean that the others were disregarded. Rather, sense is made because one version is chosen over the others, so that the unselected possibilities also contribute to understanding the role played by the preferred version.72 Greek myth, then, can be understood as a relatively coherent mytho-logical megatext, the structure of which was well known and embedded in the educated reader’s mind. The mythical motifs, themes and patterns were often featured instead of (or together with) explicit allusions, and they were not static but part of an evolving mythical vulgate, which, despite its flexibility, continued to continued to revise mythical tales that had a particular cultural meaning and ought to be transmitted further.73 Myths have long played a part in scholarly structural and narratological analysis, and the works of anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Anthropologie structurale or Walter Burkert’s Homo Necans have been very influential. In those cases the structure of myth, or of a mythical narrative, is supposed to unveil something outside the tale, outside the story logic, such as a cultural, psychological, biological and/or mental procedure. Most structural approaches to literary texts go back to linguistics and Saussure’s dichotomy of the now (synchronie) and ever (dia-

70 Conte’s 1986 analysis of Roman allusive poetry presents a comparable case for the use of intertexts but for a very different pool of texts. See also Conte 1986, 24 distinction between ‘denotative’ and ‘connotative’ semiotics when it comes to allusions. See also further at 144 on how the epic norm changes and ‘orients the code according to a definite ideological set, by adding connotative – historically contextualised – meanings to the epic sense of that system.’ 71 The distinction here follows broadly the definition of the ‘syntagmatic’ and ‘paradigmatic’ levels of interpretation as defined by Saussure 1966, who argued that the signifier obtains its meaning when examined within a system: the system is created by taking into consideration its relationship to its neighbouring elements (syntagma) as well as to its selection among a list of possible substitutes (paradigm). Saussure’s method has been used by a variety of scholars working on myth, e.g. Lévi-Strauss 1958, but each of them has a different understanding of the categoreies of ‘syntagmatic’ and ‘paradigmatic’, depending on their selection of texts. Conte’s 1986 work on allusion is closer to what I am doing here. 72 Cf. Porter Abbott 2015, 104, who draw a distinction between stories that are ‘disnarrated’, or references in the text of other story options that do not take place, and ‘shadow stories’, which are ‘sensed possibilities of what might be the case, what might link the dots, however likely or unlikely.’ 73 For the ongoing belief on Greek myth despite the critique see Veyne 1983. The italics in the parenthesis are mine.



Coming to Terms with 

 19

chronie) of language.74 Todorov (1970) for example applies Lévi-Strauss’ analysis of the Oedipus myth to the Liaisons dangereuses. Barthes (1970) in his S/Z attempts a segmentation of the basic units of the narrative that relate more or less directly with other texts, the lexias. Culler (1975) is still a good overview of these structuralist approaches to poetics, and he is right to observe that in exploring structure ‘the analyst’s task is not to develop a taxonomy of plots or new metalanguages for their transcription … he must attempt to explicate the metalanguage within the reader himself.’ Culler’s observation is important because it stresses the signifi­ cance of the readership in understanding the structure of the story.75 The Greek novel has also been a favourite subject for formal and structural approaches either because of its ample use of myth, or due to its similarity with folktale narratives, or simply for its supposedly myth-like plot.76 Keyes’ (1922) early analysis, for example, compares the in medias res composition of the Aethiopica with that of the Odyssey, and MacQueen (1990) attempts a formal examination of Longus’ narrative around the aetiological myths. An overarching approach based on Propp’s Märchen-poetics has been carried out by Ruiz-Montero (1981),

74 Allan 2000, 80ff. 75 I use here the term ‘structural’ as opposed to the terms ‘structuralist’ as I am not applying in my work a particular structuralist approach, whether anthropological or narratological. However, I have greatly profited from the theoretical framework of structuralist studies such as Culler’s 1975 ‘structuralist poetics’; for the importance of the reader in the cognitive processing of narrative see Iser 1978 and Eco 1979. Further, the novel as genre, as I will show, engages the reader in a particular kind of interpretation. Genre Theory was first illustrated in Todorov 1990, who explores the shifts in the ‘internal’ structure of genres and their constant modifications. Genre and readership are further explored in Hirsch 1967 and especially in Jauss 1982, who famously suggests the merger between the author’s and the reader’s horizons of expectations. Such approaches to genre with a focus on the reader have been already used in Classics and they have yielded such fruitful results as the analysis of Conte 1994 (1991) on Lucretius, Skoie 2006 on the pastoral genre as a ‘process of reception’, Cairns 2007, and Harrison 2007 on ‘generic enrichment’ in Virgil and Horace. Like Virgil and Horace, the novel manipulates and revisits other high genres such as epic and tragedy, but also lower genres too. That being said, because myth is such a complex system, we shall see that the novels do not appeal to one myth from either epic or drama but to a broader complex intertextual mythical vulgate. The great difficulty when studying the Greek novel is not just to identify the myths it alludes to but also their precise intertexts, while remembering that those myths are simultanesouly parts of a broader megatext. 76 On narratology see Hägg 1971a and the contributions in the collections of Irene de Jong, e.g. Morgan 2004a on narrators, De Temmerman and Morgan 2012 on space, and especially De Temmerman 2014, 27–33, who explores the structuralist construction of novelistic characters by the narrator and the embedded focalisers as syntactical but mainly vertical assemblage ... ‘requiring the reader to engage in a continuous process of negotiation, revision, and redefinition (of character) … thus, reader interpretation is situated within the bounds of narrative, but at the same time is an open concept, subject to speculation, enrichment, and revision.’

20 

 Introduction

who attempts to discover Propp’s functions in the Greek novels. However, Propp’s rules work well for his own corpus of texts but would not do justice to a genre of the complexity of such a story as Leucippe and Clitophon. That said, an analysis of the novels in Proppian terms would necessarily skim their plot down to such minimal narrative units as are unavoidably universal, and would thus discard the particular character of each work and its engagement with the culture of Greek paideia.77 The Greek novels are not folktales, although they do flirt with oral tradition and include strong folkloric components,78 mainly motifs based on the Aarne-Thompson Index, as for example G. Anderson (2007) shows, expanding on Trenkner’s (1958) earlier findings.79 Among the more interesting formal analyses is also Reardon’s (1991), esp. 170–74, work on the ‘form’ of the Greek Romance that attempts to define the common ‘pattern’ of the love and adventure story but with an eye to the social transformations of the Hellenistic world, not the narrative itself. Reardon does not engage with myth itself but assimilates the novelistic to the mythical seeing myth in Aristotelean terms qua mythos: a plot that mirrors, symbolically, the socio-cultural milieu of the genre.80 However, the Greek novels are neither folktales nor myths but sophisticated narratives of the Empire that manipulate their folktale and mythical elements self-consciously, so as to show the genre’s own input into imperial fiction. We observed above that the novel’s basic story – mutual love, loss, and reunion – was not a popular theme of Greek myth that preferred ill-fated outcomes. In fact, its very matrix seems much like the kind of novellae, or short stories often of local colour, which were based on oral storytelling and meant for entertainment.81 Trenkner (1958), in her still original approach to classical literature, discusses how the novel, like other high genres before it, exploited this rich popular material.82 Indeed, as we now know, there must have been many oral tales of different local colour: Persian, Jewish, Egyptian and other chroni-

77 See also Kim 2013, 305–06. 78 See also the use of oral formulas in Xenophon as O’ Sullivan 1995 argues. 79 It is impossible to distinguish between what is mythical and what comes from oral lore. See for example Kirk 1970, 8–9, and 41 ‘Perseus story is a myth with strong folktale components’. 80 See the review by Schmeling 1993. 81 Cf. Bowie 2008, 30 the novella of ‘Zariadres and Odatis’ in Athen. Deipn. 13.357 = Chares of Mytilene FGrH 125F 5. The two lovers dream of each other and Zariadres abducts Odatis at a symposium organised for her to choose a husband. They live happily ever after. 82 Cf. O’Sullivan 1995, 95–96 who takes Trenkner’s approach further, suggesting that Xenophon’s novel bears traces of an orally transmitted tale. On folkloric motifs see Anderson 2000, Anderson 2006, and Anderson 2007 although, none of them works with the overall structure of the novel. On the importance of oral and popular narratives see Kim 2013 and for the oral diffusion on mythical tales and performative nature of imperial culture see also Hawes 2014, 188.



Coming to Terms with 

 21

cles with cross-cultural appeal.83 However, from the moment a narrative is put down, it engages with the language and genre conventions within which it is composed.84 The folkloric core of these narratives – these elements of romance85 such as love at first sight, faithfulness, adventures, potions or magical helpers – is immediately transformed into the form of a novel in prose and becomes part of the buoyant intellectual production of the Second Sophistic. If the ravishing Callirhoe is abducted and waits for Chaereas to save her just as princesses in fairytales do, this does not underplay the reflexive allusions to the Helen myth, whose two primary versions are the Iliad and the Helen. Thus, the folkloric elements are no less important than the classical myths for decoding these texts. That said, it is not fortuitous that the Greek novel shows a predilection for those classical texts that also include some folkloric elements, such as the Odyssey or Euripides’ escape tragedies.86 As Plato says, ‘like always clings to like.’ If intertextual research repeatedly shows how important the Helen myth was for the novel, this is not because there were no other mythical Beauties, but because Helen’s story was inherently similar to the story about the bold and beautiful novelistic heroines, something that loomed in the universal storytelling motifs common to both genres. Still, the extent to which each novel alludes to and revisits the myth of Helen, as well as the degree to which it balances the novelistic/ folkloric and the mythical components, is suggestive of the way each novels fashions itself vis-à-vis its readership: a story with a more or less folkloric background that engages differently with Greek paideia and its myths. Given that we are not able to assess the volume and pathways of oral storytelling, we must take the majority of our intertextual evidence from the novels’ well-attested literary engagement with classical texts, and it is primarily this material that the ongoing intertextual analysis reveals. However, we might be able to peek into the orally-transmitted material if we were to concentrate on both, the overlap between novel and myth and its divergence from the mythical narratives that the megatext imposes: in other words, if we searched for other, non-myth-related logic in the narrative. What is not directly myth-related, in my view, points to a different 83 For an overview see Kim 2013. E.g. Egyptian demotic literature in Jasnow 1997; on Petronius’ novellae see Walsh 1970; for Jewish elements see Brant 2005; for Persian fantasies in Chariton see Llewellyn-Jones 2013. 84 See for example Foley 1990, 5 on how language and prosody as well as genre influence our understanding of the Homeric epics described as ‘oral-derived texts’ in written form. 85 The term ‘romance’ has been often used to describe the erotic content of the so-called ideal Greek novels, e.g. Reardon 1991. For romance novels, as opposed to other travel and return novels, see Whitmarsh 2011, 13–18. 86 For the function of folktales in the Odyssey see Kirk 1970, esp. 34; for Euripides’ versions of Helen and Iphigenia see Trenkner 1958, 50–55 and Anderson 2000, 88. Pl. Symp. 195b.

22 

 Introduction

source of material, motifs, themes and plot patterning that was, if not folkloric then at least novelistic, inherent to the genre the five Greek novels were written.87 In the following chapters, I will examine the imperial mythical megatexts related to Iphigenia, Phaedra, Helen and Penelope prior to my analysis of the novels, so as to derive the recurrent basic narrative elements of the myths and how they might have been seen by the novel’s contemporary readers. These repeated elementary units will be labelled as motifs, if they are of basic, or as themes, if of broader importance.88 Then I shall attempt to orchestrate these motifs in a syntagmatic sequence that illustrates how a mythical tale was articulated linearly during the act of narration, if narrowed down to its main plot ingredients. My aim is not to deduce the elementary blocks of any narrative but infer the kind of motifs and patterns that an imperial audience might have had in mind when prompted to recall the corpus of a particular mythical tale.89 Admittedly, any selection of basic motifs is by nature arbitrary and subjective.90 That said, the classification of any narrative into themes and motifs is nonetheless methodologically necessary, especially if we want to reconstruct the ancient readership’s take on the novel.91 Unlike cognitive 87 We cannot argue for folkloric elements except for those motifs that are part of the universtal folklore, which is why I prefer to use the term ‘novelistic’ for the motifs, themes and patterns that we often encounter in the particular genre. 88 Of these motifs, only some correspond to the Aarne and Thompson 1928 classification and most are based on my own observations of the particular corpus of narratives. Classicists have been very hesitant in this respect regarding the ideal Greek novels: Ruiz-Montero 1981 for example works with functions, not with motifs, and only Anderson 2000, Anderson 2006 and see also 2007 work towards this direction. Scholars have been more audacious with less ideal narratives, such as the Story of Apollonius King of Tyre that has been interpreted on the basis of universal motifs, e.g. Schmeling 1998 and Panayotakis 2012a, 96–98, or Apuleius’ novel as in Scobie 1983. 89 In modern Cognitive Studies this would have been the outcome of an experiment in which the subjects would have to summarise a particular tale. For an overview of how individual and culturally influenced memory is researched see Erll 2009. There is also rich ongoing work on cultural, local and individual memory in Classics, with a focus on the Roman Empire, e.g. Bowie 1970, Small 1997, ane Whitmarsh 2010a; on memory and art see Elsner 1995; see also Galinski and Lepatin 2016. These studies focus more on what and how something is remembered than on its formal articulation. 90 See the interesting observations of the contributors in Segal 1966, 299, 32 (Propp contra Lévi Strauss) 300 (Peratdotto contra Lévi Strauss). 91 Cf. Uther 2009, 19, ‘On pragmatic grounds, a clear distinction between motif and type is not possible because the boundaries are not clearly defined. With this attitude, a monographic investigation can distinguish between content and theme and still consider form and function as the properties that determine the genre of the narrative. Some early advocates of narrative classification envisioned an exact system like that of the natural sciences, analogous to biological classification, this vision was later influenced by semantic and structural research. Such hope for scientific exactness must be seen as a product of the wishful thinking of the time. Nevertheless, narratives must not be analysed arbitrarily but according to structural considerations. Just



Coming to Terms with 

 23

literary researchers we no longer have the the actual audience to provide helpful summaries but are compelled to reconstruct them from the available evidence. Roughly following the structural model, I will organise my material thus: into the paradigmatic sequence I shall group all the other versions to which the narrator and his/her audience had access and which hinted at a variety of different and possibly opposing outcomes. The deeper structure of a myth is revealed by the combination of the two readings, the chosen syntagmatic – namely the linear articulation of the selected plot in motifs, themes and patterns – and the paradigmatic axis, or: all other mythical possibilities that were recalled connotatively. This dynamic Saussurean approach does not intend to unveil the pattern of every narrative or of every imperial fictional work, much less the mythical narratives, but focuses only on the five Greek novels and their manipulation of mythical patterns. This articulation of the megatext will be used to explore the interchange between what a reader is told/reads and what s/he anticipates hearing/read by manipulating the shared pool of knowledge of the mythical megatext within the constraints of the novelistic plot. In order to assess the reading challenges that a novel posed to its readership, I will also explore the impact of the megatext on the implied, embedded readers.92 To the structural analysis of the available mythical intertexts I shall add a narratological parameter, paying particular attention to the function of focalisation, namely: from whose point of view a story is told or whom the external narrator favours.93 This will prove a useful instrument in deciphering the novel’s plot, since it illustrates how the external reader may have interpreted a myth on the basis of his or her internal/embedded reception and re-interpretation. While focalisation may have been encouraged or directed by the external narrator, it also depended on the reader, who might identify him/herself and subsequently focalise the plot through a chosen character.94 Readers, as Cognitive Studies as genres of narrative are only intellectual constructs, so is any typology. Broad definitions permit similar themes and plots to be included, so that, in the course of the history of the origins and development of a tradition, its different functions can be discerned. A precise analysis guarantees that variations in narrative tradition will not be reduced to simple multicultural similarities.’ 92 Hunter 2008, 267. For the ‘embedded reader’s approach, as opposed to that of the external reader: see Morgan 1991 on Heliodorus; Egger 1994a on Chariton; see also Morales 2004 on Achilles Tatius, and Smith 2007a, esp. 12–17 for cultural focalisation with a useful introduction. Recently, see Guez 2009 Morgan 2009c; the otherwise more problematic is the collection of Paschalis, Panayotakis and Schmeling 2009, for a review of which see Kim 2011. 93 As an introduction see Allan 2000. On narratology see the general Brooks 1984, which is pivotal for my approach here, together with Morgan 2004b; see also Bal 2009. 94 For the merger of the focaliser and the narrator as an important narrative tool in understanding the Greek novel see also De Temmerman 2014, 26–29 and, most importantly, 42–46. For the overall narratological approach see Genette 1969, 191 and Genette 1972, 206–11, who first invent-

24 

 Introduction

inform us, make a more or less conscious choice by taking the perspective of one or more characters.95 Besides, empathy, the ability of the external and embedded readership to engage emotionally with the narrative is an important issue in understanding the different points of view of any story.96 Equally, empathetic attachment to one or more focalisers might shift and influence the expectations of the internal and external readership.97 Considering this evidence, the expe­ ctations of the novel’s readership are shaped not only by the possible variants offered by the available mythical scenarios evoked but also by the viewpoint of the embedded readership, whose deciphering of the mythical megatext therefore offers a reflexive insight into the genre’s understanding of myth in general and in each novel specifically. Mythical narratives had been so manipulated by centuries of self-conscious mythical literature that, at least in the period I am studying here, it is difficult to place them into precise narrative templates or to distinguish them according the genre in which they appear. Still, their megatexts are the crystallization of parti­ cular versions and sub-versions of these myths within a given historical and cultural context, so as to form a kind of narrative grammar about how these stories were told and received. But in order to assess that, we need to follow our no­­ velistic heroines to the world’s extremities, where they meet with Iphigenia and Helen, or to the world’s cultural centres such as Athens, where they meet with Phaedra, or to the symbolic returning point, Penelope’s Ithaca.

ed the word to demonstrate the difference between ‘he who sees’ and ‘he who narrates’. For the contribution of the embedded characters as focalisers and their mediation towards the understanding of the story see Bal 2009, 145–65 and De Jong, Nünlist, and Bowie 2004, 31–36. 95 Keen 2011 and Keen 2007, 39, ‘The key term in the transformation of novel reading from a morally suspect waste of time to an activity cultivating the role-taking imagination, empathy, appeared in English as a translation of Einfühlung in the early twentieth century. Since then, its verb form, “to empathise”, and its interchangeable adjectival spin-offs “empathic” and “empathetic”, have passed into common parlance. In the twenty-first century, real human empathy enjoys good press as a concept and a desirable character trait (given the improved cultural status of emotional intelligence).’ The moral impact of a story on its reader was already pointed out by Plato, e.g. Rep. 378a7–8. 96 Cf. what is called ‘partial perception’ of the reader, that consists of a reader ‘forgetting’ details in the text because s/he favours a particular point of view, see Auyoung 2013 on Anna Karenina. For the empirical study of the reception of literature and the complicated paths of identification with one or more characters see Groeben and Christman 2014. 97 Cf. Keen 2007 and Aldama 2010.

The bold and virginal: Iphigenia The unfortunate Rebecca was conducted to the black chair placed near the pile. On her first glance at the terrible spot where the preparations were making for her dying a death alike dismaying to the mind and painful to the body, she was observed to shudder and shut her eyes, praying internally doubtless, for her lips moved though no speech was heard … the Judges had now been two hours in the lists, awaiting in vain the appearance of a champion. It became the general opinion that no one would wage battle for an unhappy maiden. (Sir Walter Scott, 1820, Ivanhoe, Chapter 43)

1.1 The myth of Iphigenia In tales of love and adventure there are two things that pose a threat to the ‘happily ever after’ ending: the first is the death of the main protagonist, while the second, as I will discuss in the next chapter, is adultery – sometimes male but mainly female.98 Sacrifice, execution and suicide all imperil the female protagonist and jeopardise the expected reunion of the couple. Near-death situations also add a voyeuristic touch,99 especially given the universal – and particularly dominant in Greece – imagery that relates marriage and death.100 Things are more complex, however, when a story presents a dead protagonist to begin with. And while a principal character might be expected to die at the middle or end of the plot, one that is already deceased in the first lines or chapters is extremely provocative and compelling. Surprisingly, this is the case of both Callirhoe in Chariton’s eponymous novel and of Heliodorus’ Chariclea, who, before the story really even beginns is presented with her beloved apparently dead in her arms and begging for death herself at the hands of the Egyptian brigands. By placing death, or better, near-death, so close to the novel’s opening, the earliest and latest examples of the genre show that this theme was an uncircumscribed part of the novelistic adventures. And although the tragic death of a virginal beauty was

98 An earlier version of this chapter focusing on Heliodorus is published as Lefteratou 2013. 99 Voyeurism in the novel is analysed in Morales 2004; see also Bierl 2012b, esp.136–37. 100 Thoroughly discussed in Dowden 1989, other major approaches, especially on Greek drama, are Rehm 1994 and Burnett 1971, 22ff. On Alcestis’ sacrifice see Rosenmeyer 1963, 199. On the reaction of Euripidean characters vis-à-vis death see Loraux 1987, who distinguishes between dying mothers and wives and tragic virgins; see also Foley 2001, 172–200 on sacrificial virgins as daughters of statesmen; for sacrifice in Euripides see also O’ Connor-Visser 1987, Aretz 1999, and Kyriakou 2006. DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-002

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 The bold and virginal: Iphigenia

commonplace in Greek myth, other than Iphigenia not too many girls are reported to have successfully escaped it.101 In this first chapter I would like to discuss near-death situations, which are centred on the theme of Maidens of Death, or the ‘Brides of Hades’, as Seaford (1987) calls their tragic sœurs.102 In his review of sacrifice in culture and literature, Huges (2007) understands human sacrifice as the ritual, religious sacrifice of a human which is used as a ‘powerful symbol’ to delineate the distance between culture and civilisation. On the other hand, ‘execution is rarely appro­ximate to human sacrifice but it is perfectly possible for a writer to use the idea of human sacrifice powerfully to interpret the social or psychological dynamics of an execution’ as in the case of Rebecca’s execution in the Ivanhoe above. These social and psychological dynamics of the execution/near-death situation are precisely what the novels employ as their narrative booster. The theme of the maiden’s death might be directly patterned on the Iphigenia mythical megatext, with or without the influence of other folkloric elements.103 In Greek literature, discussing sacrifice and death through the Iphigenia saga raises a set of questions about the limits and limitations of civilisation and civilised thought by contrasting the Greek and the barbarian or by discovering the barbarian in the Greek.104 Iphigenia thus provides not only an opportunity to talk about what is Greek as opposed to barbarian and how male is different from female but also a unique occasion to discuss adventure and escape in life and death.

1.1.1 In the visual arts The first three centuries CE showed enormous interest in depictions of the Iphigenia in Aulis (hereafter IA) and the Iphigenia among the Taurians (IT).105 In the illustrations of the IA, with the notable exception of the painting in the House of the Tragic Poet at Pompeii in which Iphigenia is led to the sacrifice against her will

101 The parallel of Euripides’ Andromeda might appear here as characteristic of such situations. Indeed, the play opens with Andromeda chained to the rocks. However, unlike with the novelistic scenario, the audience of the play knows from myth that Perseus is on his way to save the maiden, thus no Scheintod is required. 102 Among the many discussions, see for example Rose 1925, Szepessy 1972 and Seaford 1987. 103 E.g. Schmeling (1988) 3276 compares the Scheintod of novelistic heroines to Aarne-Thompson’s AT 990, ‘Revived from apparent death’. 104 For the acculturation mission of Iphigenia see Hall 2013a, 86–87. 105 For the artistic representations see Weitzmann 1941, Croisille 1963, and LIMC (Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae) 5 1 s.v. ‘Iphigenia’.



The myth of Iphigenia 

 27

as in Figure 1,106 she is depicted consenting to her fate and following Odysseus or Diomedes willingly to the altar. Such is for example the emblema from D’Ampurias in modern Spain in Figure 2, which illustrates a submissive Iphigenia escorted to the altar among many onlookers, hinting at a transposition of the theatrical setting in visual terms. The western location of the emblema is not problematic since it seems to have been imported from Antioch or Athens, thus demonstrating the popularity of the theme across the Empire.107 In both the painting from Pompeii and the emblema, the play’s ‘happier ending’, namely Iphigenia’s, is implied through the presence of a small deer that comes to replace the girl.

Figure 1: The sacrifice of Iphigenia, probably Figure 2: Iphigenia is led to the altar by a inspired by Timanthes’ work. The maiden is large crowd of people. Odysseus leads carried unwillingly to the altar by Menelaus Iphigenia to the altar, to the altar together or Diomedes and Odysseus. Calchas leads with Menelaus or Diomedes. Agamemnon the group while Agamemnon veils his face. turns his back to the scene. Artemis and the In the sky Artemis brings the substitutive substitutive deer figure in the background. sacrificial deer. House of the Tragic Poet, Achilles may be the naked man at the front. Naples, Pompeii VI 8, 13, Croisille Pl. 25.1, D’Ampurias mosaic, 1st c. CE or end of LIMC Fig. 38, Courtesy of Jackie and Bob Dunn. imperial period at the Museum of Ampurias, LIMC Fig. 39, Courtesy of Museun d’Arqueologia de Catalunya Empúries.

106 Probably an echo of Timanthes’ lost work. Discussion of the originality of the Roman copy in Perry 2002, 155–56. 107 See Perelló 1979, 54. On the emblema and its Greek original see Blázquez 1993 and Dunbabin 1999, 145. See also the brief description in Kyriakou 2006, 46. LIMC 5.1 s.v. ‘Iphigenia’, Fig. 39, 719.

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 The bold and virginal: Iphigenia

More interestingly, though, the Pompeian visual testimony of where the painting is located within the House of the Tragic Poet indicates that Iphigenia’s sacrifice belonged to a broader mythical visual database: in the villa, her sacrifice is contrasted to that of other women of the Trojan War, such as Helen and Briseis, who are depicted on the inner walls of the house. And whereas the Iphigenia tableau is located in the peristylium, closer to the open air, the paintings of Helen’s elopement with Paris and of Briseis are located indoors, showing thus the difference between the forthcoming liberation of Iphigenia as opposed to the confined women, who were abducted through human and not divine intervention.108

Figure 3: Orestes seated in front of Iphigenia among the Tauri on an altar. A scroll is depicted on the floor next to him. He looks at the priestess, scene represents the moment of recognition and the ruse that Iphigenia used in order to save her brother from being sacrificed. Mosaic Emblema, end of 2nd or beginning of 3rd c. CE at Antiquarium Comunale, Rome, LIMC Fig. 65 Courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Figure 4: The elopement of Iphigenia with Orestes from the Tauri. Fragment of a relief, Marseille, Académie de Marseille c. 160–180 CE. Also identified as the elopemnet of Helen with Paris, this fragment shows Iphigenia in a long dress and the statuette of Artemis on her left shoulder as she embarks with Orestes, who helps her to jump on board. Le Centre Camille Jullian, Photothèque. CNRS-CCJ Courtesy of V. Gaggadis-Robin and the Photothèque du Centre Camille Jullian.

Another favourite theme in Pompeii wall paintings is the sequel in the land of the Taurians. Among the preferred topics is Orestes standing before Iphigenia, who is depicted with or without the statuette of Artemis, depending on whether the scene precedes or follows the recognition, as in Figure 3. The later third-century Orestes 108 Bergmann 1994, 50–51.



The myth of Iphigenia 

 29

sarcophagi, on the other hand, are valuable testimony since they occasionally present the entire story among the Taurians and provide thus the main narrative blocks, the main themes of the play: for example, the famous Munich sarcophagus in Figure 5 shows, from left to right, Iphigenia in front of the temple of Artemis that is decorated with the heads of previous human sacrifices, in front of which Orestes and Pylades are led, captured, before the girl.109 This first episode of the play, as well as Orestes’ fit of madness, was particularly popular in an Empire that saw the two friends as examples of a unique male friendship.110 The Munich sarcophagus also represents their battle against the barbarians and their embarcation with the statuette and Iphigenia as narrated in the exodos.111 The embarcation was also a prevalent theme and the boat the siblings used to escape Thoas is depicted as a prerequisite for understanding the myth, as seen in Figures 4 and 5.

Figure 5: Iphigenia among the Taurians. Left, Iphigenia and the statuette in the temple of Artemis. In the centre, Orestes sits on the floor after his torment by the Erinyes. Right, Iphigenia with the stolen cult icon on the fleeing ship. Roman sarcophagus, 140–150 CE at Munich, Glyptotheque Gl. 363; Koch/Sichtermann Fig. 195, LIMC Courtesy of the Munich Glyptothek. Fig. 75.

The narrative sequence represented on the Munich sarcophagus suggests that the viewer of this kind of visual narrative was not only thought to have had a good

109 For Orestes and Pylades as exemplary friends in Roman culture see Fitzgerald 1997, 166 and Hall 2013a, 92. 110 See Zanker and Ewald 2012 (2004), 230 on the Munich sarcophagus: Pylades is always next to Orestes. The scenes where Orestes appears alone are strangely unheroic, e.g. when persecuted by the Erinyes. Also see at 230–232 the discussion about problematic masculinity and the impression of ‘soft heroes’ in the case of Orestes and Achilles. 111 For the interpretation of the Iphigenia myth on the Roman sarcophagi see Bielfeldt 2005, where the trio Pylades, Orestes and Iphigenia may have illustrated the ties of the Roman extended family within a mourning context. Also the embarcation motif may have been related to Charon’s boat and the departure of the deceased. See also Hall 2013a, 92.

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 The bold and virginal: Iphigenia

grasp of the myth and the play but that s/he could also fill in from memory the two missing episodes that form the core of the play’s plot: the account of the recognition scene, which gained Aristotle’s admiration,112 and the third act staging Iphigenia’s ruse against Thoas.113 This does not imply that the recognition scene could not be represented in visual terms. For example, the emblema from Rome, Figure 3, presents an awestruck Orestes seated on a cubic altar with the letter lying at his feet, illustrating the overflowing emotions that dominate the recognition scene. Iphigenia stands before him holding the statuette of Artemis, an indication of the ruse she will use to save him from sacrifice.114 All these details show how a seasoned audience was able to reconstruct through a shared visual grammar the basic lines of the myth’s pattern. Besides, this small selection of exhibits illustrates an interest in the poignant theme of the virgin being sacrificed, whether willingly or not, in male friendship and in scenes of recognition and flamboyant escape. Dramatic and emotional scenes such as ‘Orestes standing before Iphigenia’, in which the two siblings are ignorant of each other’s identity, or when Iphigenia is depicted as holding or handing over the letter, seem quite widespread and indicative of what the audience believed to be the central themes of the play. Equally prevalent appears to be the fight of Orestes and Pylades against the barbarians and their subsequent flight with Iphigenia on board. As a result, the theme of embarcation frames the narrative, thus stressing the play’s adventure plot. It is characteristic that the representations of Iphigenia’s escape often suggest movement: her veil is blowing in the wind and she is depicted as rushing to jump aboard with the help of her brother or Pylades. The subject matter of a woman on board ship was part of a widespread visual theme used to depict the departure of other classical heroines, most importantly that of Helen for Troy.115 Still, in the depictions of Helen, to which I will return later, the departing woman appears much more static and majestic and gives the impression that she is reflecting more on her leaving, as opposed to the extremely eager Iphigenia of Figure 4, who jumps into her brother’s arms. These subtle details would have made the reader suspect that the Queen of Sparta in Figure 16 needed to weigh the results of her leave-taking more than the innocent princess who is happily reunited with her brother. 112 See Aristotle’s praise at Po. 454a4-7, 16.1455a16-20, 171455b3-15. 113 For the discussion of this sarcophagus see Koch and Sichtermann 1982, 171 and Zanker and Ewald 2012 (2004), 227–30. 114 For the depiction of the tragedy-influenced Pathosformel and the grief of the characters on the Orestes sarcophagi see Elsner 1998, 97–98. 115 See Amandry 1958 and Kahil in LIMC 4.1. s.v. ‘Helene’, 532.



The myth of Iphigenia 

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These observations clearly do not represent the full artistic production, nor do they attempt to give an overview of the visual database related to Iphigenia during the Empire. This is beyond my scholarly training as a classicist and not as an art historian. However, they give a good idea of what a seasoned audience might have expected from an Iphigenia-like story and which parts of it could be easily completed by retrieving the details from the well-known mythical vulgate. Thus, staged sacrifice, narrow escape by substitution, recognition between siblings and adventurous escape by sea were among the main themes that characterise the visual reception of the Iphigenia myth in the Empire.

1.1.2 In literature Source texts We now know that the audience of the first three centuries not only saw but also read both Iphigenia plays, despite them not being in the selection. 116 Moreover they adapted them. Hall (2013), 115 justly argues that Iphigenia is probably the first heroine in Greek myth that comes close to a ‘quest heroine’ of the kind that we later find in the Greek novel. Unlike Penelope, who waits at home, and unlike Helen, who is the passive prize of her suitors, Iphigenia does not have much to do with love. Acting thus outside the constraints of love and marital life, outside the accusations of faithfulness or faithlessness, Iphigenia was a heroine on her own. What the other stories could offer to the Iphigenia megatext was a different approach to the characters’ relationship, to the gender of the victim, to the kind of recognition scene and adventure that follow their reunion. The sacrifice of Iphigenia seems to be silenced in Homer. 117 Nonetheless, the myth was already known to Hesiod fr. 23b (West) and appears on stage in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. The megatext based on Attic drama gave two possible endings for Iphigenia and other Maidens of Death: one in which the sacrifice is presented ‘raw’, such as in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon or the equivalent of Polyxena’s sacrifice in the Hecuba, and another ‘happier ending’ by substitution. Euripides contributed greatly to the canonisation of the myth, and he is the first poet to treat the Taurian aspect of the story as well, which he patterned after the

116 For the papyrological evidence in imperial times see Carrara 2009, 335, n. 78 IT, P. Oxy. LXVII, 4565, 2nd century; ibid. 434, n. 111 IA, P. Oxy. LIII 3719, 3rd century; ibid. 457, n.119 IT, P. Köln VII, 303, 3rd or 4th c. 117 Davies 1989, 44–45; in the Il. 9 145 Agamemnon mentions three daughters: Chrysothemis, Laodice, and Iphianassa.

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 The bold and virginal: Iphigenia

incidents in Aulis.118 The structural similarities of the two plays were already noted in antiquity, together with the dual ‘ending’ alternatives.119 In the IA, the emotive effect relies on fear and pity aroused for the victim, irrespective of her ‘last-minute’ substitution. Euripides’ IA links death and marriage and the relevant discussion of the disempowerment of women via marriage, as opposed to them choosing death. In the play, the young and innocent protagonist is lured to Aulis by the promise of a marriage to Achilles, only to realise that she has been led there as a sacrifice that will ensure the success of the Trojan expedition. In discussing the fates of virgins such Antigone, Polyxena and Iphigenia, Loraux (1987), 38 rightly observes that the theme of ‘marriage in Hades’ contrasts with the ‘union with Hades’. At the heart of the sacrifice, or of being put to death, the tragic destiny of the parthenoi is played out against the background tension between “in” and “with”. But the IA ends, at least for the imperial readers, almost always with substitution. It is still controversial whether the ending of the IA is original and whether the play might have ended with the princess sacrificed for good. It is suggested that the ending is a fourth-century addition, and probably by performers who wished to present the two Iphigenia plays in sequence.120 Whatever Iphigenia’s escape was in the original Euripidean play, her substitution became very popular and an inseparable part of the myth, as imperial visual evidence suggests above. That said, the IT offered an equally – if not more – adventurous escapade that was further blended with an emotional recognition scene.121 In the second play, the ‘averted’ sacrifice motif became an essential part of escape dramas and seems to deploy folktale motifs, such as ruses.122 This kind of pattern seems to have found other earlier imitators, as suggested by the plots of the now-fragmentary Chryses and Aletes.123 Both dramas contribute greatly to the shaping of the Iphige118 Kyriakou (2006) 41. The tragedian has patterned his chronologically earlier tragedy, the IT, around 414 and 412. BCE, according to one version of the established myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice at Aulis, whereas the IA is written later, between 408 and 406 BCE, and treats a different version. See Cropp 2000, 60, who dates the play to 414 or 413 BCE. Wright 2005 argues for 412, together with the Helen and the Andromeda; see also the reservations by Marshall 2014, 13. 119 The similar plot is already attested in Arist. Po. 1455a, regarding Euripides’ and Polyidus’ Iphigenia. For the similar plots of the IT and the IA see O’Brien (1988) 98; ‘Both tragedies are structured on a tripartite sequence of motifs: (a) the murder of a kinsman is narrowly averted by a recognition, (b) a reunion is followed by an intrigue,(c) a maiden is rescued.’ 120 Hall 2013a, xxvi. 121 Sourvinou-Inwood (1988) argues for an averted sacrifice in the Agamemnon, against Griffith (1988). I am following here the reconstruction of the play as suggested by Kovacs (2003). 122 For the ruse in IT as Euripides’ own invention see Kirk 1970, 11 and Trenkner 1958, 50. 123 S. Chryses, TrGF 494–496 and Aletes vide Aleites TrGF 101–107 (Radt). The story is also encountered in Pacuvius’ eponymous play and in Hyg. Fab. 121, see Marshall 2009, 152: after Chryseis was restored to Agamemnon she was discovered to be pregnant with a son, whom she



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nia myth, providing different options and scenarios about how the story goes. But the megatext could easily adopt elements from other adventure and escape myths too. Here, I will discuss briefly some of the common features of Euripides, other escape plays that have often been thought to inspire the escape plot of the Greek novel, either as a corpus or separately. My focus is not to determine which of the three plays contributed more to the novelistic plot pattern but what this kind of drama supplied to the mythical megatext of the Iphigenia. Whereas the IA presented the typical virginal heroine, the IT and the Helen present two male victims about to be sacrificed in different ritual contexts: Orestes in the IT and Menelaus in the Helen are the ones whose lives are at stake. In the Helen, Menelaus indeed risks being murdered by Theoclymenus who, like Thoas, sacrifices all Greeks that set foot in Egypt.124 Yet, unlike Thoas, Theoclymenus does not practice ritual xenoktonia but mainly wants to keep Helen to himself. What is more, Helen buries ‘Menelaus’ and performs a symbolic funerary ritual for him as part of her escape plan, the famous kenotaphion.125 Contrarily, in the IT, Iphigenia risks committing the same crime as Agamemnon in the myth, killing a kinsman, a brother, whereas no such danger exists for Helen. Thus the IT and the Helen offered the possibility of a male victim that may be either a brother or a lover and who is saved due to the heroine’s wit. Other cases where a male character’s life is in danger often make this the outcome of slander by a mother-in-law, as in the two Euripidean Phrixoi,126 a theme that in imperial times, as I will show, was closely related to the claimed to be Apollo’s. The son was raised on the island of Chryse, where Iphigenia and Orestes arrive pursued by Thoas. Thoas demands that Chryses Junior hands over the fugitives, but Chryses learns that they are his half-brother and half-sister, so he helps Orestes to kill Thoas. In Hyg. Fab. 122, based on the drama Aletes, we learn of a similar story: when Iphigenia and Orestes returned, Electra did not recognise her sister and would have killed her; after the recognition the siblings kill Aletes, Aegisthus’ son, and restore Orestes to the kingship. The story was supposed to be a Sophoclean play, but is now believed to be one by Sophocles the Younger, see Marshall 2009, 151, n. 36, with literature. 124 For Thoas as the double of Achilles and partner of Iphigenia see Hommel 1980, 36. Trenkner 1958 treats all the three under the folktale category ‘Princess captured by an ogre’. For the similarities and especially the differences of the two plays see now Marshall 2014, 46–49. 125 For the funerary symbolism and for Egypt as a catabatic place for Helen and Menelaus see Foley 2001, 301–14 ‘Anodos drama’ with association to both the Alcestis and the IT; see also Friedman 2007. 126 Watson 1995, 35, discusses Creusa as a ‘totally unsympathetic stepmother.’ For Heliodorus and the Ion see Clavo 2003, but since it is a stepmother plot and not a sacrifice, I do not think it mirrors the deep paradigmatic structure of the Aethiopica. Menoeceus’ case in the Phoenician Women is a more complex story, alternating between self-sacrifice and suicide, and cannot be taken as a model for the near-death experiences of the male characters in the Greek novels. See Garrison 1995, 129–31 with references to previous discussions of Menoeceus’ ethical dilemma and his choice.

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Phaedra myth. Thus the near-death pattern favoured primarily young innocent girls and, occasionally, chaste married women; only secondarily did men appear as victims, and this is the case in two plays that revisit the maiden’s death theme. The other major difference is related to the handling of the recognition scene in the play, which may be mutual or not, depending on the relationship between the characters. In the Helen, the recognition famously echoes that of Odysseus and Penelope and it is thought to test the heroine’s chastity.127 Recognition in the Helen is one-sided, as opposed to the IT, and is inextricably entangled with the question of chastity, as Menelaus accepts only with difficulty that the beautiful stranger is indeed his wife. Even if Helen does make a false promise of marriage to Theoclymenus, her motivations and faithfulness are always in question since both Menelaus and the audience know her primarily as the adulterous wife of the Spartan king.128 After all, even in the Helen, the queen escapes an unwanted marriage by stepping into a boat, a pattern that echoes her previous escape with Paris from Sparta.129 Conversely, Iphigenia’s character is innocent from the beginning. Hence, she takes part in a solemn, unobstructed and mutual recognition scene. Orestes in the IT does not try to hide his identity from Iphigenia.130 The lack of information is accidental, unlike Odysseus’ meticulous disguise, and the delay of the recognition depends on the external narrative circumstances.131 Were the plays performed as a trilogy, this difference might have as well have been intended in order to demonstrate the obstacles that heterosexual love and desire create in a recognition plot as opposed to the love between siblings, which requires no chastity trial. Thirdly, the timing of the recognition scene is characteristic for the kind of action that follows the play’s most passionate moments. In both dramas recognition scene is placed in the middle of the play, as opposed to in the Odyssey, where 127 For the recognition scene in the Helen taking place in the middle as opposed at the end see Holmberg 1995, 35, who interprets it as a departure from the epic model. 128 E.g. E. Hel. 1231–1235, Helen lures Theoclymenus into believing that Menelaus is dead and promises to marry him once the funerary rites have been fulfilled. For the non-reconciliatory character of the duetto in the Helen see Schmiel 1972, 292. 129 Cf. the various mentions of the ‘Sidonian’ boat that will carry Helen and Menelaus back to Sparta in E. Hel. 1272, 1413, 1451, 1531, echoing the more mainstream escapades of Helen with Paris. 130 For the differences between epic (more perplexed) and tragic (more straightforward) recognition see Cave 1988. 131 Cf. Orestes’ reply to Iphigenia’s question about his ‘name and family’ is ‘Δυστυχής’ (the miserable) E. IT. 500, since there is no reason to name someone who is about to die. This may resemble Odysseus’ famous ‘Οὖτις’, or his calling himself ‘Aethon’ in the ‘false tales’. However, Orestes’ choice is not deliberate but emotional, see Kyriakou 2006, 173–74. Montiglio 2012, 230 stresses the dramatic, especially Euripidean tragic hypotext, but overemphasises its input. See further Part III on the novels ‘recognitive’ narrative tactic.



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it takes place near the end.132 Thus it lacks the force of narrative ‘closure’ since the suspense is immediately transferred to the upcoming ‘escape’ theme. In the IT, Pylades characteristically cuts short the duetto of the siblings, reminding them that they need to plan their escape.133 This is a metaliteary hint to the audience to understand that recognition is not the end but rather the beginning of the second part of the play. Unlike with epic recognition, which, as I will discuss later, is to some extent the culmination of the plot, its tragic counterpart is a scene that leads to the next episode. The megatext could also be enriched by references to other myths as well. For example, the now-fragmentary Andromeda also features a nearly slaughtered maiden who is sacrificed to Poseidon’s ketos because of her mother’s frivolity, just as Iphigenia is the victim of Agamemnon’s insult to Artemis. Unlike Iphigenia, Andromeda is rescued by her (future) husband and transported to Greece in what looks very much like a fairytale happy ending of type AT 300, ‘The dragon slayer’.134 The play must have stressed the coup de foudre of the two young people: Perseus’ fight against the ketos (and perhaps against a rival for Andromeda’s hand, e.g. Phineus), and, upon his receiving the hand of the priestess, their probable flight to Greece for the ‘happily ever after’.135 In this case there seems to be no place for a recognition scene, since the two lovers first meet on stage.136 Escape from the beast is one scenario, but more plausibly the escape from Ethiopia through the air might have been the central escape theme. 137 How much did Andromeda contribute to scheming up an ‘escape plot’, if at all? Was she portrayed as being as canny as Helen and the Iphigenia, who reversed the well132 Indeed some ancient critics, such as Aristarchus, wanted the epic to end at Od. 23.296 with the recognition scene and not with book 24. See Murnaghan 1987, 109. For the novel replicating the kind of the end of the Odyssey see Montiglio 2012, 41–42 and Hunter 2014, 146. 133 E. IT. 902–906, ‘When loved ones come face to face with loved ones, Orestes, it is natural that they should embrace each other. But now you must stop your sorrowing and face the problem: how shall we attain salvation’s glorious title and make our exit from this barbarous land?’ (transl. Cropp). 134 Ogden 2013, 163. A similar tale might have been that of Hesione, daughter of Laomedon and sister of Priam, who was condemned to be eaten by wild beasts in order to save Troy from a plague. Heracles saved the girl but Laomedon did not keep his word. See Hom. Il. 5.638–642, D. Chr. Or. 4.42, Ps.-Apollod. 3.12.7. Aélion 1988, 181, n. 89. 135 Wright 2005, 122. 136 Aélion 1988, 180–83, argues that Euripides probably innovated by having Andromeda attached to the rock. Previous pictorial evidence, such as a crater from the second part of the 6th c. BCE, shows both Andromeda and Perseus confronting the monster, probably part of the tale type that presents the girl as the hero’s helper. 137 According to Wright 2005, 123 the play’s escape would include Perseus’ and Andromeda’s flight from Phineus’ plot who wanted to keep the princess for himself.

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known folktale motif of ‘Princess saved by her lover/brother’ into the type ‘Girl saves hero in his flight’?138 Or did she just passively follow her rescuer to Scyros or Argos?139 The fragmentary state of play makes any such claim highly speculative. A brief mention of the Alcestis is required to conclude this concise discussion of Euripides’ plots of love, escape and recognition. This story also belongs to universal folklore, but it seems that Euripides’ innovation was not to have Alcestis dying on her wedding day as a young bride, but much later, as a mother among her children.140 The queen is no longer a maiden in love but a woman who calculates her actions.141 She was repeatedly used as a model for the faithful and mature wives classed together with Penelope and Laodameia, as observed above.142 The Alcestis stages a (self)-sacrifice in order to appease a god, here Artemis, whom Admetus did not honour on his wedding day.143 Alcestis’ near-death and revival is the closest analogue to Iphigenia’s near-death at Aulis, but with a much happier outcome, provided we take the statue commissioned by Admetus upon his wife’s death as a substitute for the protagonist.144 Not only does she not die, but she is also restored to her husband and to her previous life, unlike Iphigenia but much like Helen. The play’s recognition scene is short and problematic, since the heroine is vowed to silence and must be purified before returning from the dead. Thus, recognition lacks much of the pathos of the scenes between Helen and Menelaus or the Iphigenia and Orestes.145 It would however be premeture to make Alcestis the primary model for the later 138 Cf. AT 313 ‘Girl as a helper in the hero’s flight’; such is the case of Ariadne, of Medea, of Helen, and of Iphigenia in rescuing Theseus, Jason, Menelaus and Orestes, respectively. 139 Cf. her plea to Perseus when still attached to the rock is characteristic of her subtlety: fr. 132, ‘Take me (with you), stranger, whether for servant, wife, or slave.’ Athena may have appeared at the end of the play foretelling the catasterism of the main characters and helping with the escape of the two lovers as Gibert 1999 (2000), 82–83 suggests. 140 Cf. Anderson 2006, 67 and Parker 2007, xii. 141 See the analysis of Roisman 1984, who questions Alcestis’ loyalty and pure motivation. 142 Cf. Luc. De luctu 5, on Alcestis, among Protesilaus, and Odysseus, not drinking from the source of Lethe; Luc. De salt. 52, on a mime on Alcestis; Luc. DMort. 27.3, on the resurrection together with Eurydice and Protesilaus; Plu. Amat. 761e, among Laodameia and Eurydice; Plu. Mul. Virt. 243d among Cornelia, Evadne and other chaste wives. The reception in these texts is parallel to the typical visual reception of the story on Roman sarcophagi, see for example Newby 2011, the case of Pomptilla’s sarcophagus having an inscription comparing her to Penelope, Laodamea and Evadne. 143 Cf. Ps.-Apollod. 1.9.15. 144 The case of Alcestis is particular: she herself substitutes for Admetus in death; she in turn is substituted by the statue, but still the ghost that Heracles brings back from Hades is speechless. Segal 1993, 49–52. 145 At E. Alc. 347–354, Admetus commissions an Alcestis-like statue that will supposedly replace his wife on their wedding bed. For the resemblance of this statue to the silent ‘revived’ Alcestis at the play’s end see Segal 1993, 49, and also the more far-fetched hypothesis that an



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recognition scenes in the Greek novels.146 The fact that Alcestis and Admetus are a pair does not necessarily increase the romantic appeal, nor is this play’s recognition scene closer to those in the novels. Rather, like the other four plays discussed, the Alcestis provided a different version on a similar theme that contributes differently to the articulation of the megatext and to the options it presented to its audience. Finally, it should be mentioned that, besides the Euripidean intertexts, there was a large volume of popular literature concerned with what may befall a man – or worse, a maiden – in a foreign land. Greeks had some supposedly ‘historiographical’ or ‘ethnographic’ evidence for the practice of human sacrifice by barbarians: ‘they knew, or thought they knew, that the Scythians performed human sacrifice, or used to, that the Carthaginians sacrificed children to Cronus,147 and that in distant India women committed suicide on their husbands’ funeral pyres: ritual xenoktonia, teknoktonia, and autoktonia, figured in ethnographic writing as well as in the IT and its imitations.’ All these accounts, combined with the myths from epic and drama, created an inspiring cultural and literary milieu that fed the imagination of the Second Sophistic and backed the broader theme of a ‘maiden’s sacrifice in a foreign land’.148 Thus the theme of a maiden’s sacrifice was not only part of an admittedly rich dramatic intertextual tradition but also of an equally important lore that was handed down as part of the Iphigenia megatext. Humans for sacrifice in Plutarch and Philostratus Human sacrifice as represented in the IA inspired authors of this time, and its treatment offered a good opportunity for myth-related criticism. Plutarch and Philostratus demonstrate an interest in the theme not only of the (by then legendary) human sacrifices, but also of sacrifice as a whole, which became a hot topic in the decades to come.149 Plutarch, in the Pelopidas 21 criticises not only the practice of actual ‘statue’ appears in the exodos scene as in Stieber 1998. It is intriguing to wonder what happens to the statue or to Alcestis’ tomb, which we know is already there. Presumably it stays as it is until the next ‘death-date’ with the statue substituting for the wife among the dead until her real body is inhumed. 146 Mainly argued by Montiglio 2012. I believe Montiglio has made too much out of this reunion scene, where Alcestis is barely participating and speechless, especially when Greek myth and Euripidean drama offered other cases of more solemn recognitions. 147 Burkert and Bing 1983, 21, 28, 78. For Phoenician and Punic children/first-born sacrifices see also the interesting evidence in Stavrakopoulou 2004. 148 Hall 2013a, 121, ‘The ancient motif “escape from the barbarians” is one that seems to have been assimilated first by the tragedians when writing their satyr plays (e.g. A. Proteus, TrGF 213 and Circe, TrGF F 113 (Radt)) … later the motif was adopted by Euripides.’ 149 Decius’ decree in 249 CE ordered ‘universal sacrifice’ and seems to have initiated the official persecutions of Christians; see Rives 1999.

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human sacrifice but also its literary representation.150 Before the battle at Leuctra, the famous general is reported to have had a dream admonishing him to sacrifice a blonde virgin; when he asks the advice of the seers they urge him to follow its admonition and support this counsel with ancient tales (τῶν παλαιῶν προφέροντες), such as that of Menoeceus, son of Creon, and Macaria, the daughter of Heracles.151 To these famous Euripidean child-sacrifices he adds the example of Agesilaus, who is reported to have doomed his expedition because he did not sacrifice his daughter in accordance with Agamemnon’s Artemis dream-request.152 Pelopidas, however, objects and opts for the substitution motif: instead of a virgin he sacrifices a female horse with a blond mane. His piety is eventually rewarded and he wins the battle.153 The critique of religious and sacrificial rituals continues in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius (Vita Apollonii).154 The protagonist of this partly fictional biography is a Pythagorean sage and an ardent combatant against the bloodshed of humans and animals alike. This Pythagorean attitude is replicated in the chapters when Apollonius persuades an Indian king not to offer a horse sacrifice but, rather, incense.155 This version, when compared with Pelopidas’ story above, illustrates the ongoing imperial criticism of any kind of sacrificial rituals.156 The stories about Pelopidas and Apollonius not only provide interesting testimonies to the Imperial Mythenkritik but might have been influenced by and influence in return recurrent theme of the averted sacrifice as presented in the Greek novels. What they contribute to the megatext I explore here is the revulsion towards bloody human sacrifices and a predilection for substitution, be it a blond mane or incense sticks. From a barbarian’s point of view: Lucian In Lucian’s treatment of the Iphigenia myth in the Toxaris, one may see how the sacrifice and the abduction of Iphigenia resulted in a different ritual among 150 See also Hughes 1991, 117–18. 151 Both these myths were the topic for a Euripidean play: in the Phoen. 834ff, 1090ff, 1310ff, Teiresias asks the sacrifice of Menoiceus to Ares in order for Creon to win in the War of the Seven against Thebes. Menoeceus slaughters himself before the city gates. In E. Heracl. 474–607 Macaria willingly sacrifices herself to guarantee the victory of Heracles’ children. 152 Plu. Pel. 21.5–6. In his Pel. 21.2 Plutarch tells the story of Pherecydes of Syrus (6th c. BCE), killed or sacrificed by the Spartans. 153 Georgiadou 1997, 166–68. 154 The revival of the Protesilaus cult in Philostratus’ Heroicus should be treated differently, as a revision of classical ritual performances and not as a critique of current ritual practices. For Protesilaus’ cult see Bradshaw and Mclean 2004; Heroicus and Christianity see in Betz 2004. 155 Philostr. VA, 1.31 (transl. C.P. Jones). 156 Philostr. VA, 1.31, 32, and 8.7, 12 Philostratus mentions that Apollonius had written four books On Sacrifices, 3.41



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the Taurians. The Greek Mnesippus, in this dialogue, discusses friendship with Toxaris, a Scythian. Here Greek myth is presented as an aetiological explanation for the abolition of human sacrifice. The embedded narrator, Mnesippus, delivers the Greek version describing whose brevity seems to replicate the compacted visual narratives depicted on the Roman sarcophagi.157 2–6: Orestes is first shown on board ship, with his friend at his side; next, the ship has gone to pieces on the rocks, Orestes is captured and bound, and Iphigenia prepares the two victims for sacrifice. But on the opposite wall we see that Orestes has broken free, he slays Thoas and many a Scythian, and the last scene shows them sailing away with Iphigenia and the Goddess … it is at this point in their conflict with the Scythians that the devotion of the friends is best illustrated.

What is most striking is the shift from the maiden’s to the male’s point of view. This is the proof that, according to Toxaris, the Greeks had not interpreted the myth to its full potential since it focused on the drama of the siblings rather than on the two men’s friendship.158 This is a subtle criticism of sacrifices and of the myths related to them by shifting the weight to another topic. In a different work, On Sacrifices (De sacrificiis) 15, Lucian treats the various sacrificial customs of Greeks, barbarians, Phrygians, Scythians and especially those invoking the theriomorphic gods of the Egyptian pantheon. Lucian, perceptively and ironically, describes the blind devotion to the practice. Thus the Toxaris enters a debate not only about ritual and religion but also about the foreigner’s superiority in understanding and emulating Greek myth. Ritual resurrection in case of a Scheintod In Plutarch’s Roman Questions (Quaestiones Romanae) there is a short, exuberant discussion about those who happen to ‘return’ from the dead. The passage bears no explicit traces of the Iphigenia megatext but curiously demonstrates popular beliefs about the ‘apparently dead’, a motif often used in Euripides’ escape plays and in the Greek novel: 264e–256a: ‘Why those who have been reported falsely to have died abroad (τοὺς τεθνάναι φημισθέντας ἐπὶ ξένης ψευδῶς), even if they come back, (the Romans) do not welcome them at the doorstep but they are brought up on the tiles and they sit inside?’ … Now this looks to some extent to the Greek customs. For those for whom a ritual burial has been carried

157 For the resemblances of the painting on the Oresteion to those standarised versions depicted on Roman sarcophagi see Hall 2013a, 107. 158 On friendship in Lucian see Fitzgerald 1997, 166. On the novelistic and romantic elements in the dialogue see Jones 1986, 56–58.

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out and a tomb has been erected as if for a dead person, the Greeks do not believe them to be pure and they do not mingle with them and do not let them approach the temples. It is said that one who had been suffering from these superstitions, a certain Aristinus, sent a request to Delphi asking the god to release him from the current restrictions placed upon him because of this custom. Pythia then said, ‘All that a woman in childbirth does. When this again you have done, sacrifice to the blessed gods.’ Aristinus then wholeheartedly agreed to provide himself as if new born and had the women bathe him and swaddle him and suckle at the breast; and all those the so-called ‘Later Fated’ (ὑστεροπότμους) do so likewise. Some report (these rites) to exist before Aristinus, since the custom is ancient.

What Plutarch reports here is a purification ritual for those who have been falsely reported dead, such as Menelaus in the Helen. It seems that ‘resurrection’ was not so uncommon a theme and not necessarily of Christian origin.159 This kind of evidence shows that narrow escape from death was captivating not only in the versions related to mythical narratives but also in the variants found in local lore.160 Helen’s sacrifice and Iphigenia’s marriage A different rare variant is taken from a tradition that assimilates Helen to Iphigenia. In what seems to be a local Spartan version of Helen as a fertility goddess,161 in her youth the princess was also about to be sacrificed: when a plague ‘had overspread Sparta, the god gave an oracle that it would cease if they sacrificed a noble maiden each year. When Helen had been chosen by lot and had been led forward adorned for the sacrifice, an eagle swooped down, snatched up the sword, carried it to the herds of cattle, and let it fall on a heifer; therefore the Spartans refrained from the slaying of maidens.’ Having Helen stop the sacrificial custom is indicative of an attempt to reconcile the myth about the otherwise loathsome aunt whose adultery partly causes Iphigenia’s sacrifice at Aulis.162 These accounts show that a beautiful maiden’s sacrifice – and Helen must have

159 For example, Reinmer 2005 has argued for exclusive Christian influence in the novel. 160 This ‘symbolic rebirth’ seems to be a universal theme, on Plutarch and Euripides see Betts 1965. For the custom around the world see Frazer 1919, 31–32. See also Hesychius s.v. ‘δευτερόποτμος’ and ‘ὑστερόποτμος’. In Nonn. Dion. 26.137–142, Tectaphus is immured and sentenced to death by starvation when his daughter Eeria, who is a nursing mother, visits him in prison and feeds him with her milk. Tectaphus thus avoids death the first time. 161 Clader 1976, 70–75. 162 The main reason was Agamemnon’s insult to Artemis. However, Attic drama often contrasts the fate of the two women: e.g. E. IT. 356, ‘But to this day non-Zeus-sent wind has come here, no vessel bringing Helen through the Symlpegades – Helen who caused my death, and Menelaus, so I could make them pay, matching my Aulis here against that Aulis.’ (transl. Cropp); IA 1237, ‘What do I have to do with the weddings of Alexander and Helen?’



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been more outstandingly pretty than Iphigenia, according to myth – was still an unique narrative topos to be exploited. Antoninus Liberalis’ Metamorphoseis presents a unique case of a romantic turn in the myth of the virginal maiden. In this account we learn that Iphigenia is actually the daughter of Helen by Theseus but is adopted by Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.163 The story is attributed to the fourth-century BCE Duris, but its popularity under the Empire is characteristic of the interest in rare new versions of old myths.164 Having Iphigenia sacrificed for Helen’s adultery makes all the more outrageous her biological mother’s elopement and links more closely their opposite fates: death for the virgin, adultery for the beautiful woman. Antoninus Liberalis’ version continues with her sacrifice at Aulis, the depiction of the leaders of the Achaeans turning their faces, and her replacement by a calf instead of the traditional deer.165 But most surprisingly, in this version, Iphigenia is posthumously changed into an immortal spirit called Orsilochia166 and becomes the wife of Achilles on Leuce.167 Thus she usurps the place of Achilles’ consort, otherwise reserved for Helen, and resumes the belated ‘happily ever after’ ending for the betrothal that did not take place back in Aulis.168 The interest in such happy endings shows, primarily, that Antoninus Liberalis was writing for a milieu that loved stories of sacrifice, substitution and erotic reunion.169

163 In Ant. Lib. Met. 27 and Papathomopoulos 1968 and Aretz (1999) 39–40. 164 The earlier testimonies are the following: Stesichorus Fr. 191 (Davies) Hellanicus FGrH 4 F 168, Apollod. Ep. 1.23, Paus. 2.22.6. 165 This may be telling since the calf is a domestic, and hence a sacrificial, animal as opposed to the untamed deer that embodies the character’s virginity in the play. See Wright 2005, 150, note 294. 166 Orsilochia was an epithet of Artemis. For the Artemisian aspect of Iphigenia see Lyons 1997, 150–51. Both Helen and Iphigenia were related to Artemis and their duo as mother and daughter might hint at a kind of Demeter/Kore relationship. e.g. Clader 1976, 52, note 34. For Helen being associated with Kore/Persephone see Nilsson 1932, 173. For Iphigenia and Kore see Burkert and Bing 1983, 65. 167 Hommel 1980, 27–28, see 34–36 on Iphigenia. Achilles’ consorts on Leuce were Helen, Medea, Iphigenia, Polyxena, Hecate, Penthesileia. Helen is probably the most popular (Paus. 3 19.11–27) being an ancient pre-Hellenic vegetation goddess, Hommel 1980, 29. About Iphigenia sacrificing Helen and Menelaus see Photius Bibl. 190, 149a (Bekker) ‘some authors report that Helen, arriving in Scythia Tauris with Menelaus in search of Orestes, was immolated to Artemis with Menelaus by Iphigenia.’ 168 Papathomopoulos 1968, 131, Neoptolemus was also thought to be Iphigenia’s son by Achilles, e.g. Lyc. Alex. 185, and Duris FGrH 76 F 88 (Jacoby). 169 Hesiod fr. 23b M–W knows of her becoming Hecate, recorded in Paus. 1.43.1. In the IT 435– 437, 537, there is no hint about her future marriage to Achilles although the chorus and Iphigenia know that Achilles’ ghost lives somewhere north of Crimea.

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Charition among the Indians Lucian mentions mimes inspired by the adventures of Orestes in Scythia, illustrating thus the popularity of the tale.170 One of them that has been preserved: the Charition mime that tells of how Charition, a Greek priestess of Selene, escapes from India together with her brother and her slave.171 What is now regarded as the main plot, which may not have been the full script, includes a chorus of Indians and the Indian king, who are deceived by the girl’s brother after drinking wine, a reminder of Odysseus’ trick on Polyphemus. Hall (2009) and (2013), 121 points out that the spectators at Oxyrhynchus would have attended both the restaging of the Euripidean play and its burlesque reworking and would be able to compare the two.172 Hall makes the interesting observation that the motif of the letter might have been of particular importance in the mime and might have resonated well with those among the audience who were far away from their own families, as the rich evidence from letters indicates.173 Thus the Charition bears unique witness to the audience’s predilection for plots of near-death and recognition involving adventure in foreign lands. The mime wittingly subverts Iphigenia’s ruse and deploys Odysseus’ comic revision as inspired by Euripides’ satyr drama, the Cyclops. The Greek novel was unavoidably influenced by – and influenced in return – these mimic representations and thus actively participated in the revision of the imperial mythical vulgate.174 The literary works of the first three centuries both replay and revise the visual representations: sacrifice to guarantee victory in war, the complicated family relationships between kinsmen at the altar, such as the case of Agesilaus qua Agamemnon, the recognition scene between spouses or siblings, the theme of male friendship, but also the motif of substitution in various forms ranging from animals to incense and a predilection for narrow escapes. The literary evidence that was contemporary with the novels also favoured the theme of averted virgin sacrifice and, moreover, tried to close the gaps and find correlations between Euripides’ two plays, either by having Iphigenia replace Helen as Achilles’ beloved or by having Helen nearly sacrificed as the maiden. These variations show how 170 Luc. De salt. 43. 171 Kyriakou 2006, 43, P. Oxy. 3413, probably dates to the second century CE. 172 Hall 2009 403 and Hall 2013b, 117–21 argues that there is evidence for performances of the Cresphontes and the Alcestis and possibly of the IT in Oxyrhynchus. 173 Hall 2009 405, in the later reception of the myth, the letter is predominant; see Luc. Tox. 6, Luc. Am. 47 (praising the homosexual relationship and friendship between Pylades and Orestes), Ov. Trist. 4.4.63–88 (with emphasis on the remoteness of the Taurian land, Artemis’ xoanon, Iphigenia’s duties at the temple and the arrival of Orestes and Pylades). Cf. Ov. Pont. 3.2.83–92 (emphasis on the letter and the friendship). 174 See Mignogna 1996, Mignogna 1997, Andreassi 2002 and Webb 2013.



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complex the reception of the Iphigenia myth was and how the major motifs and themes of the megatext were more influential than particular lines or scenes. Visual art, original sources and imperial revisions postulated a much-contested Iphigenia mythical grammar that could offer many controversial and contradicting plot patterns.

1.2 The Iphigenia mythological megatext in a faraway land or kingdom, a virgin was to be sacrificed to a god; they picked the most suitable candidate but when the girl was brought to the altar she was miraculously saved; some say she was snatched up into the air and replaced by a goat, some say she managed to outwit her executioner, and some say that a hero came to save her and brought her back to his country. This is a provisional outline of the story put together by juggling different variants of the Iphigenia megatext presented above, from both its core sources and its revision during the Second Sophistic.175 This is how one could summarise the basic Iphigenia plotline: at home or abroad, a god/dess requests a virgin maiden to be sacrificed to ensure victory, as suggested by the evidence from IA, IT, Plutarch, Antoninus Liberalis and Philostratus; the girl is led to the altar, as in Figure 1 and Figure 2, willingly or not. But at the very last-minute she is substituted miraculously by an animal (as told in the IA, IT, Plutarch, and Antoninus Liberalis, and alluded in Figure 1) or escapes by using a ruse, postponing her doom (as does the heroine in the IT, Lucian and Charition mime), or she is saved by a kinsman and carried far away (e.g. the plot in the IT, Helen, of Andromeda and Alcestis) and on the visual representations such as Figure 4 that depict the embarcation scene. The visual evidence supports the main thematic of the myth: the maiden before the altar and her substitution with Artemis, deer figuring in the back, the recognition scene between siblings and their flight to Athens, are indicative of the kind of visual text that the audience had at hand anyhow and was expected to fill in.176 175 For the papyrological evidence see Carrara 2009, 335, n. 78 IT, P. Oxy. LXVII, 4565, 2nd century; ibid. 434, n. 111 IA, P. Oxy. LIII 3719, 3rd century; ibid. 457, n. 119 IT, P. Köln VII, 303, 3rd or 4th century. 176 This is the AT 300, ‘The dragon slayer’, often including the motifs of the dragon demanding a virgin as sacrifice, AT b11.10, S262, ‘Periodic sacrifices to a monster’ the king offers her as a prize to her rescuer (T68 1). See Uther 2004 Tale Type 300 for the different combinations. Hansen 2002 casts Iphigenia under ‘The boastful hunter’ theme. Yet, the actual plot of the IA to some extent is part of a failed rescue too: Achilles, betrothed to Iphigenia, is unable to save her. This is the shift from folktale to tragedy.

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 The bold and virginal: Iphigenia

In Table 1 below I cite vertically the main variations of the myth found in the particular texts, and in the syntagmatic axis I present the events of the myth in their chronological order, the fabula.177 The Iphigenia theme therefore has two major variants, each of which has further sets of sub-variant plots. The first is the case of sacrifice that takes place ‘at home’, not abroad, and which is often carried out by a kinsman. This is the unlucky fate of Iphigenia in the IA, of Polyxena, and of Alcestis. If the victim is lucky, then substitution is the most plausible means of escape, as in the IA, or miraculous rescue by a hero, such as Alcestis’ by Heracles. The plots now based on the IT which stage a sacrifice taking place abroad incorporate the theme of the kinsman into an elaborate ‘recognition and reunion scene’ that eventually leads to escape using ruse and a return to the homeland; Helen and Iphigenia outwit and (at least) Helen seduces the barbarian king into believing she will marry him after Menelaus’ sham funeral. Thus they orchestrate the successful escape of Orestes and Menelaus, respectively. This quick survery of the different variants can be further discussed at the level of more elementary narrative units: Motif A stands for divine intervention, the goddess’ request to sacrifice a human to her as punishment for a wo/man’s pride;178 Motif B for the involvement of a kinsman in the sacrifice, which in the visual arts is highlighted by the painful expression of Agamemnon as in Figure 2 or the meeting between the siblings as in Figure 3. These elements intensify the drama for both the victim and of the executioner and move the anecdote from the folktale to the mythical realm.179 In the plays in which the sacrifice is supposed to take place ‘at home’, it seems that the victim knows her executioner. This is not the case in the plays set ‘abroad’, where the participants are unrecognisable.180 Distance and exotic settings give the opportunity for masked identities and well-hidden secrets. Thus, in a familiar space such as home, the city-state, near-sacrifice motif ends in substitution (Motif C2).181 If the sacrifice is performed in a faraway land, then recognition is the alternative route to escape (Motif D), illustrated in the plastic arts by the encounter of the two siblings, as in Figure 3, or their flight by sea as in Figure 4 and 5. While these are far from being the more elementary parts of the narrative, they do provide a good grasp of the main elements

177 As opposed to how they are narrated in the story, the sujet according Shklovsky 1991 (1929). 178 AT 830 and Hansen 2002, 56 ‘The boastful deer hunter’. 179 The other folktale option is the escape of Phrixus and Helle on the golden ram, classified under motif R175.1. R175.1 in AT. 180 The Andromeda must have been very special in this respect as well. Andromeda is ‘at home’, but not Perseus, and yet the exotic – non-Greek – setting invites adventurous escapades. For Ethiopia as the landscape see Wright 2005, 129. 181 AT motif A1545.2, ‘Substitution by animal’.



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of the Iphigenia tale. Table 2b gives the basic outline of the Iphigenia pattern that would have been available to an imperial audience. The tables below are based on a selected corpus of tales related to the Iphigenia myth. Albeit far from exhaustive they are, nonetheless, indicative of the material available to the authors of the Second Sophistic when discussing neardeath and sacrifice themes. Plutarch’s Pelopidas, for example, makes obvious the analogy between the sacrifice of a virgin and military success which is directly modelled on the IA. He even brings in a kind of a rationalisation of the substitution motif (C1) by having a blonde horse replace the girl. The motif of substitution is also thoroughly reworked in Antoninus Liberalis, where Iphigenia is replaced by a calf at Aulis and by a posthumous demon, who is once more dispatched to the north, this time as Achilles’ consort. The author of the Metamorphoseis, then, is in vogue with these fables of miraculous transformation, like those found in Ovid and in Apuleius, but he is also interested in romantic endings. However it is the escape from barbarian lands that seems to hold greater fascination for the authors of the Second Sophistic. Indeed, more than sacrifice or even sacrifice by a kinsman, Lucian’s Toxaris and the Charition stress the motif of escape, the flight (D) that follows the presupposed recognition (C2). Hence Motif C2 becomes auxiliary to Motif D, escape and return, demonstrating the new taste for adventures and mobility. That said, the motif of human sacrifice (A) in a foreign land, however legendary, becomes an important vehicle in the dialogue regarding Greeks and Greek identity, just as it was already a hot topic in the religious conversations of the second century. In what now concerns the ordering of the motifs into the Iphigenia pattern, the Second Sophistic writers did not innovate with their sequence as much as they did with discussion of the individual narrative motifs. However, they added a touch of love story to some versions, based on the Andromeda or Alcestis. There was, however a lacuna in the megatext: to myknowledge there is no version that presents a near-sacrifice of a couple or where the lover risks immolating the beloved.182 This was a unique opportunity which, as I will show below, was fully exploited by the Greek novels to transpose the original tale of a maiden’s sacrifice into a new erotic and exotic register.

182 Only Achilles, according to the story, falls in love with Penthesileia at the moment he kills her, Paus. 5.11.2, Quint. S. Posthomer. 1.40. For the Roman couples identifying with Achilles and Penthesileia as lovers and thus giving an allegorical interpretation to the myth see Ewald 2004, 254.

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the ‘ever after’ with her second lover but returns to Chaereas. But there were other novelistic analogues too. In addition to the mythical lore there were similar narratives to Callirhoe’s in other early samples of the genre. In the Chariton’s contemporary novel Parthenope190 the eponymous heroine is either married or betrothed to Metiochus in an early part of the novel.191 After she safely escapes a couple of suitors’ assaults, the King of Persia learns of her beauty and decides to make her his wife. In Hägg’s (2003), 74 reconstruction, Parthenope feigns compliance but makes him swear to carry her body to her hometown and her family on Samos if she dies before him. While the king feasts with his friends and prepares for his wedding, Parthenope commits (apparent) suicide in her bridal chamber by falling on the sacrificial pyre. The king has her body sent to her parents where, presumably, she is found alive to everybody’s joy and is praised for her wits, which saved her life. This kind of story is closer to the universal lore – and to the modern tales of ‘Snow White’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ – and probably shows that near-death motifs were not necessarily only myth-bound.192 There is no way of knowing on which ‘basic plot’193 Chariton’s novel was conceived, since none of the above mythical exempla are thoroughly and consequently used, nor is it easy to detect which particular folktale themes lurk in the background. Rather – at least for the mythical associations for which there is intertextual evidence, as opposed to universal lore – they seem a matter of perspective. In this chapter, I argue that Callirhoe’s Scheintod could have been read in terms of an Iphigenia or of a Helen tale, according to the embedded take on the story. If Helen is the main object of comparison for the love-struck Chaereas, for his friend Polycharmus, Callirhoe’s death and arrival at Miletus take a different turn. While Chaereas reads her story along the Penelope/Helen pattern as an account of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, or as a quest for his lost bride, his friend Polycharmus, who is not interested in the erotic theme, interprets it according to the Iphigenia pattern.

190 Bowie 2002, 52–53 places Parthenope after Chariton; for an earlier date of an ostracon see Cavallo 1996; for a later date see Hägg 2003, 38–40; I go here with the opinion that has them as more-or-less contemporary but not as far as Tilg 2010a, 94, who argues that Chariton was author of both the Parthenope and the Callirhoe. 191 Hägg, Mortensen, and Eide 2004 258–59 seem more inclined to have her betrothed rather than married, but without dismissing this possibility; yet the heroine’s name, as well as the later Christian martyr tale of Parthenope, indicates a virgin protagonist. 192 E.g. Anderson 2000, 47. 193 The title of Paschalis’ 2013 paper that claims that the adventure and escape pattern of the novel is based on E. IT.



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Most amazingly Chariton presents, besides the love story, a tale of strong friendship patterned on that of Orestes and Pylades in the IT, which was extremely popular in the literature of the Empire as discussed above.194 This detail includes echoes of the play as well as revisions of its broader thematic. Unlike Menelaus who is shipwrecked with the false wife on the shores of Egypt, Orestes has a valuable friend with him. Equally, Chaereas has Polycharmus with him as assistant and witness to his adventures. Joining a friend on a perilous sea journey is Pylades’ main achievement.195 Indeed, the first part of the plot, from Polycharmus’ perspective, may have more in common with the plot of IT than of Helen. Polycharmus at 4.3.2 highlights the difference between the two plots: he accompanies a friend (δι᾽ έκεῖνον); Chaereas is searching for a woman (διὰ γυναῖκα); Polycharmus’ help is evident from the beginning, when Chaereas wrongly kicks his new bride almost to death. Like Orestes, Chaereas is presented as guilty of murder in the early chapters of the novel and Callirhoe is repeatedly presented as having been ‘murdered’ by her own husband, or, as the pirates exaggerate the story, she is a woman whom ‘her own husband and her parents did not pity.’196 Chaereas too perceives himself as a murderer and before the Syracusan judges begs for a penalty reserved for the polluted,197 katapontismos.198 1.5.5: ‘Stone me to death in public; I have robbed our community of its crowning glory! It could be charitable to hand me over to the executioner; that would have been my proper punishment if it had been merely Hermocrates’ servant girl I had killed. Try to find some unspeakable way to punish me! I have done something worse than any temple robber or parricide (ἱεροσύλων καὶ πατροκτόνων). Do not give me burial, do not pollute (μιάνητε) the earth – plunge my criminal body to the bottom of the sea (καταποντώσατε).’

Like Orestes in the Areopagus court, Chaereas has a committed friend who is willing to accompany him through all the adventures needed for his expiation. It may be that their friendship is compared to that of Achilles and Patroclus, which will prove itself significant during their war against Persia, but the Orestes tale is also hinted at behind the Homeric echoes.199 In the subordinate plot of Chaer194 Fitzgerald 1997, 148–57 on Polycharmus and Pylades. 195 Cf. Orestes about Pylades in E. IT. 599–560, ‘I am steering (ὁ ναυστολῶν τὰς συμοφράς) through these misfortunes, while he is sailing with me because of my troubles.’ 196 Char 1.9.5 and 1.10.4. 197 This same tragic atmosphere is also echoed in Callirhoe’s belief at 1.8.4 that her body had not been buried according to the ritual but has been cast out as if a pollution. 198 This is the penalty for those carrying miasma Char. 1.5.5. For ‘katapontismos’ see Glotz 1900, for miasma and pollution see Parker 1983. 199 Char. 1.5.2, Chaereas’ and Polycharmus’ friendship is compared to that of Patroclus and Achilles. Hock 1997, 155 studies the ideal of friendship as presented in Chariton and in Lucian’s

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eas’ quest for Callirhoe in Book 3, the drama of friendship is also included. Upon Chaereas’ departure from the port and his farewell to his family, Polycharmus is nowhere to be seen: 3.5.8: Another noble act of friendship took place too … Polycharmus had actually said to his parents, “Chaereas is my friend and my dear friend too but not so dear that I will risk my life with him, so I shall stay out of the way until he sails.” But when the ship had cast off, it was from her stern that he said farewell to his parents, so that by then they could not hold him back.

Note that the narrator discusses the events as ‘another’ act, ἄλλον ἔργον, indicating thus that this is a subplot to Chaereas’ own story. The arrival of the two friends at Miletus after their shipwreck bears characteristic traces of the IT. Indeed, like the legendary friends, the two hide their boat and, instead of Artemis’ they find Aphrodite’s temple.200 Just as Orestes and Pylades find Iphigenia in the temple, 201 Polycharmus and his friend find Callirhoe’s image inside Aphrodite’s temple, in a kind of metaphorical dedication to the goddess, just as Iphigenia was consecrated to Artemis.202 What is more, just as Orestes’ fit of madness and loss of his senses in the IT, 203 upon seeing Callirhoe’s portrait Chaereas seems to lose consciousness.204 Being the only one in control of himself, Polycharmus proceeds to drag him away before their identities are betrayed while Chaereas falls on the floor and laments his fate.205 These images with Chaereas seated or fainting recall the rich visual material from the Orestes sarcophagi, and we observed above that in Figure 5 that Orestes is often depicted lying on the ground and being helped by

Toxaris, noting that in Chariton, ‘Polycharmus and Chaereas could easily be added as a sixth pair of Greek friends to the five presented in Lucian’s Toxaris.’ For Achilles and Patroclus, along with Orestes and Pylades in imperial times as exemplary models of friendship see Fitzgerald 1997; for the use of the Patroclus paradigm in Chariton see Paschalis 2013, 173, and De Temmerman 2014, 57–58. 200 In E. IT 257–258, Orestes and Pylades hide the boat they will later use to escape, however, one of the cowherds and messengers suspects that they may have been shipwrecked ashore. 201 Cf. Athena’s speech in E. IT. 1458, ‘Orestes, take your sister and the image and go on your way.’ Iphigenia and the xoanon of Artemis are also inherently connected in the IT too, since retrieving the statuette is equal to reuniting with the lost sister as part of the overarching divine plan. 202 Char. 3.6.2–3. Possibly an echo of E. Alc. 348–349, where Admetus foretells the creation of a statue of Alcestis to replace her in bed with him (δέμας εἰκασθέν). On more resemblances of Callirhoe and Alcestis see Montiglio (2012) 16–18, concentrating more on the final recognition scene. 203 E. IT. 292–294, Orestes believes the cattle to be the Erinyes and he starts chasing them. 204 Char. 3.6.4, σκοτοδινιάσας. 205 On self-restraint see De Temmerman 2014, 101.



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Pylades.206 But whereas Orestes’ and Pylades’ ship is hidden and later used for their flight, Dionysius’ steward Phocas sets Chaereas’ trireme on fire, closing the escape routes and, thus, the related expectations of the readership.207 Like Orestes and Pylades who face near-sacrifice, Polycharmus and Chaereas risk near-death by crucifixion before they are recognised and saved by Mithridates. Although Callirhoe is not part of the recognition scene, her name implicitly is. In the summary of their journey Polycharmus gives his own perspective to the Iphigenia story in which he participates thus: 4.3.1–5: “We, the two prisoners, are Syracusans. The other young man was once preeminent in Sicily, in rank and wealth and appearance; as for me, I am of no consequence, but I am his companion and friend. Well, we left our parents and sailed away from Syracuse. I went for his sake; he because of his wife, Callirhoe, whom he thought was dead and has given a costly funeral, but tomb robbers found her alive and sold her in Ionia. We got this information from the pirate Theron when he was publicly questioned under torture. So Syracuse sent a trireme and a delegation to look for the woman. This ship was set on fire by barbarians at night as it lay at anchor. They killed most of us but made prisoners of me and my friend and sold us to your estate. Now we put up with our misfortune patiently, but some of our fellow prisoners, whom we do not know, broke their chains and committed a murder, and you ordered us all to be taken off and crucified. Well my friend didn’t utter a word against his wife, even when the execution was under way, but I was moved to speak her name and call her the cause of our troubles because she was the reason we sailed.” Before he had finished, Mithridates cried, “It is Chaereas you mean?” “He is my friend,” said Polycharmus.

The passage above demonstrates Polycharmus’ focus on his friend and not on Callirhoe and invites the external reader to do so as well. He stresses their quest and describes elaborately the apparent death of Callirhoe and her ‘resurrection’, Motifs A and C1. Surprisingly, Mithridates does not react when he hears about Callirhoe being buried alive and resurrected from the tomb, and he seems to be carried way by the incredible account.208 Polycharmus is also careful to navigate quickly the rather implausible part of his story and moves on with the better-known (to him) events. However, he tries to convince them of Callirhoe’s resurrection by stressing Theron’s confession as the only eyewitness. Polycharmus, moreover, cautiously does not mention Chaereas’ involvement in his wife’s death, thus crafting a tale that touches the audience without prompting them to 206 E. IT. 308–312. 207 Char. 3.7.2. Cf. folktale motif R244, ‘The obstacle flight’. 208 Cf. also Dionysius does not react when Callirhoe tells him the same story at 2.5.10. But, unlike Polycharmus, Callirhoe warns her audience that she will tell them an implausible tale, 2.5.7, ‘My past was a dream and a myth-like tale (ὄνειρος ἦν τὰ πρῶτα καὶ μῦθος);’ 2.5 9, ‘I do not want to narrate incredible tales (διηγήματα ἄπιστα) to those who don’t know them (the facts).’

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ask questions, because their emotional involvement surpasses their understanding of its every detail.209 Such an approach also takes for granted that, for his Persian audience, this might have sounded convincing enough. This assumption leads to the hypothesis that Polycharmus was talking to an audience familiar with such motifs and that Mithridates and his court were familiar to this kind of oriental lore, of which Parthenope and the Scheintod of Aesop in Babylon are good examples.210 Polycharmus is also responsible for the revelation of Chaereas’ identity, just as, in the play, Pylades hands the letter over to his friend, revealing his identity to Iphigenia. The power of Chaereas’ friend narrative is such that the novel recreates the theatrical atmosphere. The audience empathises with the two friends and eagerly joins Mithridates’ man at the execution place only to observe and shout ‘from afar,’211 recreating a theatrical impression, as if Chaereas’ cross were in the centre and they were looking on from the circumference. Thus the novel not only adds themes from the Iphigenia pattern but alludes to its genre, namely tragedy, as well. Chaereas’ execution now has a new, theatrical appeal, no less than that of narrowly escaped human sacrifices presented on stage such as in IT. Last but not least, like Pylades in the IT, Chaereas’ friend engineers the ‘happy ending’, Motif D.212 Polycharmus acts like Pylades even in the final recognition scene: as the only sober person, he reminds them that they are not at home but in enemy territory, and they should plan their escape meticulously from this ‘barbarian land’.213 How barbarian Aradus really is and the shrine of Aphrodite is debatable, but their return resembles the ‘escape’ motifs provided by the megatext. It is only to be expected that, as a reward for this faithful service once the plot has reached the happy ending, Chaereas should give Polycharmus his sister in marriage, just as Orestes gives Electra to Pylades as a reward for their friendship.214 Thus closes Polycharmus’ version of Chaereas’ adventure quest to Miletus. 209 Keen 2007, 88, observes that in reading experiments carried out by cognitive researchers the subjects seem able to suspend disbelief and scepticism if they are emotionally immersed in the fictional narrative. 210 Cf. the oriental background of Aesop’s Scheintod in Babylon as discussed by Marincic 2003, 60–64. 211 Char. 4.3.5. 212 Char. 3.5.6, Polycharmus ‘did not want it to be known who they were before they had thought about the whole situation carefully and come to agreement about it.’ Cf. in E. IT. 104–114 it is Pylades who comes up with the plan to get into the temple at night. 213 Char. 8 1 9, ‘You are not in your own country, you are in enemy territory (ἐν πολεμίᾳ γῇ)’; cf. IT 905–906, ‘To get away from this barbarian country (ἐκ γῆς … βαρβάρου).’ 214 Char. 8.8.12 and E. IT. 915. Fitzgerald 1997, 157.



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In summary For Polycharmus, Callirhoe’s chastity is not the main theme but her disappearance and the quest for her is. His friendship with Chaereas makes him a character in a subplot that is simultaneously like and unlike the Helen pattern. The Iphigenia megatext offers in this secondary character good material for a quest and escape pattern without being impeded by love or desire. Just as in Lucian’s Toxaris, in Chariton it is the quest with a friend and the escape that are the main ingredients of Polycharmus’ reading. Of all the elements indebted to the Iphigenia pattern to which Polycharmus repeatedly turns, the most problematic is the Scheintod. However, even this new ingredient seems to be accepted without objections by the Persian audience, indicating its popularity through other novelistic texts and folklore. Polycharmus seems to have been speaking to seasoned ears, or at least to an audience hungry for incredible storylines.

1.3.2 Xenophon of Ephesus Hippothous at Aulis In Xenophon the near-death motif receives different treatment. The beautiful Ephesian protagonist is sacrificed once and put to death twice, and yet miraculously she escapes all these assaults. Hippothous engages with both Habrocomes’ and Anthia’s storylines: as part of an Iphigenia-like plot, and much like Polycharmus, he departs with his friend on his quest for his lost wife. 215 Moreover, Hippothous facilitates the reunion of the couple by ‘recognising’ Anthia at the brothel and returning her to his friend.216 Additionally, Hippothous’ involvement in the events with Anthia at the brothel casts him as one of her potential suitors and, as such, he becomes part of the Beauty pattern that I will discuss later. Thus Hippothous is everything: Anthia’s executioner, Habrocomes’ best friend, and Anthia’s suitor. In this chapter I will explore his first two roles as part of the Iphigenia megatext. Hippothous is responsible for the first near-death experience of Anthia, her sacrifice to Ares, the circumstances of which have strong erotic connotations as her body is to be hung up from a tree and pierced with javelins in a kind of a metaphorical gang rape.217 The ritual is presented in detail by the narrator and later briefly summarised by Hippothous, who offers his point of view: 215 An analogue of Pylades as in Giovannelli 2008, 275–76. 216 X. Eph. 5.9.7. 217 See also Bierl 2012a. For hanging from the tree as frequent suicide/sacrificial context for young maidens see Burkert and Bing 1983, 64 giving as examples Ἄρτεμις ἀπαγχομένη (Arcadia)

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2.13.2: The sacrifice had to be performed in the usual manner, which was to hang the intended victim, human or animal, from a tree and to throw javelins at it from a distance. The god was considered to accept the sacrifices of all who hit it, those who missed tried to appease him a second time. Anthia had to be sacrificed in this manner (οὕτως ἱερουργηθῆναι). And when all was ready, and they were on the point of hanging her up, they heard the woods rustling and the sound of marching. It was the eirinarch of Cilicia, Perilaus, one of the foremost men in the land. This man fell on the robbers with a large force and killed them all, except for the few he took alive. Only Hippothous was able to take his weapons and get clean away. Perilaus took Anthia and felt sorry for her when he found out the dreadful fate that had been about to overtake her. But his pity for her was the beginnings of another terrible calamity (εἶχε δὲ ἄρα μεγάλης ἀρχὴν συμφορᾶς ὁ ἔλεος Ἀνθίας). 3.3.4: ‘I have left out a story (Hippothous said to Habrocomes). A short time before my band was captured, a beautiful girl (κόρη) who had lost her way came upon our cave; she was the same age as you and said she came from Ephesus. I did not find out any more. It was decided (ἔδοξε) to sacrifice her to Ares, and in fact everything was ready when our pursuers came upon us, and as for my part I took to flight, but I don’t know what happened to her.’

In both the main narrative and Hippothous’ retelling, Anthia is the victim of a sacrifice requested by a god (Motif A) and the general circumstances of her death blend the thematic of sex and violence in the description of the ritual. What is more, it is Hippothous, a (future) kinsman, who is responsible for carrying out the ritual since he will be her husband’s best friend and a key person for their reunion (Motif B). Her sacrifice follows the pattern prescribed by the IA, but instead of a substitution or another miraculous escape, Xenophon opts for an Andromeda-like scenario, a rescue at the last moment by a possible suitor, Perilaus (Motif C). Perilaus is a positive character and would have been a perfect match for Anthia had she not been already married.218 This detail deflates any readerly expectations of an outcome based on the folktale theme of Perseus and Andromeda.219 Thus, the sacrifice is averted but there is no merging of the IA and IT patterns, as neither substitution nor recognition takes place. As a result only a partial recognition scene is re-enacted in the conversation of Hippothous and Habrocomes once they realise that the almost-sacrificed maiden is Anthia. No escape is yet foreseen, let alone a return. It is interesting to observe how the narrative stresses the importance of the above motifs and especially B. With respect to Motif A, Hippothous describes Anthia as a girl (κόρη) although she is a married woman, making it easier to see in Paus. 8.23.6–7, a hanged woman becoming Hecate in Callim. Fr. 461 (Pfeiffer), Helen Dendritis (Rhodes) in Paus. 3.19.10, Ariadne in Plu. Thes. 20.1. 218 X. Eph. 2.13.3. 219 AT 300 and Hansen 2002, 121–25; Perseus saves and marries Andromeda, or the case of Mesopotamia and Zobaras in Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca cf. Photius 77b27 and Stephens 1996, 198.



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why Anthia was a suitable victim for a sacrifice, a death typically meant for virgin females. On the other hand, the speed with which the narrative presents Hippothous’ and Habrocomes’ meeting, only a few paragraphs after Anthia’s averted sacrifice, may be attributed either to the narrative’s inherently quick tempo or to its eagerness to accentuate the upcoming Motif B, namely Hippothous’ and Habrocomes’ friendship, which becomes the catalyst for the action. Moreover, Hippothous’ temporary omission from his account to Habrocomes of an event so vividly described a few lines earlier increases the suspense of the reader, who anticipates a recognition scene and probably a rupture between Hippothous and Habrocomes. Such a rupture, to the great amazement of the modern reader, does not take place, but Habrocomes becomes even more attached to the bandit. The narrative that follows Anthia’s sacrifice does its best to exonerate Hippothous and to turn him from a fierce and impulsive bandit into a caring friend.220 Neither the description of the sacrifice by Xenophon, nor the narrator, nor Hippothous’ recapitulation focuses on Hippothous’ role in it, and the related decisions are presented in impersonal forms, such as ‘it was required’ (ἔδει), ‘it seemed appropriate’ (ἔδοξε). And yet Hippothous’ role is important enough in the novel that he is the only one to escape alive, while most of his companions are killed by Perilaus.221 The story has three more plots for him, one in which he again condemns Anthia to death. Eudoxus’ sacrifice to Eros and Thanatos Anthia’s second narrow escape from death vividly recalls Parthenope’s and Callirhoe’s Scheintod, as described above. Just like Callirhoe, Anthia’s apparent death is presented as a family tragedy, and Xenophon’s heroine wakes up in her tomb only to discover that she is buried alive. And, just like Callirhoe, she is abducted by pirates who transfer her to the next suitor.222 However, unlike Parthenope, who seems to have tricked her suitor into sending her (living) corpse 220 De Temmerman 2014, 136–37 suggests that the reason for this discrepancy is related to Hippothous lack of self-control, which also led him to murder his boyfriend’s lover, Aristomachus. In doing so he is compared to Chaereas’ lack of sobriety in Chariton. 221 At 2.13.4 Perilaus kills (almost) everybody and only the horse-swift Hippothous, as his name evokes, escapes. This swiftness is characteristic in another Iphigenia-related actor, Thoas, in the IT. We never learn whether Hippothous too participates in the ritual; if not, then his being saved may be an echo of Odysseus’ abstinence from the sacrifice of Helios’ cattle in Hom. Od. 12.375–400 and his survival. 222 For the relationship with Chariton see Reardon 1989, 126 focussing on apparent death, burial and kidnapping by pirates; also for Xenophon’s imitation of Chariton see Reardon 2004b. For Chariton’s invention of the tomb-robbery motif and its imitation by Xenophon and Achilles Tatius see Tilg 2010a, 181.

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home as a means of escape, Anthia’s suicide is meant for real and is described in tragic overtones.223 Perilaus is by all means entitled to marry Anthia, whom he has saved from certain death. And yet Anthia is already married, something she does not reveal to him but only to an Ephesian doctor, Eudoxus, who happens to be around after being shipwrecked and living in Perilaus’ household.224 The incident with Eudoxus takes up a good length of the story, surprisingly for Xenophon’s fast tempo, and provides a lot of realistic detail about the man and his motivations that play a crucial role in Anthia’s suicide.225 3.4.1–4: Eudoxus had been shipwrecked on the voyage to Egypt. This Eudoxus went round all the local aristocracy of Tarsus, begging for clothes or money and describing his misfortune. Perilaus was among those he approached and Eudoxus told him that he was an Ephesian and a doctor by profession; Perilaus took him and brought him to Anthia, thinking she would be glad to see someone from Ephesus … and so he had become a familiar visitor to the household and came to see Anthia each time, enjoying every comfort and always asking her to send him back to Ephesus, for he had a wife and children there.

Eudoxus is also shipwrecked and a foreigner. Perilaus thinks that Eudoxus’ being an Ephesian might cheer up his betrothed. Instead, the purported doctor hopes that Anthia will help him go home: we further learn that he has a wife and children to whom he longs to return, so he does not pose any immediate threat to

223 Unlike Hägg’s reconstruction of the Parthenope, Anthia does not cheat Perilaus but opts for death immediately. Thus she is more ‘tragic’ in this respect and moves away from similar folktale models towards drama. See for example the tragic echo in 3.6.3 oὐχ οὕτως ἄνανδρος ἐγὼ οὐδὲ ἐν τοῖς κακοῖς δειλή, cf. S. Ant. 37–38, οὕτως ἔχει σοι ταῦτα, καὶ δείξεις τάχα/ εἴτ’ εὐγενὴς πέφυκας εἴτ’ ἐσθλῶν κακή (And so you will soon show whether you are noble-minded or the lewed daughter of a noble line). For Anthia as a tragic heroine see also Lalanne 2006, 135. 224 The incident with the doctor echoes Hdt. 3.1. The Egyptian king Amasis has sent Cambyses an Egyptian eye doctor to treat him; the doctor, being separated from his family, longs to take revenge on Amasis. Therefore he advises Cambyses to ask Amasis for his daughter in marriage, which the Egyptian king refuses. 225 Cf. Helen in E. Hel. 301, plans suicide to avoid marrying Theoclymenus and Pantheia kills herself after her husband’s death in Xen. Cyr. 7.3.3ff. For echoes of the Cyropaedia see Capra 2009. For suicide in classical antiquity see Macalister 1996 and Van Hoof 1990 and especially the case of pudor-suicides, like that of Lucretia, where the victim commits suicide after being raped. There is a play of Menander, Koneiazomenai, in which the women threaten to take hemlock, a very untrustworthy route to suicide. Love potions that accidentally kill may also be found in tragedy, e.g. the protagonist in the Medea, Dianeira in S. Trach. or Phaedra who in the Hippolytus plans to seduce the youth with a pharmacon, Creousa in the Ion. Whereas in tragedy most of these cases end in death, in comedy and in the novel, alternative outcomes are offered. For the influence of Christianity in support of suicide after or even before dishonour see Stivala 2011.



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Anthia as a possible suitor.226 Eudoxus is the closer analogue to a kinsman in this story, filling in for the role of slayer, as in Motif B of the pattern. Universal folktale is aware of this kind of compassionate executioner, who instead of a fatal poison gives the victim a sleeping potion. 227 When Anthia realises that there is no way to postpone or cancel her wedding to Perilaus, she seeks Eudoxus’ help in committing suicide in exchange for money for his passage home. Eudoxus accepts but, afraid that he will be accused if she dies, he administers her a sleeping potion instead and boards the first ship to Ephesus, leaving the rest to chance.228 The doctor’s disappearance designates him as the main malefactor in Anthia’s death, as he is the only one with full control over the near-suicide narrative; yet we never hear of him again.229 That said, he is also the main benefactor of Anthia as he is the one whose ruse, ultimately, helps her to return alive and chaste to Ephesus. Unaware of Eudoxus’ plot, Perilaus laments his bride-to-be and carries her on a bier to a sepulchre outside the city in a lavish procession: 3.7.4: He laid her out in all her finery and surrounded her with a great quantity of gold. And no longer able to bear (καὶ οὐκέτι φέρων) the sight, when day came he put Anthia on a bier (she was still lying insensible) and took her to the tombs near the city. And there he laid her in a vault, after slaughtering a great number of victims and burning a great deal of clothing and other finery.

The passage gives interesting hints to the careful reader.230 The narrative stresses Perilaus’ impatience and hastiness to bury her because he could not bear the sight of her dead, οὐκέτι φέρων.231 This may be a metaliterary comment that revisits Callirhoe’s quick ekphora and burial, which I discussed above, and hints at Anthia’s upcoming revival. Also, the text explicitly indicates that this is a Scheintod by emphasising Anthia’s being ‘unconscious’. Indeed Anthia wakes up in her tomb to find herself alive and yet, unlike Callirhoe, she does not despair but decides to starve herself to death.232 This is a conscious move of the narrative tone from novel 226 Instead the hospitality scene may remind readers of Penelope welcoming Odysseus as a beggar and offering him clothing and food in exchange for information about Odysseus. But unlike Odysseus, Eudoxus has no news about her parents since he had left Ephesus before her, 3.4.3. 227 E.g. see the use of potions and magic spells in Scobie 1983, 168–69, more broadly in Trenkner 1958, 86. See AT motif K512.4. Also Stephens-Winkler 1995, 172–175. 228 X. Eph. 3.5.5–11. 229 Not even in the return narrative at Ephesus does Eudoxus reaapear. 230 For resemblances between the tomb robbery scene in Chariton and in Xenophon see Trzaskoma 2010, esp. 158–59. 231 This expression in Xenophon is used for other impulsive acts as well, see De Temmerman 2014, 136. 232 X. Eph. 3.8 1.

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register back to tragedy, since the reader already knows that her coma is a Scheintod. Even when the tomb robbers appear, she decides to remain with the dead in the shadows as ‘a sacrifice to two gods, Eros and Thanatos’, revisiting thus the tragic aspect of the Iphigenia theme.233 This is an eloquent illustration of the association between death and sacrifice, as well as of the strong connection between love and death. Anthia risks shifting the narrative onto another genre and plays with the expectations a reader might have had for an Antigone-like outcome. 234 And yet, Anthia, being a novelistic and not a tragic heroine, escapes death despite her objections and her steadfast will to die. The tomb robbers, as with Callirhoe, take her together with the other booty, as part of Motif C. Surprisingly this ‘rescue’ risks transferring Anthia to the far countries of the East, to India, where her new master, Psammis, hails from.235 The mention of India, as an exotic land, is a good candidate for the faraway barbarian lands where human sacrifice is practised, as is the case in the Charition mime above. Still, the next death threat on Anthia’s life comes surprisingly not in India but from Hippothous again, further twisting any expectations of an exotic adventure plot. Artemis’ dogs On the way to India Anthia is captured again by Hippothous, who does not recognise her as the girl from Cilicia, whom he already knows to be Habrocomes’ wife. Anthia’s second escape from near-death is not a ritual sacrifice, but an execution ordered by Hippothous. Anthia is accused of having murdered the rapist Anchialus in self-defence.236 She is therefore thrown to the dogs.237 In an interesting metaliterary exposition on ‘ways to kill a woman’238, the bandits outline the possible ‘novelistic’ – and also realistic – options: 233 X. Eph. 3.8.3, δυοῖν ἀνάκειμαι θεοῖς, Ἔρωτι καὶ Θανάτῳ. 234 Cf. Lalanne 2006, 5–6, Anthia as ‘une héroine de la tragédie.’ 235 X. Eph. 3.11.1. 236 Anthia’s militant defense of her virginity points to other, probably Near-Eastern sources that occasionally overshadow the Greek Helen megatext. Another novelistic case is the later Sinonis in the Babyloniaca who, according to Photius, 94.76b kills her suitor Setapus after pretending to consent to his desire. Thus, Hadas 1963 (1959), 169 is probably right to compare Anthia’s murder in self-defence with Judith’s decapitation of Holophernes. That said, in the Near-Eastern Biblical sources brave women, like Judith, tend to defend themselves not just to protect their chastity, but mainly their native lands. For more similarities see also Frye, Adamson and Wilson 2006, 75, who find echoes of the story of Daniel in the lion’s den and of Absalom. 237 Probably recalling practices of torture enacted on Christians, see Perkins 1994, 61. For the cult of the Ephesian Artemis, and the wild beasts to which Paul refers in his letter, Cor. 1, 15:32: ἐθηριομάχησα ἐν Ἐϕέσῳ, τί μοι τὸ ὄϕελος, see Frayerl-Griggs 2013. 238 The phrase is from Loraux’s 1987 book.



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4.6.3: Different suggestions were made for Anthia’s punishment, one man telling them to kill her and bury her with Anchialus’ body, another to crucify her. Hippothous for his part was distressed over Anchialus and decided on an even harsher penalty (μείζονα κόλασιν). So he gave orders to dig a large deep trench and throw Anthia in it with two dogs beside her, to make her pay dearly for her daring.

We see that Hippothous might not have actively participated in the first ritual sacrifice of Anthia since the text emphasises the collectiveness of the decision. But in this second case Anthia is found guilty of murder and Hippothous, as the leader, needs to interfere. His suggestion is a more elaborate and cruel solution, which could be understood as a study in horror at a metaliterary level and not just as exemplifying his own cruelty. Anthia has already been buried alive and survived, while crucifixion was imposed on Habrocomes a few chapters earlier.239 Since in narrative terms these means have already been exhausted, Hippothous’ major punishment (μείζων κόλασις) is intended as a metaliterary indication to draw the reader’s attention to the carefully chosen new death sentence. Thus it is not just a death penalty but it takes the form of a spectacle, just like the previous sacrifice scene. Finally, the trench to which Anthia is condemned is an assimilation of her tomb in Cilicia, recalling vividly her previous immuration. 4.6.4: So he (Hippothous) gave orders to dig a large, deep trench and threw Anthia in it with two dogs beside her, to make her pay dearly for her daring. The robbers obeyed and she was brought to the trench. The dogs were huge and particularly fearsome-looking Egyptian hounds. When they threw them in, they shut the trench with large planks and piled earth on top – the Nile was not far away – and put one of the robbers, Amphinomus, on guard ... now he had already fallen in love with Anthia … by feeding the dogs he prevented them from doing her any harm, and soon they were tame and docile.

In this new Iphigenia pattern Anthia risks being executed by a near relative – Motif B. Yet again the girl is miraculously saved – Motif C – by Amphinomus, a possible suitor but also a positive character whose function might be like that of the kind hunter in the folktale240 rather than based on the eponymous Homeric figure.241 It is tempting to think of the ex-priestess of Artemis in this context of wild animals, which would have also been part of the audience’s knowledge of a particular myth. Artemis, for example, was famous for punishing her enemies, 239 X. Eph. 4.2 1. 240 For Anthia and Snow White AT 709 see Anderson 2000, 55, who also mentions a version where the princess is almost fed to the dogs. The frequent motif of ‘The compassionate executioner’, AT F451.5.1.2. 241 Bierl 2006 and Plastira-Valkanou 2015 as opposed to Hägg, Mortensen and Eide 2004 213, who does not find a strong relationship.

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such as Actaeon, by having them torn to pieces by dogs. In the IT Orestes too imagines that he is being hunted by dog-like Erinyes.242 Yet, the hounds become benevolent in the novel, prompting an association with Artemis, who was famously known for being the potnia theron, mistress of the wild animals.243 This protection of Artemis towards her follower Anthia is transferred through the care of Amphinomus. Eventually the dogs are tamed and follow Anthia even after she is freed from the trench by Amphinomus, demonstrating a humane nature but also indicating that Anthia is indeed Artemis’ protégée.244 In summary Xenophon’s triple execution of Anthia is an important novelistic exercise that was also imitated by Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. The three near-death situations provide an opportunity to investigate the horror of sacrifice, suicide and execution scenes: Anthia’s ritual sacrifice, her self-poisoning and her execution all bring her not closer to Thanatos, but to Eros, or to Habrocomes, albeit via a rather complex narrative route. Hippothous, the almost-slayer kinsman, is the main actor of the Iphigenia-based pattern, and the revelation of Anthia’s identity relies upon him. Nonetheless, Hippothous does not solve the mystery of the twice-murdered girl during the Iphigenia patterns, but only at Taras, at the brothel keeper’s, which is part of a rather elaborate Beauty pattern. This last twist again jeopardises the reader’s expectations, provided s/he reads the plot only according to the Iphigenia near-death pattern and expects an imminent recognition scene. Instead, the narrative surprises the reader and opts, as in Chariton, for the lengthier, epic-style couple-recognition scene, the prelude of which is already playing in the lovers-like meeting of Hippothous and Anthia at Syracuse that leads to the solemn novelistic reunion between Anthia and Habrocomes on Rhodes. It may be that Xenophon does not follow closely Euripides’ IA or the IT and, as we have seen, the novel thrives on folkloric elements and motifs. Still, the novel is distinguished by a taste for drama and tragedy in particular, blurring the lines between novelistic and tragic expectations and shifting between the two. Indeed, it is the Sacrifice pattern and not that of the adventures in faraway lands that Xenophon favours thrice, showing a predilection for the IA theme, the maiden’s tragedy. Thus Xenophon’s novel seems particularly interested in neardeath experiences and attempts to innovate with respect to (probably) Chariton’s 242 E. IT. 284 and Kyriakou 2006, 121. 243 Cf. Hom. Il. 21.470. On the precincts of Artemis in Achaea see Strabo, Geogr. 5.1.9, ‘The wild animals (τὰ θηρία) become tame, and deer herd with wolves and they allow the people to approach and caress them, and any that are pursued by dogs are no longer pursued when they have taken refuge here.’ 244 X. Eph. 5.2.5, ‘The dogs were not left behind but fawned on them as faithful companions.’



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Callirhoe and (probably) the Parthenope, where the girl’s escape from the tomb occupies the majority of the story. This metaliterary, conscious reworking of the novelistic material is evident in both the suicide scene and the Scheintod as well as Anthia’s later ‘immuration’ in the dog’s den. As for Xenophon’s relationship to myth, the terrain is obscured by the lack of direct allusions. Nonetheless, the IA, the Alcestis and the Antigone might have been plausible models for Anthia’s near-deaths by means of sacrifice, self-sacrifice and immuration, being passages of high theatrical character. Moreover, there was a rich novelistic and folkloric background that could be merged with the high mythical tales. Anthia’s consecration to Eros and Thanatos shows the kind of metaliterary self-reflexiveness that illustrates how the novelistic and the dramatic elements of the Iphigenia megatext are levelled so as to fashion a new heroine, who is not a Maiden of Death, but a faithful devotee of Eros.

1.3.3 Achilles Tatius Following Xenophon’s example, Leucippe is put to death thrice: a sacrifice, a decapitation and a bogus death announcement followed by a virginity trial. The metaliterary interest of Achilles Tatius in near-death situations and especially those inherited by the earlier novels is very eloquently presented through repetition. To these influences one may add the importance of the Charition mime, established by Mignona, especially since we also have a mime entitled Leucippe.245 Achilles Tatius, writing sometime in the first half of the second century, must have had a long novelistic tradition behind him, and he consciously reworks previous novelistic material alongside his mythical megatexts.246 The novel focuses clearly on genre questions and juggles with readerly expectations that shift between novel and tragedy. How many times can Leucippe die, and how many times can the internal and/or the external reader be convinced of her death? These questions will be of central importance in the following investigation of the Iphigenia megatext in Achilles Tatius. Yet, as opposed to Chariton and Xenophon, Achilles Tatius’ protagonist is a virgin like Iphigenia and her sisters. Achilles Tatius takes two steps into and one back out from the pool of mythical tales, while keeping control over the mythical and novelistic materials. 245 Mignogna 1996, Mignogna 1997, Andreassi 2001, Andreassi 2002. Morales 2004, 71 accepts the case of Mignogna 1996 for a mime based on Leucippe and Clitophon, presenting a woman called Leucippe at the barber’s shop. Some good observation about the near death of Leucippe can be also found in Scippacercola 2011, 135–146. 246 Chew 2014.

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A Satyrus play at Aulis In the land of the Boucoloi, where any implausible thing may occur, Clitophon is the first male protagonist who witnesses the sacrifice of his beloved, Leucippe. This is the first ritual sacrifice of Leucippe and it seems to be patterned on that of Anthia. Just as Xenophon commences his study of Maidens of Death with a sacrifice, Achilles Tatius has a young virgin from Byzantium led to the altar.247 The reason for this sacrifice is to guarantee the Boucoloi’s success in their war against Charmides and his troops, a battle fought on land and at sea: such is the extent and importance of this battle that it appears to surpass even the Trojan expedition featured in the Iphigenia megatext.248 The sacrifice is carried out according to Egyptian ritual, and Clitophon is far enough away in Charmides’ camp not to hear the chanting, but still not too far to be the main narrator and focaliser of the scene.249 Such a point of view makes of the mute spectacle a kind of pantomime based on the Iphigenia at Aulis, as Mignogna (1996) has rightly argued: 3.15.1–5: We could in fact see brigands aplenty and fully armed standing on the opposite side of the trench. They had improvised an altar of earth and near it a coffin. Two of them were leading a girl to the altar with the hands tied behind her back (τὼ χεῖρε δεδεμένην). I couldn’t see who they were in their armour, but I did recognise that the girl was Leucippe (καὶ αὐτοὺς μὲν οἵτινες ἦσαν οὐκ εἶδον, ἦσαν γὰρ ὡπλισμένοι, τὴν δὲ κόρην Λευκίππην οὖσαν ἐγνώρισα). They poured a libation over her head (σπονδὴν περιχέαντες) and led her around the altar to the accompaniment of a flute and a priest intoning what I guessed was an Egyptian hymn – at least, the movements of his mouth and the distension of his facial muscles suggested that he was chanting. Then at a signal they all moved far away from the altar. One of the attendants laid her on her back and tied her to stakes fixed in the ground, as sculptors picture Marsyas bound to the tree. He next raised a sword and plunged it into her heart and then sawed all the way down to her abdomen. Her viscera leapt out. The attendants pulled out her entrails and carried them in their hands over to the altar. When it was well done they carved the whole lot up, and the bandits shared the meal. As each of these acts was performed, the soldiers and the general groaned aloud and averted their eyes from the sight, but I, contrary to all reason, just sat there staring.

Clitphon’s description matches the visual depictions of Iphigenia as a girl being led to the altar by two men, presumably Menelaus and Odysseus as discussed above. The girl in the novel is presented as having her hands tied behind her back, whereas Iphigenia seems to follow her executioners willingly. This detail is often depicted in those of the IT, where Pylades and Orestes are brought, tied up, before 247 For the ritual aspect and the aesthetics of the sacrifice see Bierl 2012b. 248 Ach. Tat. 4.14.4, ναυμαχοπεζομαχία. On the supposed historical background of the battle in see Laplace 2007, 11–12, 302. 249 Even when the other soldiers of Charmides avert their eyes from the spectacle the reader is ‘forced’ to ‘see’ it via Clitophon, as suggested by Morales 2004, 170.



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Iphigenia as captives of the barbarians. We notice therefore that an element such as tied-up arms was a ‘transferable’ feature of the Iphigenia megatext, since, in this new novelistic context, the sacrifice of the virgin is performed in faraway land among the barbarians. The chants and libations are as in Iphigenia’s sacrifice, and the army is ordered to move away from the altar and not to interfere,250 and just like Agamemnon, the general and the soldiers look away. The mythical exemplum about Marsyas’ punishment, where Apollo’s poor rival is bound to a tree before being flayed, is most likely meant to emphasise the sensuality of the supine female body tied to stakes, more voluptuous and attractive to male gazes.251 It also recalls Anthia’s sacrifice while she is about to be hung on a tree, thus leaving her lifeless body accessible to any viewer.252 In this way Achilles Tatius prompts his reader to recall not only the mythical megatext and its representations but also the novelistic antecedants regarding virginal sacrifice. Once Leucippe is tied to the altar the reader is faced with a different type of sacrifice sequel. The priest does not strike Leucippe with a knife on her neck,253 but uses a sword to perform a strange ritual disembowelment, followed unexpectedly, in terms of the Iphigenia pattern, by collective cannibalism.254 This is not the only precedent in the Greek novel. Another case is Lollianus’ Phoenicica.255 The scene in Lollianus includes both sacrifice and cannibalism and, besides conforming to the prejudices regarding Phoenician practices, gives no information about the child in question, his/her status in the narrative, and/or his/her possible Scheintod.256 Nonetheless, it bears witness to the secularisation of the Sacrifice pattern, a movement from ritual sacrifice to canibalism. For the Phoenician Clitophon the scene is no less controversial and it may have been not a new but rather a ‘new feature’ in the love and adventure novel.257 Clitophon’s 250 E. IA 1546, ‘He proclaimed to the army silence and quiet (εὐφημίαν καὶ σιγήν).’ 251 This would not have been the case if Leucippe had bent over the altar for her sacrifice. Moreover, for Menelaus’ and Satyrus’ trick to work Leucippe is not to be decapitated. According to Morales 2004, 170 the comparison to Marsyas emphasises the powerlessness of Leucippe and the bloodiness of the sacrifice. 252 Later in the novel Leucippe’s sacrifice is also compared to that of Andromeda attached to the rock and of Prometheus’ being visited by the eagle. See the analysis in Morales 2004, 174–76. 253 As is the case in E. IA 1579–1580. 254 For the associations of a male gaze with ‘eating’ and ‘devouring’ the female body throughout the novel see Morales 2004, 170. 255 Lollianus, fr. b1r. (Stephens-Winkler). The fullest discussion is Winkler 1980. 256 For a discussion of the gender of the παῖς see Winkler 1980 p 174: Stephens, whom he quotes, proposed that the παῖς is a girl, disguised as a boy. 257 Winkler 1980, 168 on the narrative and formulaic aspect of these scenes, as opposed to a ritual interpretation. Clitophon focalizes the scene as a Hellenized not as a Phoenician. Cf. Hall 2009, 400 on Egyptian audiences.

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lament, for example, over Leucippe’s dead body in the coffin stresses the narrator’s invention and signposts the sacrifice as ‘new food mysteries’.258 The novelty of Leucippe’s sacrifice is not just the cannibalism scene, but also Leucippe’s immediate resurrection and the subsequent interpretation of her Scheintod. Clitophon’s retrospective narrative of Leucippe’s first death is fully aware of this, despite the fact that it engages the reader in a quasi ‘chronological’ retelling of the events. Shortly after the sacrifice, Clitophon is prepared to die on his beloved’s body when Satyrus and Menelaus, whom he thought lost, appear and resurrect Leucippe before his very eyes, after praying to Hecate in a scene more reminiscent of black magic than of a resurrection.259 Clitophon cannot believe his eyes as Leucippe stands up and embraces him in what seems like a quick recognition scene.260 As this ‘ending’ is too quick and too happy, as opposed to the elaborate recognition scene of the Iphigenia megatext and he asks for an extensive rational explanation. Thereupon Satyrus and Menelaus explain to him the trick – namely the replacement of Leucippe’s innards for those of a goat – by which they prevented Leucippe’s execution, since they were the ones who staged it and Menelaus was the one to perform it. Thus both Satyrus and Menelaus prove to be good friends of Clitophon, recalling thus the imperial discussions on friendship that are often related to Pylades’ and Orestes’ endeavour.261 It is no longer by divine intervention but by mere human cunning that Leucippe is ‘replaced’ on the altar with a dead sheep’s belly, echoing Iphigenia’s miraculous substitution by the deer. What is more, it was a chest with all the equipment of an actor of mime that provides the dagger that did not slice Leucippe’s belly.262 With these theatrical utensils Satyrus is able to perform a metatheatrical pantomime-like sacrifice of a virgin in an exotic setting but in a fictional, novelistic context. What is more, in Leucippe’s recapitulation of her sacrifice, she reports Artemis’ epiphany in a dream to soothe her and foretell the happy ending 258 Ach.Tat. 3.16.4, ὢ τροφῶν καινὰ μυστήρια. Tilg 2010a, 181, 91 pushes the case of Achilles echoing here Chariton’s supposedly programmatic novelty (cf. καινὸν διήγημα) too far in my view, especially since despite the presence of a coffin near the altar it is the sacrifice and cannibalism which are in focus, not the burial. 259 Ach. Tat. 3.17.6. 260 Ach. Tat. 3.17.7, Leucippe embraces him and they both fall on the ground. 261 There is a short discussion of friendship between Menelaus and Satyrus before their decision to contrive the plot to save Leucippe: 3.22.1, ‘It is a large undertaking, but in the name of friendship, the risk is surely right, and even if we must die in the doing, such death would be sweet (ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ φίλου, κἂν ἀποθανεῖν δεήσῃ … γλυκὺς ὁ θάνατος); cf. John 15:13, ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ). Of course such statements may already be found in E. Or. 1155–1158, ‘There is nothing more precious than a stable friend.’ 262 Ach. Tat. 3.20.2–6.



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to her adventures.263 This epiphany echoes that of the goddess at the end of the IA but also her implicit interference in Anthia’s salvation from the dog’s den. Thus the novel plays self-consciously not only with the novelistic lore about sacrifices in barbarian lands but also twists the available high, mythical material, using it not only at an intertextual or structural level but also metatheatrically, by literally staging Leucippe’s near-sacrifice by Menelaus and Satyrus. The first ritual sacrifice of the virgin Leucippe therefore includes a variety of motifs from the Iphigenia megatext: (A) the necessity of sacrificing a virgin in a context of a war campaign, (B) the participation of kinsmen in the sacrifice, here Menelaus and Satyrus, and the substitution/rescue of the maiden by being replaced with a goat’s skin (C1) and by being saved by her fiancé’s friends (C2); there follow the recognition and the escape from danger after a cunning scheme (Motif D). All these motifs are given in the order of the Iphigenia pattern and Clitophon reveals no information in advance. And yet the ‘rationalisation’ of the near-death theme together with those elements of pantomime makes a farce of the incident.264 Despite the theatricality and the dramatic consciousness of the episode, a quick interpretation of the ‘Scheintod’ downplays both the dramatic effect of a possible sacrifice scene as in the IA and the respective instances in Chariton and Xenophon, as well as the suspense of the ‘rescued-but-whiskedaway-from-her-beloved’ protagonist, as is the case in the IT and in Callirhoe’s and Anthia’s continuous relocations. The quick tempo of the episode therefore deprives the reader of sufficient time to ‘digest’ the sacrifice, leaving him/her – like Clitophon – in awe and motionless like Niobe after a short reunion scene. A maiden’s head The second death of Leucippe is neither a sacrifice nor an execution but is identified as one, namely it is called σφαγή, a slaughter.265 This is a term also used for dramatic sacrifices and suicides, and so it encourages the reader to consider the events alongside the Iphigenia megatext.266 During Chaereas’ nautical escape with his prize, the abducted Leucippe, he realises he cannot outrun his pursuers. He therefore decides to jettison his hostage and ostensibly beheads her in front of Clitophon and the Egyptian crew.267 Substitution of one human for another is

263 Ach. Tat. 4.1.4. 264 Cf. Laplace 2007, 303, ‘Un réalisme, qui trouve son aboutissement caricatural et funeste.’ 265 Ach. Tat. 5.7.9. 266 Loraux 1987. 267 Echoing Apsyrtus’ dismemberment in the famous Alexandrian poem Apoll. Rhod. Arg. 4.338–521.

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also common, albeit rarer, in folklore,268 but we only learn the details later in the novel. Nevertheless, the description of Leucippe’s decapitation is patterned in its phrasing to mirror her previous death as part of a self-reflexive intratextual reference. Once again she is brought to the front of the boat, where Clitophon is able to see her, with her arms tied behind her back, a reminder to the reader of the visual representations of Orestes and Pylades as well as of the novelistic precedent.269 Again, Clitophon and the Egyptian soldiers witness from a distance the second Leucippe drama, although the reader is now encouraged to think that this new trial will turn out as happily as the previous one. 5.7.4 and 8: When the pirates saw our vessel closing in and us prepared to fight, they stood Leucippe on the top deck with her hands tied behind her, and one of them cried out in a loud voice, ‘Here’s your prize;’ and so saying, he cut off her head and toppled the rest of the body into the sea … (Clitophon recovers the body from the sea) … Eventually we reached land, and I disembarked and fell to weeping, holding her body in my arms. ‘This time Leucippe, you are without doubt dead twice over, divided in death between land and sea (νῦν μοι Λευκίππη τέθνηκας ἀληθῶς θάνατον διπλοῦν). I hold a headless relic, I have lost the real you!’

This lamentation of Clitophon indicates this is indeed Leucippe’s ‘second death’. The repetition of the adjective ‘double’ and of what is really ‘true’ (ἀληθῶς), not only emphasises the (Platonic) oscillation between body and mind (here as the mirror of the soul);270 neither is it merely echoing Odysseus, who visited the underworld.271 Rather, they function as a metaliterary, essentially as a novelistic self-reflexive indications that this is the heroine’s second death, which, given the previous narrative experience, may not be as ‘true’ and as definitive as it appears.272 There are several hints for the reader that this is not a ‘real death’, for this second lamentation of Clitophon is surprisingly condensed in comparison to

268 Cf. AT 953, motif K527.2 and.3, where a brother or slave may take the place of the intended victim. 269 Ach. Tat. 3.15.2 and 5.7.4, ὀπίσω τὼ χεῖρε δεδεμένην. 270 On Plato-inspired physiognomy see the collections of essays on Polemon, Achilles Tatius’ contemporary, by Swain 2007. 271 On the ‘double death’ of Charicles see also Ach. Tat. 1 13.1, Whitmarsh and Morales 2001, 149 observe that Circe calls Odysseus a man who has died twice because he has visited the Underworld, Hom. Od. 12.22. Cf. later Porphyri, Sent. 9 1–4, ‘Death is double: the one is the congenital separation of body from soul (at death), the other of the philosophers upon separation of soul from the body, and the one does not always result from the other.’ The notion is already present in Middle-Platonism, Dillon 1977, 216. For the epistemological doubleness in fiction see Morgan 1993. 272 Montiglio 2012, 69.



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the more elaborate first one.273 The rest of the action is quickly summarised: soon after Leucippe’s burial, Clitophon meets Melite and embarks on a Phaedra-inspired pattern that will be discussed below. The rapidity of the narrative may also suggest to the seasoned reader that this second death of the protagonist is not the final one, but still leaves him/her with the puzzle of how she survived this time. Some chapters later, when Clitophon and Melite arrive at her estate in Ephesus, Leucippe is miraculously resurrected, as if echoing the IT. In the reversal of roles, Leucippe, dressed in rags like Odysseus, is found in the household of Melite testing her fiancé’s admittedly controversial chastity. Just like Orestes and Pylades in the IT, Clitophon recognises Leucippe due to a letter, a feature that is often represented in the Iphigenia visual evidence of the times. In the play, Pylades hands Iphigenia’s letter to Orestes while Iphigenia is standing in front of them. In the novel, however, the recognition does not take place on the spot. Just like Orestes, Clitophon cannot believe his eyes and asks his friend Satyrus if he brought this letter from the underworld, or whether Leucippe was resurrected yet again (πάλιν).274 The repetition of the adverb πάλιν draws the reader’s attention to the reworking of the motif at a novelistic as well as at a dramatic level: not only is this a revision of the novelistic Scheintod but the repetition strikes at the tragic megatext of the story: just like Iphigenia and other novelistic heroines, including Leucippe, this is a new kind of revival. Motif C1, the miraculous substitution of the protagonist by a prostitute dressed in Leucippe’s clothes, is only explained at the very end of the story in Leucippe’s reminiscence to her father.275 This postponement is also of metaliterary importance since it shows Achilles Tatius’ interest in substitution motifs and their variations, and presumably its suppression was not a problem since it prompted the reader to imagine various ways through which Leucippe could have avoided death. Still the retelling of the events in the end shows that the novel did not want to leave it up to the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps. This new substitution motif has a particular significance since it relates the novelistic version with the ‘the myth-like tale of the Pharian pirates and the riddle of the severed head,’ as Clitophon labels this event.276 This title exemplifies Achilles Tatius’ take on traditional Iphigenia-like myths and their novelistic reworking by inserting

273 There are 135 words in 3.16.3 and only 65 words in 5.79. 274 Ach. Tat. 5.19.1, ‘Did you carry this letter from Hades? What does it mean? Has Leucippe come to life again (πάλιν ἀνεβίω;)?’ Cf. E. IT, 772, ‘Where is she? Although dead she came to life again?’ (κατθανοῦσ’ ἥκει πάλιν;). In the play Orestes means not a second resurrection but a second coming back to life. 275 Ach. Tat. 8 16.1. 276 Ach. Tat. 8 15.4.

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myth into what was, by Achilles Tatius’ times, clearly a novelistic setting, namely pirates. According to Leucippe it goes thus: 8.16.1–7: The pirates deceived a woman, one of those unfortunate creatures who sell their favours for money … removing that poor woman’s ornaments and clothes, they dressed me as her and put my modest little shift on her. Stationing her on the stern, where you in pursuit would see her, they sliced off her head and hurled the body (as you saw) down into the sea, but the head, as it fell, they caught and kept on the ship. A little later they got rid of this too, tossing it overboard when they were no longer being pursued … during the chase they slew her in my place to deceive their pursuers, thinking they would stand to gain more profit from my sale than from hers … In place of the dead woman I was to be sold to benefit the common purse and not just Chaereas’ alone. When he objected ... one of the cut-throats, standing behind him, cut off his head – a good job too! And so, having paid a penalty that none could find fault with for his kidnapping, he too was tossed into the sea.

Leucippe’s story summarises in a nutshell the theatricality of the passage and the importance of distance in this staged decapitation: for instance, the meticulous dressing and placing of the victim on the stern so as to gain visibility. What is more, it illustrates how Chaereas’ abduction plan easily turns into a ‘near-death’ pattern, with him being the final victim. In this second Scheintod of Leucippe, the virginal beauty is apparently decapitated, as part of Motif A of the pattern. The execution seems to be performed by the subordinates of a lover who replace her with a slave woman, alluding vaguely to Motif B and certainly to Motif C1 of the IA plot. The latter part-recognition, Motif C2, alludes to the events that conclude with the final recognition at Ephesus and is indirectly connected to the larger Penelope/Helen-like pattern that we will discuss below. Clitophon and Leucippe among the Taurians In the Ephesian chapters of the novel we have the most explicit allusion to the Iphigenia myth in Achilles Tatius. Melite’s husband, thought to have perished at sea, is back and finds Clitophon married to Melite in his house. He throws the hero into jail accused of adultery. There Melite visits him to share their ‘first and last’ night together, and then another act of ‘changing places’ occurs, this time not between a prostitute and the protagonist but between a woman and a man, Melite and Clitophon. Clitophon exchanges garments with Melite and departs his cell, leaving his mistress behind in his stead in a very strange substitution-of-genders motif. When the guard realises what has happened, seeing this unexpected spectacle of a woman dressed as a man, he is speechless, claiming to have seen ‘the most paradoxical sight – like the deer in place of a maiden in the proverb.᾽277 277 Ach. Tat. 6.2.3, τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἔλαφον ἀντὶ παρθένου παροιμίας.



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Here Clitophon’s escape is fashioned according to the Iphigenia myth, but in a miraculous trans-gendered substitution: he is replaced by a woman. In fact, the scene has a lot in common with the popular Judaeo-Christian motif of the ‘escape from the brothel’ by a virgin and Achilles Tatius is not alone in borrowing themes that were favoured in early Christian narratives. In fact, the anecdote of the virgin in the brothel who uses her wits to escape unmolested, which appears in Xenophon’s Anthia and Habrocomes as well as in the later novel Apollonius King of Tyre.278 In Achilles Tatius this theme takes an ironic turn: the location is not a brothel but a jail in Ephesus, and yet male and female virginity are again contested. Although Clitophon is locked up in jail, the background of the brothel is echoed in his prostitution to Melite in order to secure her help in his escape, while Melite is cast in the role of the male ‘client’, giving him money in exchange for a night of passion.279 To stress the subversion of genders, the text brings in the mythical parallels of Achilles dressed as a woman among the daughters of Lycomedes, transposing in a further ironic twist the likeness of our effeminised Clitophon with the Iphigenia’s promised spouse, the (supposedly) manly Achilles. 280 The situation could not be more asymmetrical: Clitophon is imprisoned, and not yet on the altar, facing a possible death penalty. Of course, he escapes, and not through divine intervention but because of his lover’s cunning transvestite masquerade.281 Furthermore Melite, who guarantees Clitophon both his life and his reunion and escape with Leucippe, has something of a deus ex machina about her, or even Artemis. Indeed, her name, whether spelled with tort, recalls Artemis Ephesia’s well-known connection with bees and honey.282 When Clitophon leaves the prison, the end of the story does not appear far off, since Melite promises him an immediate reunion with Leucippe, hinting at the escape motif from the Iphigenia megatext.283 Yet things are more complex than that, and this burlesque 278 For the story in Ambrose see Piredda 2000. For the reception of the Christian motif of the virgin in the brothel in the novel see also Panayotakis 2002 and Panayotakis 2012, 430 with respect to the story of Apollonius King of Tyre. Other substitutions of virginal novelistic protagonists by prostitutes are the case of Leucippe’s near decapitation 8.16.2, and Thisbe’s, a music girl, who substitutes for Chariclea in Hld. 1.28.1. 279 Jones 2012, 245. 280 Ach. Tat. 6.1.3 Clitophon is also compared to Achilles dressed as a woman, among the daughters of Lycomedes; cf. Goldhill 1995, 94–98 on the contested virginity of Cleitophon: Melite is the first ‘non-prostitute’ woman he has had, which is equivalent to him losing his ‘virginity’. For the different meaning of cross-dressing among pagans and Christians see Davies 2002 and Hadjittofi 2016. 281 On transvestism see Jones 2012, 239. 282 Elderkind 1939, on the bee as the emblem of Artemis at Ephesus. 283 Ach. Tat. 6.1.1, ‘Now grant me a sage escape and keep your promises about Leucippe.’

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interlude programmatically initiates the third and last Iphigenia pattern staged at Ephesus. Outside the prison, in a tavern, Clitophon waits for Leucippe but instead learns from robbers that they were paid by Melite to execute Leucippe.284 Such an outcome, we will see in the next chapter, conforms either folktale material in which a woman who loses a beauty contest takes revenge on her rival285 or with a Phaedra-like plotting that seeks to destroy both her lover and his beloved, as we will see in what follows. Clitophon, however, does not associate this turn of events with folktale as he is not interested in Melite’s motivations. Instead he focuses on Leucippe’s death, which he hopes to be a sham, thus connecting this story with drama, a tale from the stage.286 His lamentation once more exhibits self-awareness of the repetitiveness of his misfortunes and stands as the best metaliterary evidence of the novel’s engagement with drama. In this case the adjective καινός, new, here related to the new disaster that befalls Clitophon, may no longer refer to the novelty thereof but may be a self-referential marker of a plot twist that would have been obvious to any avid reader of novels in antiquity. 7.5 1–4: Which deity has deceived me with a brief bout of joy? What god put Leucippe on display in this new plot of disasters (καινὴν ὑπόθεσιν συμφορῶν)? … All my pleasure was just a dream! Oh my Leucippe! How many times have you died on me (ποσάκις μοι τέθνηκας)! Have I ever had a rest from mourning? I am always at your funeral, as one death hastens to replace another (θανάτων διωκώντων ἀλλήλους). But those were practical jokes (παιδιά) that Fortune played on me, this is no longer one of her tricks. Well Leucippe, how did you really die? In the case of those sham deaths (ἐν τοῖς ψευδέσι θανάτοις) I always had some consolation, however small: in the first your whole body was left me, in the second I lacked only your head (as it then seemed) for a proper burial. But now you have died twice over, soul and body are twice gone (θάνατον διπλοῦν, ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος). You escaped from two gangs of cut-throats, but Melite’s pirates have killed you.

This long tirade is not just another one of Clitophon’s lamentations about his – and the readers’ – failed expectations, but a summary of Achilles Tatius’ metaliterary approaches to the Maiden’s death theme. The previous near-deaths of Leu284 Ach. Tat. 7.3.7. 285 Anderson 2000, 152–54 is right to compare Leucippe’s tale to Snow White; after all, both names are telling. However he overlooks that the real contest is not with Calligone, a secondary character in the novel who acts as a substitute for Leucippe, but with Melite, with whom Leucippe shares the similar features. That would have been the role of the step-mother or the jealous sister or even of an evil mother in the folktale, motifs AT S31 or K2212 or S322.2 respectively. Morales 2004, 47 rightly argues that both characters are equally beautiful and their beauty is described in similar terms. 286 Ach. Tat. 6.3 1, δρᾶμα καινόν.



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cippe, we learn, can be seen as a game of vicissitude; however the third is real, and once again a double death, this time of both the body and the soul. This is not a sacrifice, of course, but a murder resembling the pirates’ execution, although this time he has no part of his beloved’s body. This is an entirely new convolution of a tried-and-tested pattern, inviting the reaction of Clitophon’s internal narratee,287 Clinias, who appears a more careful reader of novelistic plots and who comments at a metafictional level thus: 7.6.2: ‘Who knows whether she is alive this time too (εἰ ζῇ πάλιν). Hasn’t she died many times before (πολλάκις τέθνηκε)? Hasn’t she often been resurrected (πολλάκις ἀνεβίω)?’

Unlike the hasty Clitophon, who fails once again to read Leucippe’s detailed story properly, Clinias is presented as the meticulous reader who has, by now, recognised that the Leucippe saga has a pattern (note the repetition of πολλάκις, πάλιν), especially concerning the protagonist’s near-deaths and subsequent resurrections. Nonetheless, wise Clinias is unable to convince his cousin, who, in another thwarting of readerly expectations, decides to share the blame for Leucippe’s murder with Melite, hoping for a death sentence.288 This however is a pun on a previous novelistic treatment of the maiden’s Scheintod. Clitophon’s eager acceptance of his supposedly implicit guilt, namely his affair with Melite, recalls Chaereas’ readiness to face the worse penalty for having (apparently) murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy. What is more, Clitophon’s purported murder, just the one committed by Chaereas, assimilates him to impure murderers such as Orestes and opens the possibilities for yet another Iphigenia scenario.289 Unlike the court scene in Chariton and unlike the Areopagus, the court at Ephesus finds Clitophon guilty and condemns him to be tortured and executed. This outcome reverses both the novelistic and tragic expecations. Just as in the earlier near-sacrifice of Leucippe, Clitophon is sentenced to being hung up and whipped, recalling Anthia’s hanging from the tree in Xenophon and Leucippe’s attachment to poles in the previous scene at Pelusium, and broadly Orestes’ near sacrifice in the IT. Yet, despite this threat, unlike Habroomes who is tortured at the hands of Manto, Clitophon escapes actual beating. The narrative closely follows the Iphigenia megatext and assimilates Clitophon’s punishment to Leucippe’s earlier near-deaths, thus once more treating him as a female character. Like other virgin heroines, Clitophon is saved at the last moment by Artemis’ representative, the male priest of the Ephesia, who appears as if ex machina to announce the

287 On the parodic nature of Clitophon’s repetitive attempts at suicide see Létoublon 2006. 288 Ach. Tat. 7.6.1–6. 289 E.g. in Ach. Tat. 7.7.6, μιαιφόνος γενόμενος.

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arrival of his future father-in-law, Sostratus.290 The recognition between kinsmen scene that follows – Motif C2 – is only a prelude to the long-anticipated climactic recognition/reunion scene between the lovers. Sostratus’ arrival at Ephesus under the auspices of Artemis in order to find his daughter echoes roughly Apollo’s guidance of Orestes to Scythia and foretells the reunion. When Sostratus learns what Clitophon is accused of and that Leucippe is missing, he bursts into tears of despair, blaming Artemis’ dream for having given him false hope for a happy ending. Upon hearing this, Clinias, the expert embedded reader, consoles Sostratus and reassures him that Artemis has a plan, resuming the novelistic scenario.291 Clinias therefore provides all the metaliterary comments about the positive outcome of the plot. But there is another hint to the reader regarding the underlying megatext: Upon hearing this soliloquy Clitophon picks up explicitly on the Iphigenia megatext, casting himself overtly in the role of Orestes. Like Orestes, in Clinias’ words, Clitophon now fights for his soul.292 And Ephesus is no longer a Greek city but a barbarian one: 8.2.1: Seeing the extent of his injury, I pretended not to notice it at all but instead made the temple resound with a high tragic lament on the subject of Thersander’s tyrannous treatment of me. ‘Whither further may we flee violence? Where may we seek shelter? To which one of the gods after Artemis? We are attacked in the very temples, we are struck in the sanctuaries! … His (Thersander’s) drunken violence stops not at striking blows, but even draws blood from my face, as if this were a battlefield, and we were at war … Who makes such libations to the goddess? Is this not the way of barbarians, of Taurians and Artemis of Scythia (οὐ βάρβαροι τοῦτο καὶ Ταῦροι καὶ ἡ Ἄρτεμις ἡ Σκυθῶν)? Only they have a temple that runs with blood like this. You have transformed Ionia into Scythia; blood that flows among the Taurians now flows in Ephesus too (καὶ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ῥεῖ τὰ ἐν Ταύροις αἵματα)!’

The passage presents one of the most interesting reinventions of Achilles Tatius’ additions to the Iphigenia megatext: the relocation of the sacrifice to Greek soil, as in the IA, although still followed by an escape and return as in the IT. This could be interpreted as a commentary on Greek cruelty, as opposed to that of foreigners, or a sign of questioning the presumed cultural superiority of the Greeks versus the barbarians, as in the case of Toxaris. And yet, Artemis Ephesia stands at a 290 Ach. Tat. 7.12.4. Having a male priest instead of a priestess as in the IT or in Chariton indicates the reversal of roles: just as Clitophon is presented with female traits, the priest responsible for saving him is male. 291 Ach.Tat. 7.14.6. 292 Ach. Tat. 7.9.1, ἀγὼν περὶ ψυχῆς ἀνδρός; cf. S. El. 1492, νῦν ἐστιν ἁγών, ἀλλὰ σῆς ψυχῆς πέρι, Orestes to Aegisthus in the exodos. The phrase is common in tragedy and especially in E. Phoen. 1330 and Or. 847, ψυχῆς ἀγῶνα δώσων, regarding the trial. The allusion is omitted in Liapis 2006.



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liminal position between the pure, Greek Artemis and the oriental Magna Mater. What is and what is not Greek, as filtered through the Phoenician Clitophon, is less straightforward than it seems. Thus, what Phoenicians were often accused of, namely child sacrifice, now becomes part of an intercultural dialogue in which the supposed Greeks are presented in darker colours than the Phoenicians. Like Orestes, this new Clitophon is brought to trial and almost put to death, but he is spared through recognition by his future father-in-law. Just like Orestes, Clitophon has had his good friend at his side since their adventures began, and it is with a quotation associated with Orestes that Clinias tries to defend him before the Ephesian court. What is more, Clitophon, in his later summary to Sostratus, tells him that throughout the duration of their adventures he and Leucippe have become as close as brother and sister, emphasising in this way their immaculate relationship while leaving open all the possibilities of both couple and other novel­istic plots: 8.5.4: ‘We have acted like sage philosophers, father, while we have been away from home. Passion caused our escape; we fled as lover and beloved (ἐραστοῦ καὶ ἐρωμένης φυγή) but during our exile we were like brother and sister (γεγόναμεν ἀλλήλων ἀδελφοί). If one can speak of such a thing as male virginity, this is my relationship to Leucippe up to now. For she has been longing for Artemis’ temple.’

This metaliterary comment demonstrates the novel’s revision of both the tragic and the novelistic expectations. Clitophon blends the dramatic plot-lines of the IT and the Helen, intertwining the themes of abduction and ‘sacrifice’. Moreover, he adds to the mix the theme of the virgin’s near-execution by another suitor, which is so prominent in the novel. Ultimately, by presenting himself as a potential Orestes-like victim, as a brother of the nearly slaughtered virgin, Clinias seems aware of the importance of the Iphigenia pattern for the Greek novel. Artemis’ omnipresence and power, expressed in Clinias’ words, is also important as the goddess safeguards not only the innocently slaughtered virgins, as in the myth, but also those who remain chaste until the happy marriage, as it is the case in the novel. Clinias’ version of the Iphigenia pattern, however, revises both the mythical and the novelistic readerly expectations. In this new plot at Ephesus, Leucippe is supposedly murdered by her lover and his wife; she is miraculously saved, revived and recognised by her purported slayer and her father. All elements are in their proper place for an ‘escape’ drama like that of the IT, since both her fiancé and father are in situ. However, Leucippe is not fully ‘resurrected’ after her return from the dead.293 She needs to prove that she is both not a ghost and still a virgin. 293 Cf. the speech of the priest on the supposedly-murdered Leucippe at 8.9 12: ‘The woman whom he had killed and who you said had been murdered, you see here alive. You would not be

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In countering Clitophon’s attack, Thersander, believing Leucippe no longer a virgin and therefore ineligible as a candidate for Artemis, claims she is a pseudo-virgin (ψευδοπαρθένος), and as such she should be punished by the trial of the Syrinx.294 The doubts about Leucippe’s virginity stress further her association with Penelope, since the god Pan, who supervises the ordeal, is supposedly Penelope’s son by the suitors. However, the priest of Artemis takes the part of the two lovers, in defence of Clitophon, and presents his own comic variation on the events: by shifting the weight from the tragic to a lighter context he imitates Aristophanes’ comedy.295 At the end, Leucippe’s last trial occurs: a final near-death/ rape ordeal with the potential for being buried alive. This final trial unifies the expectations from a ‘serious’ Iphigenia-like plot while including elements from novelistic immurations such as Callirhoe’s and Anthia’s. Lalanne (2006), 148 is correct in arguing that the imperial reader would have grasped that, for the new ordeal, Leucippe is presented as a sacrificial victim and dressed accordingly: in a long chiton and a sacred robe made of linen; a red fillet around her fair hair, presumably in contrast with the white robes; and barefoot, so as to make her a sexual object.296 Leucippe’s third (falsely announced) death is followed by the Syrinx trial and its ritual context: it may be considered a sequel to her other near-death experiences since she is not allowed to fully reunite with her brother and father before this is done.297 In Clitophon’s revision of the scene, rape with metamorphosis seems to be his central fear: 8.13 1: I have utter faith in your virginity, Leucippe, but Pan, my dear, makes me worried. This god has a penchant for virgins, and I fear you may become a second Syrinx. She fled his pursuit on a plain, she was chased on open ground, but we have shut you behind closed doors like a city under siege, so that if he should pursue, you could not flee. Lord Pan, be kind and do not violate the law of this place. We have observed it. Let Leucippe come back as a virgin. You made an agreement with Artemis. Do not play this virgin false.

In this strange ritual ‘immurement’ of Leucippe, if the girl is found to be a virgin she comes out of the cave safe; if not, then the priestess finds Pan’s pipes but not

so foolhardy as still to accuse the same man of her murder. For this is not a ghost (εἴδωλον) of the girl. Aidoneus has not sent (ἀνέπεμψε) the murdered woman to haunt you.’ 294 Ach. Tat. 8.3.3. 295 At Ach. Tat. 8.9.1, τὴν Ἀριστοφάνους ἐζηλωκὼς κωμῳδίαν. See also Billault 1998b and Brethes 2007, 22 on the influence of Aristophanes and of the comic aspects in this novel. 296 Ach. Tat. 8 13.1, ἱερᾷ στολῇ. On the white gown of Calligone and the contrast with the purple robes as exemplifying the nuptial loss of virginity as ‘Blutopfer’ see Bierl 2012b, 144–46. 297 Ach. Tat. 8.4.1.



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the body of the presumably raped and dead maiden.298 Thus Motif C1, substitution, is here intertwined with the metamorphosis theme. It is no longer the pipes that substitute for the girl but the girl that substitutes for the pipes. Pan desires the maiden and the music from the pipes sublimates and comforts his lust if the girl is found virgin; if not, then the phallic pipes are dropped in favour of his sexual victim. With this twist Achilles Tatius blends the sexual aesthetic of the ‘first night’ with that of ‘sacrifice’. The absence of the girl’s body from the cave on the third day, when the priestess visits the spot, is evidence that Pan has carried away his victim,299 but is also a reminiscent of the disappeared corpses of beautiful novelistic heroines, such as Callirhoe and Anthia. But Motif C1 does not take place. Leucippe enters and exits the cave, namely as a virgin, thus turning this strange sacrifice into a fraud just like Melite’s fake chastity trial. The ending of the novel with a trial of virginity instead of the mutual reunion of the lovers subverts any generic expectations.300 In summary Achilles Tatius is well-situated with respect to both the Iphigenia megatext and its novelistic and other fictional reworkings. Not only does the novel evoke scenes from the megatext, such as Orestes and Pylades being led to the altar with their hands tied behind their backs, but also there are plenty of similarities to other works of the Second Sophistic. The particular importance of Lucian’s Toxaris is illustrated through the emphasis of friendship in the novel, a crucial theme in Chariton, and especially in Clitophon’s comparison of Artemis Ephesia with the Tauri. Hence the novel is part of the elaborate debate over Greekness and the superiority (or not) of Greek rites and myths as opposed to ‘other’, here Phoenician, ones. However, its most important contribution is the revision and reconsideration of a pattern now fuelled by a variety of motifs found in other genres, both mythical and novelistic The novel makes ample use of the triple near-death sequence found in Xenophon, and it demonstrates a metaliterary interest in revising the themes of the ‘virgin in a tomb/cave’ and ‘ritual sacrifice’. And yet the theatrical sensitivity of Achilles Tatius’ text is far greater. Not only does he engage with tragedy and the respective IA and IT patterns, as well as the visual representations thereof, such 298 There were rumours about human sacrifices for Pan at Mt. Lycaeon and the Cave of Pan, see Burkert and Bing 1983, 114, who lists in his sources Erat. Cat. 40, Clem. Pr. 3.42.4 and especially scenes with Pan and the dismembered Actaeon. For rape and violence see Lalanne 2006, 271–73 in connection with rituals, such as race, also for the connection of the rape ritual with a death ritual in Achilles Tatius. 299 Ach. Tat. 8.6.14. 300 Montiglio 2012, 80–86 on Sostratus impeding the mutual recognition and Tatius’ novelty.

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as Iphigenia being brought forth with her hands tied, he also demonstrates strong ties with pantomime and comedy: thus the first revision of the ‘worn out’ virginon-the altar theme presents ‘substitution by goat-belly’ in a pantomime setting, the second near-death is with another human substituting for the virgin, and the last apparent death of Leucippe is orchestrated around the Aristophanic priest of Artemis. Despite their divergent intertexts the three near-deaths of Leucippe present the sequence prescribed by the Iphigenia pattern: a god involved (or not) in the sacrifice, the participation of kinsmen who facilitate the expected recognition scenes, as well as the averted sacrifice by substitution or rescue. What has been played down in this novel, however, is the recognition motif. Indeed, both the first and third near-death situations are followed by short face-to-face recognition scenes: Leucippe by Clitophon, and Clitophon by Sostratus. Neither is escape (D) a primary concern, since after the last ordeal the couple returns safely with Sostratus to Tyre. It seems then that, as in Xenophon, an obligatory theme of the novel was the maiden’s death, the treatment of which was illustrative of the novelist’s manipulation of both the mythical and the novelistic predecessors.

1.3.4 Longus Metamorphosis as substitution Longus’ pastoral space does not stage any human sacrifice, but seems aware of the importance of this pattern for the genre. For example, in Book 1 the pirates do kill one of the secondary characters, Dorcon; however, that does not count as a human sacrifice or execution.301 Lamon and Daphnis both face a public ‘tying up to a tree’ or ‘stringing up’ when they discover that the beautiful garden they had prepared for the arrival of Dionysophanes has been destroyed. In his despair Lamon fears that he will share the fate of Marsyas, who was tied up and flayed alive by Apollo after losing a music contest reminding the careful reader that that this myth was related to other novelistic situations as it is often employed in Achilles Tatius.302 In Longus, none of this comes true, although Chloe too is often close to rape and death by each of her admirers, Dorcon and Lampon, or during her abduction by the pirates.303 301 Long. 1.30.1. 302 Long. 4.8.4 and Reardon 1989, 336. We saw above how Clitophon narrowly escaped similar punishment. The myth of Marsyas is also used as an analogue in the case of Leucippe’s first near-sacrifice at 3.15.5. 303 For sex and violence see Winkler 1990a.



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Instead, the theme of the mythical near-sacrifice is replaced in this novel by the myths of metamorphosis. Unlike Anthia or Leucippe who are devotees of Artemis, Longus opts for another mythical model for Chloe, the Nymphs of the embedded tales. In doing so he does not only revise the novelistic near-death plot but also the novelistic mythical pattern currently in use. In the three aetia of the musical virgins, rape goes hand in hand with death and metamorphosis.304 1.27.4: The maid was distressed by the loss to her herd, the defeat of her song, and prayed to the gods to become a bird before she got home. The gods granted her wish, and turned her into this bird, which lives on the mountains like the maid and is a minstrel like her. 2.34.2: Syrinx ran from Pan and his force. Tiring of running, she hid in some reeds, disappeared into a marsh. Angrily Pan cut down the reeds, could not find the girl, realised what had happened to her, so he thought of the instrument. 3.23.3: Pan was angry with the girl … he cast a madness on the shepherds and goatherds, and they tore her limb from limb, like dogs or wolves, and scattered her limbs, still singing, over all the earth.

In this cursory revision, it is useful to note that all the girls in the inset tales – Phatta, Syrinx and Echo – face rape leading to death.305 The first is the milder version of metaphorphosis because the maiden lost a song contest; the second is a chase with metamorphosis before the rape takes place; and finally Echo’s gory history tells how the girl is dismembered alive by her male lovers. Chloe, however, to the surprise of the reader, passes close – but not close enough – to these dangers and although rape, rather than death,306 is often imminent she is always rescued and restored to Daphnis. In summary Whereas Longus’ novel shows awareness of both the mythical and the novelistic traditions, it does not revisit them thoroughly. Metamorphosis here stands as close to near-death as possible, with the bird Phatta, the musical instrument Syrinx, and the natural phenomenon, Echo, replacing – albeit unsuccessfully – the girl, although they do provide an afterlife of a different kind. A parallel might be the metamorphosis of Iphigenia into the demon Orsilochia, suggesting a bear 304 For rape in Ovid see Richlin 1992, 176. 305 For the ritual background and the Dionysiac mysteries see the still useful discussion in Merkelbach 1988, e.g. 179 on the sacrificial background in the Echo myth and the association with Lycurgus and Pentheus. For the connection of Chloe to the aetia virgins and rape see, selectively, Kossaifi 2012, MacQueen 1990, Merkelbach 1988 and the classic article by Zeitlin 1993. 306 Winkler 1990a.

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form and linking the Iphigenia myth with metamorphosis. In Longus, then, the Iphigenia pattern the Iphigenia pattern and especially its Motif C1 is substituted by the metamorphosis tale, and the ‘no-longer-just-near’ death provides an alternative telos and a different ‘escape’.

1.3.5 Heliodorus Heliodorus, like Xenophon and Achilles Tatius, presents his reader with three versions of the Iphigenia megatext, drawing thus on both myth and his predecessor’s reinventions.307 Moreover, Heliodorus, as we will see, combines both epic and dramatic recognition. In the final recognition scene with the near-sacrifice of Chariclea at Meroe and the near-sacrifice of Theagenes Heliodorus adds the couple’s happy ending reunion as man and wife, an important ingredient of the novelistic plot and a typical ending for the genre. Montiglio (2012), 142 is right to observe that there are thematic parallels that link the parent-child recognition to that of the couple’s initial coup de foudre and their realisation that they are meant to be together. Thus Heliodorus’ account imbues the long awaited, epicstyle recognition – which, as we will see in the last chapter, is an important part of the Penelope/Helen megatext – with the intensity and momentum of the dramatic scene.308 That being said, Heliodorus’ final and famous recognition scene is part of an intertextual and intratextual development with respect to both the mythical megatext as well as the two previous near-deaths of the protagonist. The first occasion is Chariclea’s near-execution by Thyamis in the novel’s opening, focalised through Thyamis; the second is her miraculous escape from the stake at Memphis. Thus the last Meroetic chapters invite the reader to contrast the finale with all the mythical and novelistic revisions of the tale.309 Thyamis at Aulis Nothing would be less surprising for a fourth-century reader of the Greek novel than that the death of a virgin should take place at the Nilotic mouth, in the realm of the Boucoloi. The slaughter of Chariclea/Thisbe at the beginning of the novel is a latent Iphigenia-motif, the introduction of which is unflagged but nevertheless, for the expert reader of novels, quite obvious when Thermouthis enters the narrative. It 307 An earlier verion of this chapter was previously published as Lefteratou 2013. 308 Lowe 2000, 224 also discusses the merging of the epic with the dramatic plot, but in the case of Heliodorus he argues for the primary influence of Menander’s comedic plots. 309 An overview of near-death situations in Heliodorus can be found in Scippacercola 2011, 147–164.



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is not a coincidence that the near-execution of Chariclea is the sequel of a wrongly interpreted dream. In the novel, Thyamis dreams of Isis foretelling Chariclea’s resurrection, which would work as a metaliterary hint for the seasoned reader: 1.18.3–4: The dream that visited him was god-sent, this is what it was … when he went inside the shrine (Isis at Memphis), he dreamt the goddess came to him, gave Chariclea into his hands, and said: ‘Thyamis, this maiden I deliver to you, you shall have her and not have her, you shall do wrong and slay her, but she shall not be slain.’

Unlike the reader, Thyamis, madly in love with Chariclea, understands the dream as referring to the first night he will have with the virgin, interpreting ‘slaying’ in phallic terms as penetration and her ‘apparent death’ as the loss of her virginity.310 But Thyamis reads the dream according to his own desire and and presents an allegorical interpretation.311 When the war erupts he decides to offer a sacrifice for the success of their cause. The external reader, seasoned through the works of Xenophon or Achilles Tatius, expects that the beautiful virgin Chariclea will be sacrificed on the altar of the bandits, as was the case with Anthia and Leucippe. However, for starters, to his/her surprise and contrary to the novelistic expectations, Thyamis acts as a civilised officer and orders ‘his henchman to bring a sacrificial animal (ἱερεῖον) so that they could make an offering to their native gods before entering the battle.’ It is only after the fighting is over that Thyamis slays ‘Chariclea’ in a fit of despair; miraculously, she is substituted by Thisbe. Nonetheless, the novelistic theme of the girl’s sacrifice on the bandits’ altar is replicated in Thisbe’s actual death. Thyamis’ henchman, Thermouthis, who has been charged to provide the sacrificial victim for the bandits, takes this opportunity to hides his lover Thisbe, in the same cave where Chariclea is, to save her from the battle. It is only after the battle is over and Thisbe is dead that he reappears bringing an animal to Thyamis. The chief, believing both the war and his fiancé lost, laughs at him for having already performed the sacrifice, referring to Chariclea.312 There are more hints at the sacrificial context of the murder and its ritual aspect: 310 On the elusive interpretation of dreams see Bartsch 1989, 99–100. For Thyamis’ subjective interpretation see Winkler 1982, 310. For killing as rape see Whitmarsh 2011, 170. For the misinterpretations of dreams as narrative strategy see Macalister 1996, 80–82. For the sexual connotations in dreams in the novels see Bierl 2007, 254 and Bierl 2012a. For dreams and phantasia see Pizzone 2012. 311 For Thyamis’ misunderstanding see Sandy 1982a, 7, Said 1992, 177, and Whitmarsh 2011, 217; see also the analysis by Dollins 2012, 35–38 of Thyamis as a sloppy reader of the dream. 312 Hld. 1.31 1, ‘I have sacrificed the most beautiful victim.’ Thermouthis, instead of fetching the animal, tries to hide Thisbe in the same cave where Thyamis had hidden Chariclea to protect her from the battle, a fatal move as at 2.12.1–3.

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1.30.7: Crazed with love and jealousy and anger, he (Thyamis) went to the cave as fast as he could run and jumped down into it, shouting long and loud in the Egyptian tongue. Just by the entrance he came upon a woman who spoke to him in Greek. Guided to her by her voice, he seized her head in his left hand and drove his sword through her breast, close to the bosom. With a last, piteous cry, the poor creature fell dead. Thyamis scrambled out of the cave and, after replacing the threshold stone and sprinkling a little earth over it, he wept as he said, ‘This is my bridal gift to you.’

Thyamis here combines a sacrificial act with an interment rite, since upon departing from the cave he closes the entrance and performs a symbolic ‘burial’ in throwing in a handful of earth. The reader, who thought Chariclea safely hidden, is made believe that the heroine may actually be in danger of suffocation. The episode is of primary metaliterary importance since it recalls not only the Iphigenia megatext but also the near-sacrifice/execution scenes of Anthia by Hippothous and Leucippe at Pelusium. Moreover, it triggers the themes of inhumation that were so prominent in the earlier novels by Chariton and Xenophon. Sacrifice, execution and burial alive are used here in one single near-execution scene as a virtuoso survey of the mythical and novelistic mode. Thus in Heliodorus’ first near-death scene, we observe that the pre-war sacrifice motif is located abroad (Motif A), with a lover performing the slaying (Motif B). The narrative in the first book does not give away the solution, as was also in the case in Anthia’s second Scheintod, although there are hints, as in Thyamis’ programmatic dream, which foretells Motif C1, namely substitution. Thyamis, the major focaliser and actor of the first ‘sacrifice’ of Chariclea, cannot read it to its end, so the narrative employs another embedded reader to scrutinise the storyline.313 It is a friend of the protagonist, as was the case of Polycharmus and of Hippothous in Xenophon, who contributes to the understanding of the plot. When the battle ends, Cnemon and Theagenes successfully enter the cave and recognise Chariclea as ‘not-Thisbe’. The couple is reunited in a passionate recognition scene that echoes that of the megatext, with mutual embraces and tears.314 Cnemon, unlike the reader, is not so much interested in the romantic reunion but in investigating the sham-death: he recognises both Thyamis’ sword and Thisbe’s body and, although he cannot figure out Thyamis’ motivation for murdering Thisbe, he assumes that Chariclea is indeed alive. Theagenes’ questions are those of the reader, and they are also important as a metaliterary aid for deciphering the plot. But, unlike the narrator, Cnemon is not omniscient, and he is unable to interpret the most crucial part of the pattern, the substitution motif.

313 More generally see Whitmarsh 2011; on this passage see Dollins 2012, 38. 314 Montiglio 2012, 110–12, recognition through the ears and the eyes.



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2.11.4–5: ‘So,’ asked Theagenes, ‘can you say how he committed this murder and from what motive?’ ‘How should I know,’ he (Cnemon) replied. ‘This cave has not given me the power of second sight like the shrine of Pytho.’

The victim who substitutes for the protagonist proves to be a woman of loose morals, as is the case in Achilles Tatius, a human victim. Unlike the external reader the characters have no way of learning why Thisbe ends up dead in Egypt, despite the happy outcome of Cnemon’s tale. Nor does the novel mention anything about Thyamis’ attempt to kill Chariclea after their reunion, just as Hippothous’ deed is not questioned by Habrocomes in the later chapters.315 However, Heliodorus’ most intriguing innovation in the novelistic pattern is that he gives the substitute offering, a name and a plot of her own. This is undoubtedly a metaliterary touch: Thisbe is no longer the anonymous prostitute of Achilles Tatius but a character whose life-story blends with that of the main couple’s in important parts of the intrigue, thereby rationalizing the substitution motif further.316 Chariclea ablaze In Book 8, Chariclea is falsely accused of poisoning Arsace’s nurse, Cybele, who originally intended to poison Chariclea to ensure that her mistress had no competition for the love of Theagenes.317 Lesbos, the island from which Cybele comes, was well known for being a borderline between Greece and the East and a number of oriental practices are attested.318 When Chariclea sees the impasse she decides, together with Theagenes, to face willingly any death sentence that befalls them as salvation from their current imprisonment and sufferings. This is quite different from the altogether positive stance of the couple towards misfortune, and this eagerness to die puts the happy ending at risk and subverts the expectations of the reader. Yet still, the external reader is aware that this is the embedded view of the plot and not the official narratorial plan. In a metaliterary highlight, we learn that only Chariclea, and not the narrator, believes their embrace in the prison will be their last, hinting thus at a sequel to the story.319

315 Cf. Hld. 6.9.6–7, Chariclea’s summary of her adventures with the Boucoloi to Calasiris mentions only her false ‘promise’ to marry him once at Memphis, but nothing about the murder. 316 The importance of Cnemon’s own story and its constrasts with the ideal love scenario is thoroughly discussed in Morgan 1989c. 317 Hld. 8.8.2–5. 318 Hld. 7.12.6. A joint worship of the Greek Apollo and the Anatolian Cybele existed already in the archaic times, Spencer 1995, esp. 296–299. 319 Cf. the echoes of telos/ending at Hld. 8 9.8, τὰ τελευταῖά τε ὡς ἐδόκει κατασπασαμένη.

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This near-execution of Chariclea is peculiar in that it is not a human sacrifice: it is to be death by fire, a unique case among the female protagonists of the Greek novel, for whom burial alive or sacrifice/execution by the sword is often the rule.320 Like the phallic execution of a virgin by the sword, fire also has sexual connotations, and burning at the stake evokes a universal male imagery of consuming the female body.321 But in addition to these strong sexual overtones, fire is also purifying.322 8.9.9–11: Her judges had no hesitation, they very nearly sentenced her to the excessive cruelty of a Persian execution, but touched perhaps by the sight of her youth and peerless beauty, they condemned her instead to be burned at the stake. At once she was seized by the executioners and taken to a place just outside the city wall ... a large crowd of other people from the city had joined the procession ... Arsace was there too, watching from the wall ... The executioners built a gigantic bonfire and then lit it. As the flames took hold, Chariclea begged a moment’s grace from the guards who held her, promising that she would mount the pyre without the use of force. She stretched her arms towards that quarter of the sky where the sun was beaming and prayed in a loud voice: ‘O Sun and Earth and you spirits above and beneath the earth who watch and punish the sins of men, bear me witness that I am innocent of the charges laid against me.’… Chariclea climbed onto the pyre and positioned herself at the very heart of the fire. There she stood for some time without taking any hurt. The flames flowed around her rather than licking against her, they caused her no harm but drew back wherever she moved towards them, serving merely to encircle her in splendour and present a vision of her standing in radiant beauty in a frame of light, like a bride in a chamber of flame.

Unlike the first near-death scene, Chariclea’s second execution becomes part of a public spectacle. As with the representations of Iphigenia’s sacrifice discussed above, especially the emblem from Empurias, the townsfolk participate in the procession. And just as in the mosaic, the virgin is led outside the walls under her own volition, followed by a large crowd. What is more, like Iphigenia, Chariclea faces death bravely and willingly. And yet her prayer before jumping onto the pyre, together with the events that follow, move beyond the Iphigenia myth

320 For similarities of this scene with the next at Meroe see also Morgan 1998a, 68–72. 321 Bachelard 1938, 77, the associations of fire with consummation in both a literal and a metaphorical sense are strong: being ‘eaten’ by the flames and by assimilation becoming an ‘edible’ sacrificial victim come together with a strong sexual fantasy of consummation. On the ‘consumptive gaze’ associations of food and sex see Morales 2004, 33–35. Cf. the ‘sacrifice with cannibalism’ of Leucippe at 3.15.4, where her entrails are removed, burned on the altar and consumed, Morales 2004, 167. For some applications of Bachelard’s phenomenology to ancient Greek texts see Newbold 2006 on Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. 322 As Bachelard 1938, 173 observes ‘toute lutte contre les impulsions sexuelles doit donc être symbolisée par une lutte contre le feu.’ For fire as a sexual symbol see also Bierl 2012a.



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to incorporate allusions to Herodotus and to Xenophon’s near-death of Habrocomes in Book 4.2.4 and 8, as well as to early Christian martyrdoms.323 It is difficult to distinguish all these different layers of intertexts in the novel, and such an endeavour is probably useless. More constructive however may be to observe how all these paradigms create a different variation of the near-death experience of a virginal heroine. Indeed in the passage above the judges choose the stake as opposed to other, crueler forms of the death sentence because of her beauty. This other, more cruel sentence might well have been crucifixion, a practice ‘discovered’ by the Persians and traced back to Herodotus, which was used by Chariton and Xenophon for their male characters but which was not – novelistically – appealing for a female character.324 Heliodorus’ other model, Xenophon, had portrayed Habrocomes first crucified and then nearly burned alive at the stake. In both cases Habrocomes escapes his sentence because of his purity.325 During his crucifixion Habrocomes prays to the Sun and the nearby Nile, professing his innocence, just like Chariclea in the passage above and, as with Chariclea, his life is spared and the god of the Nile pities him. In the case of Chariclea, she is saved because of a magic stone, pantarbe, which she was carrying together with other tokens. Finally, both Chariclea’s willingness to die and the theme of flames-that-do-not-touch-the-victim hark back to popular tales of martyrdom, Thecla and Agnes included, which – if they were popular in Xenophon’s times – would have been all the more familiar to an audience of the mid-fourth century.326 That being said, the second near-execution of Chariclea presents the reader with some problems. No substitution by animal and no rescue are manipulated as part of Motif C1. Surprisingly, Thyamis, also present at this second near-death of Chariclea, he is unable to prevent it but is among the crowds who encourage the girl to step out of the fire. 327 As for Chariclea, taking this to be a god-sent salvation, she steps out of the fire and re-joins Theagenes in prison.328 It is several paragraphs before 323 See Andujar 2012, esp. 146–147, on the theatricality of the scene. 324 For example, Herodotus tells us that King Darius crucified three thousand Babylonians, Hdt. 3.159. 325 X. Eph. 4.2.4 and 4.2.8. 326 For Chariclea and Thecla see Andujar 2012; for violence in the novels and in Christian martyrdoms see Chew 2003. Just as in the case of Thecla in the eponymous Acts 24, the flames did not touch her and she escaped punishment. In the early fourth-century (304 CE) Irene, with her companions Agape and Chione from Thessalonice, was also condemned to be burned alive. Yet another fourth-century case is Agnes; for the documentation see Barnes 2010. 327 Hld. 8.9.15. 328 Cf. Hld. 8 10.2, ‘My bizarre deliverance certainly bears all the marks of a supernatural or divine intervention to save me.’

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this unexpectedly interrupted near-execution is interpreted. In fact, not even Chariclea knows the reason for her salvation, and only later does she remember Calasiris’ advice always to have the pantarbe stone with her, which Theagenes etymologically understands as ‘fearing all things’.329 As rightly observed by Whitmarsh (2011), 47 the Greek novels tend ‘to avoid direct divine intervention, in line with their general commitment to narrative naturalism.’ This opposes Chariclea’s rescue to that of Iphigenia but the result is similar: to some extent, like Artemis’ dream for Leucippe, Calasiris’ intervention guarantees the happy outcome of the pattern. Although no substitution is provided for Chariclea the novel guarantees their escape, Motif D, to Ethiopia – yet another barbarian, faraway land. After Arsace’s death the two prisoners are being taken to Oroondates in Syene when they are captured by Hydaspes’ soldiers, and this time they face becoming the victims of a human sacrifice. Thus Theagenes’ prophetic dream at 8.11.3 foretelling his ‘escape’ from Arsace’s bonds does not immediately come true.330 It is characteristic of the pair that, upon hearing these verses, Theagenes and Chariclea give a double interpretation of the dream, which in turn can be understood as a metaliterary comment on how to decipher the story. According to Theagenes’ emotional approach,331 the ‘escape’ foretold by the apparition of Calasiris is only metaphorically meant as an escape from this life of suffering and a visit to the ‘maiden’, Kore, namely Persephone in Hades.332 In contrast, Chariclea suggests a ‘better’ (χρηστοτέρα) interpretation that foretells the ‘happy ending’ of the story, their arrival in Ethiopia and the reunion with her biological parents. Thus the text offers its reader a variety of interpretations to sympathise with but, by placing Chariclea’s version second, it implicitly favours it, since she is the main character and, to some respect, the reader’s empathy is linked to her point of view. Accordingly, the sacrifice scene at Memphis includes only Motif C1, execution by an enemy, not by a kinsman. Moreover, the motif of escape, D, from the foreign land, here Egypt, is anticipated but still questionable since the embedded readers, Chariclea and Theagenes, offer two different approaches to it. The next books, which stage a sacrifice in faraway Ethiopia, not only build on the tension established in the Memphian chapters but provide the full spectrum of Heliodoran revisions of the megatext.

329 Hld. 8.11 1–2, an etymological joke, since the opposite is true. 330 Hld. 8.11.3. ‘Ethiopia’s land with a maiden shalt thou see: tomorrow from Arsace’s bonds shalt thou be free.’ 331 For Theagenes interpreting the situation only through his current sufferings see the comment by Chariclea at 8.11.5, ‘You have grown used to putting the worst construction on everything, for people are apt to allow their circumstances to shape their thoughts.’ 332 Hld. 8.11.4.



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From Aulis to Meroe Hydaspes’ glory and return to Aulis Besides Chariclea, the main protagonist and focaliser of the last two books is her father and King of Ethiopia, Hydaspes. Hydaspes’ contribution to the plot is crucial. Only he can recognise the beautiful white girl as his legitimate child (and hence, his heir) and sanction the ‘happy ending’ of the novel.333 The Syenian chapters in Book 9 are not a mere digression to promote the suspense between the ‘escape from the Egyptian prison’ and the immediate ‘capture and sacrifice’ by the Ethiopians, but allow the reader to get to know one of the principal internal focalisers of the last two books, Hydaspes. Together with Charicles, as I will argue below, he is instrumental in the happy ending to this story of near-deaths and sacrifices.334 The long account of the siege is a key element for tying the plot together and prepares the reader for the coronis of the drama. The siege of Syene occupies Book 9 and draws heavily on the Iliad.335 This does not mean that the Herodotean allusions observed by Morgan (1982) and Elmer (2008) may be neglected; rather, they should be perceived in conjunction with the Iliadic allusions.336 The Trojan War was the ‘archetypical war’ for all later narrative reporting; it brought Greece into conflict against Persia and the East. The Homeric colouring of the battle scenes observed in the duel between Pelorus and Trachinus evokes that of Paris and Menelaus, and the duel of Petosiris and Thyamis echoes that of Hector and Achilles.337 At the border between Egypt and Ethiopia, the fighting continues around a city depicted as a potential Troy; surrounded by a great force, the native Syenians and the Persian occupiers are doomed. The detail that the Syenians are not defending their location but are caught between two powerful generals in their attempt to seize this strategic city lends a touch of imperialist political realism to the scene, rather than portraying an idealised battle to save the motherland. Book 9 contributes to a positive portrayal of Hydaspes before he resumes his role as his daughter’s (almost) executioner before the altar at Meroe. To some extent this is an integral part of his glory (kleos) that will eventually grant him 333 Montiglio 2012, 138 and elsewhere overemphasises the importance of the ‘maternal instinct’ in the recognition plot. However no telos is reachable without the paternal agreement. For fathers and other kyrioi of the female protagonists in the novels see Lalanne 2006, 244. 334 For this long digression as being ‘tiring’ see Rattenbury 1935; also Morgan 1989a, 299–30 argues that Book 8, with a possible defeat of the Ethiopians, plays with the potential of not concluding happily, since the sacrifice will not be offered. 335 Morgan 1982, for the historical context. Lightfoot 1988, 119 argues that Julian borrowed some fictive elements from Heliodorus’ description. Against this see Bowersock 1994, 155. Also Elmer 2008, 423. On the chronology and the relevant scholarship see Futre-Pinheiro 2014. 336 Elmer 2008, 423, argues that Heliodorus is narrating his own version of the Persian Wars. 337 Sandy 1982a, 88.

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his return (nostos).338 Hydaspes is characterised in Book 9 to contrast with Agamemnon in Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides’ IA.339 And yet throughout the Syenian book the narrative insists on pointing out differences rather than similarities. In the Iliad and the IA, Agamemnon is presented as a man driven by a thirst for power;340 according to Clytemnestra, the whole heroic expedition was based on a crime that served the private ambitions of the Greek generals.341 In contrast to Agamemnon, Hydaspes is always presented as the ‘enlightened’ monarch who is not just one-sided but also possesses Odyssean features.342 Unlike the situation at the siege of Troy, which lasted ten years, Hydaspes, to make his attack quick and successful, conceives a brilliant, Odyssean plan: to drown the city.343 Hydaspes (not only do the components of his name mean ‘water’ and ‘shield’, but this is also the name of the river beside which Alexander fought Porus) chooses to attack the city with water, whereas Troy was famously burned down.344 Hydaspes’ scheme is not based on attacking from within but from without; the Syenians, because they are not fighting to defend their homeland, are instead pawns in the hands of their sovereigns, and upon seeing the approaching disaster they beg Hydaspes to show mercy, which he happily does.345 The Aethiopica offers yet another method of attacking Syene that highlights the Homeric tones of the passage and provides a sequel to the Ethiopian Iliad of Hydaspes. Oroondates surrenders and plans to escape from the captured city. So, while the city celebrates the Neiloa with sacrifices and banquets, Oroondates frees his men, who were imprisoned in Syene.346 The setting is like at Troy: feasts and banquets causing somnolence and the subsequent surprise of the Syenians upon discovering the Persians’ escape. This is reminiscent of the Trojans’ naïve celebrations with which they welcomed Odysseus’ wooden horse that led to the 338 In Pucci 1998, 212, the kleos is normally posthumously attributed but the Iliad attributes it also to living heroes, such as Diomedes. He also compares Achilles’ kleos with Odysseus’ kleos and nostos, see Hom. Il. 9.410–416, ‚I have lost my return/nostos home but my reputation/kleos will stay immortal.’ 339 For associations of Hydaspes especially at 10.39.1 with Agamemnon see Morgan 2006, Montiglio 2010, and De Temmerman 2014, 97–98. 340 E. IA 1195, ‘Is your only thought to be distinguished in kingship and generalship?’ 341 E. IA 1194. 342 On Agamemnon being one-sided in the IA, unlike Hydaspes of Book 10, see Montiglio 2010– 55. Cf. X. Cyr. 8.4.7, and the pious Ethiopian Sabacon, who ruled over Egypt as in Hdt. 2.139, see also Morgan 2005, 309–18. 343 Hld. 9.3.1. 344 The battle of the Hydaspes, 326 BCE, Plu. Alex. 62.1, Arr. An. 5.18; note that Alexander, having won, showed clemency and allowed Porus to rule in his name. 345 Hld. 9.5.1. 346 Hld. 9 10.1–3.



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fall of the city, and the attuned reader anticipates a disaster to follow Hydaspes’ initial clemency. It is important to notice that, while the ruse of Hydaspes causes no harm to the city, the Odyssean stratagem of Oroondates puts his former allies into danger. The Persians’ escape causes the Syenians to be suspected of treason since, despite Hydaspes’ lenience, they appear to have co-operated with the enemy. Here the king’s reprieve is put to the test: if he takes revenge on Oroondates and the Syenians, not only is his kleos but also his nostos endangered, which for the mythically steeped reader equates the possibility of an ‘unhappy’ reunion with his family and Chariclea, given the nostos reserved for Agamemnon. Hydaspes nevertheless shows mercy for a second time, which anticipates the positive resolution of the novel.347 This idealisation of the Ethiopian king in the aftermath of an ostensibly Odyssean tactic is important for the Ethiopian – supposedly barbarian – interpretation of a Greek characteristic: cunning. Thus the king’s strategic genius goes up against mere wit, illustrating the difference in moral calibre of Hydaspses as opposed to not only Oroondates but also both Agamemnon and Odysseus, the two major strategists of the Trojan War.348 That said, Hydaspes’ philanthropia seems to be inspired by another reception of the Trojan myth, through the achievements of Alexander the Great, whose model was Achilles. The dialogue for example between the victor, Hydaspes, and the defeated, Oroondates, is reminiscent of the encounter between Alexander and Porus, in that Hydaspes approaches his opponent with admiration.349 Moreover, Hydaspes proves himself magnanimous and forgiving towards the besieged Syenians for a second time, in an attempt to spare the innocent majority from the consequences of one person’s misconduct.350 Hence, unlike Agamemnon’s victory, Hydaspes’ victory will be fair from start to finish, and nothing will tarnish his homecoming.351 That is why his nostos is unlike Agamemnon’s but similar to that of Odysseus352 and will result in future happy times with his wife and his daughter. This multilayered approach to the Iliadic mythical megatext in Book 9 as an ‘alternative’ Iliad is inseparable from the Iphigenia pattern that follows, and 347 Hld. 9.6.2, 9.6.5 and 9.8.1. 348 The triumph of wit over generalship is often contrasted in the Odyssey, since Odysseus, unlike Agamemnon, achieves a happy nostos. Cf. Hom. Od. 24.95–200, the ghost of Agamemnon in Hades now reflects upon him failing in the campaign. Pucci 1998, 213–14. 349 Cf. Plu. Alex. 9.21.1ff and 60.14. 350 Hld. 9.7.2, ‘It would be absurd ... for one man’s folly to entail the loss of so many lives.’ 351 Paulsen 1992, 202 on Hydaspes being portrayed as the clement Cyrus as opposed to Oroondates, described as tyrannos. 352 E. IA 1186–7, ‘What happiness are you praying for by sacrificing your child? An evil homecoming to match your shameful departure?’

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it discloses why the ‘war episodes’ precede the sacrifice in the Aethiopica. The narrator, starting in Book 10, urges the reader to ‘let this be the end of our narrative of events at Syene: from so perilous a predicament the city had passed in an instant to such felicity, owing to the righteousness of one man.’ This is an intratextual comment on Book 10, summarising the events of the preceding book as an elaborate narration of how, despite the similarities, Syene did not became another Troy because of Hydaspes’ virtue. It is also a comment in line with the ongoing Mythenkritik demonstrating Heliodorus’ own amelioration of the Iliadic tale.353 What is more, it is a corrigendum to Chariton’s portrayal of Chaereas’ battle against the Persians as reminiscent of the Trojan War and of Alexander’s conquest of Tyre and of the Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.354 In Chariton, the hero is portrayed as a leader as competent as Agamemnon and as brave as Achilles, but needful of Callirhoe’s help in order to display clemency to the Great King’s wife and return her to her husband. The text’s reference to ‘one man’ draws attention to the one major character in the next book, Hydaspes, who unlike his mythical and novelistic models shows exceptional wisdom. Heliodorus, alone among all the Greek novelists, stages a post-war/battle sacrifice which is nonetheless connected to the military victory. Theagenes and Chariclea are the protoleia, the first captives of the war, and therefore the appropriate sacrificial victims for the celebrations. When they are caught they are already chained since they were on their way to Oroondates. Hydaspes’ scout rejoices at the sight of the two prisoners as he anticipates their victory: 9.1.4: ‘Excellent!’ he exclaimed, ‘in the first spoils of war, the gods deliver our enemies bound into our hands! Let these, our first prisoners,’ he went on, ‘be kept safe for the victory sacrifices as the first fruits of the war, for so Ethiopian law requires. They are to be kept under guard to be an offering to the gods of our homeland’ … 9.2.1 The removal of the first set of chains raised hopes in the two lovers that they were to be given their freedom, but these hopes were dashed when their guards loaded them with new chains, chains of gold. Theagenes could not contain his laughter. ‘A great improvement, I must say!’ he exclaimed. ‘What kindness Fortune is showing us! We change iron for gold, captivity brings us riches, and now we are aristocrats among prisoners!’ Chariclea smiled too and tried to brighten Theagenes’ mood by reminding him of what the gods had foretold and beguiling him with happier hopes for the future.

This must have been a striking tour de force and quite the departure from what the careful reader of Greek novels was accustomed to from either the mythical 353 Cf. for example the contrasting visions of Agamemnon in Dio, Gangloff 2006, 314–17. Agamemnon as a model in the speeches on Kingship is revised in the D. Chr. Or. 11 and in D. Chr. Or. 61, Chryseis, where the negative aspects of his character appear. 354 See De Temmerman 2014, 97 for a comparison of Chaereas and Hydaspes with Agamemnon.



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pattern or its novelistic reworkings. The reader does expect an escape to Ethiopia, which after all was not a strange land but Chariclea’s homeland. But then, the remaining Motif D of the previous pattern announced in Theagenes’ dream is twisted in this new ironic recapture of the pair and their confinement in golden chains. On the other hand, the seasoned reader, who would have expected such sacrifices in remote oriental places, might have foreseen this turn of fortune as the two interpretations offered an ambiguous outcome: Theagenes’ reading of a death threat versus another ‘near’ escape as suggested by Chariclea. Hence, this post-war sacrifice contributes, as we will see, to a merger of the plots of the IA, sacrifice at home for a common cause, and the IT, cruel rites of human sacrifice in a barbarian country. Thus, the narrative prospects for a subversive finale are heightened. The events of the closure also allude to Achilles Tatius’ finale and, especially, a virginity test for both of the heroes on the pyre. Just as Leucippe had to prove herself virginal by undergoing a near-rape/sacrifice ritual in the cave of Pan, Heliodorus’ Chariclea, and even Theagenes, need to undergo a similar trial. This time it is not just female virginity but also male virginity that is literally at stake.355 The novel therefore revises and idealises the topos of mutual chastity and faithfulness, found purely only in Xenophon, and supports it with ‘real’ evidence of mutual fidelity, a topic of extreme ambivalence in Chariton, Longus and of course Achilles Tatius. Moreover this militant abstinence of the characters lends a different dramatic tone to the near-death theme. What is more, it makes clear the underlying connection in Achilles Tatius between virginity and death by sacrifice and/or by the sword on the altar, as opposed to other means of death reserved for the non-virgin female characters, Callirhoe and Anthia.356 The events at Meroe clearly evoke a dramatic setting and the IA in particular. The arrival of the couple at Meroe is presented at 8.17.5 if ‘the scene was like the preliminary appearance (προαναφώνησις) and introduction (προεισόδιον) of the actors in the theatre before the play begins, and in an interesting prolepsis the narrator tells how the couple was led to Ehtiopia as captives, before resuming their roles as the country’s leaders.’ Thus Books 9 and 10 are presented at metaliterary level as a drama which features a reversal of fortune that leads to a happy ending. Under this generic dramatic template, the text takes pains to describe further the theatricality of the scene. The novel focuses on the emotions written on the visages and gestures of those who, like Chariclea, hope for a positive outcome – as 355 Hld. 10.9.3 (Theagenes’ test) and 10.10.1 (Chariclea’s test). 356 In the case of Anthia’s first ‘sacrifice’ we observed that Hippothous thought her to be a ‘κόρη’, X. Eph. 3.3.4.

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opposed to those who, like Hydaspes, take the plot-turn as a tragic development. But even this description prompts the reader to recall the Iphigenia megatext: for example, in the Aethiopica and in the IA the contradictory emotions manifested on the faces of both daughter and father are highlighted in order to underscore the dramatic irony;357 in IA, Iphigenia cheerfully greets a weary-looking father, just as in the Aethiopica, Hydaspes sadly observes the radiant countenance of Chariclea on her way to be sacrificed.358 However, the real ‘spectacle’ begins after the virginity trial of the burning pyre with Chariclea dressed in her Delphic gown.359 It is the third time Chariclea has consciously dressed for a ‘performance’ of which she is the star.360 Chariclea reveals her identity in a dramatic way, as Hydaspes recounts at 10.12.2 ‘casting herself in the role of (his) daughter to resolve a hopeless situation like a deus ex machina in the theatre.’ The dramatic plot according to which Chariclea shapes her self-defence is modelled on an amalgam of the Iphigenia megatext. According to the pattern she is a captive in a foreign land where the custom of human sacrifice is still practised. If the story in Ethiopia is like the one both Chariclea and the reader expect from the Iphigenia megatext, then there is an oscillation between killing one’s own children and killing foreigners: 10.12.1–3: ‘Does the law enjoin on you, sire, the sacrifice of aliens or of your own countrymen?’ ‘Aliens,’ he said. ‘Then it is time for you to find a new victim to sacrifice,’ she said, ‘for you will find that I am a native of this land of ours.’ In spite of Hydaspes’ astonished assertions that she was not speaking the truth, Chariclea continued: ‘you evince surprise at the least important part of my revelations: the most important is yet to come. Not only am I an Ethiopian, but I am of the royal house and bound to you by the closest ties of kingship’ … ‘the law may permit you, sire, to kill aliens, but neither law nor nature allows you, father, to murder your own child! For today the gods shall proclaim you a father, deny it as you will.’

Chariclea’s argument is rooted in the distinction between human sacrifice that includes killing foreigners, xenoktonein, something tolerable, and killing one’s own children, something deemed insufferable by both law and nature, dismiss-

357 Hld. 10.7.3, ‘(Chariclea) whose countenance was radiant and smiling.’ Cf. IA 64, ‘Father, I was so happy to see you.’ 358 E. IA 650 and Hld. 10.7.6. 359 Hld. 10 9.3; On the theatrical elements of the scene advertised at 8.17.5 see Paulsen 1992, 75. 360 See Morgan 1998a, 71–72 on the importance of the gown as illustrating her Artemisian side. The other two times she wore this gown were in Delphi, when she meets Theagenes at 3.4.2, and before her marriage to Trachinus, 5.31.2. Chariclea lives her life more or less consciously: her love, her Helen-adventures and now her Iphigenia-adventures. For the chiton incarnating the Apollonian dialectic capacities of the protagonist see De Temmerman 2014, 290–91.



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ing thus any anticipation of an IA pattern.361 Chariclea, like the reader, expects that the king will not go against ‘nature’ and kill his own offspring, provided he is convinced that she is a legitimate child, thus lifting the spirits of both the embedded focaliser, Chariclea, and the reader. 362 Chariclea’s demonstration of her ties of kinship, which stress the importance of Motif B for the plot, starts with the proofs of her being first an Ethiopian and then the lost princess. Strangely, if Motif B proves correct, then the IA prospect of the sacrifice is deconstructed, although this is the motif that particularly contributes to the tragedy of the Euripidean play. But what Chariclea has in mind is the case of an averted sacrifice abroad like the IT, where the kinship guarantees recognition and escape. Indeed, the recognition scene follows all the steps of the ‘ideal recognition’, since Hydaspes does not know the identity of his victim, and, in Aristotelian terms, it is ‘the better form ... when the character does it in ignorance and recognises his victim afterwards.’ The recognition in the Aethiopica displays all the potential elements of the Aristotelian dramatic recognition typology better than any other of the novels, asserting its claim to being the exemplary dramatic recognition.363 But although the recognition scene is successfully carried out, Motif C2 is revisited and the Sacrifice pattern is resumed. Chariclea and the reader return back to Motif C1 where the sacrifice is compulsory. This is a twist on the readerly expectations – both on the grounds of an adventure in a faraway land and due to their familiarity with Motif C2, recognition between kinsmen abroad – of a happier outcome.

361 For a discussion of maternal and paternal nature, which is important in Chariclea’s argument, see Montiglio 2012, 125–40 on ‘nature is never wrong’ and the ineffectiveness of parental instinct in carrying out the recognition scene. 362 Cf. Hld. 10.11.1, ‘Cheerful because he was expecting a solution from the current situation.’ 363 It is like the Aristotelian: simultaneously (a) ‘the least artistic recognition ... is recognition by visible signs,’ which are found in the band, the jewels and the ebony scar on Chariclea’s arm; (b) it is ‘by means of memory,’ since glimpsing the young girl reminds Persinna of the daughter she should have had and Hydaspes of the dream in which he was father of a daughter; (c) it is also a recognition ‘manufactured by the poet’ in that Chariclea accidentally embraces the feet of Sisimithres, whom she only later recognises as her saviour, and who is now her public defender; and (d) it is a recognition ‘on the basis of reasoning’ as natural conclusion, since Hydaspes has to accept and make evidence of all the testimonies before acknowledging his daughter. (e) Finally, to complete these simultaneous modes of recognition, the narrative presents another feature, namely the famous Andromeda painting explaining the colour of Chariclea’s skin. See also the quadripartite classification of recognition scenes in Arist. Po. 1454b, 16ff. For the reception of the Poetics among the novelistis, especially the case of Chariton, see Rijksbaron 1984 and Montiglio 2012, 11–14.

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Despite the evidence, Hydaspes nevertheless decides to sacrifice his daughter, since tradition demands it and the people364 have decided. It is at this moment that Hydaspes comes to personify the character of Agamemnon, and Persinna that of Clytemnestra, the ‘tragic mother’. The theatricality of the next scene is highly accentuated: Hydaspes is now consciously staging his own drama against the expectations of the other plot-creator, Chariclea. Hence, whereas the daughter expected the recognition scene to be the ending of her plot, the father conceives a new one. Like a good dramatist and actor, Hydaspes takes his time to observe his audience’s reaction before moving on with the play: ‘He stood and looked at his people, whose emotions were no less than his own and who were weeping from a mixture of delight and pity at destiny’s stage management of human life ... and raised his arm and with a motion of his hand stilled the tempest (κλυδώνιον) that raged in the people.’ The noun κλυδώνιον – meaning ‘surge’, ‘surf’ – is frequently used in Aeschylean tragedy.365 Further on, Hydaspes presents himself as a man subject to divine powers; it is divine will, he says, ‘whether it is the gods’ wish to bestow her on me and take her from me in the space of a single instant.’ Moreover, he addresses both his subjects and his daughter in heavily emotional vocabulary drawn from both tragedy and epic: ‘so then, if you will, cease your tears, put away your empty commiserations, and let us proceed with the ceremony ... and you, my daughter, do not confuse my heart with sorrow.’ Hydaspes stresses his personal drama by evoking more of the IA, addressing her with the following words at 10.16.9: ‘And you, my daughter ... conduct yourself with the pride and courage befitting a king’s daughter ... come to your father ... for I am the man who has to slay his child in the very instant of calling her by that name.’ The comparison between sacrifice and marriage is common throughout Greek literature, but here it is particularly related to the Iphigenia myth alone.366 Moreover, the sacrifice of a king’s daughter for the common good is a major feature of the Iphigenia myth, and it is explicitly reworked in the novel.367 Thus, unlike the novelistic predecessors, Heliodorus turns once more to the basic sources of his megatext and adjusts them accordingly.

364 Hld.10.16 1–6. 365 Cf. A. Ch. 183, κλυδώνιον χολῆς and A. Sept. 759, a metaphor about the city being in danger (κλυδωνίου). 366 E. IA 460–491, ‘The poor virgin, it seems that Hades will marry her soon.’ 367 E. IA 514ff. A major difference between the IA and the Aethiopica is the viewpoints of the priests. Whereas Calchas is presented negatively in the play (520), in the novel the Gymnosophists explicitly argue against human sacrifices, 10 9.6.



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While the reader’s expectations – and presumably Chariclea’s, whose reaction to Hydaspes’ words is not recorded in the text – is being threatened with a sacrifice the narrator gives a metaliterary cue in the king’s speech: 10 17.1: So saying, he laid hold of Chariclea and made as if to lead her towards the altars and the fires that burn on them, though the fire of sorrow that smouldered in his own heart was hotter than any altar fire. And all the while he prayed that his oration, whose rhetoric he had contrived to ensure its ineffectiveness, would fail to carry its point. But his words jolted the Ethiopian assembly into activity. They would not allow Chariclea to take so much as a single step towards the altar.

Just as in the Syenian episodes Hydaspes proves himself a better general than Agamemnon, so in this family drama does he appear more capable of defending his daughter openly and in person. This is in contrast to the IA, where Agamemnon – after the official letter supposedly inviting Iphigenia to marry Achilles at Aulis – sends her a second letter telling her not come. In his monologue Agamemnon appears to be a caring father until Menelaus and Odysseus discover his plan, and the second letter is never delivered.368 These backstage arrangements of the play are thoroughly revised at both a metatheatrical and metamythological level here. Instead of secret plotting, Hydaspes takes the situation into his own hands and delivers his own speech, in support of Chariclea. He is thus recognised by his people as not only the king, but also as having the right to remain Chariclea’s father.369 The revision of the onlookers’ attitudes also leads to other theatrical and mythical considerations. In the IA, the Greeks, with the exception perhaps of Achilles, do not oppose the sacrifice and remain spectators. Hydaspes’ expectations seem to come true when the crowd, overwhelmed by the pathos of his performance, releases him from his duties. What is more, this reaction by the Ethiopians indicates Chariclea’s final ‘recognition’ by her people as their princess. This response from the crowd is presented as being in direct cultural dialogue with Heliodorus’ previous dramatic models by highlighting the sensitivity and the sympathy of the Ethiopian crowds to such Iphigenia-like plots. With Motif B thusly revised and contested, Chariclea, like Iphigenia, narrowly escapes death, although this is achieved not by substitution but with the help of the embedded audience, the crowd. Unlike Heliodorus’ models in the mythical, dramatic 368 E. IA 399, (Agamemnon to Menelaus) ‘I am worn away by nights and days in tears because of lawless and wicked acts against my own children.’ Cf. also the comment of the chorus at 403, ‘This speech is different from the earlier one and a fine sentiment it is, to spare one’s children’ (transl. Henderson). 369 Hld. 10.17.1, ‘You are the father of the people, now become a father of your own household.’

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and novelistic revisions of the maiden’s sacrifice, no supernatural or ex machina solution is provided besides the expectations of the embedded and external audiences. It is by human cunning and wisdom that the obstacles and twists of fortunes are overcome. Chariclea in the land of the Taurians Conversely, even as father, daughter and the crowds rejoice at the ‘happy ending’, another sacrifice is still pending: that of Theagenes.370 Not only this, but, despite the happy outcome, there is another returning Motif C1, substitution of a maiden next to Theagenes instead of Chariclea on the altar: 10.18.2–10 19.2: (Hydaspes) ‘I shall see to the sacrifice once we have selected the girl to be sacrificed in your stead alongside the young man, if we can possibly find one fit to take your place.’ Chariclea almost wailed aloud in her anguish at this reference to Theagenes’ immolation, it was with some difficulty that she refrained from anything so inopportune and forced herself to subdue the frenzy of her emotions to the exigencies of her situation. Once more she tried to work around stealthily to her goal (πάλιν ὑφεῖρπε τὸν σκοπόν). ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘in sparing me the people may have consented to forgo the female sacrifice altogether, thus relieving you of any further obligation to find a girl. If anyone insists that the sacrifice must be performed without subtraction, with victims of both sexes, then you must look not only for another girl, but for another man as well. Otherwise you will have to kill not another girl, but kill me again as you originally intended (ἐμὲ πάλιν σφαγιάζειν) … ‘it is my god-driven destiny to live together with this man as long as he lives and die together with him if he dies.’

Chariclea expects the sacrifice to be cancelled altogether and her cunning to prove once again useful, hinting at the metaliterary, self-reflexive, and metafictional, nature of suche episodes in the novel (πάλιν). But Hydaspes returns to the motif of substitution, at which Chariclea refuses to be replaced at Theagenes’ side: no other woman can die with him, as no other woman can live with him. The king’s remark about the near impossibility of finding someone like her to take her place is a metaliterary sign that substitution is impossible and makes the reader ponder whether this pattern will lead to an actual sacrifice deprived of substitution or whether another miraculous solution will appear. The text that shows the recurrence of the situation – πάλιν – makes it obvious that Hydaspes will either have to kill Chariclea indeed or save Theagenes as well. Since this first argument does not convince her father, Chariclea asks to be allowed to kill the man, whom she has presented once more as her brother and not as her fiancé, herself. Hydaspes is at loss. As a virgin, Chariclea, trium370 Montiglio 2012, 143 on a Neoplatonic interpretation of Theagenes as Chariclea’s ‘recognition of the onset of love’.



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phally proven by the test of the stake, cannot have a husband, which might have enabled her to perform the sacrifice of Theagenes. The plot reaches an impasse and returns to stage one, this time focusing on xenoktonia, echoing the IT and especially the imminent sacrifice of a ‘brother’ by his ‘sister’. Chariclea also proposes the mutual death of two lovers, which is what she hints at in her request to slay (first) Theagenes, and then presumably herself. Her praise of the knife, which will bring her as close as possible to a happy ending, is part of the reverie of her staged death – which would indeed make their story a celebrated Ethiopian legend. 10.20.2: ‘Your Majesty … if this (exempting Theagenes from the sacrifice) may be impossible … at least grant me one wish: bid me slay the victim with my own hand (μὲ αὐτουργῆσαι τὸ θῦμα), bid me take the sword in my hand as treasure beyond price and earn undying renown among the Ethiopians for my courage.’

But we need to dwell more on the sibling relationship between the protagonists. The novel has taken great pains to establish the alternative kinship relation between them.371 First, Chariclea tried to introduce Theagenes as her brother to Thyamis, where they appeared as priests of Artemis and Apollo respectively. Again in Book 6, Chariclea is compared to Isis in her search for Theagenes-Osiris in Chemmis, a sacred city in the cult of Osiris,372 and afterwards at Bessa.373 Chariclea again introduces Theagenes as her brother to Hydaspes.374 This choice is not only required by circumstance, her subtle and discreet handling of rival suitors, but it has a deeper analogue in the Isis-Osiris myth: like Isis and Osiris, who fall in love in their mother’s womb, Theagenes and Chariclea are soulmates in search of each other’s love.375 The brother-sister relationship is not merely a trick to deceive their respective suitors or a reminiscence of (neo-) Platonic love,376 but also a narrative ploy fully utilised in Book 10: because Chariclea presents herself as Theagenes’ sister, it enables Motif B, sacrifice by a kinsman, and Motif C2, recognition between kinsmen, thus enhancing the reader’s pity and fear. On the

371 See also Létoublon 1993, 150–152. Montiglio 2012, 174 underlines the recurrent ruse of presenting a lover as a brother. 372 There are two Chemmis: (a) a big city, see Herodotus, 2.91; (b) a floating island, Herodotus, 2.156. On Chemmis as the first city to learn about Osiris’ death see Plut. De Is. 356d. For Chemmis as the birthplace of Horus see Behaeghel 1995. 373 Coray is conjectured that this Bessa was the city of Antinoopolis; the idea was refuted by Feuillâtre 1966, 39 since the Delta is far away. 374 Hld. 10.8.2. 375 Hld. 3.5.4. 376 For allegorical interpretations see Hunter 2005, Montiglio 2012, 142–43.

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other hand, the brother-sister relationship in a quasi-IT setting may also be an allusion to Achilles Tatius’ presentation, at the end of their adventures, of the relationship between Clitophon and Leucippe as that of siblings, or better, as that of a chaste pair of lovers. The narrative now sends Chariclea into her tent with Persinna and focuses on Theagenes giving his viewpoint of the sacrifice:377 in a foreign land, the Tauri in Iphigenia’s case and Meroe in Chariclea’s, barbarians perform human sacrifices by killing strangers; the victims are dedicated to Artemis and Selenaea when unexpectedly they appear to have a close relationship with the priestess who executes the sacrifice. This is in both cases a priestess of a Moon goddess, Artemis and Selenaea, respectively. Among the Taurians, a virgin priestess performs the ritual, whereas in Ethiopia only a married woman may do so. Chariclea, however, is in a liminal position between a virgin and a woman, being both virginal and Theagenes’ fiancée. The mythical parallel between the sacrifice of Theagenes and that of Orestes is based on two things: the virtual brother-sister relationship, already staged by Chariclea in the Helen chapter, and the ensuing recognition, required for the happy ending and the ritual aetiology. On the one hand, Chariclea, unlike Iphigenia, is fully aware of Theagenes’ identity. Yet this does not suffice. Theagenes requires not only his bravery to be recognised, but his identity too: not as brother, nor as foreigner, but as beloved. It is Charicles’ mission to recognise him as the abductor of his daughter, and only then is Theagenes fully legitimised as Chariclea’s husband-to-be. The recognition of the hero, as is also the case in the Iphigenia myth, leads to the abolition of the sacrifice. Nonetheless, in the Aethiopica it is not escape but marriage that follows, since Ethiopia is ‘home’ not only for Chariclea but also for Theagenes.378 Unlike the Tauri for Orestes, Meroe is finally a place friendly to the two young wanderers, providing shelter and crowning them queen and king of the Ethiopians. It is no coincidence that both IT and the Aethiopica end with an aetiology for the abolition of human sacrifice. In the Aethiopica, Sisimithres, aware of the divine intervention in the events, closes the scene by praising Providence that, in the priest’s words, ‘on the very altar of sacrifice, revealed the blessed lady Chariclea to be your daughter and dramatically transported by her foster father here from the heart of Greece ... and now they revealed that this young stranger is betrothed to the maiden.’ This is the first conclusion of the novel, since the main ending consists of the ordination of Theagenes and Chariclea as priest and priestess of the Sun and the Moon respectively. Heliodorus, then, has made a conscious 377 Hld. 10.22.1, Hydaspes moves on to receiving the embassies before Chariclea has a chance to speak. 378 For this romance without a proper return see Whitmarsh 2011, 115–16.



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effort not just to embed the Iphigenia pattern in his novel as the coronis of his own drama,379 but also to have it fully interlocked within his larger Penelope/Helen pattern as we will see below, thus making dramatic and epic recognition coincide. Epic, drama and novel – three in one: this is the ending of Heliodorus’ tale. In summary Heliodorus writes at the end of a long literary tradition of Iphigenia and other near-death themes. In reworking the pattern he entertains the expectations of the reader in multiple directions. The case of Thyamis’ execution of Chariclea-Thisbe is particularly illustrative in that it subverts both the mythical and the novelistic, metaliterary anticipations. As discussed, while nothing would have been more expected than a near-sacrifice/execution in the marshes of the Boukoloi – given the example of the Iphigenia megatext, of Xenophon of Ephesus and of Achilles Tatius – Thyamis initially attempts to protect Chariclea and hides her in the cave. Thus the near-sacrifice theme that is foreshadowed in the Isis dream is postponed until Thyamis’ fit of despair during the battle, when he decides to murder the first Greek-speaking woman whom he takes to be Chariclea. Consequently, the reader’s foresight is bound to come true, albeit in an unexpected way, and yet the Iphigenia pattern – featuring a near-execution by a kinsman in a foreign land and substitution – is not disrupted as such. And yet, both Chariton’s and Xenophon’s narrative of the burial of the protagonists are also invoked during Thyamis’ ‘funeral’ for Chariclea, and at the end of the pattern the reader wonders whether Chariclea, like her fictional married predecessors, risks burial alive. Moreover, all of these major life-threatening scenes have a highlighted theatrical character, manipulating the vocabulary and simulating the stage. While the second execution of the heroine on the pyre is presented in a theatrical manner, it also bears traces of other popular Christian narratives of the martyrdom of young virgins by fire. Thus the Iphigenia megatext and its core myths are substantially enlarged and broadly perceived, demonstrating a syncretism that goes beyond the mythical. And yet the theatrical setting of the Memphitic execution ensures the connection to the near-sacrifice plays, as well as to Heliodorus’ predecessors, Xenophon in particular, in an all-in-one approach to the Iphigenia story at both mythical and literary levels. More importantly, virginity, a debatable novelistic prerequisite in the previous novels, is in this later novel thoroughly tested and revised. It is virginity and (near) death that go hand in hand until virginity is rewarded. What is more, the staunchly innocent female protagonist in Heliodorus faces different near-death experiences from those of her less militant sisters. Thus, Heliodorus makes clear 379 Hld. 10.39.2.

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his interest in violent executions/sacrifices as opposed to ‘burials’ and ‘deathlike’ Sleeping Beauties, which take their final and concrete form in the third and last time Chariclea encounters death at Meroe. He denies any supernatural interference with the Iphigenia pattern, risking staging the death of not only Thisbe, the villain, but also that of Chariclea’s substitute virgin at Meroe. It is not fortuitous that Heliodorus reserved the last two books in order to scrutinise and to rework in detail the Iphigenia megatext. Books 9 and 10 revise at the level of myth what ‘went wrong’ in the original Euripidean versions and also revisit the myth’s tragic emotional potential. Not only is Chariclea presented being as brave as Iphigenia, even after the king’s suggestion to proceede with the sacrifice, but Hydaspes qua Agamemnon – and his fatherly and kingly duties – are also in the focus of Heliodorus’ mythical revision: piety, philanthropy and wisdom characterise this general who, unlike Agamemnon, is awarded both the kleos of the fall of Syene and the nostos to Meroe. What is more, unlike Agamemnon, Hydaspes succeeds in rescuing his daughter from sacrifice without displeasing his subordinates. Finally, unlike the Greeks at Aulis, the Ethiopians at Meroe are far more tolerant readers, and they are ready to dismiss Motif C1 altogether for the sake of a passionate recognition/reunion scene between father and daughter. This Ethiopian version of the myth proves superior to the Greek one, echoing the similar observations of the Hellenised Lucian and of the Hellenised Clitophon in Achilles Tatius. At the level of the pattern, the Meroan double human sacrifice conflates both the IT and the IA plots into one successive sequel. It is ‘abroad’ for Theagenes but almost ‘at home’ for Chariclea; it is a father who assumes the role of the kinsman (Motif B) and Chariclea who wishes to immolate her ‘brother’ Theagenes; but it is recognition that becomes the central focus of the Heliodoran version. Instead of a substitution the novel opts for two elaborate, elegant recognition scenes, that of Chariclea and that of Theagenes as Chariclea’s husband. No escape (Motif D) is required since Ethiopia, and not Greece, is the destination of the two lovers. Yet, as we shall also observe in the final chapter, Heliodorus’ biggest contribution to the novelistic plot is the conflation of the epic, dramatic and novelistic modes. Heliodorus’ ending also makes the most of the long, epic-based recognition and reunion theme offered by the Penelope/Helen pattern. Hence, the epic material, in combination with the power and momentum of the pathos arising from the dramatic recognition scenes, underlies the hybridism of this meandric work.



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1.4 Iphigenia in focus The Iphigenia megatext provided the novel a narrative model for the discussion of sex and death, men and women, and the lines between civilisation and barbarism. It provided a framework for discussing how a young woman may be overwhelmed by male power and nevertheless prove herself as formidable as her executioners, because of her courage. The megatext came with a variety of ways to escape marriage via death – or to replace it, willingly or not – and it furnished models for interpreting human sacrifice as a symbolic defloration as well as for discussing kinship and humanity, or relationships between parents and children, or between siblings. These tales were not only available in mythical texts but were also part of the broader popular culture as motifs of universal lore. On the other hand, Iphigenia, and especially her escape from the Taurians, was a popular theme in the visual arts. This play considers both close and extended family relationships as well as the popular theme of cunning escape and adventure. In the Empire, the specific Iphigenia megatext was of special importance because it was endowed with a peculiar philosophical and cultural significance for both Greeks and the Hellenised.380 The focus shifted to the very utility of human or bloody sacrifice, as in Plutarch’s and Philostratus’ Mythenkritik. The authors of the Second Sophistic creatively reworked these themes by varying each of the motifs of the pattern. As the topic was still captivating for various narratives, it was modified often: the omnipresence of the substitution motif and its rationalistic reworkings as the blond mane in Plutarch, the emphasis on friendship, or the extended happy ending so as to include not only a narrow escape but also a wedding, such as in Antoninus Liberalis: all these demonstrate new takes on the story and efforts to achieve a ‘fairytale ever-after’. In this endeavour the theme of travel by sea and adventure was indispensable, and visual arts provide good evidence for it. It is no longer the virgin at Aulis in the centre but a girl and/ or her brother/lover sacrificed somewhere in a barbarian land – at least in the texts examined – that provide the basic material rationalising. Thus the Iphigenia story is more widely used in the first three centuries to discuss the themes of otherness and ethnic identity than it was in Euripides’ time: now India, not Scythia, is the ‘faraway land’ that is Charition’s destination. The Greek novels follow this trend. As a major difference we might see the downplaying of the participation of a kinsman in the execution, or the metaphorical ‘reshuffling’ of this role to the beloved – with the exception of Heliodorus, who adheres more closely to the myth of Iphigenia, reworking the theme of the 380 Cf. Hall 2009, 400–401 who argues that the audience in Oxyrhynchus did not feel ‘barbarian’ when watching the performance of the Charition mime.

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family tragedy as well. Yet overall, the novels focus less on the familial ties than on relationships outside the family: now it is barbarian bandits and rulers who threaten the heroine’s life and virginity. Most of them are villains, but some of them are exceptionally chaste and caring, such as Amphinomus in Xenophon, or potential suitors, such as Perilaus. Furthermore, a lover or a potential suitor, such as Chaereas or Thyamis, may be the one responsible for the maiden’s near-death. This change results in inserting folktale elements into the mythical vulgate. The lack of strong family ties between the major participants in this pattern shows the novel’s predilection for adventure, rather than tragic plot, by maintaining the core of the myth’s structure and removing those elements responsible for the pathos of the family tragedy. Equally, Iphigenia’s famously shifting character, from a naïve girl to a courageous virgin, is somewhat echoed in the novels too.381 Although the pattern in the new genre no longer deals with sacrificing for one’s country but for one’s life or love, the novelistic heroines face death boldly. The sacrifice-for-the-fatherland theme had been so thoroughly revised and questioned in works such as Pelopidas during the Empire that the novel did not feel compelled to do so. Nonetheless, some of the near-sacrifices take place in broader war settings, except for Heliodorus’ post-war one. Most novelistic heroines are led to the sacrificial altar without much fuss, displaying some kind of courage and echoing the majority of visual representations. Surprisingly, the novels do not invest narrative time or ink on describing the heroine’s emotional state during these near-death experiences – at least not as much as they do for another heroine, Phaedra, as we will see below: we learn nothing about Anthia’s feelings during her first ritual execution, or about Leucippe’s during her near-decapitation by the pirates. Only ex post facto do we learn about Artemis’ dream appearance to Leucippe before her near-sacrifice, and the same happens with Chariclea’s recollection of Calasiris’ dream at Meroe. These premonitory dreams seem to be, at least partly, the reason why the novelistic heroines show so much self-restraint even in the face of death. Among the most moving scenes are probably Callirhoe’s and Anthia’s soliloquies in their tombs as they wake up from their Scheintod mourning their marriage and/ or death, as well as their resolution to die rather than be parted from their beloved ones. The downplaying of the emotional component, I believe, is due to the novel’s interest in Iphigenia primarily because of her adventurous potential and only secondly for characterisation of the heroine. Most novels report the scene of the girl 381 Cf. Arist. Po. 1454a, ‘An example of an anomalous treatment of a character (παράδειγμα ἀνωμάλου (ἤθους) is Iphigenia at Aulis. The one who supplicates in the beginning is unlike the other one.’



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on the altar as theatrical snapshots, echoing the plastic representations of the story. The tragic context, so prominent in the megatext, is only to be assumed as part of the reader’s knowledge of the vulgate, and it may be that, because the material was so popular, the novels did not bother to repeat it. The scene of the maiden’s death in the first three centuries was part of a literary fantasy addressing a male audience of onlookers, such as Polycharmus, Perilaus or Clitophon, rather than a deep study of the maiden’s psyche from her own point of view. Indeed, girls on the altar were offerings par excellence for male eyes.382 This voyeurism, supported by the symbolic defloration of the girl on the altar, is prominent in the near-human-sacrifice and near-rape of Anthia by Hippothous, in Thyamis’ reading of Chariclea’s sacrifice at the Nilotic mouth, as well in the tendency of the ‘later novels’, such as those of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, to stage a virgin’s – not just a young woman’s – ritual sacrifice only after exhaustive tests of virginity. These last two novels manipulate male virginity and the sister-brother relationship to adapt Orestes’ near-sacrifice in the land of the Taurians to a scene of torture for Clitophon and a real threat of ritual sacrifice for Theagenes. Like the female heroines, even males now have to show themselves as pure as the girls who were traditionally depicted on the altar. Thus, whereas the near-death experiences threatening the young hero were more commonly due to slander by a temptress, as we will see in the following discussion of the Phaedra pattern, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus model two near-death patterns on Iphigenia and fashion them after Orestes’ arrival among the Tauri. Equally important is the adventurous potential of Motifs C1 (substitution) and C2 (reunion) in the pattern. The novels thoroughly rework the substitution motif, either by merging it with popular motifs or by suggesting more versions that were not always available from the mythical models but also from folktale: Scheintod, symbolic substitution by an animal (as in Leucippe’s first sacrifice), a last-minute rescue by a valiant suitor, or substitution by another human victim (as in Achilles Tatius and in Heliodorus, who opt for a ‘realistic’ touch). Achilles Tatius even links Motif C1, in his final version of Leucippe’s offering to Pan, with the metamorphosis tale, a trend already present in Antoninus Liberalis but also in Longus, indicating the thorough relativism of the theme. Motif C2, recognition and reunion, is still an important ingredient in the IT but sometimes recognition between the protagonists waits until the novel’s end, as is the case in Xenophon and in Heliodorus; as we will see, this is because it was more closely related to the Odyssean spousal recognition theme. The novels’ open-endness to the pattern suggest that rescue by substitution or replacement left open possibilities for further reworking of the motif by having the heroine relocated to another 382 Bierl 2012a on the aesthetics of such sacrifices.

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land where the same adventures could potentially start over. Thus Motifs C2 and D are postponed in the intermediate near-death patterns until the very end. Only Heliodorus blends the reunion and escape from death with the final recognition theme of the Penelope/Helen pattern into a dynamic finale. All of these options coexist in most novels since the majority of them stage a variety of manifold near-death situations exploring different aspects of the pattern. Most importantly, and most relevant to the revision of the Iphigenia pattern in the Second Sophistic and the ongoing Mythenkritik, is the discussion about humanity in Greek/Hellenised versus barbarian contexts: the different locations where these near-sacrifices take place are not always so far removed from the Greek/Hellenised world. Unlike Xenophon’s character, both Leucippe and Clitophon risk execution in Miletus; or in Heliodorus, the supposedly enlightened Ethiopians still hold a sacrificial ritual for humans that endangers the king’s lost daughter. In this respect, the two novels written by Hellenised authors oppose and revise the mainstream approaches, which are not so evident in the earlier Hellenocentric works of Chariton and Xenophon. In doing so Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, for example, rework not only the mythical but also the novelistic adaptations of the Iphigenia pattern with an outsider’s touch. Their suggestions relate not only to the mythical pattern but also to the fictional reworkings. If an inclusive conclusion is allowed, and despite the individual differentiations in the treatment of the myth, all novels rework the sexual fantasies as suggested by the pattern, such as the apparent death of a newlywed like Anthia and Callirhoe; the rescue of a woman who is expected to – according to folktale – but then does not marry her saviour, as in Perilaus’ tale; or the execution of a beloved, as is the case in Chaereas’ or Thyamis’ blind (near-)murder of their dearest ones; and even Arsace’s blind revenge on Chariclea at Memphis suggests the erotic context in which the Iphigenia myth was now inscribed. The other important discussion that the myth brought about was related to the cultural dialogue between Greek and non-Greek identity. The answers given vary, but as a general trend, one may observe the relativity of the ‘concluding’ remarks: not all barbarians are villains, nor all Greeks good. Anthia’s ritual sacrifice in Cilicia is staged as if in a faraway land like Chariclea’s, yet the Hellenised Clitophon turns the Greek city of Ephesus into the Taurian Chersonese. The reader of imperial fiction was therefore prompted to juggle the various elements related and relevant to the Iphigenia megatext, from folktale echoes about potions and Sleeping Beauties, to innocently slaughtered maidens on the altar, through to happily reunited families and couples. Moreover s/he was encouraged to connect this material to the ongong imperial debate about sacrifice or fictional plots that included escape from faraway lands. This background created a net of expectations upon which each novel played upon and subverted



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the readerly anticipations. The novel’s readership was no longer required to detect a one-to-one intertextual influence but did need to look past the variety of sources to the ongoing narrative potential of the megatext. In this respect Xenophon’s triple execution of Anthia and Achilles Tatius’ triple near-death of Leucippe are indicative of the importance of the pattern for the new genre. Staging in a single novel three treatments of the same pattern shows the significance of the theme not only at a metaliterary level but also for the novel as a fictional genre per se. The even more miraculous revisions of Motif C1, substitution, are not only comments on the myth’s own stock of outcomes but, perhaps more importantly, metafictional statements about how this myth was reworked in fictional genres. Below, I provide a table in which I display how the novel’s plot adjusts to that of the Iphigenia megatext, showing in a nutshell how the novel approached the traditional mythic scenario and how a tragic tale becomes one of adventure and erotic escapades. This is schematic and is mainly meant to visualise the novel’s addition to the well-known myth’s megatext as described above. Yet it shows the narrative blocks that were considered indispensable parts of the megatext, as well as how they were revised by the Greek novels.

The bold and unfaithful: Phaedra Diana: ‘Nymphs, I must obey the laws of Destiny; today I set your hearts free; still, I shall not let my pride lessen until I see a festival suitable for Eros: Hippolytus and Aricia, doomed to perish, have placed in me their last hopes; against an unjust evil, it’s my obligation to help them.’ Rameau, 1733, Hippolyte et Aricie, Act V.383

Just as death, even the near-death of the novelistic heroines, endangers their ‘happily ever after’, so should adultery be unthinkable for both male and female characters. This chapter examines the threats to the chastity of the male character by a female temptress who forces him to choose between faithfulness to his fiancée and the erotic pleasure she offers.384 Not surprisingly, as we will see, most of these tales are situtated in eastern provinces. In Greek literature, the Near East, the southern climates of the Levant and Egypt, tended to produce wanton women – and especially married women – tend to be beautiful but wicked, such as Candaules’ wife in Herodotus’ Histories 1.8, who features among Clinias’ list of deadly women. But the most ancient faithless wife is found in the Egyptian ‘Tale of Two Brothers’: in it, Anpu’s wife attempts to seduce her husband’s younger brother, Bata. When he rejects her advances, she – gravely offended – accuses him of attempting to seduce her. Anpu chases his brother to kill him, but to prove his innocence Bata severs his own genitalia. After many trials, Anpu and the reincarnated Bata are reunited and rule over Egypt.385 Another version of the Egyptian woman’s lover is the Biblical story about Potiphar’s wife found in Genesis 39:6–20: in it we learn about an unnamed Egyptian woman who attempts to seduce Joseph when he is working in the house of Potiphar. Joseph refuses, is slandered by the woman, and is thrown into prison until the Pharaoh requests his help to interpret his dreams.386 Joseph’s prophetic skills are acknowledged, and eventually the Pharaoh makes him his counsellor and marries him into the royal family.387 383 This is my translation of the French original: ‘Nymphes, aux lois du sort il faut que j’obéisse; Je mets dès aujourd’hui vos coeurs en liberté; Je ne dois pas pourtant abaisser ma fierté, Jusqu’à voir une fête à l’Amour si propice. Hippolyte, Aricie, exposés à périr, ne fondent que sur moi leur dernière espérance; contre une injuste violence, c’est à moi de les secourir.’ J.-Ph. Rameau staged his opera Hippolytus and Aricia with a libretto by Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, which was based on Racine’s Phèdre. In the play, the chaste, Hippolytus, is in love with Aricia. 384 On the symmetry of desire in the novel see Konstan 1994, 57–58. 385 AT Tale 318. 386 The Septuagint gives only the request of the Egyptian woman ‘κοιμήθητι μετ’ ἐμοῦ’, whereas the Testament of Joseph gives a full account of her attempts. For the influence of the Hippolytus play on the later Joseph saga see Wills 1995, 164–165 who discusses the elaborate, quasi-novelistic description of Potiphar’s wife’s emotions. See also Kraemer 1998. 387 Kugel 1994, Brant 2005, 156. DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-003



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This story would have been available to a Greek audience not only through the Septuagint but also through Philo388 in the mid-first century BCE and through Flavius Josephus by the mid-first century CE.389 It is also said that the story featured in the early first BCE century Testament of Joseph 7.2, which might have been influenced by Euripides’ play too.390 The Biblical story is echoed also in the (Hellenistic?) novel-like tale of Joseph and Aseneth,391 in which the protagonist is suspected of having been ‘caught sleeping with his mistress.’ It is characteristic that the Biblical story acts as a master plot that might endanger the happy marriage of Joseph to Aseneth, since the novel often contrasts the girl with the lustful wife of Potiphar: for example, at the beginning, Aseneth is presented as living in luxury, demanding and spoiled, and she even spurns the son of the Pharaoh as a potential husband. She has, therefore, all the narrative qualities for becoming another wicked woman. In an intertextual comment that links the novel and the Genesis, Joseph is presented as fearing that this new Egyptian woman too might blame him in the future.392 Yet, unlike the bold and unfaithful wife of Potiphar, both Aseneth and Joseph swear a vow of chastity, which they eagerly revise as they gradually become attracted to each other.393 These kind of tales seemed to address an audience, Greek or Hellenised, that shared a predilection for adultery tales, and even if their source of inspiration might not have been Euripides, the educated Hellenistic audience, would undoubtedtly, have been able to draw the similarities. By the time the Greek novel flourished, Pausanias, writing about the Hippolytus cult in Troezen, attests to the popularity of Euripides’ version of this widespread folktale, stressing his Greek origine:394 1.22.1: The end of his (Hippolytus’) life, it is said, came from curses. The desire (ἔρως) of Phaedra and the daringness (τόλμημα) of the nurse in order to serve her are well known to everybody, and even a barbarian who has learnt Greek (καὶ ὅστις βαρβάρων γλῶσσαν ἔμαθεν Ἑλλήνων) (knows them).

388 Braun 1934, 23. For the motif in literature see Yohannan 1968. 389 Philo Jud. 41.257–250 and Joseph. Ant. Jud. 2.39–59. 390 Braun 1934, 24–25, Wills 1995, 231. 391 For the early date see Philonenko 1968. 392 J&A 7.2, ‘Because Joseph was afraid that she too might bring me trouble.’ There is an ongoing oscillation between Jewish as equal to purity and Egyptian as an expression of depravity. For the symbolic use of Egypt, especially in Philo, see Pearce 2007, 87ff. 393 A discussion regarding the formation of the identity of the Jewish Diaspora with respect to chastity can be found in Collins 1983, 184ff. My aim here is to discuss the motif, not its cultural interpretation. See Johnson 2005, 191 for a looser interpretation of the multilayered Jewish identity. 394 Trenkner 1958, 64–65 on folktale origins.

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Pausanias’ testimony here is characteristic of the swiftness with which popular stories with similar plots travelled not only among the Greeks but also among the Hellenised. Pausanias might have been aware of those legends from other lands, however, he emphasises the popularity of the Greek version as narrative for export, probably because it resembled the widely-known folktale about the wicked wife or stepmother. Moreover, he emphasises the role of Phaedra’s love and the nurse’s machinations which empower the female characters, as opposed to Hippolytus’ passivity and are characteristic of the play.395 The reason this chapter is named after the ‘other woman’ of Greek myth and not after Euripides’ protagonist is that the male heroes of the Greek novels who are tempted by bold and faithless women have already a fiancée, so that the Phaedra-like characters are the third persons in the relationships. We shall see that the triangle eventually develops between the two women in the hero’s life. As will become more obvious in the following analysis, these seduction and temptation plots are set up by cunning women, and the male hero only has a passive role in it. Thus the two women, the faithful and beautiful and the bold but unfaithful, represent the two different outcomes of desire, whether reciprocal or not. Therefore, the hero’s refusal to give in to the temptations that become available during his adventure is not only due to an inner belief about chastity or moral conduct but also motivated by love for and commitment to his own fiancée. Thus the original triangle relationship of the adulterous woman, her enraged husband and the youth now spawns another triangle, that of the two women and the male hero, like in Rameau’s melodrama.

2.1 The myth of Phaedra 2.1.1 In the visual arts Phaedra and her disastrous love for Hippolytus was a perennial theme for Roman artists from any part of the Empire. Wall paintings and mosaics illustrate the major scenes of the play, and it was expected that the audience would be able to fill in the details.396 In the selection below, we see that among the popular scenarios was Hippolytus’ chastity: Figure 6, for example, shows the 395 The only exception to the rule is Corymbus’ desire for Habrocomes in Xenophon, which, in my view, has been overstressed by Konstan 1994, e.g. 58–42 in order to fit his thesis of ‘sexual symmetry’. Elsewhere, though, he also stresses the importance of female characters for those plots that are inspired by tragedy; Konstan 1994, 177–78. 396 The main reference works are Mucznik 1999 and Croisille 1982.



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hero in his hunting outfit in front Artemis’ statue, worshipping the goddess, like in the play’s opening. Yet, Phaedra’s mal d’amour and her rejection by the youth was probably the most widespread theme. In some representations, such as Figure 7, Phaedra is represented either standing or seated and holding her veil, while the nurse mediates between her and the hero. But from the second century onwards, on the Roman sarcophagi, Phaedra is depicted sitting and barely holding up her head, supported by a handmaiden, a visual hint indicating her erotic suffering. 397 Next to her stands the faithful nurse who tries to persuade Hippolytus, Figures 8 and 9.

Figure 6: Hippolytus naked with his chlamys on his shoulder, holding his spear. He faces a statuette of Artemis in front of which he has placed offerings, such as flowers and the head of a deer. Gem from Chalcedonia, 1st c. CE, at Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum. IX 1919. LIMC Fig. 19 Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Figure 7: Phaedra with the nurse confronting Hippolytus, who rejects her letter and throws it on the floor. On the left is the statuette of Aphrodite, who engineers the tragic plot. Mosaic from Antakya, Daphne, House of the Red Pavement, 2nd c. CE, at Museum Hatay 1018, Levi Pl. 11b, LIMC s.v. Hippolytus I Fig. 48.

Visual evidence suggests that much was expected from the seasoned Roman audience regarding the myth’s various intertexts. The scenes captured by visual art are not necessarily those inspired by the second Hippolytus play, the so-called Stephanias, as they also seem to take into consideration the letter from the first play, the so-called Kalyptomenos.398 Others suggest the letter is an allusion to the Roman reworking of the play in Ovid’s Heroides 4, or to Euripides’ play about the other adulterous spouse, the Stheneboea.399 The letter that 397 Some of these sarcophagi also have portrait heads, which makes it easier to identify the scene as non-Phaedra. See Zanker and Shapiro 1988, 302, Zanker 1999, and Platt 2011, 376. 398 Radt, TrGF F 675, p. 457 suggests the existence of letters in Sophocles’ Phaedra too. 399 Kannicht 2004, 645. It is tempting to interpret the opposite tableau of the Four Seasons mosaics as representing the meeting between Stheneboea and Bellerophon, which would have

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is decpicted on Figure 7 is of particular importance since it is an evidence as early as Pompeii and reappears later in third-century sarcophagi, leaving us with a gap in between.400 Additional representations of the myth show Phaedra and the nurse before Theseus, a scene that might have been inspired by Seneca’s Phaedra 943–947,401 or Phaedra more or less naked: her desire presumably unrestrained.402

Figure 8: Phaedra supported by one of her sevants, while Eros is sitting next to her. Attic sarcophagus from Tripoli, end of 2nd/3rd c. Liban. Lebanon Istanbul Museum, Arch. 508, Koch/Sichtermann 396, LIMC Fig. 54 Courtesy of the Instabul Arkeoloji Müzesi. Phaedra’s suffering as Hippolytus leaves to go hunting with his horses.

Figure 9: Phaedra and Theseus sarcophagus Roman sarcophagus, Via Praenestina, end of 3rd c., Phaedra sarcophagus, MA 1663, Louvre, Koch/ Sichtermann 36, no.39, p. 65–67. Phaedra on the left fainting, Eros at her feet, reclining. The nurse addresses Hippolytus who is leaving while holding a diptych, Phaedra’s letter. On the other side of the sarcophagus sits the bearded Theseus receiving the news of Phaedra’s death, leading to Hippolytus’ slander, LIMC Fig. 69 Courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen.

In the manner of later sarcophagi, Figure 9 shows Phaedra seated and suffering, with Hippolytus standing in the middle, portrayed as a hunter, whereas Theseus sits at the other end of the picture, receiving the news about Phaedra’s required the reader to remember the whole palette of faithless spouses, e.g. Antioch-on-theOrontes: the excavations of 1937–1939, vol. III, 237. However, the identification of the theme is uncertain and Levi 1947, 80–81, Pl. XIIb suggests an Aphrodite-Adonis farewell thematic. 400 LIMC s.v. ‘Hippolytus I’, 5.1, 462. 401 LIMC s.v. ‘Hippolytus I’, Fig. 97–98 (Theseus-Phaedra-Nurse); only Fig. 96, a silver bowl from Bactria, represents a reunion of all the main characters – Theseus, Phaedra, Hippolytus – a scene that does not appear in the literary sources. Fig. 73, a relief from Brigetio in Danube, shows Phaedra seated, half-naked, with the nurse on her knees begging Hippolytus, who is standing. 402 Mucznik 1999, 127–29.



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or Hippolytus’ death from a messenger. It is interesting to note that Phaedra’s death is represented nowhere, but it is hinted at through the messengers, reinforcing thus the theatricality of these representations.403 In both Figures 8 and 9 Hippolytus’ death is foreshadowed by the representations of horses, Hippolytus beloved animals, which will become, eventually, responsible for his death. From the admittedly limited selection of visual representations of the Phaedra myth presented here, it becomes nonetheless evident how flexible the relationship was between source text and its visual embodiments. Not only was the imperial reader expected to know both of Euripides’ versions, as well as Ovid’s and Seneca’s, but also to identify the story through various details, such as the statuette of Artemis that stands for the youth’s chastity. Phaedra’s emotional depiction is also part of the visual grammar for the imperial audience. Indeed, what most of these depictions emphasise is Phaedra’s suffering – her passion. She is usually the one dominating the left side of the narrative, as the tale is meant to be read from left to right, like a book, her desire being the beginning of Hippolytus unlucky fate, that is alluded on the left part of the relief. Her rejection by Hippolytus – the youth presented as discarding the letter with her erotic confession – is extremely popular too. The nurse is frequently presented in this scene as the mediator. Further, Phaedra’s slander of her stepson is hinted at indirecty in most representations, but Theseus, the third man in the story, also appears: the Roman sarcophagus, Figure 8, is very characteristic in that it represents all the participants of the triangle at once, allowing the reader to fill in all the relevant gaps, leaving only Phaedra’s death to the audience’s imagination. Finally, the death of Hippolytus under his horses is a very common theme to illustrate the death of a young man. Scenes from the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra were so popular that adapted to the new Christian interpretation and persisted until the early Byzantine times.404 What was so fascinating about this tale, it seems, was the woman’s emotional depiction and the youth’s tragic death, a topic that Christians appropriated accordingly. Keeping this in mind I will now continue with the literary intertext of the myth.

403 There is only an uncertain lecythos from Campania, dated c. 350 BCE, that represents a woman falling on a sword in front of the dead body of a young man – an object that looks like a letter also appears. LIMC s.v. ‘Hippolytus I’ Fig. 122. 404 Weitzmann 1941, 192–195.

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2.1.2 In literature Source Texts In Greek literature, the theme of an older woman’s desire for a hero appears first in the tale about Bellerophon and Stheneboea in the Iliad 6.155,405 whereas Phaedra is mentioned only en passant in the Odyssey 11.321. Yet if Phaedra and not Stheneboea grew in popularity over the centuries, it is presumably because of the unlucky fate of her stepson and because the Athenian context, which would have appealed particularly to the fifth century dramatists. But Euripides’ contribution is major in this respect. The Hippolytus play was performed in 428 BCE, and it was part of a long tradition of dramas based on this myth, such as, for example, Sophocles’ Phaedra. Although Hippolytus appears first in Attic tragedy of the fifth century, his tale must have pre-existed in earlier sources.406 Euripides’ Hippolytus is famous for representing the two extremes of sexuality, setting Phaedra’s illicit desire against Hippolytus’ almost obsessive chastity and devotion to Artemis.407 It is this open female desire that scandalised the Athenians at the performance of the first version of Hippolytus, and there are reasons to presume that such behaviour would have been no less shocking for the imperial public, as suggested in Plutarch’s How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (Quomodo adulescens poetas audire debeat).408 Moreover, Euripides’ play made of this tale a kind of Athenian ‘myth’, despite its being staged in Troezen, since Phaedra was the wife of Athens’ chief hero and king, Theseus.409 In fact, the play becomes emblematic of Athens as it has Hippolytus opposing Theseus, criticising thus some aspects of the Athenian democracy.410 Although the myth’s ‘Attic’ character might have been noticed by Euripides’ predecessors too,411 we can be certain that Seneca and Ovid, and even the nov405 Barrett 1964, 9, observes that Phaedra in the Nekyia, appears together with the Athenian Procris and Ariadne and argues that this is an Athenian insertion of the sixth century BCE. There was also a painting by Polygnotus on the Nekyia figuring Phaedra and dated around 460 BCE. 406 Barrett 1964, 6. 407 The main study is still Barrett 1964. I use here the text of Diggle 1981. 408 Plu. Quomodo, 28a, presents Phaedra as inappropriate reading. A general introduction to the myth of Phaedra and its motifs are provided by Yohannan 1968 and Gérard 1993. For the two versions of the Euripidean play, the Kalyptomenos (TrGF 428–448, Kannicht) and the Stephanias, and their reception by the Athenian public, see Barrett 1964 and Hutchinson 2004. For a short introduction to the Roman reception of the myth in imperial times see the commentary of Coffey and Mayer 1990, 33 on Seneca’s Phaedra, with literature, and Armstrong 2006. For stepmother plays and the frequent emphasis of the title on the victim and not the stepmother see Watson 1995, 37–38. 409 Barrett 1964, 2. 410 Gregory 1991, 6–12, 51–84. 411 Ov. Met.15.500, Fast. 6.379, Her. 4; Barrett 1964, 32.



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elists,412 stage the story consciously in Athens and highlight thus its ‘Athenian’ flavour. We now have more evidence for the plot of the first Hippolytus, the Kalyptomenos, thanks to two papyri, dated in the second or third century CE, that present a version different from the one presented in the hypothesis by Aristophe of Byzantium, and probably come from a hypothesis to the Kalyptomenos.413 According to Sommerstein’s and Talboy’s (2006) reconstruction of the first play, one of many,414 Phaedra might have revealed her passion in person to Hippolytus, without the medium of the nurse, and might have also suggested a plot to murder Theseus – who was absent in the beginning of the play – so that she and Hippolytus might rule Athens. Rebuffed, Phaedra brings Theseus accusations against Hippolytus that he was trying to overthrow his father and rape her. Hippolytus, probably bound by an oath of silence, cannot defend himself satisfactorily and is exiled, cursed and killed in the horse accident. Theseus meanwhile may have tried to test Phaedra, probably by sending her someone dressed as Hippolytus, to whom she would utter words of love. Phaedra must have committed suicide at the end of the play and not halfway through, as in the Stephanias.415 This play, or something along these lines, might have still been available to the imperial audience at least through its hypothesis or anthologies such as Stobaeus, although direct knowledge of the text is probable too.416 Alongside the myth of Hippolytus existed the similar tale of Bellerophon and Phoenix, which may provide different insights into what was expected of a slander plot involving someone else’s wife or mistress but not necessarily the stepmother.417 In the tale of Bellerophon, none of the participants is actually punished in the core versions, such as the summary by Ps.-Apollodorus below:

412 Cf. Smith 2007b, and Scourfield 2010, discussed in detail below. 413 P. Mich. inv. 6222A discussed by Luppe 1994 and P.Oxy. 4640 Collard and Cropp 2008, 474. See also Carrara 2009, 333 n. 77 Ippolito velato?, P. Oxy. 4369, 1st or 2nd c. 414 For a review of the different reconstructions of the play see Hutchinson 2004, Magnani 2004. 415 Besides Euripides’ two plays on the myth there was a fragmentary Phaedra by Sophocles TrGF, vol. 5, F. 677–93 (Radt) and Lycophron’s Phaedra, from which we only have the title. 416 Note the most of the fragments of the first Hippolytus come from Stobaeus and have a pronounced gnomic character. In the 2nd c. CE Pollux 9.50 cites Fr. 441 (Kannicht) = Fr. 442 (Collard-Cropp, 484) and [Just. Mart.] De monarch. 5.5, cites Fr. 445 (Kannicht) = Fr. 444 (Collard-Cropp, 484), which indicates that the plot of the play might have been available not only as a hypothesis or gnomic excerpts but whole. 417 For the Euripidean Stheneboea see TrGF 661–672 (Kannicht) and Collard and Cropp 2008, 79–97. For the Phoenix see Fr. 804–818, Jouan and Van Looy 2002, 313–39, and the analysis in Papamichael 1982 and Gregory 2009 with literature.

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2.3.1–2: Bellerophon, the son of Sisyphus’ son Glaucus, involuntarily killed his brother … so Bellerophon came to Proetus for purification. Stheneboea fell in love with him and sent him written invitations to a romantic tryst. When he spurned her, she told Proetus that Bellerophon had sent her messages of the grossest nature. Proetus believed what she told him and gave Bellerophon a letter to deliver to Iobates, in which it was written that he was to murder Bellerophon. When Iobates read it, he ordered Bellerophon to slay the Chimaera … but when Bellerophon had slain every one of them as well, Iobates, struck by his strength, showed him Proetus’ letter and said he would be honoured if Bellerophon stayed on with him. He gave him his daughter Philonoe, and, when he died, he left him his kingdom.

Bellerophon proves his value by successfully accomplishing all of Iobates’ labours and in the end he wins the king’s daughter. This is a happy ending tale, at least at least in what the pattern of the ‘other woman’ is concerned. What happened to Stheneboea is not evident from Apollodorus’ summary, but the reconstruction of the plot may hint at a triple-revenge plot. Stheneboea is eventually killed by the young man and the happy ending is reserved for the young couple.418 In imperial times, one of the most famous quotations from the Stheneboea is Fr. 663 (Kannicht) on love: ‘After all, Eros teaches a poet, even if he’s previously lacking in skill.’419 This image of Eros Sophistes acquired a Platonic touch, as it was alluded to in Plato, and had a happy afterlife in imperial literature.420 In Euripides’ Phoenix the eponymous hero, following his mother’s plan of revenge, (probably) sleeps with his father’s mistress, Clytia.421 Amyntor curses him with blindness and he is later exiled, but Cheiron restores his eyesight and makes him teacher of Achilles.422 The cause of the love intrigue is the old man’s desire for a young concubine which eventually is turned against him.423 The Phoenix’s main storyline is reused adapted in Menander’s Samia this time shoing a father and a son arguing over Chrysion, the mistress of Demaeas.424 Unfortunately, given the fragmentary state of Euripides’ tragedy, there is not 418 Collard and Cropp 2008, 80: first plot is that of the letter sent to Iobates to kill him, the second plot is Bellerophon’s task to kill Chimaera, the third plot occurs upon his return to Tiryns, where he deceives Stheneboea into elopement and throws her off Pegasus into the sea. Bellerophon meets with Proetus and proves himself innocent. 419 Fr. 663 (transl. Collard and Cropp 2008). 420 Pl. Symp. 196 e; Theocr. Id. 11. cited also in Plu. Amat. 17. For Eros the Sophist see Anderson’s 1982 book title and his analysis. 421 TrGF F 803a–818 (Kannicht). 422 Ps.-Apollod. 3.175. For a discussion of the father’s curse and the revenge see Gregory 2009 on both Hippolytus plays and Phoenix. 423 Cf. TrGF F 807 (Kannicht), ‘Bitter thing for a young woman is an old husband.’ 424 See now Sommerstein 2013, 38–39.



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much we could say about the plot besides the exoneration of the victim at the end.425 The reconstruction by Jouan and Van Looy (2002), 326 implies that, somehow, at the end Clytia (the concubine) dies or commits suicide, and that a deus ex machina announces the brilliant friendship between Peleus and Phoenix and his role in the upbringing of Achilles. The story ends with the good characters being rewarded and the bad ones punished. The classical source texts therefore provided a variety of seduction and slander plots and endings. The dominant Phaedra scenario presented an extremely chaste Hippolytus, whereas the Phoenix might have presented a male protagonist who sleeps with his father’s concubine. The two Hippolytoi plays had both protagonists die, whereas Phoenix and Bellerophon are exculpated, the slander becoming manifest. Also, the ‘other woman’ may be either a stepmother or a wife or a concubine, an identity that allows the above different outcomes of the plot. In sum, classical sources suggested a wide pool of motifs to choose from, which mainly included the male character’s rejection of the ‘other woman’s’ desire and lust, her slandering him to her husband, and either punishment of them both or the death of the adulteress and the exculpation of the youth. Faithlessnes, hunting and slander Pausanias’ summary of Phaedra and Hippolytus, above, shows how famous, especially Phaedra’s desire and the nurse’s cunning were. A particular feature of the imperial reception of the myth is the opposition between female lust and male chastity.426 Lust brings calumny, and Hippolytus becomes the exemplary slandered young man. Dio of Prusa discusses distrust in family relationships and cites, among other things, Theseus’ killing of Hippolytus because of the slander.427 Yet Lucian is the most severe judge of Phaedra, classifying her among the lewdest of women and including Anteia – as the Iliad calls Proetus’ wife instead of Stheneboea – among the chief examples of slanderers.428 Again, 425 We are equally aware of a love triangle in Euripides’ now fragmentary Peleus, TrGF F 617–62 (Kannicht) and in the Cretan Women, TrGF F 460–467 (Kannicht), but not much can be said about that either: in the first, Peleus is married and desired by the wife of Acastus, Astydameia; his rejection of her makes her slander Peleus both to his wife and to Acastus – see Ps.-Apollod. 3 13.3; in the second the story was probably around the affair between Atreus’s wife and Thyestes. 426 For Euripides’ reception in Dio see Gangloff 2006; for Lucian see Karavas 2005; for Plutarch see the three articles by Di Gregorio 1979 and Di Gregorio 1980. For Philostratus see Bowie 2009. 427 D. Chr. Or. 74 13. 428 Luc. Salt. 2, with Parthenope and Rhodope, ibid. 40, the Athenian drama (πάθος) of Hippolytus, ibid. 49, with Pasiphae and Ariadne. The lustful stepmother is a key theme in Lucian’s DMeretr and in the Abd. As for Anteia, she appears as the embodiment of wickedness in Luc. Cal. 26.

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in Lucian’s On Calumny (Calumniae non temere credentdum) 23, Hippolytus features among other famous victims of defamation.429 In the ekphrasis of Apelles’ painting of Slander, in the same treatise, Slander is depicted as followed by Repentance, illustrating the provisional structure of the pattern.430 Connected to Phaedra’s lust and wickedness is the false accusation, the letter of calumny. The Ps.-Plutarchan Roman Parallels (Parallela minora) 314 mentions how ‘the lascivious one’ (ἀσελγής) writes her letter of calumny against ‘the chaste one’ (σώφρων) and then commits suicide, leading the youth to his doom. Plutarch too must have considered the second play as well as the overall megatext, according to which the stepmother causes the death of the stepson. He only briefly outlines the well-known story in the summary in the Theseus 28.2, which is meant as a laudatio of the Athenian king: ‘As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and Theseus’ son, since there is no contradiction here between historians and tragic poets, we must suppose that they happened as staged/represent (πεποιήκασιν) by the poets uniformly.’ Another favourite theme of the myth that seems to have served in various comparisons is Hippolytus’ love for hunting – often represented in visual arts – and his premature death. Dio, in his funerary oration for the boxer Melancomas, cites Hippolytus alonside Achilles, Patroclus and Sarpedon.431 On another occasion, he praises his love for hunting, a theme found in Plutarch as well.432 Sport, in the Empire, replaces Hippolytus’ obsession with hunting, whereas hunting is not just a sport, as Goldhill (1986), 119 observes, but also represents a negation of the city in favour of the wilderness, whereas sport is the affirmation of the city and of citizenship.433 Thus, one already sees the elements which, in the third century, become the core themes of funerary representation on the sarcophagi. Additional evidence of the play’s popularity is Philostratus’ Imagines 2.4, which presents a description of a painting. The narrator here focuses on the youth’s death rather than on the love plot, which is taken for granted and summarised briefly as the love of a wicked stepmother and her plotting against the stepson. This last scene is not presented on stage in the drama but in the messenger’s speech, which makes it an ideal candidate for the plastic arts, as Figure

429 The others are Luc. Cal. 23, Bellerophon, Aristides the Just and Themistocles. Cf. also D. Chr. 64.2 (διαβολήν), and Aristid. Or. 33.34 (Behr), on Hippolytus and Bellerophon. 430 Luc. Cal. 5, Τhe passage is famous from Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles in Florence. 431 D. Chr. Or. 29.20. 432 D. Chr. Or. 70.2, with Meleager; cf. Plu. Mor. 52b. and 959b on animal intelligence. 433 See Newby 2005, especially Chapters 5 and 6.



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5 above shows, since it allows a large degree of freedom and plenty of space for creative imagination.434 2.4: The wild beast is the curse of Theseus; swift as dolphins it has rushed at the horses of Hippolytus in the form of a white bull, and it has come from the sea against the youth quite unjustly. For his stepmother Phaedra concocted a story against him that was not true, to the effect that Hippolytus loved her – but it was really herself that was in love with the youth – and Theseus, deceived by the tale, calls down upon his son the curse which we see here depicted … and you, O youth, that loved chastity (σωφροσύνης ἐρῶν), you have suffered injustice at the hand of your stepmother and worse injustice at the hand of your father. So that the painting itself mourns you, having composed a sort of poetic lament in your honour.

The abstractness with which Philostratus refers to Euripides’ play is typical of the literature of the period as well as in the visual arts. Whatever the intrigue that inflicts the calamities upon Phaedra and the youth, whatever the role of the nurse in it, it is of minor importance, since the overall megatext would not be disturbed. Helen as the stepmother Such was the prominence of the Phaedra myth that it seems to have contaminated the Helen story as well. In a less-known version from the mid-first century BCE, reported by Parthenius of Nicaea 34, Helen casts for the role of the temptress as well as the stepmother. The version according to Parthenius is attributed to Hellanicus of Mytilene, a contemporary of Thucydides, and to Cephalon of Gergis.435 We learn that, when in Troy, the beautiful queen became enamoured of her stepson, Paris’ son by Oenone.436 Early in the Erotica Pathemata, Parthenius had presented Paris’ rejection of Oenone for Helen, and in wrapping up the collection he reminds us of the misfortunes that followed this choice by presenting Helen as the ‘other woman’. Paris, enraged, kills Corythus in revenge but Helen, we are left to assume, survives, only to return to Menelaus according to the well-known story. Exonerating Phaedra: Stratonice and Ismenodora Some other imperial variants sought to implicitly exonerate Phaedra’s desire. However, imperial revisions do not touch directly upon the myth, as with Helen, but adjust the plot pattern to other stories. Most exciting is the embedded narrative 434 Elsner 2007. 435 FGrH 4 f 29 and FGrH 45 F 6. 436 Parthen. 34. Lightfoot 1999, 546 compares the story with one found in Conon’s Diegeseis in which Corythus is sent by Oenone to cause trouble between Helen and Paris.

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about Stratonice and Combabus in Lucian’s Syrian Goddess (De dea Syria) . The story of Stratonice and Combabus cunningly replaces the traditional, reader-anticipated tale of Stratonice and Antiochus, which is mentioned only briefly.437 In this telling, Antiochus, son of Seleucus, falls in love with his very young stepmother, whom he successfully marries after the withdrawal of his father. Lucian highlights the major themes: Stratonice, the narrator says, seems to be ‘that Stratonice whose stepson fell in love with her (τῆς ὁ πρόγονος ἠρήσατο) and was discovered by the stratagem (ἐπινοίη) of his (Antiochus’) doctor.’438 King Seleucus, Antiochus’ father, overcomes his jealousy and grants his son both wife and kingdom, since he does not think ‘that the calamity (ὁμοίην συμφορήν) of losing a son equals the loss of a wife.’ Stratonice therefore is presented as a lucky Phaedra, and Seleucus as a wise Theseus, improved avatars of their Athenian exempla. In the rest of the treatise Lucian counters the extant and well-known narrative of the Phaedra-like tale about Stratonice with a more obscure story, his masterpiece also on the same theme.439 Here, Stratonice is still married to Seleucus when she undertakes the sacred mission to build the temple at Hierapolis. Seleucus puts his young and handsome attendant Combabus, in her charge. Combabus, afraid that his beauty might attract the queen – who had already taken part in other erotic scandals according Lucian’s programmatic introduction – emasculates himself and presents Seleucus with his castrated member in a jar.440 As expected, Stratonice does fall in love with her young attendant and, even after learning of his emasculation, she ‘checked her frenzy (μανίης) but did not relinquish her love.’441 With these words Lucian contrasts desire and lust that lead to destruction, such as Phaedra’s, with love in general. Lucian’s account is a comment on the Athenian version of Phaedra as it subverts an array of readerly expectations: for example, Stratonice’s behaviour is not typical for an eastern queen who, since Phaedra’s time, is more prone to jealousy and violence,442 and Combabus is presented as being slandered before the king by his own adversaries and not by the queen. The subversion of the calumny theme appears to be Lucian’s greatest contribution to the tale’s revision. He notes: 437 The main analysis and the translations are based on Lightfoot 2003. 438 Luc. Syr.D.17. 439 Lightfoot 2003, 385, the story is not Lucian’s invention but elements of it appear in other sources. 440 Lightfoot 2003, 401 on Lucian’s ‘heightened prominence’ of the tale and the ‘motif of the love of the Great Goddess’, Burkert 1979, 110–14. 441 Luc. Syr.D. 22. 442 For Euripides’ ‘other women’ and for Greek women behaving as barbarians see Segal 1993, 232.



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23: Others falsely assert that Stratonice, her desires thwarted, herself wrote (γράψασαν) to her husband accusing Combabus of having made an attempt on her, and what the Greeks say about Stheneboea and Phaedra of Cnossus is attributed (μυθολογέουσιν) by the Assyrians to Stratonice. I myself do not believe that Stheneboea or Phaedra did such thing, if she truly did love Hippolytus (εἰ τὸν Ἰππόλυτον ἀτρεκέως ἐπόθεεν), (transl. Lightfoot).

Elsner (2001) in an excellent discussion of the ongoing Mythenkritik, compares the noble Lucianic version of the Assyrian Phaedra myth to the Greek one with these words: Both heroes, Combabus and Hippolytus, are pure and chaste, both are objects of seduction by an adulterous queen. But in the case of Combabus, the castrate who loves and honours Stratonice,443 the queen never repudiates the lover who fails to satisfy her, and ultimately there is honour and salvation for all concerned. Hippolytus, on the other hand, repulses Phaedra – only to be himself falsely accused and subject to a terrible curse. Combabus loses only his genitals, Hippolytus is torn to pieces. This Assyrian version of the Hippolytus drama is extended in the narrative before the Combabus myth444 by the parallels drawn explicitly between Stratonice and Phaedra at 23. Both stepmothers become amorously involved with their husband’s son. But while Phaedra falls for her stepson Hippolytus with disastrous results, in the Syr.D., it is the stepson who falls in love with Stratonice … twice. What one might call a ‘Syrian sacrifice’ (that is, a loss to gain a greater boon: e.g. the loss of Combabus’ genitals and the loss of the king’s wife and kingdom) is made to change the mythical structure of the parallel Greek narrative.445

Another positive Phaedra character is Plutarch’s Ismenodora. In the Amatorius 754e Ismenodora is a young, rich but chaste widow who falls in love with her friend’s son, the youth Bacchon, for whom she initially acts as a matchmaker on behalf of his mother.446 Like Jane Austn’s Emma, the more involved she gets in Bacchon’s engagement, the more interested in him she becomes. While the Ismenodora tale is narrated in two sequels, the other characters in the dialogue discuss true love. In an unexpected scene at the end of the dialogue, with the reader left hanging in the middle of the Ismenodora story, we learn that she indeed marries her beloved, whom she knew to be not unwilling to marry her after ‘kidnapping’ him from the gymnasium.447 The story contributes to the 443 Luc. Syr.D. 22. 444 Luc. Syr.D. 17–18. 445 Elsner 2001, 148–49. 446 The relationship between the motif of the widow and that of Phaedra is discussed in Huber 1990; for similarities between the Ephesian Widow and Phaedra tales in Petronius see Macglathery 2001, 124 and Harrison 2006. 447 Cf. Plu. 754e, ‘he was not displeased.’ For the connection to similar predatory women in the Greek novel, e.g. Melite in Achilles Tatius, see Goldhill 1995, 154 and Haynes 2003, 94.

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celebration of true love. Euripides’ Hippolytus is also echoed elsewhere in the Amatorius,448 especially the lines that extol the power of Eros, whether it occurs between two young people or between an older woman and a younger man.449 In Plutarch, the age and status gap does appear as an important theme, which was the case throughout the background of the myth, but reciprocal love erases the differences and brings uniformity, probably echoing the world of the ideal novel and stories of happily-ending mutual love. Exonerating Hippolytus: the case of Timasion Regardless of Phaedra’s wickedness, Hippolytus’ chastity, in the Empire, was mistrusted as unatural.450 Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius does not revise the myth explicitly but presents a parallel story. In it, the young Timasion is described as a character in a story that surpasses that of Euripides, πρὸ Ἱππολύτου.451 The story about Timasion is interesting in that it subverts the common themes of the Phaedra myth: 6.3: Timasion was the name of this stripling, who was just emerging from boyhood and was now in the prime of life and strength. He had a stepmother who had fallen in love with him, and when he rejected her overtures, she set upon him and by way of spiting him had poisoned his father’s mind against him, condescending to a lower intrigue than even Phaedra (οὐδὲν ὧνπερ ἡ Φαίδρα), had done, for she accused (διαβάλλουσα) him of being effeminate, and of finding his pleasure in pederasts rather than in women. He had, as a result, abandoned Naucratis, for it was there that all this happened, and was living in the neighbourhood of Memphis … [upon hearing his tale] Apollonius said: ‘Do you sacrifice to Aphrodite, my boy?’ and Timasion answered ‘Yes, by Zeus, every day, for I consider that this goddess has great influence in human and divine affairs.’ There Apollonius was delighted beyond measure, and cried: ‘Let us, gentlemen, vote a crown to him for his continence (σωφροσύνη) rather than to Hippolytus the son of Theseus, for the latter insulted (ὕβρισε) Aphrodite, and that perhaps is why he never fell a victim to the tender passion, and why love never ran riot in his soul, but he was allotted an austere and unbending nature.᾽

448 Di Gregorio 1980, 61: E. Hipp. 7–8 cf. Amat. 766c; E. Hipp. 449–450 cf. Amat. 756d; E. Hipp. 47 cf. Amat. 759b. To these I wish to add the supplication scene in Amat. 766c, ‘she welcomed him at the doorstep alone and she only touched his robes (τῆς χλαμύδος ἔθιγε μόνον)’ against E. Hipp. 606, ‘Do not touch my robes (μήδ᾽ ἅψῃ πέπλων).’ 449 Ismenodora’s sexuality as a revision of the traditional view of female virtue is discussed in Goldhill 1995, 157. For Plutarch’s social milieu and women’s position in the Empire see Harries 1998. 450 Goldhill 1995, 22. 451 Philostr. VA 6.5 and at 7.42.2–6, a young boy from Arcadia is explicitly compared to Hippolytus because of his sophrosyne. The youth refused to become Domitian’s lover and was imprisoned by him, but because of his modesty was admired by the emperor and set free.



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Timasion’s story presents a different version of the Phaedra myth. Like Phoenix, the boy is exiled as a result of his stepmother’s plot.452 The slandering this time is by the woman, who accuses him of being effeminate.453 Apollonius, a Pythagorean sage and champion of absolute chastity, ought to judge him according to Hippolytus. However, he asks him instead about Aphrodite, subverting thus the readerly epectations. Unlike Hippolytus, who is often depicted as worshiping Artemis (see Figure 6), Timasion avoids hybris and honours Aphrodite. Slander, chastity and exile are the key elements in a Hippolytus-like plot, but one in which the main character lives happily ever after. At the end of the Second Sophistic, both Phaedra’s and Hippolytus’ characters required thorough reconsideration. Low-life Phaedras Besides the creative revision of the myth by the chief imperial representatives, Phaedra’s destructive passion was popular in pantomime, and Roman sarcophagi may display some of these of the myth.454 The Greek testimonia are scant: the Hellenistic fifth mime of Herodas and the fragmentary Moecheutria from P.Oxy. 413, dated in the second century CE, present what seem to be a common theme: a virtuous slave rebuffing the advances of a lecherous mistress since he is in love with another slave, Apollonia – a name echoing Hippolytus’ love for.455 This theme is also partly present in the tales of Potiphar’s wife and Phaedra.456 A hilarious triangle including a slave-mistress affair is narrated in the Life of Aesop 74–76. In it, Xanthus’ wife sees her slave Aesop masturbating and falls in love with him, promising him a nice change of clothes if he satisfies her ten times; Aesop fails the tenth time and she refuses to give him his reward.457 The motif of clothes and the mistress’ refusal may echo the slander theme in the tale of Potphar’s wife, where she presents her husband with a piece of Joseph’s

452 A similar story with a Neopythagorean touch is the one reported in the Life of Secundus: the philosopher-to-be, trying to prove that indeed ‘all women are whores’, tries his own mother and offers in disguise to sleep with her; upon learning the truth she hangs herself, whereupon he takes a Hippolytan-like oath of eternal silence, Perry, 1964, fr. 68 and Archibald 2001, 65. This interpretation is based on broad motifs of the Phaedra megatext, such as the proposed incest and the oath of silence that binds Hippolytus in both plays but also alludes to Oedipus’ tale. 453 Hansen 2002, 346 also notes the transformation of the slander accusation. 454 Huskinson 2008, 93–94. 455 Webb 2013, 287. Andreassi 2001 argues for a direct influence of the mime on the Life of Aesop. 456 On the novel and the adultery pantomime see Andreassi 2001, Andreassi 2002 and Webb 2013, esp. 288. 457 For common ‘novelistic themes’ see also Jouanno 2009 and Kim 2013, 305–08.

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clothing as evidence for the rape. And yet, despite the affair, all ends well for Aesop and for Xanthus’ wife too. Petronius too may be a trustworthy witness this folkloric material for the Satyricon includes the famous tale ‘The Widow Ephesus’ (110–112).458 The story is of folk origin, although the manner in which it is narrated bears clear epic and tragic undertones: the situation is different from the myth of Phaedra, but it also describes the resistance of a supposedly chaste wife, willing to starve herself her husband’s grave, and her quick surrender to the pleasures of wine, food and sex offered by a younger soldier.459 Some milder echoes of the Phaedra story can be found in the Circe episode, veiled under the Odyssean overarching intertext.460 Here Encolpius meets the beautiful Circe, who is cast in the role of both the temptress and the ‘older rich woman’ who lusts after slaves and lowborn younger men. Circe describes herself as a chaste rich woman who has only recently tasted the pleasures of love;461 Encolpius is eager to give in to the beautiful temptress, and if he remains chaste it is only because of Priapus’ curse that causes impotency. One can easily imagine how similar plots might have appealed in imperial times, and how the traditional myths of passion and destruction ended up in excruciating satire of all classes and characters, arranging them in hilarious and dangerous triangles. Thus imperial Phaedras and their desire for young men – widowed, married or concubines, even the excessively ugly alike – found their way into lowbrow theatre.

2.2 The Phaedra mythological megatext Once upon a time, in an oriental land, a married woman/widow falls for her stepson, brother-in-law, slave. He repudiates her advances but each day she becomes more daring. One day she confesses to him, openly or through an intermediary. Some say he eventually sleeps with her, others say he refuses her. When

458 For associations with the Milesian Tales and the ‘birth of the novel’ see Tilg 2010a, 147–50; for the evidence of Phaedra-inspired adultery mimes in Apuleius see Harrison 2006. 459 Barta 2001, 124–33. 460 Petr. Sat. 126–133. For the overarching paradigmatic Odyssean example see Morgan 2009b, 33. See also Rimell 2002, 148–50, who notes the similarities with the tale of Dido, the Widow Ephesus and Encolpius posing as a miles amator. Rimell 2002, 151 argues for an innovative reworking of the Homeric material. The dramatic (Roman New Comedy) backdrop of the Croton episode is discussed in Panayotakis 1995, 160. 461 Petr. Sat. 127, ‘si non fastidis feminam ornatam et hoc primum anno virum expertam.’



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it is found out, she accuses the man of rape and the man flees. In the end both are punished, or she is punished alone. This far-from-inclusive summary of the tale of Potiphar’s wife makes a good starting point for thinking about Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus during the Empire.462 From the source texts and their imperial reworkings one sees that this raw material supported a variety of treatments, not all of them leading to tragedy. Of major importance for Euripides’ play for the imperial reader was Hippolytus’ awkward devotion to Artemis and chastity, besides his refusal to sleep with his stepmother. Motif A was maintained in visual art by depicting statuettes of Artemis or Aphrodite in the background, as in Figure 7, or an Eros next to Phaedra as in Figure 8. Male chastity, which in the visual sphere is represented by the thrown away letter, is also featured in literary texts: Philostratus’ version of the myth in Timasion’s story or Combabus’ self-castration in Lucian also admit them to this league of chaste youths. The imperial revisions of the story did not need to maintain the stepmother-stepson relationship as it is the faithless wife that is in focus. However the family relationships featuring in the Hippolytus are important for the revisions of Parthenius and Philostratus. Already the myths about Bellerophon and Phoenix provided a variety of liaisons dangereuses, presenting either a lustful married queen or a concubine, as is also the case in the Samia. Equally, the temptress, Motif B below, may be a queen (such as Stratonice), a widow (such as Ismenodora) or, as in Petronius’ novella a; slave-owner; the young man may be anything from a slave to a stepson. More interesting are the possibilities that follow the woman’s advances. Whereas visual arts favour the motif of the nurse as the go-between, literary evidence is more varied. According to the megatext discussed above the man might succumb to the woman’s plight, Motif C1, willingly or not, as in the case of Phoenix according Apollodorus, or of Corythus in Parthenius, and of couse in some mimes and the ‘happily ever after love’ of Ismenodora and Bacchon in Plutarch. More popular however is outcome C2, the man’s refusal, present in the Hippolytus and the Stheneboea, as well as in Lucian and Philostratus. Visual art also emphasises Hippolytus’ refusal, since, as we observed, the rejected tablet is very often represented, as in Figure 7. The triangle relationship is also highlighted, just as in the plastic arts, e.g. Figure 9. When the husband learns about the supposed affair, the wife very often slanders the youth.463 The husband punishes the man with exile and/or death, Motif D1, as Hippolytus, Bellerophon, Corythus, Timasion or Combabus, and he is threatened with a death sentence, echoing thus the popular theme of Hippolytus’ death in the visual arts. But in the texts of the 462 AT motif K2111: ‘A wife falsely accuses of rape a man who reupidates her’; AT Tale 318 ‘The treacherous wife is punished’. Trenkner 1958, 64 ‘Potiphar’s Wife’. See also Hansen 2002, 332–52. 463 AT K2120 ‘Innocent, chaste man slandered as seducer’.

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Second Sophistic not all Hippolytus-like characters meet their unlucky doom, and some of them, like Timasion, enjoy a happy life away from home. The end of the story for the adulteress includes the following twofold possibilities (D2): the wife is either punished (e.g. Stheneboea is thrown from Pegasus) or commits suicide (e.g. Phaedra), or we do not learn the outcome, as in the case of Potiphar’s wife. Often the young man is exonerated and, if alive, rewarded, as are Bellerophon, Joseph, Combabus and Bacchon. The distinction in these provisional motifs shows the possible outcomes that were available for this popular folktale, depending the genre in which it was reworked. A story about a wicked and faithless wife did not necessarily need to end badly for both the woman and her lover and it depends whether the story was meant for instruction or for a good laugh, as is the case with Lucian or Petronius’ Ephesian widow. The authors of the first three centuries show remarkable versatility. On the one hand, they illustrate a deep interest in female psychology, making Phaedra the focus of the story rather than Hippolytus in the later adaptations: Stratonice, who did not slander her beloved, and Plutarch’s chaste widow, Ismenodora, are very characteristic cases. These authors celebrate the power of love, not desire: Stratonice remains enamoured of Combabus even after his emasculation. As for Ismenodora, she successfully wins the hand and love of the younger Bacchon despite the difference in status and age. What the Second Sophistic contributed to the Mythenkritik and the reshaping of the pattern was the emphasis on the woman’s lovesickness and the loosening of the stepmother/stepson construction so as to include other triangles that gave opportunities for different treatments. Also, Hippolytus’ chastity was revised, and the seduction plot could even succeed. Thus the mythical expectations of the audience were shaken to their depths, since Attic drama had invested in numerous plays illustrating the impossibility of a happy outcome. This critique of the traditional Phaedra myth not only made her character more accessible and intelligible in the spirit of the overall rationalising of myth, but also, the fact that these other versions were not presented through drama by authors such as Lucian, Philostratus or Plutarch shows that prose narratives were allowed a freedom that myth-based genres were not. Thus, although the visual intertexts and the literary ones share the interest in the myth of Phaedra’s love and the chaste youth’s rejection, the sophistic texts are more experimental with their treatment of the story. It is also not surprising that although the actual Phaedra was critisised this was not the case for her analogues. The relocation of the Phaedra story from Athens to other places, such as the oriental Antioch, also provided opportunities for cultural subversions of the myth, thus opposing the Greek to other – oriental or Hellenised – versions, as was the case above with the Iphigenia myth. Having this provisional pattern in mind as



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a ‘reader’s digest’ of the myth of Phaedra, we can now proceed to explore the treatment it received in the Greek novels.

2.3 Phaedra in the Greek novel 2.3.1 Chariton Aphrodite’s anger Chaereas is the only hero who is not straightforwardly involved in a Phaedra pattern. Yet, in the initial description of him he is compared to, among others, Hippolytus.464 In an interesting analysis of the Euripidean intertexts in Chariton, Scourfield (2010) contends that there is a tragic dimension to his novel, an aspect otherwise downplayed by other scholars. Among other arguments, Scourfield emphasises the role of Aphrodite in punishing Chaereas’ hybris465 for having kicked his wife, the most beautiful god-given gift, Callirhoe, almost to death.466 Chaereas’ offence may not be of the same calibre as Hippolytus’ obstinate chastity, but Aphrodite’s involvement hints at a possible Euripidean outcome of the plot, namely Motif A of the megatext. Luckily, Aphrodite changes her mind and finally acknowledges Chaereas’ efforts in retrieving his beloved.467 We might nonetheless ask if this theme of erotic hybris could be contextualised in the early novels and consider whether the Phaedra pattern was already part of the recipe. Would a reader seasoned in novelistic narrative understand Chaereas’ offence to be of Euripidean inspiration? In the contemporary Metiochus and Parthenope there is a triangle plot between a stepmother and a stepson. The fragments tell that Hegesipyle concocted a plot (ἐπιβουλή) against Metiochus, which results in Metiochus’ exile and subsequent arrival at Polycrates’ court.468 It may be that he was exiled by 464 Char. 1.1.3, alongside Achilles, Nireus, and Alcibiades. See De Temmerman 2014, 47–49. 465 Char. 8.1.3, ‘She had given him the fairest of gifts, fairer even than the gift she had accorded to Alexander Paris, and he had repaid her kindness with arrogance (ὕβρισεν).’ For Hippolytus as a model of chastity for Chaereas see also Hunter 1994, 1079 and De Temmerman 2014, 47–49. 466 Scourfield 2010, 99, 300, 302–306 focuses on the main triggers of intertextuality such as the mention of Hippolytus among Chaereas’ analogues in 1.1.3, Aphrodite’s anger and revenge for Chaereas’ assault (hybris) against Callirhoe in 8.1.3, the Artaxerxes hunting scene and Theseus’ anger, transmitted through Menander’s Perikeiromene. Note that Chaereas’ hybris is mentioned only in 8 1.3, at the very end, and it is not as programmatic as Habrocomes’ or Metiochus’ arrogance. 467 Scourfield 2010, 300. 468 P.Berol. 7927, 15–17.

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his father, Miltiades, as part of the wife’s plot against her stepson. The comparison of the text with its Persian reworking, Vamiq and Adhra, led Hägg, Utas and Unsuri (2003), 221 to conclude that there was no romance between Hegesipyle and Metiochus, ‘provided it is not the Persian poet who has purged the narrative.’ Still: the stepmother’s ploy is what leads the hero to his exile.469 At the end of his story, Polycrates’ guests praise the youth for his uprightness.470 This could allude either to his willing obedience to his father’s wishes, or his fleeing secretly, or even his having rebuffed any erotic advances and leaving the household to avoid causing trouble, as Timasion did above in Philostratus’ account. Another argument that speaks for a Hippolytus characterisation is the mention of his chastity: indeed Metiochus is portrayed as ‘so far inexperienced and unwilling to experience Eros at all,’471 so we may assume that his falling in love with Parthenope was Eros’ punishment for arrogance.472 Another fragment may shed some light on how Chaereas’ hybris might have been decoded by his readership. In the equally early Ninus Romance there are possible hints at the megatext of Hippolytus and Phaedra, too:473 for example, Ninus’ first words to his aunt, Semiramis’ mother, reveal that he was, like Hippolytus, bound by an oath of chastity.474 Ninus’ chastity may not necessarily be patterned after a Hippolytan model, nor must it allude to a permanent chastity but rather a kind of secret oath of eternal love with Semiramis, such as Habrocomes’ and Anthia’s oaths.475 Nonetheless, such claims demonstrate that the theme was an important ingredient of a novelistic plot. 469 Cf. P.Berol. 7927, col. 1.10, φιλότεκνος and 16, τῶν ἑαυτῆς παίδων (Stephens-Winkler). Hegesipyle in the story probably tried to prioritise her own children as opposed to her stepson, as it is the case in the story of Phrixus and Helle. Hansen 2002, 340 places the myth of Phrixus and Helle also under motif K2111 (Potiphar’s wife). 470 P.Berol. 7927, 24, ‘(They) marveled at the courage,’ (transl. Stephens-Wiklner). 471 P.Berol. 7927, 60, ‘I have not yet done so (fall in love) – may I never experience it at all!’ Cf. also Parthenope, who later is angry at Metiochus for claiming that he had never been in love, lines 64–68. 472 The novel here echoes a folktale pattern as described by Uther 2004, 347, AT 590: after being slandered by the stepmother and exiled, the man rescues a young girl who eventually becomes his wife. 473 Stephens 1996, 23 date the Ninus Romance before Parthenope and before Chariton, whereas Bowie 2002 opts for a post-Chariton date. Tilg 2010a 20 believes Chariton to have written Parthenope too. 474 P.Berol. 6926, 18–20, ‘He swore to safeguard himself so as to remain uncorrupted and unexperienced of Aphrodite (ἀδιάφθορον καὶ ἀπείρατον Ἀφροδίτης).’ 475 Cf. X. Eph. 5.9.3, τὰ ἀπόρρητα. Fr. A.II.1, εὐορκήσας ἀφῖγμαι (Stephens-Winkler). Cf. Stephens 1996, 56, Ninus’ oath might suggest that he remained chaste in spite of (a) the temptations; (b) his age; (c) his love for Semiramis.



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Chariton then must have been writing against or within such a background; he may have made the choice not to include a Hippolytan plot in his narrative, instead choosing to focus on the nuanced faithfulness of Callirhoe, the female protagonist. And yet, despite his programmatic resolutions, his comment on Chaereas’ arrogance at 8.1.3 may harn back to such plots, since nowhere in the opening of the novel is Aphrodite mentioned as being angry with the hero. The same could be said about Dionysius’ supposed offence to Aphrodite. The Milesian widower is portrayed as not a barbarian but a man of good education, extraordinary virtue and self-restraint.476 His widowhood also emphasises his sexual abstinence, making him even more Hippolytus-like. However, Dionysius’ sophrosyne, like that of Hippolytus, does not please Eros, who transforms him from a pious widower to a love-stricken and possessive suitor.477 Thus Chaereas’, and also Dionysius’, hybris to Eros is reminiscent of a common theme of the genre, as well as being a metaliterary hint at Chariton’s reader, which, nonetheless, remains underplayed by the subsequent plot.

2.3.2 Xenophon of Ephesus Habrocomes’ hybris The folktale about the young man and the older woman does not necessarily need to exclude other females. In fact, the slandered young man often falls in love and marries another girl and not the wicked older woman, who is rightly punished in the end, as in Bellerophon’s tale. This kind of tale shows who is indeed an eligible partner and who is not.478 Accordingly, the Greek novel matched the hero with an outstanding beauty that strains first his sophrosyne but even more his faithfulness.479 The Ephesiaca is characteristic because, in the opening of the novel, Anthia is cast in the role of both the Beauty and the temptress testing Habrocomes’ chastity. Througout the novel Habrocomes remains faithful not to Artemis but to an Artemis-like mortal woman. Xenophon’s novel begins with a clear Hippolytan setting that becomes programmatic for the entire work. This setting is 476 Char. 2.4.1, ἐξαιρέτως ἀρετῆς, and 2.4.5. 477 Char. 2.4.5, ‘But Eros who took his restraint as an insult, set himself against Dionysius and fanned to greater heat the blaze in a heart that was trying to be rational about love.’ The theme of the offence of Eros is well known from the Phaedra pattern. 478 According Hansen 2002, 340, the two women illustrate the two kinds of love, the prohibited and the recommended. 479 For the subtlety of the term sophrosyne, meaning either self-restraint or chastity or faithfulness, see De Temmerman 2009; see North 1966, 6–10 for sophrosyne and aidos.

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represented in two layers: first, the description of Habrocomes as a Hippolytus type, and secondly, the ekphrasis of Anthia as Artemis. Early in the novel, we see Habrocomes praised by his compatriots as if he were a god: he is not only handsome but also well versed in belles lettres and music, hunting, equitation and fighting with arms. Hunting thus played an important role in his life.480 In these very first lines we also learn that Habrocomes, like Hippolytus, thinks highly of himself primarily because of his good looks.481 His arrogance is such that ‘he did not even recognise Eros as a god … saying that no one would ever fall in love or submit to the god except of his own accord, and whenever he saw a temple of a statue of Eros he used to laugh and claimed that he was more handsome and powerful than any Eros.’482 In short, he believes he is what the others see in him: a god.483 This is a second Hippolytan attribute since it recalls the hero’s rejection of Aphrodite and his stubborn preference for Artemis, thinking himself beyond mortal error in doing so.484 It does not take long before Eros, like Aphrodite in the eponymous play, decides to take revenge on Habrocomes and punish him for being supercilious.485 The novel’s opening thus packed with so many Hippolytan themes: it is not surprising that the context of Habrocomes’ chastisement is a festival to the goddess of virginity, Artemis, during which Eros and Aphrodite decide to punish the arrogant youth.486 Xenophon’s ekphrasis visualises the hunting procession of the Ephebes to the temple of Artemis Ephesis, ‘first the sacred objects, the torches, the baskets and the incense, then horses, dogs, hunting equipment, some for war, most for peace.’487 The end of the opening scene in the Hippolytus also depicts a hunt, which seems to echo the ritual procession of 480 X. Eph. 1.1.1–3. 481 X. Eph. 1.1.4, ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῷ μεγάλα; E. Hipp. 4–5, ‘(Aphrodite) I honour those who reverence my power, but I lay low all those who think proud thoughts against me (σφάλλω δ᾽ὅσοι φρονοῦσιν εἰς ἡμᾶς μέγα).’ (Transl. Kovacs). On Hippolytan characterisation see De Temmeman 2014, 142. 482 X. Eph. 1.1.5. 483 X. Eph. 1.2.8. For the focalisation see De Temmerman 2014, 125. 484 Cf. E. Hipp. 88, (the old slave to Hippolytus) ἄναξ, θεοὺς γὰρ δεσπότας καλεῖν χρεών, and the reaction 113, τὴν σὴν δὲ Κύπριν πόλλ’ ἐγὼ χαίρειν λέγω. The lines are problematic: Barrett 1964 translates: ‘Lord – I address you thus because it is the gods whom one should call master.’ But West 1965 and Kovacs 1995 translate: ‘Lord, for it is as gods that one should address one’s masters.’ Here I concur with Barrett’s interpretation. 485 Cf. X. Eph. 1.2.1, ‘Eros … a god compulsory for the arrogant ones.’ 1.4.6, ‘Habrocomes, a handsome man but arrogant.’ 486 Dalmeyda 1962 1926, 9, also Steiner 1969 and Griffiths 1978, 411, argue that Artemis cannot be Anthia’s model since the Ephesian Artemis was an oriental and sensual goddess. For the Greek character of Artemis at Ephesus see Yildirim 2004. 487 X. Eph. 1.2.3.



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the Eleusis Mysteries during which Phaedra first saw Hippolytus and where the hunting theme is highlighted.488 Yet this scene echoes soundly the visual representations of the myth too, where Hippolytus is shown with a group of fellow hunters, dogs, deer or horses, as in Figure 8. Anthia, at 1.3.7–8, is presented as the living image of the goddess, and the crowd ‘gave a cheer when they saw her … some were amazed and said it was the goddess in person, some that it was someone else made by the goddess in her own image.’ The comparison of Anthia to Artemis is a lieu commun in the Greek novels,489 although the hunting context reinforces the link between Habrocomes as Hippolytus and Anthia as Artemis.490 For example, Anthia poses in a short dress, Artemis-like, and her posture, it has been argued, might recall some figurines of Artemis.491 However, upon seeing Habrocomes, Anthia’s attitude changes: she becomes vocal and bares parts of her body so that Habrocomes can ‘hear and see’ her.492 She thus prompts Habrocomes and the external reader to visualise her in sensual terms:493 Aphrodite was well-known for her half naked shoulders and her slipping himation, and Artemis too was depicted with a slipping drapery as early as on Phidias’ east frieze on the Parthenon.494 Early on, then, the heroine is depicted as incarnating both the virgin and the woman, the chaste and the sensual.495 A Euripides enthusiast would expect 488 E. Hipp. 51–56, ‘But I see coming the son of Theseus, who has just left the toils of hunting, Hippolytus.’ 489 The parallel with Artemis and/or Aphrodite features also in Létoublon 1993 as one of the lieux communs, but does not receive further interpretation. Lalanne 2006 has interpreted this phenomenon in the context of the sexual education of young girls: e.g. first assimilated to Artemis when still maidens, and then to Aphrodite and/or Demeter as grown women. 490 De Temmerman 2014, 124. 491 Hägg 1983, 27. 492 X. Eph. 1.3.1. 493 This mixed Artemisian characterisation is encountered also in the plastic arts. In an exciting paper, Newby 2011, 216–18 discusses the use of portrait heads on Roman sarcophagi and the mythical hunting scenes; she observes how ‘the wife appears in the guise of a female huntress, usually identified with Artemis/Diana, an appropriate patron goddess for the hunter, and how the hunter is represented as the strong and athletic man rather than the arrogant youth who met a premature death.’ The uncertainty of Xenophon’s date makes it impossible to tell if such a transformation of the Phaedra megatext took place earlier, in the second part of the first century where Xenophon is placed. That said it nonetheless suggests a change of tastes that might have predated the sarcophagi. 494 For Aphrodite see LIMC 2 s.v. ‘Aphrodite’, Fig 225–240, the so-called ‘Aphrodite from Fréjus’ type now in the Louvre; see also Artemis from the Parthenon, East Frieze, slab 6 (Acropolis Museum). For the Greek character of Xenophon’s Ephesian Artemis see Whitmarsh 2011, 27–29. 495 Cf. Guez 2012 for parallel situation in Achilles Tatius and de Temmerman 2014, 54 for Chariton.

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Habrocomes to remain unmoved by the spectacle of the beautiful girl, but in an ironic twist Eros causes Anthia, this Artemis-looking virgin, to become overwhelmed by passion. What follows though is unexpected of a Hippolytan character: ‘and thus far insensible to desire (ὁ τέως ἀνέραστος), Habrocomes wished to see Anthia.’496 Disappointing such readerly Euripidean expectations, the virile Habrocomes, famous for his chastity, immediately becomes a supplicant of Eros.497 The parallel with the Phaedra megatext is further subverted when Anthia is no longer presented as the all-virginal ideal heroine but as a love-struck girl who struggles to control her desire, echoing the famous theme of Phaedra’s lovesickness so prominent in visual art. Anthia’s reaction in this context has much in common with Phaedra’s amorous suffering, although the situation is different.498 Another factor that may have aided the reader in connecting Anthia with Phaedra could have been the depictions of the Athenian queen in the visual arts, in which the Euripidean stepmother is frequently portrayed with naked shoulders, her chiton removed as evidence of her ‘disarrayed emotional state’.499 Anthia too, when she sees Habrocomes in the temple, tries to get his attention; we learn that she not only talks but also exposes a part of her body so that Habrocomes can see it.500 In the days that follow the fateful meeting, Xenophon underlines Anthia’s silent carnal suffering, her physical weakening and her need for a loyal nurse to communicate her sorrows,501 recalling the basic plot line of the extant Hippolytus. Yet none of this takes place and the two get married with the blessings of their families.502 In fact, because they are reunited through the god’s will and not the ploys of a handmaiden, the reader recognises that that s/he is in the midst of an ideal novelistic plot, rather than

496 X. Eph. 1.2.9. 497 De Temmerman 2014, 142, argues that the Hippolytan characteristics disappear after the opening and reappear at the Manto episode. However there is an ongoing latent subversion of the pattern even before going into the details of the Manto and the Cyno chapters. 498 For the lack of self-control in novelistic characters, here Anthia, see De Temmerman 2014, 135–36. 499 Mucznik 1999, 124. 500 X. Eph. 1.3.2, ‘Anthia too was in a bad way … and already she paid no attention to modesty … and she revealed what she could of her body for Habrocomes to see (ἐγύμνωσεν τὰ δυνατά).’ The mention of τὰ δυνατά here probably indicates the head, hair and shoulders, since Anthia was in a short Artemis-like dress; see the comparison in Hägg 1983 (1980), 27 of Xenophon’s description in 1.2.6 with a statuette of Artemis of the so-called Tanagra type. 501 X. Eph. 1.4.7, ‘Whom shall I find to help me? To whom shall I confide all the truth?’ 502 For the development of Anthia’s desire from carnal to spiritual and emotional see Tagliabue 2012.



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the kind of intrigue inspired by the Phaedra megatext. And as their union is not the outcome of a ploy but of god’s will the happy ending is guaranteed. Apsyrtus misreading Phaedra The various Phaedra themes in the novel’s opening – chastity, arrogance, hunting, lovesickness and, above all, Eros’ revenge – are used to sidetrack the reader towards a number of possible outcomes: falling in love is the first solution to Eros’ revenge plot, but testing this love is the next. The Manto episode is the first and most extensive Phaedra pattern in the novel. Manto’s name indicates Apolline influence, and for that reason it is presented as part of the divine plan foretold at Claros.503 These echoes might be intended to make her comparable to the Artemis-like virgin, Anthia – and a dangerous rival as such.504 Indeed, the young barbarian girl is beautiful and virginal; in this sense, she does not conform to the pattern of the adulterous woman. 505 Yet, like other powerful females of the pattern, she is in a higher social position than Habrocomes and Anthia, whom her father, Apsyrtus, brings into their household as her slaves. Surprisingly for the external reader, unsuspecting of the potential consequences, Apsyrtus leaves Manto at home with the two young Ephesians, showing thus himself as an unseasoned reader of Phaedra patterns.506 As the story goes, Manto falls in love with her handsome slave, who, faithful to Anthia, rejects her. Like Phaedra in the Hippolytus she asks another slave, (Anthia’s co-slave) Rhode, to act as the go-between.507 When Rhode refuses to 503 Manto was the mythical founder of the oracle of Claros, Paus. 7.3 1–2. See also Schol. Ap. Rhod. Arg. 1.308: the authors of the Thebais say that Manto the daughter of Teiresias was sent to Delphi by the Epigonoi as a first fruit of their spoils, and that in accordance with an oracle of Apollo she went out and met Rhacius, the son of Lebes, a Mycenaean by race. This man she married – for the oracle also contained the command that she marry whomsoever she might meet – and coming to Colophon, wept bitterly over the destruction of her country. Any secure interpretation of her name, however, is impossible. I owe this observation to E. Bowie. As Hägg 1971a argues regarding the names, they are not chosen on mythical grounds. 504 Habrocomes’ chastity has been threatened earlier by Corymbus, 1.16.5, whom he also turns down. Jones 2012, 202–205 argues that in this episode not only Habrocomes’ faithfulness is tested but also his masculinity. In a homosexual relationship he might have needed to become the eromenos as opposed to his active role as erastes in his wedding. However with Manto there are no such complications, as it is yet another heterosexual and likely relationship. 505 X. Eph. 2.3.3, οὖσαν ἡλικιῶτιν καὶ κόρην. The depiction of Manto’s communication with Habrocomes is very realistic. She chooses Rhode not only because she is her own age, but also because she speaks Greek. For delivering the letter, presumably written in Greek, she uses a barbarian slave who cannot read Greek, 2.5.3. 506 X. Eph. 2.6.5, σώφρονα παρθένον. De Temmerman 2014, 127. 507 X. Eph. 2.3.4.

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collaborate, the virgin Manto reveals her non-Apolline nature, making it clear that if Habrocomes does not consent, both he and his betrothed will suffer the wrath of an offended and barbarian virgin who knows no limits.508 The savage nature of Manto is further highlighted by Habrocomes, as he accuses Leucon of being more barbaric than the Phoenicians when he suggests he cheat on Anthia.509 Rhode and Leucon, learning about Manto’s infatuation, are the primary readers in a chronicle of misfortunes. In a metaliterary comment, as the embedded audience they foresee and anticipate (προσδοκῶν) only disasters.510 In a second attempt, when the medium of the intervening slave fails, Manto writes a letter directly to Habrocomes, echoing the tablets containing Phaedra’s declaration of love. In the letter Manto uses the popular from the Phaedra megatext theme, namely her ‘mal d’amour’ described as nosos, and threatens revenge if he proves arrogant.511 She goes even further and threatens to kill Anthia if he does not collaborate.512 Nonetheless Habrocomes remains stalwart to his principles and rejects Manto twice, in a speech delivered to Leucon and in a letter that echoes the motif of the tablet from the megatext.513 This metaliterary reworking of the Phaedra pattern in Xenophon involves not another husband in the game but the girl’s father. As Manto is unmarried, the punishment of Habrocomes falls to Apsyrtus, who happens to be away from home. When her father returns, according to Motif C1 of the pattern, she accuses Habrocomes of rape and she even puts up a show for her father. Apsyrtus now steps into the role of Theseus, or of the detective who must investigate a complex plot. 2.6.1: As soon as he arrived, Manto contrived her plot against Habrocomes. She dishevelled her hair and tore her clothes, went off to her father, and fell at his knees. ‘Have pity father,’ she exclaimed, ‘on your daughter, wronged by a slave, for the “chaste” Habrocomes tried to rob me of my virginity.’

Apsyrtus had come back with a groom for his daughter, thus integrating yet another person into the complex love triangle. Raping a virgin must have been 508 X. Eph. 2.3.5, ‘A rejected and barbarian maiden’. For her self-representation see De Temmerman 2014, 122. 509 X. Eph. 2.4.3. 510 X. Eph. 2.38, ‘Leucon burst into tears, expecting terrible consequences.’ 511 E. Hipp. 731, ‘By sharing with me in this malady (νόσου) he will learn to keep within bounds (σωφρονεῖν μαθήσεται).’ Cf. broadly the context in X. Eph. 2.5.3, ‘He thought how to punish the arrogant youth.’ 512 X. Eph. 2.5.1. 513 For Habrocomes’ characterisation in both these cases see De Temmerman 2014, 137–138.



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a worse crime even than adultery with a married woman. Habrocomes’ paradigmatic punishment therefore proves Manto’s chastity to Moeris, the fiancé. Apsyrtus’ designation of Manto as an innocent to her future husband rings terribly hollow in the ears of the reader who knows what this girl is capable of. But Apsyrtus turns out to be an incompetent reader and unable to interpret Anthia’s petition to spare Habrocomes as proof of his faithfulness; he tells Anthia that his revenge is also taken on her behalf, since Habrocomes has supposedly wronged her as well.514 And yet, for ‘The clever Judge’, this would have been further evidence of Manto’s slander, Habrocomes’ chastity and Anthia’s true love.515 Habrocomes’ torture and imprisonment point to other paradigms in the megatext besides the Euripides drama. The mime is equally important for this novel, since it often represents a mistress desiring (and threatening to torture) a slave, but our novel might also bear traces of the actual tale about Potiphar’s wife. The parallels are considerable: just like Joseph, Habrocomes is a slave, not the stepson of Manto; what is more, like Joseph, Habrocomes has something to do with imprisonment and dreams: while in prison, Habrocomes has a prophetic dream of his father, Lycomedes, who foretells the happy outcome by means of an image of two horses playing together, anticipating the end to his sufferings;516 Joseph also starts interpreting dreams while in prison. Moreover, the revelation of Habrocomes’ innocence induces Apsyrtus to appoint him as his butler and promise to make him a freedman by marrying him to a citizen’s daughter, just as Joseph became curator of Egypt and ‘Egyptian’ by marrying an Egyptian, Aseneth.517 Unlike with Hippolytus, and much more like Joseph, Habrocomes’ story has a happy ending. As in the drama, Apsyrtus does find a letter: not of slander like the one hanging from Theseus’ wife’s hand, but a revelatory one, namely Manto’s confession to Habrocomes. He thus recognises the truth and immediately releases the

514 X. Eph. 2.6.5. 515 This is a common folktale motif too, AT 926. The most famous tale is the ‘Judgement of Solomon’, 1 Kings 3:16–28, in which two women both claim a child; a judge offers to cut it in two, whereupon the real mother refuses. The dispute might also be between the real and a false husband, e.g. AT 926A, motif J1171, ‘Judgment by testing love’. For Encolpius and Giton fighting over the boy Ascyltus in Petr. Sat. 79–80, see Hansen 2002, 230. Hansen leaves out of his discussion the passage from X.Eph. 516 X. Eph. 2.8.2, in the dream Habrocomes becomes a male horse and meets a mare (Anthia), adding to the Hippolytan imagery, which is connected to the opening scene. MacAlister 1996, 198; for an allegorical interpretation see Bierl 2006. Oikonomou 2011, 53 points out that Lycomedes in freeing the horse is an allusion to Hippolytus name. 517 X. Eph. 2.10.2, ‘To manage his household (τῆς οἰκίας ἄρχειν).’ Cf. Gen. 39:5, ‘From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had,’ and later in Gen. 41:43, ‘Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt.’

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young man.518 And while letters and scrolls are part of the Phaedra megatext, these tend to be deceitful rather than veracious.519 The exoneration of Habrocomes is not followed by an immediate reunion with Anthia but the novel defers punishment of the wanton Phoenician girl. Shortly after the wedding, Moeris falls in love with Manto’s rival, Anthia, on whom she takes revenge.520 And yet, in a last twist of the pattern, like Potiphar’s wife, Manto escapes any penalty herself and, presumably after these love adventures of her youth, lives, presumably, happily ever after with Moeris – as soon as Habrocomes and Anthia leave the scene. Habrocomes reconsiders sophrosyne Manto’s successor receives less prestigious narrative treatment. The Cyno episode is compacted into a single paragraph,521 with the basic elements of the pattern reduced to a minimum: Araxus is an old man who loves Habrocomes as his son but his wife is wicked. Unlike Manto, she is not in the least beautiful and her name means ‘she-dog’.522 Cyno’s lust is so great that she contemplates killing her husband to satisfy her desire for Habrocomes. Such vicious words are found again in an oriental version of the story: Potiphar’s wife, in the Testament of Joseph promises to legally marry Joseph after killing her husband.523 The Egyptian staging of this event may evoke a further allusion to the story about Potiphar’s wife through the overarching Phaedra pattern. Habrocomes’ reaction, however, is remarkable, as he does not turn her down immediately: 3.12.5–6: Now Araxus for his part was kind to Habrocomes and treated him like a son, but Cyno made suggestions and tried to win him over, promising to kill Araxus and make him her husband. This proposal horrified Habrocomes, and he thought hard about a number of things at once: Anthia, his oath, and the chastity that had done him so much harm in the past (τὴν πολλάκις αὐτὸν σωφροσύνην ἀδικήσασαν ἤδη). Cyno kept pressing him, and at last he agreed (συγκατατίθεται). When night came she killed Araxus … and told Habrocomes what she had done. But he could not tolerate the woman’s shameless act and left the house. 518 E. Hipp. 856. Cf. X. Eph. 2.10.1, ‘And he recognises (Manto’s) letters and learns that he, Habrocomes, has been punished unjustly.’ 519 The only evidence I could find is Motif AT K1557.1, ‘Husband discovers paramour’s love letter’. In Ov. Her. 3.3 (Phaedra), ‘quid epistula lecta nocebit?’ Phaedra encourages Hippolytus to continue reading, but the mention of a letter that does not harm prompts the reader to recall the other tablet that Phaedra leaves for Theseus accusing Hippolytus. 520 X. Eph. 2.11.2, ‘But Anthia will not so easily attract Moeris as well, I shall take my revenge on her also for the events in Tyre.’ 521 X. Eph. 3.12 1. 522 Hägg 1971c, 36–37. 523 X. Eph. 1.5.1.



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What is Habrocomes pondering and why does he agree? The hero’s thoughts are important since they revise and subvert the reader’s expectations. Indeed, so far Habrocomes has suffered because of his chastity and for him, as an embedded reader, Cyno’s desire is anticipated in the narrative. Surprisingly however for the reader, Habrocomes’ knowledge of the recurrent Phaedra pattern – note the metaliterary sign-posting πολλάκις in the text – leads him to a different choice. His consenting to sleep with Araxus’ wife before she commits the murder may illustrate a change of mind towards chastity; or he may be ‘sacrificing’ himself to save Araxus, since his previous stubbornness caused (as he believes) Anthia’s dispatching and subsequent death.524 When Cyno nonetheless murders her husband, Habrocomes, disgusted, refuses to sleep with her and the pattern returns to the expected one, namely: slander as Motif C2 of the pattern. Cyno accuses him of murder in the forum and Habrocomes is arrested and sent to the unnamed ruler (ἄρχων) of Egypt, a title that might also recall the title of Joseph as the Ruler of Egypt in the Bible.525 Here the background of the Potiphar’s wife motif mixes the Phaedra megatext with other echoes of Christian martyrdom narratives:526 for Habrocomes miraculously escapes both crucifixion and fire trials.527 Nevertheless, despite the obvious divine favour bestowed upon him, Habrocomes is not released but returned to prison, according to the prefect, ‘till they could find out who he was and why the gods were looking after him like this (μέλει θεοῖς).’528 Divine grace is also part of Joseph’s tale, since the Pharaoh believes him to be god-sent. Thus both Habrocomes and Joseph are saved by god’s grace, while the wicked wife is punished. Cyno suffers the punishment to which Habrocomes was sentenced: she is crucified.529 In summary In Xenophon, the reader witnesses the geographic diversity of the Phaedra pattern: in Ephesus it is closer to the Euripidean plays in both structure and analysis, whereas against the background of Tyre a barbarian virgin grows ever

524 For this development in his characterisation see also De Temmerman 2014, 140. 525 To Christian ears this may have sounded like the Gen. 45:9 passage, in which the Lord makes Joseph ‘Lord (κύριον) of all Egyptian territory’. For Joseph and Habrocomes see Hansen 2002, 347. 526 For the Christian background of Xenophon see Whitmarsh 2011, 48; more debatable but with good observations is Ramelli 2001 and now Giraudet 2012. 527 X. Eph. 4.4.2. In the ancient Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers Bata’s wife, who desires her husband’s brother, twice attempts to kill her husband. 528 X. Eph. 4.2.10 and Gen. 41:38, ‘And Pharaoh said to his servants, “can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?”’ 529 X. Eph. 4.3.4.

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more daring until, on Egyptian soil, female cruelty peaks with the raw brutality of Araxus’ Egyptian wife. It is possible that this shift is influenced by local traditions, such as Joseph’s tale and/or the older Egyptian story of Bata’s wife. It would also be plausible to interpret Habrocomes’ obsession with chastity within this Near Eastern/Joseph-type aspect of the plot, although his hesitation in the Cyno episode remains problematic. I wish to propose that Xenophon departs from a chiefly Greek intertext which he varies with Near Eastern material, whether from the Pentateuch or from other folktale sources as the story relocates to the East. By placing the Euripidean model at the beginning of the novel, it inspires reading the following ménages à trois according to the Phaedra pattern. The freedom and diversity in the use of the Phaedra tale bear witness to a conscious engagement of the narrative with the pattern in more than one cultural background, and this prompts the reader to compare the subsequent Manto and Cyno episodes with the more dramatic version of the opening scene. While direct knowledge of the Hippolytus is evident, especially in the programmatic opening of the novel, the text does not necessarily allude to particular lines but to the broader megatext, incorporating references to popular visual representations. For example, the hunting scene and Manto’s letter to Habrocomes seem to echo well-known types. More controversial is the discovery of the letter by Apsyrtus since, unlike Phaedra’s tablet, this is truthful evidence and not deceptive. Yet scrolls and tablets are a recurrent motif in the Phaedra pattern, and Xenophon might be playing with the skills of the novel’s embedded readership at a metaliterary level: unlike Theseus, Apsyrtus eventually becomes a good reader of Phaedra plottings by reading the scroll. Equally, Cyno’s stratagem filtered through Habrocomes’ reading also opens another perspective, inviting the reader to ponder more or less mythological readings. With respect now to the novel as a genre, Xenophon seems to work with a well-established pattern. We saw above how Metiochus seems aware of his stemmother’s ploy that might have been already typical for the novel, in order to test the chastity of the main hero. We even followed the adaptation of this mythical theme in the novelistic register in Chariton’s description of Chaereas’ hybris. Xenophon now, as was the case with the Iphigenia pattern, presents three different versions of the Phaedra tale, inviting his reader to ponder and compare at a metaliterary level the intratextual differences, as well as the similarities and differences between his version and the mythical vulgate, both Greek and Hellenised. Of these versions, the first – the Greek one – is idealised. Unlike with Phaedra, and very unlike Manto’s and Cyno’s lust, Anthia’s love suffering is cured as she is united with and marries her beloved, who is no longer arrogant. For this to happen, the most challenging alteration to the mythical pattern is the association of the main protagonist with both Artemis



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and Eros. Thus Hyppolytus’ mythical devotion for the goddess is now translated into faithfulness and chastity in a monogamous relationship that no ‘other woman’ can penetrate.

2.3.3 Achilles Tatius Charicles’ horses A new reader of the first three books of Achilles Tatius’ novel would have expected anything but an ‘ideal’ romance: neither Leucippe nor Clitophon conforms to the chaste characters of the genre, since they are easily susceptible to Eros and even attempt to have premarital sex, which is thwarted when Leucippe’s mother enters the room and Clitophon flees.530 Leucippe’s explicit association with Artemis occurs only in Book 4, after her near-sacrifice, whereupon the goddess appears to her in person and bids her remain a virgin until her marriage to Clitophon.531 After this crucial event, she becomes more of a conventional novelistic heroine and abstains from sex with her fiancé.532 Clitophon is not a typical hero either. He initially presents himself as if naïve in matters of love, although we learns that he had already had sex with prostitutes.533 He thus subverts the topos of the chaste, erotically innocent novelistic hero.534 That said, on other occasions he tries to fashion himself as the typical male character: for example, in talking with his older cousin, Clinias, he mentions that he is a slave to Eros after having seen Leucippe. Accordingly, at 1.7.3, we learn that Clitophon used to make fun of Clinias, who was enamoured of a young boy; now Clitophon retracts his earlier mockery and says that he has been ‘paid out for all his scoffing,’ for he too ‘has become a slave.’ This formulation is very close to Habrocomes’ rejection and eventual submission to Eros in the beginning of the novel, as well as Metiochus’, and it seems a metaliterary comment on the kind of story Clitophon’s account might develop into. Nonetheless, the initial characterisation of Clitophon makes him an atypical novelistic

530 Ach. Tat. 2.25.1. 531 Ach. Tat. 4 1.5. On the antagonistic nature of Aphrodite and Artemis and the influence of E, Hipp. on the novel see Guez 2012. 532 Morales 1999, 125 and 217–22 on the sensual aspect of Leucippe’s virginity as porne sophronesasa; see also Chew 2000 and De Temmerman 2014, 189. For Leucippe’s ‘laxity with her virginity’ see De Temmerman 2014, 170 533 Another case might be Chaereas who seems to have had homosexual affairs, Char. 1.3.6, Callirhoe tells Chaereas: ‘Your getting married has hurt your boyfriends.’ 534 Ach. Tat. 2.37.5, πρωτόπειρος. See Jones 2012, 233 and De Temmerman 2014, 159.

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hero from the start.535 That being said, the allusions to the Phaedra pattern are already hinted at the reference to both the myth and its sophistic reworking at 1.10.1, when Clinias tells his supposedly inexperienced cousin that Eros can turn any man into a sophist, echoing thus the famous fragment from the Stheneboea and the Platonic Symposium.536 The revision of the male character’s hybris against Eros in the novel is more flagrantly reworked in the Charicles incident, which stands here as a programmatic cautionary tale for the heterosexual couple.537 Like Xenophon, who opts for a visual imprint of the story by describing the hunting procession for Artemis, Achilles Tatius picks the well-known theme of the plastic arts: Hippolytus’ death. Charicles is about to get married while his friend Clinias begs him not to, delivering the long misogynist tirade about women whose love affairs have been disadvantageous for their husbands and/or beloveds that we saw in the Introduction: Phaedra, Penelope, Helen, Briseis, Clytaemnestra, Eriphyle are among them.538 Such an arrogant view of love and marriage naturally makes Clinias an adversary of Aphrodite and a good subject for demonstrating her powers. Equally condemnable is Charicles’ view of heterosexual love-inmarriage who describes it as a ‘death sentence’ or as ‘prostitution’.539 It is not so much their homosexual desire but their rejection of the power of Eros and Aphrodite, as well as the couple’s arrogance, that leads to their fall.540 The Charicles incident (1.8.1–1.14.3) is sketched as a snippet from a drama recording a Phaedra pattern.541 The meta-references to theatricality and to the genre of drama are characteristic: first, it recalls the one-day unity of a theatrical play, presenting Charicles as saying in a characteristic comment that many things may happen ‘over a single night’.542 This is a typical premonitory prolepseis just as the comment, as Charicles takes off, on this being ‘his first and last ride’ on the horse Clinias gave him. Moreover, in what could have been a messenger’s speech, the two cousins’ idle conversation about Eros is interrupted, as a servant comes in suddenly to announce the boy’s death: in a description 535 De Temmerman 2014, 156. 536 Stheneboea TrGF 663 (Kannicht) on love: ‘after all, Eros teaches a poet, even if he’s previously lacking in skill’ echoed in Pl. Symp. 196e see Anderson 1982, 23–26. 537 Konstan 1994, 115, 240, Jones 2012, 192 also compares Clinias’ love with Hippothous’. See also Makowski 2014. 538 Ach. Tat. 1.7.4. 539 Ach. Tat. 1.7.3, ‘I tell you Clinias, I am lost (οἴχομαι);’ cf. S. Ph. 414, οἴχεται θανών. 540 Morales 2004, 152 describes Charicles’ death as ‘a cautionary tale against Clinias’ mode of loving’, of homoeroticism against heterosexual love. 541 For a close analysis see also Degl’Innocenti Pierini 2003. 542 The unity of place and time is obvious in Charicles’ words in 1.8 10-11.



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that details each stage of the accident we are informed about Charicles’ losing control of the horse, its leaving the main road to enter the woods and his final disfigurement. The vocabulary used in this report alludes to Euripides’ play, especially the comparison of the ride to a hurricane,543 as does the lament of Charicles’ father over the dead body of his son, which echoes that of Theseus at the end of the play.544 Furthermore, the incident has echoes of the visual representations of Hippolytus’ that might have inspired ecphrastic narrartives such as Philostratus’ Imagines 2.4. Philostratus’ Imagines 2.4.545 Thus, already early in the plot the reader is presented with one of the last, but very characteristic, motifs of the pattern, without even needing a stepmother’s plot against the man but only a quick reference to the young men’s arrogance. It therefore appears that Achilles Tatius was writing within a novelistic tradition for which the punishment of the arrogant man was a standard musthave. Already Chariton and Xenophon, among the extant novelists, begin with echoes of Aphrodite’s anger, well known from Hippolytus, and we also saw that Metiochus and Ninus might have also been assimilated to the eponymous Euripidean hero. That being said, Achilles Tatius’ novel has more surprises in store, even for the seasoned reader. Not only does a secondary character die because of his offence against Aphrodite right in the beginning, but the main character is also presented as coming close to commiting a similar hybris. Leucippe reading Phaedra Book 5 marks a new beginning for the novel, this time at Ephesus.546 Leucippe is thought to be dead for the second time, and Clitophon marries Melite – without consummating their marriage – upon their arrival at her estate. And whereas both Clitophon and Melite believe their significant others to be dead, both Leu543 The detail of riding in a storm is similar in both: Ach.Tat. 1.12.4, ‘(Charicles) surrendered himself to the hurricane of the horse’s mad career’ (ὁ δὲ τοῦ κλύδωνος … χειμών) ~ E. Hipp. 1213, ‘with a hurricane and tempest (σὺν κλύδωνι καὶ τρικυμίᾳ).’ On the disfiguring see Ach. Tat. 1.12.5–6, ‘He was hurled from his seat as from a catapult, and his face was pelted by the branches, gashed with as many incisions as there were points on the broken wood … he is no longer recognisable as Charicles,’ and Ach. Tat. 1.13.2, ‘He does not look like a handsome dead (εὐσχήμων νεκρός).’ Cf. E. Hipp. 1238, ‘And the poor man himself, entangled in the reins, bound in a bond not easy to untie, was dragged along, smashing his head against the rocks and rending his flesh’ (transl. Kovacs) and E. Hipp. 1344, ‘The unhappy man, his young flesh and golden head all mangled’ (transl. Kovacs). 544 Garnaud 1991, 22 rightly compares it to Theseus’ lament in E. Hipp. 1245–1248. 545 For the ecphrastic nature of ‘Charicles’ death’ see also Bartsch 1989, 138. 546 The opening of Book 5 as a ‘new start’ as comparable to that of Book 1 is discussed by Nimis 1998.

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cippe and Thersander appear alive at Ephesus. Thus the erotic triangles are multiplied with the participation of both the fiancée and the husband in the Phaedra pattern. This complex situation seems quite like the one in Xenophon, implying that Achilles might not only rework the Phaedra pattern but also embed his predecessor’s revisions of it. The first reading of the story, although narrated by Clitophon, centres on Melite. Melite is introduced in the story by Satyrus as Aphrodite’s gift, evoking not only the role of the goddess of love in the Phaedra myth but also her involvement in novelistic plots such as Chariton’s. Not only is Melite pretty but her statuesque, Aphrodite-like looks might be a metaliterary hint at Callirhoe’s magnificence.547 Yet, her Ephesian origin and her having been recently widowed casts another light on the story,548 one inspired by the lower versions found in the Milesian stories, and the famous ‘Widow of Ephesus’, especially given that it is Satyrus who presents her to Clinias.549 What is more, the beauty, youth and social status of Melite remind the reader of another widow from the megatext – one with serious intentions, namely Plutarch’s Ismenodora – intimating the possibility of a real romance after all.550 This short introduction therefore not only alludes to the classical Phaedra pattern but also includes metaliterary hints at other imperial and novelistic revisions of the ‘other woman’ tale. 5.11.5–12.1: ‘Aphrodite … has made to dote on him (μέγα … ἀγαθόν)551 a woman so beautiful that you might take her for a lovely statue (ἄγαλμα); she is an Ephesian by origin, her name is Melite, she is very rich and young, her husband has died recently in the sea … But he, for some reason which I cannot fathom, is too proud (ὑπερηφανεῖ) to consent, believing that his Leucippe will come to life again.’ And Clinias said, ‘Satyrus seems to me to talk reasonably. Beauty and riches and love all beckon to you at once ... God hates the proud (μισεῖ τοὺς ἀλαζόνας). So come, allow yourself to be convinced by Satyrus and offer yourself to the god (χάρισαι τῷ θεῷ).’

The terms Satyrus and Clinias use to describe Clitophon’s resistance to Melite – Aphrodite’s μίσος, ὑπερηφάνεια, ἀλαζονεία – are key themes of the Phaedra megatext, and prominent in Xenophon too. Moreover, they also allude intratextually to Charicles’ prelude above: for example, Satyrus emphasises the beauty 547 Char. 1.1.1, ἄγαλμα τῆς ὅλης Σικελίας … κάλλος αὐτῆς Ἀφροδίτης. For similarities between Callirhoe and Melite see Tilg 2010a, 191, 255–256. 548 On Ephesus as ‘a place rich in novelistic connotations’ and the tale of the Ephesian Widow, see Whitmarsh and Morales 2001, 158. 549 Huber 1990 and Bowie 2013, 251. The motif is popular in folktale AT 1510, ‘The Ephesian widow’. 550 Ach. Tat. 5.11.3–4, Clitophon refuses to return. 551 Cf. Char. 8.1.3, δῶρον κάλλιστον.



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of Melite and the reader is prompted to recall, together with Clitophon, that Clinias’ boyfriend, Charicles, was engaged to a rich but ugly woman before his fatal ride. Thus, although Clitophon’s initial resistance to Melite’s advances conforms to the norms and the expectations of the genre and matches the reader’s anticipations, soon after recollecting Charicles’ tale the protagonist, followed by the reader, seems to revise the pattern. Clitophon thus agrees to marry her under certain conditions. The famous oath of Hippolytus, well-known from the megatext is here revised as it applied no longer to him, but to Melite. What is more this is no longer an oath of silence but of (temporary) abstinence: 5 12.3: So Satyrus, take me where you will ... if Clinias approves too. But on the one condition that this tiresome woman shall not trouble and press me to have sex until we arrive at Ephesus. I have some time ago taken an oath that I will have no intercourse (ἐπομοσάμενος μὴ συνελθεῖν) here where I lost Leucippe.

This first reading of Melite’s desire that Clitophon records jibes with the novelistic Phaedra pattern. However, the text leaves clues that Clitophon too was impressed by her beauty as he realises her stunning similarity to Leucippe, with her lovely eyes and her golden hair.552 We learn that Clitophon looked on her with pleasure – οὐκ ἀηδῶς – subverting previously established novelistic expectations, according which the hero has eyes only for his chaste beloved one. Thus the novel shifts from a threat of death, according to the Hippolytan model, to an affair. And yet the narrative is focalised through the eyes of Clitophon who, given the retrospective resurrection of Leucippe, seems to present himself to the reader according to the Hippolytan norms. In his analepsis of the episode he repeatedly refers to his safeguarded chastity – provided a kind of sexual morality exists ‘among men’.553 For the external reader, there can be no guarantee that Clitophon’s protestations as a chaste widower is not a post factum self-fashioning like the one he gives Leucippe in the end.554

552 Ach. Tat. 1.4.3 (Leucippe’s fast eyes and blond hair) and 5.13.2 (Melite’s eyes and golden hair), Melite’s description as a statue, as a valuable object, and her similarity to Leucippe are discussed in Morales 2004, 222. For Clitophon being the only novelistic protagonist who pays much attention to women’s looks see Morgan 1996c and De Temmerman 2014, 165. 553 Ach. Tat. 5.20.5, εἴ τις ἐστὶ καὶ ἐν ἀνδράσι παρθενία. 554 Ach. Tat. 8.5.3–4, ‘When I came to the part of the story about Melite, I gave such a turn to the sequence of events that I made them appear greatly to the advantage of my continence (σωφροσύνην), yet without any departure from the truth, I related the story of Melite’s love for me (ἔρωτα), my own chastity (σωφροσύνην) … the trip … only one thing I omitted in all my adventures, and that was the somewhat delicate matter of my connection with Melite after the events just mentioned.’ See De Temmerman 2014, 161–76.

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Surprisingly, for this part of the story, Clitophon gives Melite’s perspective as well. Melite’s view is important since she is the one who can convince Leucippe about Clitophon’s abstinence. Rebuffed by Clitophon not only on the boat but also at Ephesus, Melite even resorts to magic to have her wish fulfilled. But while asking – according to pattern – the right person, her slave, she chooses Leucippe instead, thought to be an expert in Thessalian magic.555 It is curious how Clitophon becomes aware of the otherwise secret meeting between his two women, without making any explicit analeptic comment, as he was not present in the scene he describes.556 It is from Melite’s mouth that Leucippe learns about Clitophon’s marriage and also his current abstinence so far, enabling the couple to endure the twisted navigations of the plot.557 A comedy of errors replaces the tragic tones, or in the words of Billault (1998b), 150, Thersander’s unexpected return ‘accélère en explicite-versions le rythme des péripéties plus que jamais sous le signe de l’échec et de l’erreur.’ At the crucial moment of Thersander’s attack on Clitophon, the latter drops Leucippe’s letter, and Melite, speechless, picks it up. Just as in Xenophon, letters – an important element leading to the motif of slander in the Phaedra pattern – are throroughly revised in the novel. The letter Melite picks up is not of accusation but, as in Xenophon, a love letter, like that of Manto. Still, the circumustances under which Melite finds this letter reinforce the motif of slander. The novel pays close attention to Melite’s emotional anguish: 5.24.3: And so she learnt the whole truth, and her heart was filled with conflicting (ἐμεμέριστο) emotions, shame (αἰδοῖ) and anger (ὀργῇ) and love and jealousy (ζηλοτυπίᾳ). She felt shame as regards her husband, and anger at the letter, love made her anger wither, jealousy fired up love, and in the end love was victorious.

The references to anger and jealousy also point to a novelistic reading of the Phaedra pattern, one that would stage the revenge of the unlucky lover on the hero and his beloved, just like Manto in Xenophon of Ephesus. The Hippolytan associations with Clitophon’s rebuffing of Melite also contribute to such a reading. But the narrator here chooses another version, one that appears

555 Ach. Tat. 5.22.2. The motif of love potions is also in E. Hipp. 516, ‘This drug, is it an ointment or a potion (transl. Kovacs).’ Pamphile the witch in Apul. Met. 1 is also from Thessaly. There is also a play by Menander, Thettale, PCG vol. 6.2. Frag. 170–175 (Kassel-Austin), the topic of the play being magic. Cf. Plin. N.H. 30.2.7. 556 For the logical gaps see here Morgan 2004b, 499. 557 Repath 2013, 254 believes, Clitophon’s letter to be supported by Melite’s own testimony.



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similar to Lucian’s comment regarding Stratonice, as discussed above.558 Melite cannot accuse Clitophon herself, just as Stratonice did not slander Combabus to the king according to Lucian’s version. Melite’s self-defence before her husband is constructed around the themes of ‘rumour’ and ‘slander’ by others, just as Combabus in the Syrian Goddess was the victim of gossip and not of slander by Stratonice. Melite explicitly mentions ‘Rumour (Φήμη) and Slander (Διαβολή), the two kindred evils,’559 that can bring death upon both her and Clitophon. If the plot follows the logic of the mythical pattern, this is not due to a conceit of the ‘other woman’ but because of the husband’s jealousy. Like the king in the Stratonice anecdote, Thersander is not convinced by his wife’s apology, and he plans revenge, thus proceeding with Motif D1 despite the fluidity between Motifs C1 and C2. Accordingly, like Habrocomes, Clitophon is hastily thrown into jail awaiting trial. This is the official version of the tale about Melite that Leucippe later learns from both her rival and her future husband. Thus, all of Clitophon’s actions, conscious or not, lead to the official reading offered to Leucippe and her father at the end of the novel, in which the male narrator and focaliser remains chaste throughout.560 Yet the external reader is allowed a glimpse of a different potential sequel. Melite revisits Phaedra While Clitophon is in prison, instead of Leucippe, Melite pays him a visit, to the surprise of the reader. We saw in Xenophon how Apsyrtus dismisses Anthia’s plea and how inconsiderate Manto is to her beloved’s torture. In Achilles Tatius’ revision of the novelistic adaptation it is now the ‘other woman’ who shows an equal emotional suffering and consideration, subverting both the mythical and the novelistic models of the megatext. In a heartbreaking monologue full of inter- and intratextual reminiscences of the Phaedra pattern and of the Charicles interlude, Melite begs Clitophon to fulfil his promise to have sex with her: 5.26 1–10: ‘Faithless, savage wretch! How could you have the heart to see a woman thus withering away for love, when you too were Eros’ slave (δοῦλος ὤν)? Did you not fear his wrath (μηνίματα) … may Love requite (ἀμύναιτο) you in your passions the same treatment that you have meted out to mine.’ 5.25.6–8 … but after a while she went on in a changed mood … 558 Melite accuses him of being a eunuch, like Combabus, Ach. Tat. 5.25.8, εὐνοῦχε καὶ ἀνδρόγυνε. Moreover, both Melite and Stratonice seem to have been victims of slander and rumour. 559 Ach. Tat. 6.10.4. 560 Clitophon’s principle of ‘male virginity’ above at 5.20.5 is resumed in his account at 8.5.7, where he withholds from Sostratus and Leucippe the crucial part of his Melite adventures see Jones 2012, 244.

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‘What I have just said, my dearest, has been the utterance of anger and grief, what I am now going to say comes from the prompting of love … I ask but a little medicine (φάρμακον) for my long disease (νόσον) … I know that I am lost to all sense of shame (ἀσχημονοῦσα οἶδα) … If you have found Leucippe, marriage with another woman is no longer possible for you, I willingly grant you even this … all sorts of new things happen to me (κατ’ ἐμοῦ πάντα καινά) … Now I beseech you my lord Clitophon … surrender yourself to me now for the first and last time … if you agree to this may you never lose your Leucippe … do not despise my love, through it all your great happiness has come. It has given you back Leucippe, for had I never fallen in love with you, if I had not brought you hither, Leucippe would still have been dead as far as you are concerned.’ 5.27.2: ‘I suddenly felt so human, and indeed I was afraid that Eros would take his revenge upon me (μήνιμα ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ).’

Melite’s imploration is an emotional tirade alternating between threats and kindness that echoes the typical vocabulary of Phaedra’s lovesickness: the disease, slavery to Eros, and the subsequent anger of Aphrodite together with her feelings of embarrassment (ἀσχημονοῦσα οἶδα), which recall Phaedra’s shame.561 It is a direct supplication, but in a situation where she has the upper hand and in which she directs the plot. In her concluding remarks we see how she believes that she too is partaking in the development of the plot by unknowingly bringing Leucippe into her estate. Melite then asks Clitophon to consummate their marriage and promises in exchange to help him escape together with the newly-found Leucippe. Clitophon, surprisingly for the norms of the extant Greek novels, consents and Book 5 closes with a ring composition recalling once more the famous fragment from the Stheneboea Fr. 663 quoted in the opening lines of the novel.562 This strategic repetition of the theme of Aphrodite’s omnipotence, especially after the tryst of the two lovers, plays the mythical connotations next to the Platonic ones: 5.27.4: Everything happened as love willed. We had no need of bedding or of any of Aphrodite’s acutrements; for Love is a handy and resourceful, and clever sophist,563 who can turn any place into a chapel for his mystic liturgy.

As we observed above, Motif C2, having sex with the temptress, is also a possible outcome of the megatext but was mainly reserved for lower genres or even a romantic ending, provided the youth were single, like Bacchon. Yet, in Clitophon’s case it is a double adultery: not only does he transgress the rules of mutual chastity which was a requirement in the other ideal novels, but he does so only after his beloved is finally found alive. Moreover, his agreeing to Melite’s 561 Cf. E. Hipp. 244–246, αἰδούμεθα ... καὶ ἐπ᾽ αἰσχύνην ὄμμα τέτραπται. 562 Ach. Tat. 1.10.1. 563 Translated as ‘bricoleur’ in Reardon 2008 (1989), 249.



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plea after she promises to help them escape equals prostitution, with Melite cast in the role of the client.564 However, he uses the lesson learnt from both the Phaedra megatext and the Charicles programmatic tale to explain the twist of readerly anticipations. Had he not agreed, like Hippolytus and Charicles he too might have had to bear the wrath of Aphrodite. As in the Hippolytus and other Euripidean plays, the pattern of Phaedra in Achilles Tatius closes with an aetiology.565 Melite, in order to be exonerated, has to step into the waters of Styx, a fountain near Ephesus, having written her ‘oath of chastity on a tablet, which she then suspends by a string around her neck.’566 The turn in the Phaedra story could not have been more evident than in this passage, which alludes to the tablet and her hanging from the noose.567 The ironic allusive play is further complicated: Phaedra’s tablet was one of slander (Motif D1), resulting in the hero’s punishment, as it was a false testimony. Contrarily, Melite’s oath claiming that she had no extramarital affairs during her husband’s absence is technically true, if the timing is taken strictly into consideration: namely that she had extramarital sex only after her husband’s return. This is a frequent motif in universal folklore illustrating the cunning of the adulterous wife and here is blended with the Phaedra megatext and aetiological myth.568 Thus Melite takes a pledge of chastity similar to the famous ‘Oath of Styx’, the most powerful for gods and mortals.569 Just like the gods she is tried by the waters of the river of the dead and found not guilty, as if the gods approve of the tryst. The aetion of the Styx was also known as part of a pre-nuptial ritual, thereby making Melite an exemplary wife.570 The wedding aetiology that the 564 Jones 2012, 245. 565 For the Euripidean closure see Dunn 1996. 566 Ach. Tat. 8 12.9. 567 There has been scholarly disagreement about the place of Phaedra’s tablet on the stage: most scholars seem to agree that the letter was hanging from her hand, cf. Mueller 2011, 165 with the related literature. Mueller, according to archaeological evidence, argues convincingly that the letter was a form of defixio, normally placed in the right hand of the victims of violent death. Despite this detail, mimic representations of the myth may have placed the letter around Phaedra’s neck as well, as the speaking device of the now-silent dead body, and it may be that Achilles Tatius refers here to such representations. 568 Cf. AT 1418, Motif K1513 ‘The Wife’s equivocal oath’. E.g. A husband insists that his wife swear that she has been intimate with no one but himself. The paramour disguises himself as an ass-driver; she hires an ass from him, falls down and lets him pick her up. 569 Hes. Theog. 775–806. 570 Bremmer 1999, 23–24 on Achilles Tatius combining the Thracian myth of Rhodope, with the Hellenistic tale about the Syrinx, and the pre-nuptial ritual. For the Euripidean echoes in the aetion see Guez 2012, 30–35.

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novel attributes to this tale may also recall the ritual hair-cutting of the girls on Hippolytus’ grave, as attested by Pausanias.571 Additionally, the very myth that is related to the ritual of the Styx is no less than a ludic revision of the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus: here the chaste female hunter, Rhodopis, who despises love, is urged by Aphrodite to fall in love with Euthynicus.572 Like Melite and Clitophon, the two lovers have consensual sex, whereupon Artemis, witnessing their embraces, punishes them with metamorphosis, a theme known from other myths connected with Artemis and the chastity of her followers, such as Callisto’s.573 Like the couple of the aetion, Melite and Clitophon, despite their oaths of faithfulness to their partners, surrender to their mutual attraction, and yet unlike their mythical models both are exonerated. With the same incongruity, the unhappy story of Rhodopis and Euthynicus becomes the rite by which a (good) adulteress is judged innocent. If Artemis helps Leucippe from her near-death/rape encounter with Pan in the Iphigenia pattern above, in the Phaedra one Aphrodite and Rhodope hide Melite’s and Clitophon’s affair under the waters of the Styx. In summary The Phaedra pattern proposed by Achilles Tatius cunningly animates those readers who, despite having being deceived in their expectations regarding fidelity and chastity, still get their share of the expected plot (trial, punishment and travails), but with a dose of voyeuristic intimacy. Achilles Tatius consciously plays with the motifs of an established pattern, not only in mythical narratives but in novelistic ones too. The novel, like Xenophon, presents different versions of the pattern. However, instead of presenting two or more temptation incidents, it offers the same plot from different angles. The incident of the affair between Clitophon and Melite is focalised through both Leucippe 571 E. Hipp. 1423–1430, ‘Unmarried girls, before they wed, will cut their hair for you.’ Cf. Paus. 2.32.1. 572 Ach. Tat. 8.12.1–9. The passage abounds in themes and phrases that allude to the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus. But the Hippolytan characterisation is shared between the two characters: Rhodopis swears not to ever fall in love (τὴν πρὸς ἄνδρας ὁμιλίαν φυγεῖν); Aphrodite directs her anger towards the maiden’s ὑπεροψίας; Euthynicus is a hunter like Hippolytus; Eythynicus also despises Aphrodite like Hippolytus. The tale subverts the myth in that both lovers consent to have sex, despite their oaths. Guez 2012, rightly argues that in this context, as opposed to the drama, Aphrodite, and not Artemis, proves to be the more powerful. 573 Note that similar vocabulary is used to describe Eros’ vengeance on Clitophon and on Rhodope: Ach. Tat. 8.12.1, ‘Aphrodite heard her, was angered, and decided to punish (ἀμύνασθα) the maiden for her pride (τῆς ὑπεροψίας).’ Cf. above Ach. Tat. 5.25.8, ‘May Love requite (ἀμύναιτο) you in your passions.’ For the Phaedra theme see also Bremmer 1999 mentions a calyx on which Rhodope figures together with Antiope and Hippolytus.



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(and later her father) in the official version and again through Melite and Clitophon, who supply the subversive edition. Thus the reader is given two interpretative choices: Leucippe’s variant includes Motifs A, B, C1 and D1 and D2 of the pattern, summarising Clitophon’s supposed rejection of Melite, his imprisonment and his exoneration (through the Styx ordeal); on the other hand, Clitophon and Melite juggle and eventually replace Motif C1 with C2, manipulating a contested chastity theme. The reader’s expectations are therefore shifted back and forth between these two readings. The novel, like its predecessors, plays with a variety of models and paradigms in innovating the pattern. Not only do the two characters have sex, which appears only in lower genres and from a much different and idealised perspective in Plutarch’s Amatorius, but this does not seem to disrupt the outcome of the pattern for the Leucippe-type embedded readership. Equally interesting is Achilles Tatius’ revision of the slander motif from Motif D1 of the pattern, which echoes similar amendments made by sophists, such as Lucian, who pay attention to the psychological parameter. Clitophon may indeed face a death threat and near-execution, as discussed above in the Iphigenia chapter, but the calumny plot is not Melite’s. Instead, like Lucian, the emotional parameter is taken into consideration; Melite and Clitophon are presented as every-day human beings, prone to desire but not necessarily evil.574 This reconciliation of Artemis and Aphrodite is important for both the metamythical and the metafictional revision of the pattern. Implicitly love – Aphrodite, as embodied in the couple of Melite and Clitophon – wins the game, whereas Artemis, who protects the original couple of Leucippe and Clitophon, has to make some concessions. Ultimately, both goddesses win.

2.3.4 Longus Longus’ Proem establishes a firm connection between the theme of love and chastity but in a playful way. As Goldhill (1995), 20 observes, it ‘enmeshes and provokes the reader’s sophrosyne.’ Having described the beautiful grove and the painting with the lovers Daphnis and Chloe, the narrator comments that ‘no one has ever escaped Love, nor ever shall, so long as beauty exists and eyes can see. For ourselves may the god grant us to remain chaste in writing the story of others.’ On other occasions, Longus alludes to Euripides’ Stheneboea via Plato, 574 Cf. Ach. Tat. 5.27.2, Clitophon’s justification of his weakness: ‘I was overcome by my human nature (ἔπαθόν τι ἀνθρώπινον) and indeed I was afraid of Eros, in case the god decided to take revenge on me.’

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reminding the reader that Love ‘produces great sophists.’575 Such an introduction is inspired not only by Euripides576 but also by Menander and Plato, as well as Theocritus and pastoral poetry.577 Furthermore, the name of Longus’ protagonist, Daphnis, is reminiscent of the Theocritean Daphnis of Idyll 1, who, famously and like Hippolytus finds death at the hand of the ‘sweet-laughing’ Aphrodite.578 But the novel offers more than intertextual reminiscenses of the Phaedra pattern. As Morgan (2004b), 208 observes, the events in Book 3 maintain he sophrosyne of the narrator ‘by unloading the impropriety onto the reader.’ Lycaenion hunting Longus’ novel had numerous predecessors in which a Phaedra pattern was a vital element of the novelistic plot. His reworking of the pattern displays a keen awareness of what was ‘expected’ as well as a masterful manipulation of these expectations with humour and subtlety. The seasoned reader does not need much to understand that the ‘other woman’, Lycaenion, might become a threat to the couple’s love.579 She is introduced immediately after Daphnis’ unsuccessful attempt to ‘sleep’ with Chloe, not knowing in his naïve mind what ‘sleeping’ with a woman actually means. What is more, for the knowing reader, Lycaenion is introduced as a woman desperate for sex: 575 Long. 4.18.1, cf. E. Sthen. TrGF 663 (Kannicht); cf. Pl. Symp. 196e, ‘The god is a composer so accomplished that he is a cause of composing in others’ (transl. H. N. Fowler). On Plato and Euripides see Sansone 1996, for Longus see Morgan 2004a, 236. For an allegorical interpretation of Eros in Longus see Chalk 1960. For nature, sexuality and erotic initiation see Bierl 2013, 446–447. 576 For a distant echo see also the words of the chorus, cf. E. Hipp. 525, ‘Love, never to me may you show yourself to my hurt nor ever come but in due measure and harmony (ἔρως … μή μοὶ σὺν κακῶι φανέηις).’ Also E. Sthen. TrGF 661 (Kannicht) ‘The love that leads to chastity and virtue;’ E. Thes. TrGF 388 (Kannicht). Cf. S. Ant. 788, ‘Neither can any immortal escape you’ (transl. Jebb). For Eros in the novels as a positive emotion as opposed to its tragic treatment see Morgan 2004a, 150. For tragic allusions in Longus see Bowie 2007. 577 Cf. Pl. Phdr. 241a, ‘Sense and reason in place of love and madness (νοῦν καὶ σωφροσύνην ἀντ’ ἔρωτος καὶ μανίης)’ transl. H. N. Fowler. The Proem and the novel in its entirety have received much attention. Here I cite selectively: on Plato in Longus see Hunter 1983, 31–33, Danek and Wallisch 1993, 46–47. On New Comedy and Longus see Hunter 1983, 67–70 and Zeitlin 1990, 425 with literature. On Plato see Hunter 1997 and Herrmann 2007. On pastoral see Rohde 1937. See Bowie 1985, 345 on the terms ‘νόσος’,‘φάρμακον’. 578 Theocr. 1 104. For the association of Daphnis with Hippolytus and Adonis see Crane 1987. Morgan 2004a, 208 also mentions a cowherd named Daphnis who takes a shepherdess into the woods and Alciphr. 2.3.5, in the same line, mentions a rape. 579 Philargyrius on Virg. Ecl. 5, mentions a nymph called Lyca as Daphnis’ beloved. See Morgan 2004a, 209.



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3 15.1–5: He (Daphnis) has a neighbour who farmed his own land, Chromis was his name, and he was now past his best, physically. This man had a little lady he had brought from the city: young, pretty and by country standards rather glamorous. Her name was Lycaenion. Every day she watched Daphnis drive his goats (παρελαύνοντα τὰς αἶγας) out to pasture in the morning and home from pasture in the evening and she had set her heart on making him her lover, using presents as a bait to catch him … but she hesitated to say anything (εἰπεῖν δέ τι ὤκνει) because she divined (καταμαντευομένη) his love for Chloe; indeed she could infer that (συνεβάλετο) 580 he was quite devoted to the girl. Previously she had deduced this from the movement of their heads and their laughter, but early this morning … she had followed behind them … and had heard every word they said and seen everything they did … full of compassion for the poor pair, and thinking that a double opportunity (διττὸν καιρόν) had presented itself on the one hand to effect their salvation and on the other to satisfy her own desire (ἐπιθυμίαν), she hatched a scheme on the following lines.581

Lycaenion – the little but predatory she-wolf – has an old man for a husband, recalling the stereotype of Phoenix and Clytia as well as Menander’s Samia, where the age gap between the man and his wife is an important parameter in the plot. Moreover, she is a city girl and brings with her the liberal mores of the city. In a hilarious reversal of the Hippolytus hunting theme, so prominent in Xenophon, Longus presents a scene sprinkled with Theocritean flavouring:582 the object of Lycaenion’s desire parades daily in front of her window yet not in a hunting procession nor on his way to a religious festival. Like Phaedra wishing to follow her lover into the forest as in Euripides’ play,583 the holder Lycaenion tricks her prey into penetrating deep into the forest, where she witnesses the private moments of Daphnis and Chloe. Moreover, Lycaenion proves to be an intelligent reader of love’s signs. Her reading of ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ is initially based on observations of their body language, they way they behave towards each other. She understands therefore that if she makes any open attempt to seduce Daphnis he will reject her.’584 The use of συνεβάλετο, literarily meaning ‘putting each piece of information next to the other,’ demonstrates the reading method of this city woman, who is apparently more successful than other embedded readers of novelistic tales. Lycaenion not only imagines the real reason but also tries to become an eyewit580 Morgan translates ‘she could see’; I translate ‘she could infer.’ 581 Transl. Morgan. 582 Cf. Legrand 1925, 10 notes Theocr. 5.88–89, ‘Cleariste throws apples to the goatherd who is driving past (παρελᾶντα) his goats,’ and Hunter 1983, 60, 69 cites Theocr. 8. 71–74, ‘A maiden saw him yesterday, driving past (παρελᾶντα) his cows, beautiful, and, said she, “how beautiful is he.”’ 583 E. Hipp. 208–214. 584 Morgan 2004a, 211.

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ness of Daphnis’ and Chloe’s attempted lovemaking. Lycaenion thus realises what is missing in the story to satisfy hers and Daphnis’ desire and like Melite she dwells on the man’s love for his beloved as bait to succeed. It is only when Lycaenion’s ‘help’ is needed for the plot’s development that she enters the tale with a subplot (ἐπιτεχνᾶται), a word often used to describe the nurse’s techne, ploy, in the Phaedra pattern, that promotes the novelistic flow. Lycaenion proves an excellent reader of the novelistic plot as well as author of her own Phaedra pattern.585 While the Phaedra pattern anticipates a chaste male hero, Lycaenion, instead of becoming an obstacle between the two, promises to teach Daphnis how to proceed with Chloe. Whereas the typical novelistic hero would have spurned her advances, Daphnis presents an unexpected reaction: unable to hold backand at 3.18.3 he throws himself at Lycaenion’s feet and begs her ‘to lose no time in teaching him the art which would enable him to do what he wanted with Chloe.’ In exchange for her tutoring he promises presents, including a goat. Here Lycaenion is surprised since such eagerness goes well beyond her expectations. Daphnis might be a novice in erotic matters, like Clitophon, but she never imagined such an outcome.586 Such eagerness stuns not only the reader, who has the Phaedra patterns from novels like Xenophon’s in mind, but also Lycaenion, who might have been expecting at least some resistance according to a more typical Phaedra scenario.587 Lycaenion’s desire being satisfied quickly and efficiently, she interferes no further with the central love plot, having contributed a great deal to its fulfilment. 588 And whereas Lycaenion is successful in seducing Daphnis in a humorous reversal of Motif C2, Daphnis’ affair with Lycaenion is precisely why he decides not to have sex with Chloe until their wedding. This twisting of mythological expectations does not subvert the novelistic constraints but, instead, embeds them. 589 Just as in Clitophon’s and Leucippe’s case, the novel toys with and manipulates the myth-related readerly anticipations: Daphnis’ conscious choice not to have sex with Chloe before their wedding, like Leucippe’s chastity test, illustrate how important for the genre female virginity was. 585 On Lycaenion and her contribution to the plot see Whitmarsh 2011, 105. 586 Cf. Ach. Tat. 2.37.5 and 2.38.1, πρωτόπειρος ὢν εἰς γυναῖκας; Long. 3.20.1, ἀρτιμαθὴς γὰρ ὤν. 587 Long. 3.18.3 οὐ προσεδόκησεν. Morgan 2004a, 212, gives as reasons a. her downplaying of the importance of sex; b. her ignorance of rustic generosity; c. the gifts Daphnis gives her are unexpected for a city woman. 588 For the sentimental/sexual education of the couple see Morgan 1996b and Hunter’s reply in the same volume. Beyond sentimental/sexual and towards cultural education is the study of the novels by Lalanne 2006. 589 De Temmerman 2014, 225.



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In summary Longus’ Phaedra pattern questions the tragic and pastoral prototypes by opposing his treatment to theirs:590 Lycaenion is a married woman enamoured of a younger man, but unlike the tragic models she tries to arrange things within measure. Her double dealings with both her own desire and Daphnis’ attachment to Chloe is the best example of her versatility and of the adaptability of the novelistic plot to the mythical megatext. The typical Phaedra pattern may not have offered similar possibilities, but other lower versions of the megatext, such as mime, did. More importantly, Achilles Tatius also presented a rather atypical hero, and Daphnis’ eagerness to sleep with Lycaenion, who promises to help him with Chloe, echoes vividly the scene in the jail at Ephesus. Moreover, Longus adds to the psychological analysis of the ‘other woman’. Whereas Manto and Cyno cannot contain their jealousy and fury, and whereas Melite displays her anger and jealousy towards Leucippe, Lycaenion’s desire is purely carnal. Her quickly satisfied passion and lack of jealousy, as well as guaranteeing the secrecy of the affair, enables Chromis and his wife to attend the couple’s wedding in the end. Longus’ bucolic relationships are not necessarily possessive and demanding, although the tragic and the bucolic intertexts of the Hippolytus and the Daphnis myth may suggest otherwise. Such a revision coming after a Stheneboea-highlighted prologue revises not only the tragedy influenced megatext but also the previous novelistic norms against all expectations. If chastity is in question then the sophrosyne most frequently tested is not so much Daphnis’, but mainly the narrator’s and the reader’s, who are experienced in different kind of erotic plots, so as not to be able to take Longus’ subtle reversion of the myth and of the novelistic patter at face value.591

2.3.5 Heliodorus The Phaedra pattern in Heliodorus has received intense scholarly interest, especially because of its intertextual debt to the Euripidean text and to Menander’s reworking of such domestic triangles.592 It has long been acknoledged that the first version of the pattern, the one in the embedded tale of Cnemon in Book 1 590 For the tragic intertexts see Bowie 2007, 349, for the contrast between the tragic mythical and the positive novelistic Daphnis see Morgan 2004a, 36, 214. 591 Cf. Goldhill 1995, 28 on the reader’s reception of Longus’ ‘shyness’ and ‘slyness’. 592 For Phaedra in Heliodorus see Feuillâtre 1966, Sandy 1982a, Rocca 1976, Colonna 1987, Morgan 1989a, and Cueva 2004. Rattenbury, Lumb and Maillon 1935, 15 oddly argue that the incident is not inspired directly by E. Hipp. but is only ‘très familier avec les œuvres d’Euripide.’

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is meant to contrast with the episode relating Arsace’s desire for Theagenes in Book 7. This kind of ring composition of the Phaedra theme was also observed in Chariton as well as in Xenophon, two novels that open with strong allusions to the Phaedra pattern. Besides, Cnemon’s very name, a name probably inspired by Menandrean comedy, enhances the theatrical aspect of the episode alluding to a variety of stepmother plots from the stage.593 The two versions, the one acted by the lesser comic character, Cnemon, and the other by the ideally chaste Theagenes, supplement each other, presenting ‘Athenian love’, or love inspired by the stage, as something inferior to the supreme, ‘ideal love’ of Theagenes for Chariclea.594 Cnemon’s Demaenete in Athens Cnemon presents his story as a ‘tragedy in prose’: 595 his is one part of the overarching plot of the novel but worthy of the Athenian stage and he also fashions himself as the wrongly defamed, chaste hero. Cnemon’s younger stepmother, Demaenete, falls in love with him and calls him ‘the new/young Hippolytus, my Theseus’ in a context that strongly recalls different themes from the Phaedra megatext.596 1.10.1–2: It was during the festival of the Great Panathenaea, when the people of Athens escort a ship overland to Athena. I had just come of age, and after singing the traditional hymn to the goddess and taking part in the ritual procession, I went home still dressed in my short mantle and garlands. The moment she saw me she was beside herself. She no longer made any attempt to disguise her passion; her desire was quite blatant. She ran to me, threw her arms around me and cried, ‘ὁ νέος Ἱππόλυτος,!’ You can imagine my reaction if even now I blush in the telling. That night my father was dining out … She came to me in the night, seeking satisfaction in her unnatural desires. But I was not to be seduced and rebuffed all her attentions, promises and threats until at last she left with a deep sigh. She waited only until morning before starting her devilish web of intrigue against me.

This Demaenete is presented as a woman with a dubious past and her name is connected with the Athenian pandemic world.597 In a twist that surprises 593 Bowie 1995 and Paulsen 1992, 83: the name probably alludes to Menander’s main character in the Dyscolus. 594 Morgan 1989b, 107, ‘The narrative provides a prolonged portrait of perverted, immoral, simply bad love.’ 595 Paulsen 1992, 84–85, 101. 596 Hld. 1.10.2. The transmission of the passage is problematic and there seems to be a lacuna, Rattenbury-Lumb 1935, 15. However the overall allusion to the Hippolytus is clear. 597 For the association of Demaenete with Lais, the prostitute concubine of the hedonist philosopher Aristippus, see Jones 2006, 558. She analyses the etymology of her name from Δημ-



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the reader, Demaenete sees Cnemon during a festival. In order to enforce the tragic setting he is described as returning from the Panathenaea, just as when Hippolytus was seen by Phaedra. Unlike Phaedra in the extant Hippolytus Demaenete is straightforward with the youth, as she makes ‘no attempt to disguise her passion.’ This attitude may allude to the Kalyptomenos, however, the novel here exploits other well-known intertexts from the evolving megatext.598 For example, Demaenete accuses Cnemon before Aristippus not of having attempted to rape her, but of having kicked her while pregnant, a charge that echoes Chaereas striking Callirrhoe.599 She thus presents a story in which the second wife plots to have the children of the first marriage out of the house, well-known from the Phoenix but which also echoes tales such as Metiochus’. Aristippus believes his wife and punishes his son by whipping him.600 Still, despite this punishment, unlike Metiochus who wanders (self-) exiled, Cnemon remains at home and gives further inspiration to Demaenete for yet another Phaedra-based plot.601 Whereas the first Phaedra pattern included a direct move of Demaenete on Cnemon, in the second Athenian reworking of the pattern, the wicked stepmother attempts to approach the stepson using her not-so-faithful servant,602 Thisbe, as a go-between, recalling the pivotal role of the nurse in the second Hippolytus. And yet, unlike in the play, Thisbe is too young, pretty and canny for Demaenete. This kind of detail opens up the possibility for other comic variations, where the servant replaces the mistress in her lover’s bed. By the request of her mistress, and not unwillingly, Thisbe starts a love relationship with Cnemon, and Demaenete hopes to replace her one night in bed, supposedly without Cnemon noticing. The slander motif, D1, is this time entirely convoluted since Thisbe slanders Demaenete to Cnemon and tells him that she will show him Demaenete’s ‘true’ lover, who is none other than Aristippus. Being a good son, Cnemon attempts to catch her with her supposed lover and thereby nearly kills his father. (pointing to her pandemic character) and from (ἐκ)-μαίν-(ω), justifying her wanton passion for Cnemon. However another etymology may come from Δημ- (people) and -αἶν-ος, meaning a tale, equal to a popular tale, which is what Demaenete’s affair seems like, or with -αἰν-ός, meaning horrible, terrible, monstruous, which also conforms to her machinations. 598 Paulsen 1992, 86 on Cnemon’s broader reuse of the Phaedra related themes. 599 Another parallel is Hld. 1 12.3, ‘My father was at the field;’ cf. Char. 1.4.8, ‘He pretended he was going to the field.’ 600 Hld. 1.11.1. 601 Hld. 1.11.2, δευτέραν ἐπιβουλήν. 602 Paulsen 1992, 87, it is precisely because of Thisbe’s lack of loyalty that the plot does not end up a tragedy for Cnemon as well.

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This second pattern brings some interesting revision to the mythical text: Aristippus’ choice not to kill Cnemon on the spot but to take his son to court is a meta-mythical comment on Theseus’ behaviour.603 Whereas Theseus is responsible for the death of his own son, Aristippus uses the law. In vain, Cnemon, not bound by any oath, cries to his judges that his stepmother has falsely accused him. The court knows enough – either from the stage or perhaps from the orators604 – to suspect a possible stepmother plot and sentences Cnemon only to exile, as is the case with Phoenix, and not death as in the Hippolytus. Yet, Cnemon’s own fate, namely Motif D2, is pending as long as he is on Egyptian soil. The metaliterary narrative expectations related to the wife’s punishment and the hero’s exoneration, are articulated by the embedded audience; when Cnemon suggests to postpone the end of his tale to the next day Theagenes and Chariclea strongly object and insist that ‘it will add to their misery if the wicked Demaenete is left unpunished in the story,’ showing how important the ending was, at least the part regarding Demaenete, for the tale and for the pattern.605 The punishment of Demaenete, however, is not part of the stepmother’s revenge but concoted by another woman, Thisbe, who introduces a plot similar to Demaenete’s but at a lower register, echoing plots well-known from the mime and comedy. As Hunter (1998), 46 rightly point out the links between Thisbe’s and Demaenete’s stories and argues that ‘the general similarities between the details of Demaenete’s plot against Cnemon and that of Thisbe’s subsequent revenge upon her openly display how such narrative material is held in common for almost infinite reuse.’ In the second storyline, Thisbe appears to be a skilful schemer, manipulating her audience’s reactions and expectations – here Demaenete’s – according to what her mistress and audience desire.606 The first plot, invented by Demaenete, focuses on the revenge and anger of the ‘other woman’. The second one, suggested by Thisbe, leaves open other narrative plot paths besides the explicit confession of her feelings to Cnemon. In Thisbe’s view, the youth’s only option is to openly rebuff Demaenete’s direct

603 Hld. 1.13.2. 604 Hld. 1 13.4. ‘the suspicions against the stepmother’. See Hunter 1998, 45 on Heliodorus alluding to Lysias’ Against Eratosthenes. 605 Hld. 1.14.1, Cnemon, as a skilful narrator, hints at the end of the tale but postpones it: ‘Thus, I was banished from my family home and the land of my birth; but that she-devil Demaenete did not escape the punishment that was her due. How this came about I shall tell you another time, but now you must sleep.’ 606 Thisbe as the typical intrigue-plotmaker slave from New Comedy is discussed in Paulsen 1992, 96–97.



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approaches, but if a subtler variant is used, she reassures her mistress, she has good chances of success.607 Thisbe implements the Phaedra pattern with a motif inspired by folklore, that of the substitute bride, which we find in Aesopic fables or in comic plots. She therefore promises to change places with Demaenete in Cnemon’s bed, provided she visits him in the house – admittedly of bad repute – of her friend Arsinoe.608 Meanwhile Thisbe reveals Demaenete’s misconduct to Aristippus and slanders her for receiving other lovers. Demaenete is caught and found guilty, but the law-abiding Aristippus intends to take her to court to have her tried. Demaenete escapes Aristippus’ custody and commits suicide by jumping into the sacrificial pit in the Academy, instantly turning the comic scenario into a tragedy.609 Her death is more a divine punishment, as Aristippus and Cnemon aknowledge.610 Thus is one part of Motif D2, the punishment of the wicked adulteress, satisfied. Demaenete’s death, like Melite’s exoneration, comes with a taste for local aetiological tales that both recall the end of the Hippolytus. Cnemon’s stepmother chooses the pit used for sacrifices to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the two great heroes of Athens. It seems that, like Peisistratus’ son Hipparchus, Demaenete is punished by the protectors of Athens, a detail that lends all the more Athenian glamour to Cnemon’s tale. Just as in the case of the Styx Water at Ephesus, the story here may wish to present itself in aetiological colours as an Athenian aetion. This local dimension may be related to yet another anecdote about the ‘hero Anargyrus’, the supposed inspiration of Euripide’s other stepmother play, the Phoenix, making the Demaenete episode a counter- or parallel inspiration to the play: 607 Hld. 1.15.5, Demaenete, ‘Why did I not use gentle persuasion instead of underhanded schemes against him? Why did I not cast myself on his mercy instead of hounding him? He repelled my first advances - but so he ought … but perhaps in time he might have been induced to soften.’ 608 AT K1911, ‘The false Bride’. Cf. Aesop. Fab. 300 (in this case one adulterer substitutes for another in his mistress’ bed). Also see the proverbial ‘λύχνου ἀρθέντος γυνὴ πάσα ἡ αὐτή’ (Leutsch, T.II, AP X 90) as in Plu. Conjug. Praec. 144f. Cf. also Plaut. Cas. 910–935, where the clever wife of the adulterer, Cleostrata, in the darkness replaces Casina (his favorite slave girl) with a male slave, Chalinus. 609 Hld. 1.17.5–6. Paus. 1.29.15. For the ritual see Ekroth 2002, 93, ‘Heliodorus mentions an enagismos/sacrifice to the heroes in the bothros in the garden of Akademos, which should probably be taken to refer to an animal sacrifice in which the meat was completely destroyed. The blood may have been separately poured out into the bothros.’ At Hld. 6.14.3–6 and 6 15.5, the old Egyptian magician resurrects her son, also creating such a bothros; she also slips and dies, stabbed, close to the pit she had opened for her black magic, Ekrott 2002, 95. 610 Hld. 1.17.6, Aristippus considers her death to be according to justice; for Thisbe and Cnemon see later, 2.11.2, about the whip of Justice and Thisbe’s punishment.

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Suda A 1842 s. v. ‘Anagyrasian’: Anagyrasian daimon (spirit), since the old man who lived nearby and used to cut down trees in the sacred grove was punished by the hero Anagyrus. Anagyrasians are deme in Attica (nowadays Vari). Someone there cut down some trees in the sacred grove. He made his mistresd infantuated with his son, and, when she was unable to seduce him, she told his father he had tried to rape her, and the father had him mutilateds and locked away. The father hung himself over this and the mistress threw herself into a well. Hieronymus reports this in On Tragedians and points out the parallel with Euripides’ Phoenix.

Whatever the Athenian legendary material might have been, Demaenete’s name – from δῆμος (people’s) and αἶνος (tale) – may include among others, a hint at a Euripidean-like tale. Thus, Demaenete and the mistress of the legend are related and, given that the events of the Aethiopica are presented as taking place around the sixth century,611 they notionally predate Euripides’ dramas and could be seen as Heliodorus’ effort to make his own ‘Demaenete tale’ “the” local legend that might have inspired the later famous megatext. Cnemon reading Thisbe’s Phaedra With Demaenete’s death, Thisbe’s punishment is still pending as well as Cnemon’s reunion with his father. As we saw above, the slave girl miraculously appears and replaces Chariclea during her first near-death experience, leaving, nonetheless many questions unanswered. When Theagenes and Cnemon examine the body of the dead Thisbe, they find a tablet attached to it, which was meant to be a confession of the ‘real’ truth: Thisbe’s love for him and her request for help to escape. The tablet was meant to be delivered to Cnemon with the aid of an old lady who was to function as the go-between.612 In retrospect, the themes of the tablet and the old nurse, which were crucial parts of the Phaedra megatext, are once more recycled to allude to the myth of Theseus’ wife – but amplified in this new Egyptian setting.613 No longer indoors but in the countryside and no longer by means of suicide but of execution, the Phaedra-like Thisbe dies, nonetheless, with a tablet around her neck, inviting the audience to recall drama, although the overall setting is a novelistic Egyptian backdrop. Cnemon’s words of mistrust exhibit the range of possible variations these plots may develop: as both actor in and spectator of his own story he exclaims: 611 Morgan 1996a, 434–35. 612 Hardie 1998, 43 on how Cnemon’s reading of the deltos recalls Theseus reading Phaedra’s note, cf. E. Hipp. 856–7 and Hld. 2.10.1. See also Létoublon and Genre 2014, 362 although she falsely attributes a tablet to Demaenete too at p.62, n. 6. 613 Whitmarsh 1998 has discussed the displacement and the assimilation of Homer by geographically marginal authors. The same is true here of Euripides.



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2.11.1–2: Thisbe I am glad you are dead, that you were yourself the messenger (αὐτάγγελος) who brought us word of your misfortunes (τῶν σῶν σφαγῶν),614 for it was your very corpse that delivered your narrative to us. Fury (τιμωρὸς Ἐρινύς) pursued you over all the world and did not still her whip of Justice until she had brought you to Egypt, where I, the victim-audience of your crimes (τὸν ἠδικημένον θεατήν), happened to be and presented me with the spectacle of the retribution she exacted from you. I wonder what new scheme you were concocting against me beneath the cloak of this letter (τεχναζομένην καὶ σοφιστεύουσαν διὰ τοῦ γράμματος), when Justice pre-empted your plans with death. Even dead I regard you with suspicion … and that you have come across the sea to make me the victim of another Attic tragedy (Ἀττικὴν σκηνήν), but in an Egyptian setting.

The passage is full of comments that highlight the theatrical setting imagined by Cnemon. Thisbe’s dead body here resumes the role of the messenger in the Hippolytus and in other plays, narrating the events that normally were not shown on stage. A good end, then, for Cnemon’s Phaedra tale, which is literally a dead end, since Thisbe’s death raises more questions than it solves. Freed from her machinations, Cnemon eventually meets and marries Nausiclea, and he travels back to Athens to assist his father in his lawsuit against Demaenete’s relatives, who hold him responsible for her death – fulfilling thus Motif D2 of the megatext, the hero’s vindication. Yet, the final reward for Cnemon is not so much his exoneration but the romantic marriage to Nausiclea and his return to Athens, which makes him partly a novelistic hero too.615 The Egyptian setting, however, and Thisbe’s unconscious participation in the Iphigenia pattern shows how very altered the core megatext might emerge from a fusion with the typical near-sacrifice of the novelistic heroine in a faraway land. Egypt, although barbarian and not a Greek land, renders true justice by punishing the wicked, who was not punished in Athens. Whereas the Athenian plot ended with Demaenete dead, Thisbe exiled, and Aristippus and Cnemon in danger because of slander, Egypt restores the order of things and exonerates the innocent young man. Thus, Phaedra made it well ‘Beyond Athens’,616 not only because of Heliodorus’ revision of the pattern but because of her handmaiden. Thisbe in Egypt is not only the actor in a adultery dramatic scenario, but also, and most importantly, acts as a substitute for the main heroine in one of the most crucial moments of the novelistic plot. The ending of Thisbe’s plot in Egypt, on the one hand, is a metatheatrical comment that shows a predilection for the ‘escape tragedies’, such as Iphigenia, as opposed to those ending in real 614 Note the theatrical vocabulary with which the dead body is represented as a messenger (αὐτάγγελος); also the term ‘σφαγαί’ is used metonymically here to refer to ‘tragedy’ as a genre. Cf. Philostr. VA 4.22.3, ‘The Athenians assemble to the theatre … to watch human slaughters.’ 615 Paulsen 1992, 89–93. 616 To use the title of Smith’s 2007b paper.

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‘tragedy’, such as the Hippolytus. On the other hand, as Thisbe substitutes for a novelistic heroine, it is the novelistic version of the Iphigenia pattern that is emphasised. Thus, in a metaliterary comment, the embedded reader, Cnemon, cannot but praise the coincidence that brought Thisbe to Egypt as a supreme, god-like invention, that links the stage with the novel. 617 Chariclea misreading Arsace If Demaenete’s subplot grants the narrator licence to play with the constraints of the pattern, the Arsace episodes bear witness to a dark and unexpected version of the Phaedra pattern.618 Arsace bears the male name of the Arsacid dynasty that ruled over Parthia and northern Iran (242 BCE–224 CE) and was succeeded by the Sassanid Empire. The name of her husband, Oroondates, is not encountered elsewhere besides the Aethiopica.619 Her nurse’s name, though, is Cybele, a Greek of Lesbian origin. Cybele’s name makes her Greek origin dubious: the eponymous goddess is associated indeed with the island of Lesbos, where the Cabeirian mysteries were held and which featured as a liminal boarder between the Greek and oriental world.620 Besides, while Lesbian women were mostly known for their good looks, the reader might anticipate a competition between Chariclea and her rival621 wetnurse with this name prepares Heliodorus’ reader only for misfortunes. So the Arsace plot takes place in a heavily loaded context in which oriental lore. Even the location, Memphis, is the very place where the tale of Potiphar’s wife, the so-called ‘Memphitis, the Egyptian’ takes place. What is more, Arsace is by no means innocent or new to adultery. Before she attempts to seduce Theagenes she has already tried to seduce Thyamis and his brother Petosiris: the 617 Cf. Hld. 2.9.5, ‘How Thisbe came to be in the cave, and who killed her there, we may never know, unless some god reveals the answers to us.’ Of course this comment points to the masterfully orchestration of the plot by Heliodorus the narrator. 618 For Demaenete and Arsace see Rocca 1976, Morgan 1989b, Paulsen 1992, 91, and Hunter 1998. About the serious intention of Heliodorus in this version see Pletcher 1998, 19. 619 The manuscript tradition exept for Oroon-datis gives also O-rr-oodantes with or without -nwith or without -rr – Rattenbury, Lumb, and Maillon 1935, vol 1, 78, apparatus. And yet the name seems to have some Persian echoes: e.g. in Plu. Alex. 57, Alexander kills an Orsodates, there is also an Orrhoes or Osroes, of Parthian/Persian origin Paus. 5.12.6. Justi 1895, 234–35 s.v. ‘Oro(o) ndates’ believes the name to come from Aurwadaspa (meaning the Sun). The second compound of his name -dates- might also be a corruption of the ending -datis- that is common compound of Persian names: e.g. Mithridatis, Datis. 620 Cf. Hdt. 6.31.4 and Athen. Deipn. 13.90 compares the kallisteia in Persia with those in Lesbos and Tenedos. 621 In Hom. Il. 9.128–131, Lesbos is famous for its beautiful women and the festival Kallisteia.



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first rebuffed her while the second sided with her against his brother.622 Arsace seeks, not for the first time, the help of her nurse and she even finds it hard to choose beteween her old beloved, Thyamis, and the new one, Theagenes.623 The Arsace episode seems to be a reworking not only of the previous Demaenete tales and the Euripidean Phaedra megatext but also a close reading of Xenophon’s opening and his own revision of the Phaedra pattern. It is worth remembering that the Manto episode also took place in Phoenicia, in Tyre, and that the Emesan Heliodorus might have felt a particular sympathy for this local version.624 Theagenes is a chaste young man obsessed with chastity just like Hippolytus, Metiochus or Habrocomes.625 Yet, most unpredictably, Heliodorus’ Chariclea is not only Artemis-like, an established feature of the novelistic heroine by then, but, as the goddess’ zakoros at Delphi, she accretes other Hippolytan characteristics normally attributed to the male protagonist: 2.33.4–5: (Chariclea) has renounced marriage and is resolved to stay virgin all her life … and spends most of her time hunting and practising archery … Eros and Aphrodite and all nuptial revelry she curses to damnation. 3 17.4 (Theagenes) claimed that he had never been intimate with a woman (ὁμιλίας ἀπείρατος) and swore many oaths to that effect; he had never felt anything but contempt for their whole sex, he said, and even for married love (καὶ γάμον αὐτὸν καὶ ἔρωτας, εἴ τινος ἀκούσειεν), if it was never mentioned to him; but now Chariclea’s beauty had exposed the falseness of his pretensions: it was not that he was naturally proof against temptation, simply that until yesterday he had never set eyes on a woman worthy of his love. He wept as he spoke, as if to make it clear that it was only under compulsion that he admitted deeat at the hands of a girl (ἥττηται κόρης).

The broader Phaedra thematic appears here: sworn virginity, never having been intimate with a woman (like Metiochus and Habrocomes), revulsion for anything to do with Eros.626 However, Theagenes is also aware of the novelistic variations of the theme when the text mentions his rejection of even the possibility of lovein-marriage: καὶ γάμον αὐτὸν καὶ ἔρωτας, εἴ τινος ἀκούσειεν. This, for the sea622 Hld. 7.2.4, Arsace had also tried to seduce Thyamis (another Hippolytan figure in his youth) when he was a priest at Memphis. Thyamis rejected her love, thus making it possible for Petosires, his brother, to take Arsace’s part and withdraw Thyamis from the priesthood. Calasiris also shares, in his youth, Hippolytan characteristics in his affair with Rhodopis (2.25.1) and his (self)-exile after the incident. On this see also Paulsen 1992, 155. 623 Hld. 7.4.2, ‘Torn asunder by the desire she felt for each of them.’ 624 Eg. X. Eph. 2.11.3, δι’ ἣν (namely Anthia) τὰ μὲν πρῶτα ἐν Φοινίκῃ ἀφῃρέθην ἐρωμένου. 625 See De Temmerman 2014, 253 and Cueva 2004, 109. 626 The vocabulary used by Heliodorus shows its intertextual debt to X. Eph. 1.3.1, ἡττᾶται δὲ ὑπὸ Ἔρωτος Ἁβροκόμης, 1.4.1, παρθένῳ δουλεύειν, Hld. 3.17.4, ἥττηται κόρης.

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soned reader, functions as a metaliterary reminiscence of such novelistic tales as Anthia’s love for Habrocomes, which start with a Phaedra-like description of passion but become, as they evolve, about stable and faithful mutual desire. On the other hand, Chariclea’s rejection of love and marriage has nothing similar in any of the previous novels.627 We saw how both Callirhoe and Anthia readily fall in love with their future husbands and how Leucippe was initially with her own virginity. Chariclea’s obsession with chastity, hunting and virginity has been interpreted as being inspired by the emerging Christian ideals,628 but it is also a well-known motif of various myths related to Artemis’ virgin companions that end in metamorphosis.629 Chariclea’s obsession with virginity, influenced either myth or Christian narratives, helps, nonetheless, with innovating the well-known pattern by shaking the reader’s expectations with respect to the novelistic plot:630 not only the chastity of the male hero endangers the outcome of their romantic relationship but also the militant virginity of the heroine. Luckily for the reader, soon both Theagenes and Chariclea are convinced that the only way out of their suffering is marriage. Just as Anthia in Xenophon is described as suffering Phaedra’s nosos, and just as Manto is presented as an alternative version of the Ephesian beauty, the Aethiopica meticulously foreshadows the opposition between Arsace and Chariclea in their lovesickness for Theagenes: Chariclea’s passion for Theagenes is expressed in the very same words as Arsace’s; both their nosoi echoe Phaedra’s one.631 Moreover, both contemplate suicide by hanging: Chariclea in case a bandit forces her; the queen, after her plot fails, out of fear that her husband will execute her anyway. Thus, the reader is expected to recall not only the original Phaedra pattern but also its novelistic variations and remember that, more than any other novelistic heroine, Chariclea is the incarnation of Artemis. Arsace, like Manto, is presented as a barbarian woman crazed with desire and cruel to arrogant young men. Cybele’s warning to Theagenes about the ultimate outcome of the queen’s lust sounds like a metaliterary reworking of Xenophon’s version:

627 Even the all-virginal Parthenope seems to disapprove of Metiochus’ view Coll. II.66–67, δι᾽ ὀργῆς ἔχουσα τὸν Μητίοχον. 628 E.g. Andujar 2012. 629 Buxton 2009, 114, 238–239, such as Callisto, Atalanta, or even Rhodopis in Achilles Tatius’ aetion discussed above. 630 De Temmerman 2014, 255 discusses Hld. 2.33.4 in light of 1.25.4, where Chariclea sees marriage as the only solution to desire, and observes her changed attitude. 631 E.g. Hld. 6.8.2, βάκχιόν τι οἰστρηθεῖσα (Chariclea) and 7.7.5, ὥσπερ οἰστρηθεῖσα ὑπὸ ὄψεως ἐμμανής (Arsace). For a detailed list of their common symptoms of love see Morgan 1998a, 65–66.



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7.20.4: Women of quality who have a fancy for young men are apt to become bitter and vindictive if they do not get their own way. They regard rejection as an insult, and reasonably enough, take reprisals (τοὺς ὑπερόπτας ὡς ὑβριστὰς εἰκότως ἀμύνονται) … beware the wrath of spurned love (μῆνιν ἐρωτικήν), the vengeance that will follow if you snub her (τὸ ἐκ τῆς ὑπεροψίας νεμεσσητόν). Many I know who have come to regret their obduracy.

Moreover, Chariclea’s presence supplements the erotic triangle with yet another participant, as was the case in Xenophon and in Achilles Tatius. In order to remove Chariclea from the scene, Arsace promises her to Achaemenes in exchange for Cybele’s help. The queen’s lust grows all the more intense and dangerous when she learns that Theagenes is not Chariclea’s brother, as she thought in the beginning, and neither is he a freeman but a captive and thus her possession, just as Habrocomes is Manto’s slave.632 Yet the novel reserves for the reader a curious twist, articulated by the all-virginal Chariclea. Unlike Anthia, who is willing to sacrifice herself to leave space for Habrocomes and Manto, Chariclea actively attempts to distract Arsace, with a ruse that she, a woman, often uses to distract male suitors. Chariclea, the plot-maker, suggests the following to Theagenes: 7.21.4–5: ‘Feed this barbarian woman’s desire with promises, play her along (πλάττου τὸ συγκατατίθεσθαι) and so ensure that she does turn spiteful … with the god’s help it is not impossible that the time you buy might bring about our deliverance. But please Theagenes, do not allow the role you play to become the first step to a shameful reality … (Theagenes) let me assure you that I could not even pretend to have such intentions: to speak immoral words is just as wrong as to commit immoral acts; besides, a point-blank rejection of Arsace will have one pleasant result at least: she will stop making such a nuisance of herself. I may be made to suffer for it (εἰ δὲ πάσχειν τι δέοι), but fate and my resolve have (ἥ τε τύχη καὶ ἡ γνώμη παρεσκεύασε), through many ordeals, equipped me to endure whatever may befall.’ All Chariclea said in reply was, ‘Take care not to land us both (ἡμᾶς) unwittingly in great danger.’

The excerpt above presents two readings of the Phaedra pattern. A Hippolytan one, according to which Arsace’s blatant rejection will cause Theagenes misfortunes, and a novelistic reworking of it, expressed by Chariclea. To Theagenes’ straightforward reading, which involves Motif D1, the youth’s slander and the woman’s revenge, Chariclea the revenge of Arsace on both of them, as it was the case with Anthia and Habrocomes. Yet, Chariclea’s plan, which aspires to surpass the previous mythical and novelistic reworkings altogether, proves flawed: despite his stalwart chastity Theagenes unwillingly receives a kiss on the mouth by the queen, inciting Chariclea’s

632 Hld. 7.24.1.

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jealousy.633 This kiss, in a novel so preoccupied with purity and chastity, may be a metaliterary hint, a reminder of the relaxed chastity of the previous Hippolytan characters of the Greek novel. Indeed Clitophon who sleeps with Melite or Daphnis with Lycaenion might have been the models who have successfully twisted the Phaedra pattern to their benefit. Thus, Chariclea’s advice reconsiders the Phaedra pattern at a metaliterary level and filters it through previous novelistic knowledge.634 Arsace, initially, seems unwilling to take revenge on Theagenes herself, showing herself as a woman in love, and not as a vengeful barbarian, 635 rehearsing thus the Mythenkritik echoed in Philostratus’ characterisation of Stratonice, yet another oriental queen, or Xenophon’s portrait of Manto. Leaving the reader pondering Motifs C1 and C2, rejection of the ‘other woman’ or not, the pattern finds its way towards D1 through the rebuffed suitor, Achaemenes. Having failed in his plans to get Chariclea, he conceives a new slander plot. Blinded by his lust for revenge, he betrays Arsace’s desire for Theagenes to Oroondates.636 Meanwhile, Cybele, fearing for her life and dreading Achaemenes’ reactions, suggests that her mistress has Theagenes tortured by a certain Euphrates, adding to the oriental flavour of the queen’s revenge.637 Cybele’s intervention therefore redirects the pattern to a more traditional form in which the hero is imprisoned and tortured – not by the husband or the father, as in Achilles Tatius and Xenophon, but by the mistress in love. Yet Arsace’s consent makes her revenge extremely cruel, a variation that might have its origin in eastern folklore, such as Ishtar’s paradigmatic revenge on Gilgamesh.638 This 633 Hld. 7.24.5 and 7.26.7. For this episode being the doublet of the Thyamis one see De Temmerman 2014, 270, note 87. 634 See De Temmerman 2014, 276, for the emotional development of Theagenes and Chariclea in this episode and their ‘evolution from rejecting morally unacceptable courses of action to accommodating them in their strategies of self-defence.’ 635 Hld. 8.5 11, Arsace’s first reaction to Cybele’s suggestion of torturing Theagenes is soft: ‘How can I see this body being tortured?’ But Cybele changes her mind. Arsace’s reconsideration echoes as a revision of Manto’s previous cruelty at having Habrocomes tortured. 636 Hld. 7.29.1. 637 In Hld. 8.5 12, Theagenes is handed over to a eunuch named Euphrates – a name alluding to the famous river – to be tortured. This may recall the tortures of Habrocomes after the Cyno episode on the banks of the Nile. 638 Compare the exemplary revenge of Ishtar on Gilgamesh after the latter refuses her attentions for the sake of his (boy)friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh refuses, listing all her unfortunate consorts so far, including Tammuz and others. Ishtar, rebuffed, sends the Heaven’s Bull, who kills Enkidu. The Epic of Gilgamesh, VI.7–33, 42–79 (Mitchell). Some fragments of the story are to be found in Philo of Byblus: e.g. fr.2.212. On Philo’s – 1st to 2nd c. CE – reporting fragments of the Epic of Gilgamesh, see Nagy 2005, 76. In the Aethiopica Arsace takes revenge on Theagenes and on his lover, Chariclea.



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paints a more brutal portrait of the Persian queen who, in her despair – not having Theagenes but being slandered to her husband for adultery – is ready to do anything.639 However, the slander motif affects primarily Chariclea, not Theagenes, given the interchangeable Hippolytan characteristicts of the two protagonists: Cybele attempts to poison the girl but accidentally drinks the poison herself, yet shortly before dying she blames Chariclea.640 Chariclea then joins Theagenes in prison, a unique case in the Greek novel that may echo Xenophon’s having Anthia visit Habrocomes in prison in Tyre. Whereas the pattern ought to focus on Theagenes, the chaste male hero, the lights turn upon Chariclea, merging thus the Iphigenia with the Phaedra pattern. 641 Like Habrocomes, Chariclea is also tried and sentenced to death on the pyre, a punishment from which she escapes by praying to the Sun for justice,642 just as Habrocomes had successfully prayed to the Nile under similar circumstances.643 In a metaliterary twist of Xenophon’s Phaedra-reworking, the fire – instead of the waters of the Nile – writes the epilogue of the Memphis chapters, thus dispensing justice. Chariclea is miraculously saved and returns to jail with Theagenes, her successful plan having bought her time. All her advances and plottings having failed, and with Cybele dead too, Arsace commits suicide. To some extent it is a death worthy of a proud, albeit wicked, woman, as Arsace proves to be superior to Phaedra: despite being rebuffed, ultimately, she does not slander her lover to the king, showing, thus, once more the revisionist approaches to the myth during the Second Sophistic. Upon the dispatching of the lovers to Oroondates, Arsace hangs herself, thus concluding the Memphian Phaedra pattern with explicit allusion to Euripides’ own words.644 The end of the drama, staged at books seven and eight, is as happy as as it could be but Bagoas, the messenger of Oroondates who frees them from prison, represents it in very positive colours, especially Arsace’s end;645 in Bagoas’ view as an embedded reader, Theagenes’ and Chariclea’s beauty will eventually please the satrap, who will make the youth his butler and the maiden his wife,

639 X. Eph. 2.11.2–3, Manto takes revenge on Anthia later, by asking a slave to execute her. 640 Hld. 8.7.2. 641 For the near-death Iphigenia pattern see above CROOS REF. 642 Hld. 8.8.5 and 8.9.11. 643 X. Eph. 4.2.4, ‘He turned his eyes towards the Sun.’ 644 Cf. E. Hipp. 802, βρόχον κρεμαστὸν ἀγχόνης ἀνήψατο Hld. 8.15.2, τέθνηκεν Ἀρσάκη βρόχον ἀγχόνης ἁψαμένη. 645 Cf. the similar formulation for both episodes: Hld. 1.14.3 (Charias) ὦ Κνήμων, εὐαγγέλιά σοι κομίζω ... ἔχεις παρὰ τῆς πολεμίας δίκην. Δημαινέτη τέθνηκεν. Cf. 8.15.2, ὦ ξένοι θαρσεῖτε, δίκην ὑμῖν ὑπέσχεν ἡ πολεμία. τέθνηκεν Ἀρσάκη. Paulsen 1992, 92.

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an eunuch’s ‘ideal end’ indeed.646 But such an ending implies the opening of a suitor competition pattern to follow the Phaedra one. As this outcome expresses the readerly anticipations of the embedded Persian slave, and is common in other novels, such as the Callirhoe,647 in which the beautiful protagonist risks indeed becoming the king’s concubine, the external reader fears that Chariclea might have to face more suitors, albeit so close to Ethiopia. However, Book 7, is not followed by yet another Helen-like suitor pattern but by Chariclea’s third near-sacrifice at Meroe, the novel’s coronis. In summary Heliodorus’ novel comes at the end of a long tradition of tales involving wanton women. It is not fortuitous that the two different levels of the Phaedra pattern handling are so inserted as to include as many variations as possible from their predecessors. Thus the Athenian setting of Demaenete’s and Cnemon’s tale evokes the stage and alludes to drama, while mixing elements from lower, comic, genres too. Still the violent and righful deaths of Demaenete and Thisbe do not qualify these patterns as being exctusively comic. Just like Cybele’s and Arsace’s deaths, they appeal to a readerly wish for justice, expressed by the embedded messengers who bring the news of the deceased Demaenete and Arsace to Cnemon and the main couple respectively. Most characteristically the novel uses the embedded characters to reflect and comment thoroughly on other theatrical and novelistic reworkings of Phaedra: Cnemon for example presents his tale through a dramatic lens, emphasising the ties of his own stepmother plot with his tragic models. On the other hand Chariclea, having heard Cnemon’s version, ‘reads’ Arsace’s plot not only as a Phaedra tale, which is evoked only at the end of the events, but mainly in novelistic terms: her suggestion to Theagenes to simulate reciprocation of Arsace’s feelings is advice tried in previous novels, and especially Xenophon’s. At least, even if other novels were not available to Chariclea, she would have learnt the ‘moral’ reserved for such stories from the various Phaedra plots included in the programmatic novella of Cnemon that foreshadows her and Theagenes’ adventures. Cnemon’s revision of the Phaedra pattern does not change much in the chain of the motifs, although the youth’s supposed obsession with chastity is thoroughly subverted in his affair with Thisbe. Theagenes’ version, on the other hand, is much more problematic and experimental since some motifs of the pattern allude to previous novelistic reworkings as well: not only is he already

646 Hld. 8.15.4–5. 647 Cf. Char. 6.4.10, Artaxates -ὡς εὐνοῦχος, ὡς δοῦλος, ὡς βάρβαρος- also believes Callirhoe to have been blessed to attract the King’s attention.



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engaged to Chariclea but he plays with Arsace’s feelings – and even receives a kiss. These elements were not included in the Phaedra pattern but in those novelistic revision of it that stage Clitophon’s, Daphnis’, or even in Habrocomes’ (enviseaged) affair with Cyno. Moreover, Theagenes’ behaviour is directed by Chariclea’s reading of Arsace’s ploy that implements the Phaedra pattern with a motif borrowed, as we will see from the Penelope/Helen one: gaining time through fake promises.648 Chariclea thus revises Theagenes’ storyline not according a Hippolythan model but a Penelopean one, reviewing thus once more the theme of Hippolytus’ obstinate chastity. What is nonetheless remarkable is Heliodorus’ transfer of the readerly attention from Motif D1, the hero’s slander, to the heroine. Unlike the wrongly defamed Cnemon – who, ends up exiled in Egypt – Theagenes’ torture is not the result of slander but of a mischievious plot by Cybele. Yet his punishment is not described fully, whereas Arsace’s revenge on Chariclea is. Moreover, the scene describing the heroine’s miraculous salvation echoes vividly Habrocomes’ punishment in the aftermath of the Cyno episode albeit being part itself of an Iphigenia megatext. If now Chariclea’s original combination of Artemisian and Hippolytan characteristics is reconsidered her near sacrifice at Meroe appears even more complex as this time the virgin girl has brought it on herself alone. Thus, her narrow escape from execution smacks of a pattern otherwise reserved for arrogantly chaste mythical and novelistic heroes. Yet, unlike with Chariton or Xenophon and the myth about Hippolytus, there is no mention that either Theagenes’ or Chariclea’s sufferings are part of an Eros/Aphrodite revenge plot. Rather the various Phaedra plots of this book allow them to prove their mutual faithfulness but also paves the way for their arrival among the Ethiopians. Additionally, the shifting of the settings of both Phaedra patterns in and out of Athens is important for the interpretation of the myth in cultural terms. Whereas Demaenete’s tale might seem slated to become a kind of local legend, the PM of the second version, Thisbe, finds her punishment in the marshes of the Rangers, far away from Athens, showing how Egypt has a better sense of justice than the stage. On the other hand, Arsace’s oriental background loads the pattern with elements that suggest a crueler outome, although the queen’s suicide at the end without slandering the young man in person seems to redeem the ending of the Greek play as the Persian lady acquits herself honourably. The manipulation of the geographical and cultural setting by the Hellenised Phoenician, Heliodorus, thus promotes other views and treatments of the pattern

648 Cf. De Temmerman 2014, 274–274, ‘Chariclea has become for Theagenes the teacher of rhetorical dissimulation that Calasiris has been for her in earlier episodes.’

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and engages the seasoned reader in a complex narrative syncretism of similar tales about the youth and his lustful mistress.

2.4 Phaedra in focus The megatext of Phaedra and Hippolytus provided a frame for discussion and debate on desire and chastity. The myth also brings a non-Greek female sexuality face-to-face with the Athenian one in its Hippolytan embodiment, opposing it to that of Theseus, the womaniser par excellence. Throughout antiquity, Phaedra exemplified illegitimate female lust. She was famous for being bold in her advances to her stepson, but her yearnings for the young man also became emblematic of the erotic nosos, the mal d’amour. So great was her suffering that even on later sarcophagi her passion was reinterpreted as that of the bereaved mother or of the wife. Contrarily, Hippolytus was always portrayed as the utmost chaste hero although his conduct was not necessarily approved of. Nonetheless, his death became characteristic of the catastrophic outcome of the queen’s lust and slander and typical of a young man’s premature end. Female emotion, thus, and male untimely death, formed the kernel of this tale. On the other hand, the Euripidean myth offered opportunity to discuss the well-known folktale at a tragic level, including incest and a father’s curse on his own son because of a woman. Moreover, it gave different twists to Phaedra’s personality, ranging from the bold and wicked wife to the milder figure in the Stephanias play, which would influence the drama’s outcome. Further, the play offered another variation on the intrigue by implementing the nurse’s plot. Now the story is not just about woman’s desire but also features a matchmaker, who takes the initiative, with a disastrous outcome. The nurse, this frequent theme from the visual arts, functions as a go-between, amplifies the possibilities offered by plot, and downplays the negative characterisation of the wanton woman. The family milieu must have added to the popularity of the tragic pathos of the Hippolytus play, since other source texts of the megatext, such as the Stheneboea or Phoenix where incest is not in question, might have treated the wronged youth more benevolently and even exonerated him while still alive. As with the Iphigenia megatext, the authors of the Empire revised the myth starting from the constraint of the family milieu. Motif B (the other woman’s desire) was now extended to other levels, including a variety of pairs such as the queen and her consort, the rich matrona or the widow and her slave, or a rich woman and a young man. All explore various plausible or implausible erotic scenarios, some of them even successful, as opposed to the orig-



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inal pattern. Most ‘ideal’ among those is the case of the good ‘other woman’, who does not slander her beloved even after being rejected, demonstrating an interest in the emotional aspect of the story and not just in the moralising one. Lucian’s Stratonice, for example, although possessing all the characteristics of the spiteful oriental queen behaves better than the Athenian Phaedra, and the text pays attention to her ‘actual’ feelings about the youth. Equally sensitive in love matters is the development of Ismenodora’s feelings for the young man that eventually requites her love. On the other hand, Phaedra’s Cretan, namely not Athenian, desire on the Athenian stage for the son of an Amazon, a half-barbarian, evinces the cultural differences in erotic desire. Yet even in this respect the imperial authors did not give a restrictive answer: Antoninus Liberalis’ Helen experiences desire for her stepson, leading to tragedy, while Seleucus’ father is wiser and not jealous of his son, bestowing both wife and kingdom on him. While oriental women tend to be more wanton not all ‘oriental’ Phaedras end in a tragedy. Hippolytus’ death was not a prerequisite and the authors of the Second Sophistic show a predilection for justice and happy endings. This potential was already lurking in other source texts of the megatext, such as the Phoenix or the myth about Bellerophon’s wedding to Iobates’ daughter. Yet, in the first three centuries there must have been other similar tales in circulation, the most popular among them being Joseph’s slander by Potiphar’s wife and its echo in the novel-like tale about Joseph and Aseneth, a story in which desire culminates in a happy folktale-like ending. This resolution is achieved only after careful reconciliation of chastity with love, either in marriage, or when this was not possible, or in mindful abstinence as in the case of Timasion. The novels seem to digest these supplementary sources of the megatext, allowing for a wider palette of plots, particularly in the light of the tale of Joseph, of which we hear echoes in Cyno’s murder of her husband or Arsace’s oriental retaliation on Theagenes and Chariclea. Equally, the novel manipuates a variety of lower genres that also thoroughly exploit the myth and experiment with hilarious subversions. ‘Widows’ such as Melite, young wives such as Lycaenion, or lustful mistresses like Manto tap into different dimensions of the tale’s potential, being more or less successful in seducing the youth. Motif A is therefore under re-examination: the young man or slave – whether the more-committed Habrocomes and Theagenes or the less-committed Clitophon – is not onesided when rebuffing the other woman’s feelings, but plays around with them, either in an attempt to gain time or because he is also attracted. Further, because the hero is not always – or not as stubbornly – chaste as Hippolytus, the merging of Motif C1 (rebuffing) with C2 (satisfaction) is further revised so as to illustrate the range of shades the plot may take, from defamation to gratification.

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Due to the versatility of the novelistic Hippolytan characters and the acknowledgement of the other woman’s feelings, the revision or omission of the motif of slander takes on a role of greater importance. A woman in love, like Stratonice, Melite or even Arsace, cannot hurt her beloved. This seems to be an insight that the novels share with the ongoing Mythenkritik of the Empire, and the theme is further revised when the cultural context is also taken into account. Surprisingly the oriental Stratonice and, to some extent, Arsace show more compassion and are less willing to harm the objects of their desire, calling into question the stereotype of the randy barbarian woman. The novels, like other sophistic works, focus on the nature of Phaedra’s desire. Just as Plutarch’s Ismenodora combines chaste love with marriage, the Greek novels often portray the female protagonists as suffering from erotic nosos, Phaedra’s illness par excellence. Anthia and Chariclea are therefore characteristic since their longing for Habrocomes and Theagenes respectively, echoes the locus of Phaedra’s mal d’amour, well-known from Euripides’ play but also of primary importance in its reception in the visual arts. Just as on the sarcophagi Phaedra’s lamentations are reinterpreted so as to visualise, among others, the grief of the bereaved mother or lover, the Phaedra-like nosos experienced by Anthia or Chariclea is also positively described. Indeed, although both Anthia and Chariclea are presented as incarnations of Artemis and thus strangers to Aphrodite’s passions, as the plot proceeds they acknowledge their feelings and agree to remain not chaste but faithful in marriage. The novels achieve an interesting equilibrium between desire and its fulfilment in marriage, between Euripides’ two contrasting ideals: Artemis’ chastity and Aphrodite’s lust. What is more, the once Artemisian heroine now becomes the wife or fiancée to whom the male hero is eternally loyal, shifting Hippolytus’ unnatural abstinence into a positive register. Thus, even the earlier novel, Chariton, shows that the reconciliation of Aphrodite with chastity was a sine qua non of the new genre. With the heroine now in the place of Artemis the temptation scene takes a different turn. The ‘other woman’ is not just another temptress but the third person in an already strong relationship. An echo of this new turn of the mythical megatext is seen as late as Rameau’s opera Hippolytus and Aricia, which prefaced this chapter, where the young man is not faithful to a goddess but to a human mortal – and Diana supports this chaste mutual love. In addition, precisely because the heroine actively participates in parts of the pattern, the Phaedra myth often develops in a competition between the hero’s two women, with Chariclea characteristically reading through and between the lines of Arsace’s plot. What is therefore allowed to the chaste heroine is not permitted to her lustful and wicked opponent, irrespective of whether she is a possible candidate for the male character or not. What is more, since the hero’s



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beloved is actively present, as in Xenophon and Heliodorus, the revenge of the ‘other woman’ can now be directed also towards her, the rival, exploring different levels of female jealousy and competition and plotting. Hence Motif D1, slander, takes on different narrative embodiments such as Anthia’s persecution by Manto or Chariclea’s calumniation by Cybele in Memphis. Motif D2, retribution, is not uniform either: even in a single novel such as Xenophon the wicked Manto is spared the punishment Cyno receives, although Heliodorus’ novel does satisfy the readerly expectations by having all the femmes fatales penalised. Besides, Longus and Achilles Tatius achieve a happy ending for all participants by adopting different versions and interpretations of the same pattern. Thus the folkloric punishment of the wicked was not preprequisite. On the other hand, the exoneration of the young man is revisited throughout, echoing thus the ongoing sophistic revision. All male characters, whether faithful or not, are ultimately found not guilty, whether by divine providence, as in the case of Habrocomes, or by human cunning, as with Melites’ chastity test which is related to Clitophon’s exoneration. After all, male virginity, chastity and even faithfulness are hard to prove. In light of the Mythenkritik of the Second Sophistic, the novel abandoned some of the stereotypical interpretation of the pattern. Just as the later sarcophagi maintain the theme of Phaedra’s suffering and Hippolytus’ tragic death, irrespective of the erotic context, the novels continued to plunder the Euripidean motifs while manipulating them differerently. Now not only were both Phaedra’s desire and Hippolytus’ chastity contested, but the later novels also revisit and comment on the previous novelistic reworkings: Chaereas’ hybris to Aphrodite, Metiochus’ stepmother plot, Charicles’ and Clinias’ homoerotic version, and even Chariclea’s fashioning according the major Hippolytan characteristics, such as virginity and hunting, illustrate the vast extent of the novelistic reworkings of the pattern. Therefore, when Calasiris mentions marriage to both Chariclea and Theagenes as the answer to their desire, he speaks not only from mythical and personal experience but also mindfully of the positive novelistic outomes of the pattern. In sum, although each novel makes different use of the Phaedra pattern, all of the five extant works seem to include it one way or another in the plot. Key terms such as nosos, arrogance, hybris, chastity or hunting, and motifs such as the letter, slander, or the handmaiden, offered a variety of tempting intrigues to test the hero and his love for his fiancée. But, and most importantly, the plotting of these intrigues by women and the involvement of the female protagonist, direct or not, shows that, in the Greek novel, Phaedra was a myth that dealt only secondarily with male chastity, while focusing primarily on women’s competitiveness, cunning, but above all desire.

The bold and the faithful: Penelope and Helen Then he told me how much he’d missed me, and how he’d been filled with longing for me even when enfolded in the white arms of goddesses; and I told him how very many tears I’d shed while waiting twenty years for his return, and how tediously faithful I’d been, and how I would never have even so much as thought of betraying his gigantic bed with its wondrous bedpost by sleeping in it with any other man. The two of us were – by our own admission – proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It’s a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said. But we did. Or so we told each other. (Atwood, M. 2005, Penelopiad, scene 31)

The novel, it has been argued, is a tale of love and adventure like the Odyssey.649 Just as Homer’s polytropos spends ten years wandering around the Mediterranean, rejecting Calypso’s love and her gift of immortality, searching instead for a small island and longing for his faithful wife, so too do the novelistic heroes journey around the same dangerous waters, facing shipwreck, bandits, slavery, and various sexual temptations until their final reunions with their beloveds at the stories’ happy endings. It has also been suggested that the novelistic heroines, models of chastity par excellence, are moulded on the wise, cunning and virtuous Penelope, as opposed to the Phaedra-like counter-models of lustful women discussed in the previous chapter. Like Penelope who cleverly postpones her wedding, the novel’s protagonists too are able to outwit undesired suitors while remaining faithful to their betrothed; they are able to persevere through diverse tribulations until they can finally live ‘happily ever after’. Yet, another mythical heroine, Helen, is also said to have much in common with the beautiful heroines of the Greek novels.650 It is especially the Helen of Euripides’ play, one that Holmberg (1995) famously showed is modelled on Penelope, who has drawn a lot of attention. Euripides’ Helen blends the themes of beauty, suitor-competition and faithfulness together with adventures in faraway lands and daring escapes from barbarian kingdoms. Thus the tale about Helen could intergrate the faithful-wife aspect into the adventure plot, part of which I discussed above as the Iphigenia megatext. Yet, Euripides’ play was only one version excerpt from a broader megatext that, even in archaic times, was greatly concerned with both Helen’s beauty and her responsibility 649 Bakhtin 2006 (1941), on the difference between the epic and the novel, for Homeric influence in the novel see Lowe 2000, for the novel adapting the ‘major key’ of the Odyssey; for the Odyssey as the ‘first Greek novel’ see Perry 1967, 44–45, Hägg 1983, 111, Reardon 1991, 15–16, and Fusillo 1991, 25–27 ‘l’Odyssée comme le premier roman de la littérature occidentale.’ 650 Reardon 1991, 132. I have found an old dissertation about Euripides’ Helen and romance, Pattichis 1963, but there was not much useful material for my point here. DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-004



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for the Trojan War. Thus, while Penelope did not offer much to the novelistic adventure theme, using Helen as a model for the novelistic chaste heroine was tantamount to opening Aeolus’ bag of winds with respect to the interpretative possibilities related to both the heroine’s characterisation and the story’s patterning. Besides, what Penelope was mostly famous for was her faithfulness, and Helen for her beauty. In this final part I will explore the echoes of both these myths in the treatment of the faithful and beautiful novelistic protagonist.

3.1 The myth of Penelope 3.1.1 In the visual arts Before turning to the Greek novels I will briefly discuss the visual representations of the Odyssey myth in the first three centuries CE. The excellent volume on the Odysseus myth edited by Andreae (1996) suggests that there was a long tradition visually representing Odysseus’ adventures and homecoming.651 In our visual testimonia the ‘adventure’ or ‘outdoor’ themes seem to outnumber the ‘indoor’ scenes: Odysseus and the Cyclops, and Odysseus in the underworld, were some of the favourite topics ever since Polygnotus’ murals in the temple of Athena Areia at Plataea.652 The later frescoes from the Esquiline, dated in the first century BCE, also focus on the ‘exotic’ adventures and travels of Odysseus, rather than on the erotic reunification with Penelope, as does the Cyclops statue in Sperlonga. Thus there is plenty of visual evidence related to Odysseus’ travels during the Empire. But what about Penelope? The reunion with Penelope is by no means absent and is probably the best-documented ‘indoor’ scene of the Odyssey. We know about an early painting by Zeuxis of Penelope as symbol of Virtue, but nothing remains of it.653 Most famous however is the type of the Vatican Penelope, where she is often presented with her legs crossed, pensively holding her head, seated on a stool, a diphros; she probably holds a rod for weaving – to remind the viewer of her

651 See also Stewart 1976. 652 Paus. 9.4.1 and Plu. Arist. 20.3. Germini 2008, 99 argues that the sanctuary was decorated with the paintings of Polygnotus and of Onasias around 469 BCE. Among them was most likely a sculpture of Penelope awaiting Odysseus’ return to free her that was probably an allegory of Graecia capta. To which extent that allegory may still have been relevant in the Roman Empire is a question for art historians. 653 Plin. Nat. Hist. 35.63.

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craftiness in outwitting her suitors – and there is often a kalathos nearby, as in the original Persepolis Marble shown in Figure 10.654

Figure 10: Mourning Penelope, sitting with her legs crossed and supporting her veiled head pensively with her hand. Statue, Roman copy of one of the Severe Style, 5th century BCE, Penelope Marble found in Persepolis. Vatican Museum Inv. 754, LIMC Fig. 2a-i Courtesy of bpk/Scala.

Figure 11: Penelope preparing the bow of Odysseus. The female figure has also been Identified as Diana, but she is not dressed like the goddess, leading to the suggestion that she might be Penelope. Fresco, Stabiae, III style, Napoli, Mus. Naz. LIMC Fig. 12 Courtesy of bpk/Scala.

In imperial times, the renewal of interest in Penelope’s chastity and faithfulness, as Germini (2008), 100–01 argues, was connected to the new role of Roman matronae and the freedoms they acquired. It is, therefore, not surprising that a similar echo is found in contemporary literature.655 That said, with the

654 Palagia 2008, 226, suggesting one of the prototypes for this kind of marble to be an Attic red-figure skyphos of c. 440 in Chiusi, which represents her in front of her loom, attended by her son Telemachus, while the other side shows Odysseus being recognised by the old servant washing his feet. 655 Newby 2011, 196–97, notes the prominence of faithful wives, such as Alcestis, Penelope, Evadne, and Laodicea, on sarcophagi of elite Roman women. See also Langlands 2006. Some liberty must also have been enjoyed by Greek women, see Haynes 2003, 207–08.



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exception of one fresco from Apamea, Figure 12, which is of a much later date, most of the representations of the Penelope recognition scene depict her in a pose similar to the ‘Mourning Penelope’ as in Figure 13: standing with hand on chin, reluctant to recognise the man sitting in front of her as her husband.656 In other paintings Odysseus stands next to or behind his mourning wife, or vice versa, also in a pensive stance.657 The seated position of Odysseus in this picture reminds the reader of the earlier recognition scene between Orestes and Iphigenia, Figure 3, where again the standing female character inquires the seated man’s identity.







Figure 12: Odysseus’ recognition by Penelope. Indoor scene. Odysseus has his hand on his chin and is seated. In front of him stands Penelope, hand in chin too, in what seems a reluctant recognition scene. Fresco from c. 50 CE, Napoli, Mus. Naz. 9107. LIMC Fig. 36 Courtesy of Jackie and Bob Dunn.

Other frescoes from Pompeii in the first century present Penelope in a static pose: e.g. the Stabiae fresco, Figure 11, depicts Penelope holding Odysseus’ bow,658 the queen in a pensive mood. Contrarily the much later mosaic from Apamea shows mutual recognition, the two spouses are depicted in a sweet 656 LIMC 7 s.v. ‘Penelope’ and Germini 2008, 50; for the iconography of the myth see esp. Mactoux 1975, 155–68, who argues that the figure of Penelope in imperial times is the symbol of marital fidelity but also, under the influence of Stoic and Neo-Platonic interpretation, the incarnation of all (spiritual) virtues. For the psychological dimension of the recognition scene in Homer see Bierl 2006, 121, supporting an ending at 23.296. 657 Cf. Hom. Od. 23.164–165, ‘Then he sat down again on the chair from which he had risen, opposite his wife.’ 658 Cf. Valladares 2014, 82 suggests that this is not Artemis, because the woman depicted is too heavily dressed, whereas the goddess wears a short chiton.

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scene. In it, Penelope and Odysseus embrace outside the palace in front of Eurycleia and the handmaidens, who are dancing on the right. Indeed, only this Syrian mosaic represents what may be designated as a ‘novelistic’ recognition-reunion motif between two spouses, namely a kiss with an embrace, which is absent from the earlier text-based recognition scenes we see in Pompeii. Furthermore, this is one piece of art in which the reunion of the couple has been interpreted allegorically as the reunion of man with Lady Philosophy. Yet, besides the obvious Neo-Platonic and Christian influences, the mosaic may exhibit some affinities with the ideal love novels too, since the works of novelists like Heliodorus, as we will see further, also interpreted Odysseus’ return along the same allegorical Neo-Platonic lines.659

Figure 13: Odysseus and Penelope embrace and kiss in front of Euryclea. Six more girls dance in circle. It echoes the celebrations after the Mnesterophonia. Roman mosaic, from Apamea in Syria, Musée du Cinquantenaire, Royal Museum, Brussels Inv. 362–365, c. 375 CE. LIMC Fig. 41 Courtesy of Musée du Cinquantenaire.

This brief overview of the visual representations gives a good idea of what was probably an integral part of the ‘Myth of Penelope’ in the first centuries CE: 659 I shall return to this mosaic later in my discussion of Heliodorus. The Neo-Platonic context is emphasised by the opposite mosaic depicting Socrates among the Sages, which was found next to the one of Odysseus. For an overview see Buffière 1956, 388–91 on Circe incarnating Episteme and Penelope Lady Philosophy. See also Lamberton 1986, 144–145. The main discussion of the mosaic can be found in Balty 1977, 76, contra see Helleman 1995, who believes the mosaic to be an allegory of Episteme and the Seven Arts.



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a seated mourning woman, often weaving, waiting for her husband’s return, or, less frequently, a queen actively preparing for an archery competition, or a standing pensive woman and a seated man unfolding a reluctant recognition scene as in the Odyssey.660 Could the evolution from the Pompeii fresco to the Apamea mosaics illustrated a debt not only to emerging philosophical trends but also to a developing taste for erotic mutual reconciliations?

3.1.2 In literature The main source for Penelope is undoubtedbly Homer’s Odyssey, the key model for the Greek novel.661 Penelope was thought to contrast with the other two femmes fatales of the Trojan Cycle, the adulterous and murderous Clytemnestra and the beautiful, faithless and volatile Helen. The Odyssey offers glimpses into the characters of Menelaus’ and Odysseus’ wives, pointing out the intelligence and the faithfulness of Penelope, as opposed to that of Helen.662 The epic focuses on appearances too: for example, we also see Penelope almost as beautiful as Helen, appearing in front of the suitors and her husband, who is also there incognito. Still her cleverness and chastity were not always beyond doubt, a version stretching from antiquity to Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. Such speculations have their origin as early as Herodotus 2.153, who has Pan being born to Hermes and Penelope, or a variant in which Pan is the offspring of Penelope sleeping with all her suitors.663 But the most difficult problem that the ancient and the modern readers of the Odyssey face is whether or not Penelope recognises Odysseus as early as Book 17, when she sets her mind on having the suitors compete with one another for her hand, or whether she is the pre-

660 Cf. Hom. Od. 23 167–170, Odysseus reproaches Penelope for her ‘iron’ heart and her cold welcome before the final test of the queen. It’s only after the final test of the bed that Penelope welcomes her husband with tears in her eyes in an embrace: 23.207–208, ‘Then with a burst of tears she ran straight toward him, and threw her arms about the Od. neck of Odysseus, and kissed his head.’ 661 For Penelope and her role in the Odyssey see among the many, Mactoux 1975, Winkler 1990b, Katz 1991. For her chastity see North 1966, 21,248–49. 662 Clader 1976, 35–39, Zeitlin 1995. 663 The best-known myths about Penelope’s infidelity probably stem from an epichoric, Arcadian tradition: Penelope is said to have given birth to Pan, either by Hermes or by all the suitors together (Lycoph. 772, Schol. ad Herod. 2.145, Cic. De nat. Deor. 3.22). Mactoux 1975, 221–22 suggests an alliteration between the Queen’s name in Doric Panelopa and Pan, since the connection is an odd one, and gives a full list of ancient authors.

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last, before Laertes, who learns about Odysseus’ return.664 Yet, above all, it was Penelope’s faithfulness that remained renowned throughout antiquity. On the other hand, plot wise, the tale about this faithful wife did not provide an intrigue that appealed to the dramatists. Unlike Helen, Penelope was rooted, like her nuptial bed, on Ithaca; unlike Clytemnestra, she was not wicked, but caring. Hence, whereas the myth of the Iliad bequeathed the stage with a firm conception that would develop into the myths of the ‘tragic plots’,665 as observed in plays such as Agamemnon, Trojan Women, Helen and others, the dramatic reception of the Odyssey in antiquity is more problematic.666 The small – compared to the Iliad-based plots – surviving number of dramas inspired by the adventure and return epic all seem to focus on the second part of the poem, or the theme of recognition.667 The very last Odyssean chapters are indeed characterised by dramatic coherence and end with a culmination that seems more appropriate for dramatic reworking than the episodic adventures of Odysseus’ narration. These last chapters include the famous recognition scene, the one that has been so popular in the visual arts too, as observed above, as in Figures 13 and 14. In his Poetics 1459b, Aristotle made a famous claim that influenced all future critics of literature.668 In his very minimal and hence authoritative manner, he 664 To be discussed below. Here I cite selectively, Murnaghan 1987, Winkler 1990b, and Reece 2011. 665 E.g. see how the Iliad is used as an example of a ‘tragic’ register versus the comic one as represented by the Odyssey. See Lowe 2000, 260 on the Iliad being in the ‘minor key’ versus the Odyssey being in the ‘major key’. 666 Here by Iliad and Odyssey, I mean not only the particular epics but also their surrounding myths. Indeed, Aristotle noticed that they demonstrate such unity of plot that one could make one or not more than two plays out of them, as opposed to the episodic epics of the Cycle (Arist. Po. 1459b). See also Hawes 2014, 76. ‘Tragic myths then, form a cohesive class of stories not only because of their one-time use by tragedians, but also by virtue of their basic suitability for the tragic stage and their achievement of canonical forms through theatrical performance, and later, through textualization.᾽ 667 We know of a Penelope by a certain Philocles (TrGF, Snell, v. 1, Fr.8, p. 161), a play, Mnesteres, by a Timesitheus, and an Odysseus, (TrGF, v.2, F a and b, Kannicht-Snell) to which is attributed the reference of Arist. Po. 16.1455a12 regarding ‘absurd’ recognition. Moreover, there seems to be a trilogy/tetralogy by Aeschylus: Ostologoi F 179–180, Psychagogoi F 273, Penelope F 187, Circe F 113a–115 (probably the satyr play) in TrGF, v.3 (Snell). Finally, there is a Nausicaa/Plyntriae by Sophocles, but the content is obscure. 668 See Brooks 1984, 92–93, with references to other literary critics: ‘if at the end of a narrative we can suspend time in a moment when past and present hold together in a metaphor – which may be that recognition or anagorisis, which, said Aristotle, every good plot should bring – that moment does not abolish the movement, the slidings, the mistakes, and partial recognitions of the middle.’



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judges the Iliad as being ‘a simple plot with emotions, whereas the Odyssey is complex in its plot (being a recognition throughout) and ethical.’ Scholars still attempt to interpret what exactly the great thinker meant, and Richardson (1983), 225 and Cave (1988), 40 have discussed the topic thoroughly.669 From the above citation I shall focus here on Aristotle’s obscure but axiomatic remark that the Odyssey ‘is a recognition throughout.’ Indeed, the Odyssey encourages a focus on the recognition scenes that precede the final and crowning spousal recognition and reunion scene: i.e. Alcinous, Telemachus, Eumaeus and Euryclea all gradually recognise Odysseus under different circumstances. In each of these recognition scenes the reader is able to add one more missing piece to the portrait of the hero, until the core romantic recognition by Penelope.670 This cluster of recognitions hints to the audience that the key to the poem’s ‘meaning’ may be hiding behind these correct or false identifications of the protagonist and imposes itself as a guide for decoding the plot at a metaliterary level.671 Thus, recognition in the Odyssey is not just a ‘scene’ but mainly a process towards recognition intertwined with the very deciphering of narrative. The more hints and clues the reader decodes, the greater the suspense, and the closer one gets to the well-known but still long-anticipated ending.672 The recognition process in the Odyssey functions as a catalyst leading inexorably towards its closure, as metaliterary equipment for the deciphering of an adventure-return/recognition plot.673 This idea was in no way perplexing to the ancient readers of the Odyssey who, like the modern reader, had the time to re-hear/read the poem and extrapolate all the necessary details that may have gone under. The revelation of the stranger’s identity therefore became, because of the Odyssey, a narrative example of reading between the lines. In the words of Cave (1988), 41–45:

669 For recognition in the Odyssey see also Austin 1975, 225 and Cave 1988, 40; for a formal analysis of the Homeric recognition scenes see Gainsford 2003; for the manipulation of information around recognition scenes and the narrator’s voice see Stewart 1976 and Goldhill 1991; for fidelity and recognition see Zeitlin 1995. The most recent contribution is Montiglio 2012. 670 Montiglio 2012, 42 sees the recognition by Penelope as the ‘climactic telos’, whereas those by Laertes and Dolius and his sons are meant to ‘tie up other threads’. 671 De Jong 2001, 7 observes that the concealing of names results in the ‘delayed recognition story pattern.’ 672 Kelly 2011 on the audience’s expectations; a psychoanalytical approach in Bierl 2004. 673 Cave (1988) 4, ‘To tell a story that ends in recognition is to perform one of the most quintessential of all acts of fictional narration – the recognition scene is, as it were, the mark of signature of a fiction, so that even if something like it occurs in fact, it still sounds like fiction and will probably be retold as such.’

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Epic anagnorisis then is regarded in the Aristotelian tradition as being diverse and cunningly wrought. Epic differs from tragedy, according to Poetics 24, in that the narrative form affords greater occasion than the dramatic for the marvellous, implausible, or irrational incidents … in narrative poetry, the violation of logic or of common standards of plausibility can be skilfully disguised so that the reader or the audience experiences the maximum effect of ‘wonder’ without discrediting the narrative … Eustathius, speaking of the many different kinds of recognition scenes in the Odyssey, uses the adjective polytropos … The recognitions are as many-sided, versatile and cunning as Odysseus himself, who is a notorious storyteller and who certainly knows how to stage a recognition scene. Eustathius would only have to take one step further in order to make Odysseus explicitly a personification of narrative strategy.674

Recognition and recognitive (‘recognition-oriented’) reading was therefore not an unfamiliar approach to the epic among the readers of the first three centuries. This kind of readerly attitudes is already present in the earlier Alexandrian objections regarding the ‘ending’ of the poem. Famously Aristarchus and Aristophanes of Byzantium had wished – true or not – for the poem to end at 23.296 with the lovemaking scene between Odysseus and his wife, thus demonstrating a taste for ‘a story that ends in recognition’, or, in Cave’s terms above, for a ‘fiction’ before the birth of the novel.675 If indeed there were interpretative issues leading to the acknowledgement of an ‘early recognition’ of Odysseus in Book 19, as Seneca may be hinting in his Epistle 88.8,676 that would also point to a self-conscious manipulation of the recognition scene to stress the unity of the work and use it as a metaliterary device to unveil the ending. 677 These observa674 Eustath. Comm. in Od. 2.214. stresses the importance of the recognition scenes: ‘(Odysseus) was recognised in an incredible way (παραδόξως) and in a variety of manners (πολυτρόπως) by all those to whom he revealed himself, and no recognition happened to be altogether like a previous recognition: (he was recognised) else ways by Telemachus, differently by Euryclea, diversely by the slaves, in more incredible manner (παραδοξότερον) by Penelope, in a different way by Laertes, and all were entirely unlike to the others.’ Eustabius here gives thus an example of how a Byzantine reader would have read the poem as an ongoing recognition process. 675 Still, the poem transmitted to us includes Book 24 because it was considered an integral part of the myth; on the telos, as ending /consummation or as aim (Ziel) see Page 1955, ch. 5, Stanford 1965, Wender 1978, and especially Moulton 1974; more recently see Said 2011, 215 with review of previous literature. Besides this is not the end of the myth: Odysseus’ journey is anticipated not to end in Ithaca according to Tiresias’ prophecy, also repeated in his recapitulation of his adventures to Penelope in Od. 23.245–253. 676 See Murnaghan 1987, 101. 677 The topic was reopened by Harsh 1950 and Vlachos 2007. See also Emlyn-Jones 2009. More subtle is Murnaghan, 1987, 35–37 claiming that Penelope recognises not the stranger himself but the man the stranger talks about as being indeed Odysseus. See also Bierl 2004 for a detailed investigation of the psychological dimension of the scene. For a review see Reece 2011, who argues that Homer plays with the options offered by the Tale AT 974 ‘The Homecoming Husband’



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tions, however, more than illuminating the telos of the Odyssey, illustrate how ‘ending’ and ‘reading for a decipherable end’ influence ancient Homeric interpretations. Besides, telos in Greek could mean both ‘end’ and ‘aim’ (Ziel), something in the process of being completed, bringing thus once more to the fore the active role of the reader in defining the plot. Modern readers have walked down a similar path asking and replying to different but related sets of questions to confirm their own expectations from the text: e.g. what clues are given by a text so as to reconstruct its meaning? In his analysis Goldhill demonstrates further the metaliterary role of recognition, playing with the alliteration between the notions ἀναγνώρισις and ἀνάγνωσις and equating Odysseus’ voice with ‘the voice of the bard’.678 How are the reader’s expectations guided through the narrative towards the ending? Maronitis (1991) shows that the Odyssey is one large and gradual recognition project, at each stage of which the internal (and hence external) audience is challenged to ‘locate’ and ‘identify’ the hero. He also argues that what holds the different parts of the epic together, including the Telemachy, is a series of questions on the location and identity of Odysseus: that is, ‘who is Odysseus?’ and ‘where is Odysseus?’ The reader is expected to decode these questions as the narrative evolves, while gathering information about Odysseus’ whereabouts and his homecoming together with the embedded readers.679 The tale told about Penelope, therefore, included her ideal characterisation but also, and most importantly, the recognition scene and the chastity test between two long-lost spouses. Penelope’s recognition of her husband is the catalyst in the plot as without being recognised by his queen Odysseus cannot be restored to his past glories. Having all the above in mind, I wish to highlight the kind of myth that the Second Sophistic knew about Penelope. The ideal wife Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and the Groom (Conjugalia Praecepta), 25, like his Amatorius, celebrates conjugal love: in it, Odysseus and Penelope, labelled as wise and chaste (φρόνιμος, σώφρων) and famous for their mutual love and in order to refashion the recognition in the climax of the poem. See also Harsh 1950. For a review of relevant literature see Murnaghan 1987, 101, notes 25 and 26. 678 See Austin 1975, 219 and Goldhill 1991, 56. 679 Kelly 2011 for example presents how, in an oral performance, the final recognition of Odysseus plays with the audience’s expectations since the myth and its ending were well-known. Aristotle’s ‘throughout recognition’, his throughout recognition, then, made it to modern criticism with some detours though the importance of the recognition scenes for the understanding of the Odyssey has not weaned.

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wisdom, are set in opposition to the lustful and greedy couple of Paris and Helen (φιλήδονος, φιλόπλουτος), who are to blame for the Trojan War. In How a Young Man Should Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis) 27, he discusses the dubious scene in which Penelope receives gifts from her suitors, not as an indication of infidelity but of her womanly craftiness: Odysseus, Plutarch observes, is happy with the presents, which add to his treasures, without suspecting his otherwise faithful wife. Yet, in another work of Stoic inspiration, On the Cleverness of Animals (De sollertia animalium) 898b, Penelope is compared to female crows, which grieve more than other animals over the loss of their partners. The queen’s twenty-year waiting, falls short in comparison, since crows mourn for the equivalent of nine human generations, thus surpassing Penelope’s persistence.680 Penelope’s youth and faithlessness Penelope certainly remained periphron throughout antiquity. Her trick with the loom, her weaving as demonstration of her faithful and patient waiting, and her reunion with Odysseus became part of early philosophical allegoresis:681 e.g. Penelope is often thought to represent wisdom and philosophy, to which Odysseus returns after his long (philosophical) quest for knowledge;682 also, in Lucian’s Runaways (Fugitivi) 21, Penelope’s loom features as a metaphor for those who fail to attain philosophy, and in his Imagines 20, Penelope poses next to another famously chaste woman, Pantheia, wife of Abradates. Yet, imperial prose seemed inclined to include some erotic touch in Penelope’s otherwise stable faithful character. There is scarce evidence of what could have been a love story between Odysseus and Penelope: according to Pausanias 3.12, Penelope, like Helen, was a precious prize, and Odysseus won her in a foot race with her father, Icarius.683 In another snapshot from this earlier time of her life, it is said that once, when she run off together with Odysseus for Ithaca, Icarius asked her to stay with him; she then covered her face with her veil, demonstrating her wish to follow her 680 Mactoux 1975, 157. 681 The standard works are Buffière 1956, (on Stoic exegesis), and Lamberton 1992 (on Neo-Platonic interpretation). See also Brisson and Tihanyi 2008 (1996), 38 on Antisthenes and the Cynics; 80, on Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists. On the treatment of Odysseus and Penelope, the Cynic and Stoic influences, see Stanford 1968, Branham and Goulet-Cazé 1996, and Montiglio 2011, 66–94, 89–90. For Homeric myths and their Stoic influence in Dio see Gangloff 2006. For Lucian, I cite here selectively Kim 2010, 140–174 and Anderson 1976. 682 Cf. Plu. De lib. 7d, ‘Bion, the philospher, used to say jokingly that, just as the suitors were not able to come close to Penelope and thus they were sleeping with her maid servants, the ones who cannot reach philosophy are wasted away in the other studies, the good-for-nothings.’ 683 Although, according to others, she was given to him as a prize for helping Tyndareus choose a suitor for Helen, avoiding quarrels, Ps.-Apollod. 3.10.



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husband even as far as remote Ithaca.684 This makes the story sound more like the elopement of two lovers, a tale for which Helen was known. Pausanias’ interest in such details about Penelope’s youth shows that, besides her image as the faithful queen, there was also a wish to see her as a young woman in love. Following up the variant of the unfaithful Penelope, Pausanias mentions that Odysseus supposedly repudiates her on his return, whereupon she goes to Sparta, and thence to Mantineia, where her tomb is on display.685 But there are other negative representations of the queen: in a characteristic passage from Dio’s Euboean Discourse (Euboicus) 84 Penelope appears as a rather grudging queen who is willing to grant the poor beggar shoes and clothes, provided he manages to string the bow of Odysseus or only after his promising that Odysseus will certainly return. Additionally, Lucian reports the fiasco of the famous ‘recognition-reunion’ theme: in the True Histories (Verae historiae) 29–36, the narrator meets Odysseus, who, having returned home to be killed by Telegonus, his son by Circe, asks him to deliver a loveletter to Calypso, in which he expresses his regrets for choosing Penelope over her.686 In another passage in the Dialogues of the Gods (Dialogoi deorum) 2, he presents Penelope as the mother of Pan, and in the Dialogues of the Courteasans (Dialogi meretricii) 11 she becomes an example for Phaon’s concubine, who, as faithful as she is, has eyes only for her man.687 Penelope was not beyond suspicion and these spicy details show how unexciting her status as the otherwise patiently waiting wife might have seemed to some. This short survey, far from being exhaustive, shows, nonetheless, the main trends in the representation of Penelope in the first centuries CE. Faithful and clever wife though she was, she was not above suspicion. In the visual representations Penelope is most closely linked with longing, waiting at home and chastity; she is therefore the static point of reference for Odysseus’ active travels. More persistent than the moral imagery of Penelope was the allegorical interpretation of Odysseus’ homecoming. Cynics and Stoics had allegorised Odysseus’ wanderings and his endurance; later, the Neo-Platonists saw in his travels a spiritual journey towards wisdom too. Penelope, in this context, becomes the principal reason for the homecoming, representing Lady Philosophy and converting the romantic context into a philosophical allegory. If we are now to extrapolate, some 684 Paus. 3.20. 685 Paus. 8.12. 686 Here Lucian echoes another tradition in which Telegonus, son of Circe, upon his arrival at Ithaca in search of his father accidentally kills Odysseus, whose identity he learns too late. Then Telegonus marries Penelope and Telemachus Circe, cf. Ps.-Apollod. 7.16, 7.36–37, Hyg. Fab. 125, 127. Telegonus is mentioned in Hes. Theog. 1014, among the children of Circe by Odysseus. For the motif in Indo-European myth see West 2007, 441. 687 Luc, DMeretr. 11, ‘I adhered to you with the fidelity of Penelope.’

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thematic kernels for the study of the Penelope myth would be ‘chastity’, ‘mourning’ – which in visual art was connected with weaving and the trick of the loom – and ‘reunion/recognition’, but no ‘adventure theme’ seems to intrude into this static model of female devotion and chastity.

3.2 The myth of Helen 3.2.1 In the visual arts Whereas Penelope was presented as more or less chaste until the imperial period, her cousin, Helen, had a mixed reputation. In stark contrast to Phaedra, despite Helen’s adultery with Paris, her infidelity was somehow downplayed as being the result of a mutual Eros, and her divine beauty justified her exceptional erotic career. Gorgias famously exonerated Helen in his Encomium, offering a variety of reasons for why things went the way the myth describes: among others Eros and Peitho played chief roles.688 Archaic art is unaware of the Egyptian, and supposedly Stesichorean, Helen.689 Thus, it appears that the Homeric version of the myth was the prevailing one, despite Stesichorus’ revision, which is absent from the visual evidence.690 Pausanias 10.26.2, for example, mentions the famous painting of the Iliupersis by Polygnotus for the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi. The painting would have been about five hundred years old in Pausanias’ time and could have survived another two centuries or more, since it is mentioned by Themistius.691 Polygnotus’ painting had a long afterlife in Greek and Roman visual art, too,692 and was thought to echo Stesichorus’ other version of the myth, the Helen of the Iliupersis.693 The painter presented the Spartan Queen as a vain beauty who sits gazing into her mirror, unmoved by the misery of the other Trojan women.694 In addition to these 688 Gorg. Hel. Enc. 19, ‘If therefore the eye of Helen, pleased by the body of Alexander, presented to her soul eager desire and contest of love, what is wonderful in that? If being a god, love has the divine power of the gods, how could a lesser being reject and refuse it?’ 689 Kahil 1955, 499. 690 The reception of the Helen myth is discussed by Lindsay 1974, Clader 1976, Austin 1994; for the Euripidean treatment of Helen as a parallel to Penelope see the seminal Holmberg 1995. 691 Themist. Or. 34.2. 692 Kahil 1955, 250–51. LIMC 4, s.v. Hélène. 693 Zimmermann, Schlichtmann, and Schmid 2011, 192 for a short introduction with major references for Stesichorus’ Iliupersis (S88–S147and 196–205 PMGF), the Helen (Fr. 187–191 PMGF), and the Palinode (Stesich. Fr. 192 and 193 PMGF). For the Iliupersis and the Wooden Horse see also Schade 2003, 118–215. 694 LIMC 4. s.v. Hélène Fig. 374. Dated in the mid fifth c. BCE. This painting did not represent the reunion of Menelaus and Helen but her glorification. Polygnotus seems to have been following



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paintings, reports have survived about paintings like Zeuxis’ portrait of Helen, the reputation of which became anecdotal and whose renown was passed on through description until imperial times and later.695 Yet the Roman paintings and mosaics seem much more interested in the love plot. A mosaic from Antioch, Figure 14, shows Paris seated between the three goddesses and choosing Helen’s beauty above all else. Other mosaics represent Helen and Paris in a get-together scene that echoes that of Phaedra before Hippolytus as in Figure 15. 696 However, in this myth Phaedra shows explicit indications of erotic torment while Hippolytus is unaffected by the Queen. Contrarily, the love at first sight scenes between Helen and Paris suggest a mutual attraction and an erotically charged atmosphere. Helen’s elopement with Paris by sea, as Figure 16 suggests, was also a very common theme in the visual arts and provided a basis for an outdoors adventure. Yet, as observed above, unlike Iphigenia, who embarks hastily with the help of her brother or Pylades in Figure 4, Helen is shown to calculate pensively her flight; she seems to need convincing, as she leaves behind a husband and a daughter.





Figure 14: The Judgement of Paris. Paris seated before the three goddesses who offer their gifts. Hera sits in the middle. In the background Psyche and Eros are depicted. Note the importance paid to the depiction of the pastoral setting. Such uses of the Helen myth emphasise the eroticism of the story rather than its ruinous aftermath. Mosaic from Antioch, atrium, c. 130/150 CE. Louvre, MA 3443, Dunbabin (1999), 161, LIMC s.v. ‘Paridis Iudicium’, Fig. 77. Courtesy of bpk/RMN - Grand Palais/ Hervé Lewandowski.

a version that might have exonerated Helen but there is not enough evidence to suggest which version he was following. 695 Dion of Halic. De imitat. 31.1.1, tells the story of the painter, Zeuxis, who gathered five women in order to paint Helen’s unmatched beauty. 696 Cf. LIMC 4 s.v. ‘Hélène’, Fig. 143, Pompeii, Casa del Sacerdos Amandus. In it Paris stands naked before Helen, like Hippolytus before Phaedra. Yet he stretches his right arm out, holding hands with a flying Eros. Helen is seated with her nurse opposite, welcoming the gesture.

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All these depictions of Helen focus mainly on her beauty and the erotic theme, showing how important these aspects were for the myth’s reception during the Empire. This is why she is often accompanied by Eros or Peitho or even Aphrodite.697 The tragic consequences of her affair with Paris are also evident, although her captivating looks seem to provide some excuse for her mythical reputation. Unlike Phaedra’s story, which leads Hippolytus to his death, and unlike the visual representations that highlight her fatal lust, the myth of Helen not only conjures up the context of the Trojan War but emphasises beauty and the lovers’ elopement.698 As Kahil rightly asserts, the imperial artists were chiefly interested in depicting Helen’s physical appearance as the epitome of female physical beauty.699 There is no visual representation of Helen’s return to Sparta, although as we shall see imperial literature promoted a different, ‘new’ and ‘sophisticated’ Helen: the chaste one.





Figure 15: Helen falls in love with Paris. Indoor scene in Sparta. Paris dressed in Phrygian clothing is seated in front of Helen. Eros stands between the two and presides over the scene, showing Paris to Helen. Fresco. Pompeii Casa di Giasone, IX 5.18, third style. Napoli. Mus. Naz. 1143 20. Kahil 234–235. 182. Pl. 36.3. LIMC Fig. 122 Courtesy of Jackie and Bob Dunn.

697 LIMC 7 s.v. ‘Peitho’. See also Buxton 1982. 698 E.g. Bergmann 1994, 245–46 in her seminal paper explains how a series of paintings in the ‘House of the Tragic Poet’ in Pompeii – depicting among others Achilles and Briseis, Hera and Zeus and the above-mentioned painting of Helen embarking with Paris – form a thematic cluster, treating the themes of fidelity, infidelity and marital devotion. If ‘read’ by the audience in a different order, Bergmann argues, the paintings point towards the two key factors responsible for the Argives’ misfortunes during the Trojan War: Helen’s infidelity and Achilles’ wrath. 699 Kahil 1955, 218.





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Figure 16: Helen embarking for Troy. She waits before boarding, aided by another figure. Behind her we might see a young girl, Hermione (?). We see a part of the boat and a hand stretched out to her. Fresco, Pompeii, House of the Tragic Poet VI 8.3, fourth style. Napoli, Mus. Naz. 9108. Kahil 238 no. 189 pl. 39.3. LIMC Fig. 176 Courtesy of Jackie and Bob Dunn.

3.2.2 In literature Source texts There is no doubt that Homer’s Iliad is a very influential version for the myth of Helen. It was taught at schools and was part of everyone’s mythical pedigree. What is more, even in its more secular versions the story still bears traces of its mythical past West (2007), 230–37 gives a good overview of this early material. Yet Helen was not a goddess but a mortal woman with an intriguing life.700 Very early on Greek writers started debating her faithfulness and surmised a variety of reasons for her elopement. Resonances of the early revision of this myth can be found in Herodotus’ Histories 2.112–120. Later Gorgias and Isocrates also found something positive to say about Helen’s affair, probably inspired by other 700 For her human and divine ‘biographies’ see Lindsay 1974.

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sources. Next to the Homeric Helen, however, as O’Sullivan (1995), 171–73 persuasively argues, there was a rich oral tradition that regarded Paris and Helen as the archetypical romantic couple, which is also evident from the treatment of the tale in the visual arts.701 This romance tale is echoed in the final section of Book 3 of the Iliad, in which Helen allows herself to be seduced by Paris. Herodotus transmits these traditions, which probably stem from the Epic Cycle and especially the Cypria, which retraces the couple’s ocean-going itinerary from Sparta to Sidon and Egypt.702 It is in Egypt, according to Herodotus 2.112, that Paris is arrested and brought to the Pharaoh, who supports Menelaus by retaining the beautiful adulteress until her husband’s return. The Cypria also seem to have transmitted other tales about Achilles’ meeting with Helen in Troy as a prelude of their later wedding on Leuce.703 In sum the Cypria appear to have stressed the role of Aphrodite in Helen’s love affairs, a theme that would also have supported the later treatment of erotic tales in the novels. That being said, there is also a prominent version of the Helen myth that presents the Spartan beauty as the faithful, chaste wife who never sets foot in Troy. This variant has roots as early as the two poems of Stesichorus, who famously wrote his Palinode against a previous poem in which he supposedly treats Helen as a faithless wife. It is nonetheless Euripides’ version, whether indebted to Stesichorus or not,704 that would be important for the reception of the myth. The Helen may not have been included in the so-called ‘selection’ of the Alexandrian editors, but it was transmitted among the ‘alphabetical plays’. The earliest papyrus (P.Oxy. 2336) dates from the first century BCE.705 Thus, the lack of more papyri should not be discouraging, since it may be a matter of pure chance or part of a scholarly or educative initiative that did not necessarily reflect the literary taste of the times.706 Unlike the rather obscure Stesichorean version, the full Helen play survives, which enables a closer comparison with the novel.707

701 See also Davies 1989, 39–40. 702 Hom. Il. 6.288–292, Herod.2.116.6.-117, see Létoublon 2011, 33 for Homer’s revision of the canon with a useful table. 703 Fantuzzi 2012, 14 on the Cypria and on Lycophr. Alex. 704 For arguments against Euripides’ debt to the Palinode see Wright 2005, e.g. 86–87 reworking Austin 1994, 138–99. However, already in classical Athens, Helen’s eidolon and the related Egyptian tale were associated with Stesichorus, as argued by Marshall 2014, 57. 705 For the textual history see Allan 2008, 84 and Carrara 2009, 213–219. 706 Cf. Barrett 1964, 52. 707 A brief mention of the ‘romantic’ elements in Euripides’ Helen can be found in Pattichis 1963.



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As I will show the novel did not found its ‘romantic’ inspiration in Euripides, but the play conformed to the novel’s new predilection for a chaste adventure plot, if combined with the Penelope myth and Helen’s Homeric adventures as discussed above.708 Euripides’ Helen gives a new twist to the megatext of the Beauty and her suitors, which was entangled with the more canonical versions about the faithful queen of Ithaca and the frivolous one of Sparta. Various threads throughout the play seem to have encouraged this comparison: e.g. the theme of sailing, as in the Iphigenia myth observed above; the theme of suitor competition that remains preeminent also in Euripides’ version; and the theme of man’s going to war over a beauty.709 Additionally, the queen’s faithfulness and the subsequent recognition scene bring her closer to the myth of Penelope.710 What Euripides’ plot suggests is that the themes of ‘suitor(s) competition’ and ‘adventure/sailing’ can all serve the myth without sacrificing any suspense while including the less intriguing ‘faithfulness’ theme set ‘at home’, thus borrowing from the tales of Helen and Penelope.711 This is the core megatext that the classical texts bequeathed to the imperial readership, which, in its turn, revisited and questioned Helen’s chastity as well as her Trojan and Egyptian adventures. Faithlessness, beauty and war Was the Egyptian Helen known to the readers of the first three centuries a Euripidean or Stesichorean version of the myth? Whose invention was the eidolon? These questions, legitimate though they may be for scholars working on earlier revisions, no longer matter in the first CE centuries. The name of Euripides may not appear in connection with this ‘chaste’ version of the myth but the tale of the eidolon was intrinsically linked to the play. Whether or not Stesichorus’ Palinode reached the first centuries intact, by that time it had definitely gained proverbial status, supplemented with Platonic overtones.712 Mythographers 708 As Allan 2008, 335 rightly observes the ‘romantic’ and ‘comic’ elements of the play are evaluated a posteriori and are projected back onto Euripides. 709 See Austin 1994, 140 and Allan 2008, 335: Helen faces another suitor in Egypt, Theoclymenus, whom she must keep under control, but she does not avoid bloodshed. Hence, Troy is transferred to the Nile Delta in a kind of miniature Iliad e.g. E. Hel. 1602. 710 On the Homeric influence on the play see Austin 1994, 84–85 and Allan 2008, 27, 56. 711 The Penelopean character of the Euripidean Helen is excellently discussed in Holmberg 1995. 712 What is more, the name of Stesichorus lends a Platonic flavour, since the very first reference to the Palinode appears in Pl. Phdr. 243a, in a passage more interested in the semantic possibilities emerging from the interplay between ‘truth’ (ἔτυμος λόγος) and ‘blindness’ than appears in the Helen myth alone, see Davies 1982.

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and periegetes also know of other versions of her myth not less important for the megatext of the tale, such as her rape by Theseus, in Antoninus Liberalis.713 On the other hand, even in the earlier Erotica Pathemata by Parthenius, there is no record directly related to Helen; instead Parthenius tells of the unhappy love of Oenone for Paris, who leaves her for Helen’s sake, or the tale of Corythus, Helen’s stepson from Oenone.714 Such a selective approach shows how difficult it must have been to directly reuse the myth of the famously beautiful and scandalous woman. Yet, the imperial Mythenkritik found other innovative ways to approach her. Among Dio’s references to the unfaithful Homeric Helen, Oration 20.23 is characteristic of his ethical analysis, for which the Odyssey provided ample material for reflection: in it Paris is foiled by greed attributed to his dynastic ethos; this greed, according Dio, is what made him kidnap Helen.715 This is a similar to Plutarch’s earlier juxtaposition of Penelope’s chastity and Helen’s lust. For Aelius Aristides, Stesichorus is the looser hypotext of his Palinode on the restoration of his hometown Smyrna, which was destroyed by the earthquake of 117, to its former glory, but nothing suggests that he was reworking the Helen myth. Rather he makes use of a well-known proverb and a literary topos of beauty to describe the rehabilitated splendour of his home city by using the metaphor of the renowned belle.716 The majority of Aristides’ other Helen-related intertexts allude to Homer, including the Sacred Tales’ reference to Helen’s pharmaka from Odyssey.717 The mention of her eidolon at Troy in the Panathenaicus, Or. 1.128 (Behr), seems to echo Herodotus’ version, not Euripides’ or Stesichorus’.718 In other authors, such as Pausanias, Helen is primarily 713 Ant. Lib. Met. 27. 714 Parth. 4 and 34. 715 Other references are 7.93 (the Helen of the Odyssey), 20.29 (Theseus kidnaps Helen), and 61.11 (on Helen manipulating Menelaus). 716 For the reconstruction of Stesichorus’ poem see Bowie 1993, 24 arguing that Stesichorus’ poem had two proemia according to Aristides’ witness; see also Kelly 2007 arguing for a single poem on Helen, the Palinode. For the proverbial status of the first lines of the Palinode see Wright 2005, 88. Aristides differentiates himself from Stesichorus too, Or. 20.3 ‘Yet I shall differ from Stesichorus to this extent. For he wrote his second poem as a retraction of his slander of Helen. But what then I lauded in grief (namely the former beauty of Smyrna), now I shall laud in joy, offering praise free from lamentation.’ 717 Hom. Od. 4.219–226. 718 See Aristid. Sacred Tales 1.273, Or. 47.1.1 ‘I believe that the speech is created according to Homer’s Helen, for she too is said not to have narrated all the deeds of the stout-hearted Odysseus. But I think she chooses and narrates only one of his deeds.’ In Aristid. Or. 2.234 (Behr) oratory is compared to the illusionary ghost of Helen. The scholiast on the Panathenaicus mentions another variation in which Proteus steals Helen from Paris and gives him a painting so that he



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the ‘instrument of fate’, the cause of the Trojan War in the Homeric version of the myth.719 Plutarch in his Theseus, on the other hand, chooses to discuss this lesser-known version of the tale, although the Homeric version appears elsewhere. Nevertheless, Plutarch omits from his account the otherwise semi-popular tale of Iphigenia, born of the illicit liaison between Helen and Theseus in Athens.720 Lucian, however, shows the vain Spartan beauty no mercy portraying her even in the underworld as the ever-faithless wife of Menelaus. In the True Histories (Verae Historiae) 2.8–25, Rhadamanthys awards Helen to Menelaus, not to Theseus, only for Helen to run off with the young Cinyras soon afterwards. In the Dialogues of the Dead (Dialogi mortuorum) 5.1, the once-beautiful Helen is but one skull among many, and in the Judgement of the Goddesses (Iudicium Paridis, DDeor. 12) she is again the famously lovely prize of Paris. Moreover, Lucian involves the adulterous beauty in a more scandalous fornication plot – an affair with her stepson, Corymbus, as discussed above in the chapter about Phaedra. Lucian also mentions in his True Histories 2.15 having seen Stesichorus in the underworld, singing of Helen’s return to Menelaus in a masterly feat of literary irony. Helen’s eidolon In two of his orations, Dio alludes to the Stesichorean Helen, which he uses as a metaphor.721 In Oration 2.13 Stesichorus’ blindness is compared to the poet who is bribed by the kings; in 80.4 freedom is linked to Helen’s ghost, both nonexistent and inapproachable.722 However, the most amazing revision of the Helen myth is Dio’s Trojan Discourse (Or. 11.24), in which he tries to convince his audience, in the spirit of Homeric criticism and revision, that Homer told the wrong story since ‘he did not start at the very beginning, but in a haphazard fashion, and this is the usual way with practically all who distort the truth.’ The ‘true story’, Dio argues, is the one reported by the priest Onuphis, according to which Helen was can quench his desire by looking at it (Σ BD Arist. 131), Marshall 2014, 65. On Plato’s influence on Aristides see also Kindstrand 1973, 213–14. 719 Already in Il. 6. 357–358 Helen is aware of the scandal and of her share of shame, Austin 1994, 1; however, despite the shame, her beauty makes her desirable enough for Trojan elders to approve of the war, Il.3.156–157. For the ‘classical’ interpretation of myth in Pausanias and Plutarch see Veyne 1983, 107. 720 Helen did not confess to Menelaus her liaison with Theseus, and in some versions gives Iphigenia up for adoption to Clytemnestra, cf. Paus. 2.22.7, who assigns the origin of the tale to Stesichorus, Euphorion and Ant. Lib. Met. 27. 721 For Dio’s use of Stesichorus vis-à-vis Homer see Kindstrand 1973, 123. 722 Wright 2005, 96 note 113 links this version with Euripides’ Helen.

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kidnapped at a pre-nuptial age by Theseus. Paris heard about Helen’s beauty and came to Sparta as one of the suitors. Helen chose him and was given to Paris by her father ‘as his lawful wife’.723 The Greeks, enraged with this decision, initiated the Trojan War. Helen, even after the truce with the Greeks, remained in Troy. But Dio, even after Paris’ death, concludes that there was no truth in the tale of Helen’s abduction, nor were the Trojans responsible for the war.724 Where does the ‘truer’ lie behind this eloquent piece of reasoning, which – despite its call to originality and revisionism – abides by the Homeric pattern more than is otherwise apparent? The answer is not simple since this is a piece of forensic rhetoric which is not exclusively interested in the Homerkritik.725 What is significant is that Dio omits altogether the ‘elopement’ or ‘rape’ threads central to both the Homeric and the Stesichorean versions of the myth726 but maintains the theme of the ‘war over the Beauty’ as well as Helen’s free choice of bridegroom. Thus, despite the revision of Helen’s motivation, the pattern about the Beauty, involving sailing adventures and the quest for a bride, remained more or less unchanged. 727 Maximus of Tyre quotes Stesichorus with similar phrasing in the opening lines of Or. 21.1, using Stesichorus’ famous lines ‘οὐκ ἔστ᾽ ἔτυμος λόγος οὗτος (this is not a true story).’ He then adds that, like the poet, he will write palinodes for his ‘erotic discourses’. The context is of course highly Platonic, and the central focus of this speech is not the Helen myth but Socrates as known from the Phaedrus. It is also not extreme to say, as Kim (2010), 80 states it, that ‘allegorists like Maximus of Tyre … imagine Homer … as some sort of semi-divine, mystical proto-philosopher, which is at least consistent with the enigmatic and convoluted manner in which they suppose him to have hidden the truth in his poetry.’ Only Philostratus – much later – presents a thoroughly idealised, almost novelistic version of Helen.728 In the Life of Apollonius 4.15.6, he refers to Helen as being in Egypt and in 6.11.14 cites the wise man from Himera, who composed 723 D. Chr. Or. 11.53, ἐκ τοῦ δικαίου. 724 D. Chr. Or. 11.67. 725 Kindstrand 1973, 138–30, 41–62 does not treat it within his Homerkritik chapter either, although he points out the connections to it on p. 162, insisting on the philosophical and political character of the work, cf. Kindstrand 1973, 139, ‘muss man doch im Auge behalten, dass Kritik nur nebenbei vorkommt und dass Homer in den meisten Fällen sofort entschuldigt wird.’ 726 D. Chr. Or. 11.41, ‘Helen did not sail anywhere.’ 727 Kim 2010, 122, ‘The so-called new version agrees substantially in other respects with the traditional account. In fact, as we have just seen, Dio goes so far as to use evidence from Homer’s narrative in support of his own version.’ 728 A similar love at first ‘hearing’ is the tale described in Athen. Deipn. 13.375, about Odatis and Zariadres, see Bowie 2008, 30.



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a Palinode.729 The Spartan queen is also exonerated in the Heroicus. In this tale she lives on the Islands of the Blessed not with Menelaus, who is unworthy of being the husband of such a chaste Beauty, but with the bravest and handsomest of the Achaeans, Achilles. The war happened because the Achaeans did not believe that Helen was not in Troy and were greedy to obtain the Asian treasures. In the Heroicus Helen does not meet Achilles before the war as he was still too young to be among the suitors, but while in Egypt she falls in love merely upon learning of his deeds in Troy.730 Achilles too falls for Helen after hearing about her stunning beauty. Thus Philostratus deviates from the traditional story line, and despite the previous marriage of Helen to Menelaus he bestows her on Achilles, in a revision of the Egyptian variation. In a splendid ‘happy ending’, Achilles and Helen encounter each other at Leuce for the first time in a meeting that recalls what we later find is depicted in the novels: ‘there they saw each other for the first time and embraced,’ and after becoming immortal they are able to ‘perpetually sing about their mutual desire.’ Philostratus is of a rather late date, however, and the Heroicus could not have been written in a world without novels.731 The imperial Mythenkritik addresses different meta-levels of the tale. At first sight its comments operate at a mythical level in that they aim to revise and reconsider the canonical mythology either by commenting or by ‘inventing’ a new version of the myth to replace the commonly known one, as is the case in Dio’s Trojan Discourse and in Lucian. However, most of these metamythological reworkings do not disrupt the pattern: female beauty, suitor competition and war remain core ingredients of the Beauty tale. The Mythenkritik however addresses at a metaliterary level the fictional aspect of these narratives: as opposed to traditional mythical tales, often in verse, the now-prose reworkings of the Second Sophistic fashion themselves as ‘self-invented’ versions and attempt to prove themselves more convincing than the canonincal texts. ‘Invention’ rather than ‘revision’, with implementation of new material for a myth-related tale, stresses primarily not the tale’s debt to myth but to fictional reworking. Additionally, the works discussed above are concerned with the genre through which the Penelope and Helen myths were transmitted: unlike

729 Bowie 2009, 67 relates the passage above to the Phaedrus and takes the one at 4 16.5 as a mixed Stesichorean/Euripidean version of the Egyptian Helen myth. For similarities between Philostratus’ version, Lucian’s VH, Ptolemy Chennus, Dares’ Ephemeris belli Troiani, and Dictys’ Acta diurna belli Troiani, and the relevant mythographic and sophistic revisionist milieu, see Kim 2010, 178–79. 730 Philostr. Her. 54.3 (De Lannoy). 731 Cf. Bowie 2008, 31, Grossardt 2009, 86–88 suggests influence by D. Chr. Or. 11 too.

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poetry, famously known for its unreliable content, prose – the medium of historiography and philosophy – is supposedly closer to the truth, even if presenting compositions that question and test the very credibility of any tale.732 This kind of literary context is important for understanding which myths were available to the novelists when discussing beauty, chastity and unfaithfulness. The imperial sources above, regardless of the variations, highlight the continuous interest inspired by the intriguing myth of the Spartan Beauty. Kim (2010), 15 rightly calls Stesichorus ‘the patron saint of the historical revisionist tradition.’ While the Homeric story of the unfaithful wife of Menelaus prevailed, the literary works of the Second Sophistic seem to have been inspired by the other, Egyptian version of the myth, which exonerated Helen from adultery and in some cases turned the tale into a romance with either Paris or Achilles in the role of the ideal lover.

3.3 The Penelope/Helen mythological megatext Once upon a time there was a very beautiful girl. When she came of age her father affianced her to the one she loved most. However, one of the failed suitors kidnapped her and carried her away. Some say he was actually the one whom the maiden loved most, others say she was forced but that she nonetheless managed to remain faithful to her beloved. The thwarted groom mounted a quest for his lost bride, and tradition has it that he started a war against his rival. Eventually he recovered her and the couple recognised each other, even after a long time. Then they returned home and lived happily ever after. In this admittedly simplistic summary we nonetheless observe how, by the time of the Greek novel, all the variants of the Penelope and Helen myths formed a firm base for the construction of a megatext that treated the themes of love, marriage and faithfulness in a variety of tales.733 The megatexts of the Penelope and Helen myths, aligned, illustrate the thematic overlap in the two tales, which were available through visual and literary sources alike. The tales of the faithful and the unfaithful queens do not necessarily contradict each other;

732 See Ni-Mheallaigh 2008. 733 Goldhill 1991, 99–101 on Helen, Penelope, and Clytemnestra. In Hom. Od. 24.199–202 Clytemnestra stands at the antipodes of both Helen and Penelope with her murderous acts. See also Foley 2001, 304. When the Greek novel portrays similar murderous women it does so under the Phaedra template that I shall discuss further. For murderous adulterous wives see Foley 2001, 126.



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rather they may be seen as complementary, at least on a structural level.734 We discussed above the themes that seemed to prevail in both imperial visual and literary testimonies: beauty, love, marriage, elopement/embarkation, recovery of the lost or assaulted wife through a military achievement and recognition were important elements that were continuously reproduced both in the visual and in the literary sources. Yet, unlike the Phaedra and Iphigenia myths presented above, the tales about Penelope and Helen present a greater variety. As Hansen (2002), 173 rightly observes, the story was ‘so popular and so frequently narrated in classical antiquity that different versions of virtually every detail developed, and the details themselves are often greatly elaborated.’ From the available material one could claim that the Second Sophistic gave its own twist to the well-known story, and a summary of it may be found in Table 1b. In this revision the theme of mutual love often replaces the more traditional Motif A, in which Helen marries the man her father chooses. Beautiful as she was, she had to withstand many suitor attempts (Motif A), but in the revised versions, such as Dio’s and Philostratus’, these were in vain since the object of their desire was spirited away to Egypt or found another way to maintain her chastity. What the Penelope myth offered the megatext is her artfulness in avoiding the suitor attempts, which was not part of the traditional Helen myth but that of Euripides’ revision in the play (B2); instead, Helen was famous for eloping with Paris (B1). However, the ‘hero’s quest’ (Motif C) remained prominent, and in most versions an accomplishment in a war is needed, whether the Beauty is in Troy or not as is the case in Dio’s Trojan Discourse. Equally, Odysseus’ killing of the suitors as a reenactment of the Iliadic heroic code,735 as well as of Helen’s courtship,736 now becomes an integral part of the quest and recovery of the long-lost wife. If now Menelaus finds his wife in Egypt, according to the Stesichorean or the Euripidean reworking of the myth, recognition (D2) is an indispensable requirement, just as in the Penelope megatext, since it reveals those details that prove the couple’s faithfulness. It is no surprise that these thematic similarities bring forth motifs that are otherwise known from a formalistic approach to folklore narratives. Both mythical and folkloric narratives share some similar modes of storytelling. These motifs that could be excerpted from any ‘classification’ of folktale literature structure the action of the Penelope/Helen myth according to a series of folktale

734 For Helen as a not overall negative exemplum for Penelope see Goldhill 1994. 735 Among the many see Pucci 1987, 128–37, Murnaghan 1987, 46, Goldhill 1991, 102–04, Maronitis 2004, 7. 736 Austin 1994, 40.

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motifs and tale types such as: ‘suitor’s tests for a supernatural (divine) wife’737 which may (or may not) include a ‘fight with the father-in-law’738; ‘abduction of the princess’739; ‘the chaste wife entraps the suitor(s)’740,‘the man on a quest for his lost wife’;741 ‘identification of lost spouse’ through a variety of chastity tests.’742 Yet, besides the universality of these motifs and tale types one needs to reconsider the broader visual and literary comparandum. In the table below, in the vertical column, are the literary sources discussed above that function as ‘paradigms’, or alternative versions of the tale. Along the horizontal are the basic motifs that emerge from a comparison of the available paradigms following a chronological narration of the events. The available paradigms give a handy amount of possible variants that do not disturb the overall logic of the myth but which are nevertheless particulars that make the difference in the interpretation: e.g. according to the logic of the pattern, it is the suitor-competition motif, which is crucial since it brings about the seduction/abduction motif, further leading to the ‘hero’s quest’ and ‘reunion’. That is, the embedded and the external reader expect, for instance, the partner of the Beauty to leave on a quest trip and to accomplish some heroic achievement because it is a motif inherent to the logic of the megatext. On the other hand, the syntagmatic level of a particular narration of the tale is also important because it provides all these details that support one or another reading of the tale: e.g. it is important to know whether Helen eloped out of love or by force and whether she remained faithful or not (Motifs B1 and B2 on Table 1a). Motif D2 is also important, because by placing doubts in a recognition scene the faithfulness of the female character is confirmed, which is the case in the Penelope but not in the mainstream Helen tale. Thus the Penelope-Helen megatext bequeathed to the Greek novel a story about a Beauty’s abduction and her recovery by her beloved. The megatext was particularly inspiring for discussing love and/in marriage, faithfulness and faithlessness as well as mobility and travelling and a taste for heroic male achievments and for female cunning. It also offered a model to read this kind of story about faithfulness and chastity by using the Odyssean overarching recognitive plot patterning. In what follows I will present the different focalizations

737 AT H310. AT 888. ‘The faithful wife’. 738 AT H331.4, AT 513, 514. 739 AT motif R 10; AT 301, 302, 311, 312. 740 AT motif K1218.1, AT Type 1730. 741 AT 400 ‘Quest for the Lost Bride’. For the vignettes see also Ruiz-Montero 1981, 229 ‘Seeker and victimized hero’, ‘Princess a sought-for person’. 742 AT H480, ‘Wife tests, chastity tests’.



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of the Helen pattern by the embedded readership of the Greek novels and I will show how this helps the understanding and evaluation of this mythical megatext in the ideal love novels.

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3.4 Reading Penelopes as Helens 3.4.1 Chariton Callirhoe is the one novel that makes the most out of the Penelope/Helen megatext, as modern critics have observed. This is because the culminating reunion and recognition scene in the final Book 8 cites explicitly the lovemaking scene that marks the ‘end’ of the Odyssey in 23.296: Penelope and Odysseus re-enacting the rites of ‘their bed as of old’. The great debt of Chariton to Homer has been extensively studied and many scholars consider him, in extreme cases, an avatar of the great epic bard in the first century CE.743 Regarding Helen, the extensive Homeric quotation and the explicit characterisation of the protagonist qua Helen have been at the centre of interest for a while, while researchers tend to focus either on the epic or on the dramatic intertextual hints the tale offers.744 Yet, these intertextual approaches, rich as they are with respect to the level of allusion, analogues and characterisation, nonetheless often fail to reveal the deeper structural logic that a reading of the Callirhoe according to the Penelope/Helen megatext suggests.745 In the approach I posit here, arguing that Callirhoe ‘is’ or ‘is not’ like Helen and/or Penelope is only the first step towards the kind of reading that the

743 E.g. Hirschberger 2001, 157 and Tilg 2010a, 142, ‘Chariton becomes Homer.’ 744 Different studies, primarily those of Laplace 1980, Marini 1993 and Hirschberger 2001, have emphasised either the tragic or the dramatic version of the Helen intertexts while acknowledging both variants, but mainly relying either on ‘quotations’ or on more broad ‘echoes’ without taking into consideration the overall megatext of the myth. 745 E.g. Hirschberger 2001, 167–68 presents a mythical biography of Callirhoe in which she is compared with Helen, Penelope and Alcestis and emphasises Callirhoe’s association with Penelope. Another problem is the identification of each of Callirhoe’s husbands with Menelaus and/or with Paris: e.g. Hirschberger 2001, 165 believes Chaereas to be Menelaus’ avatar, interprets Dionysius as Paris; on p. 166 she interprets Artaxerxes as Theoclymenus and Stateira as Theonoe – a parallelism that, in my view, goes too far. Laplace 1980 interprets the myth not structurally but symbolically, on the basis of thematic words/meanings, which is why she does not follow the allusions to the ‘légendes Troyennes’ in the order of appearance but sees them as un-contextualised semantic composition. Laplace 1980, on the other hand, centres her analysis on thematic and semantic units – δῶρον, εἴδωλον, ὄνομα, Ἰλίου ἅλωσις – on the basis of which she maintains that Callirhoe is closer to the Euripidean rather than the Homeric Helen. Laplace 1980, 100 states that, ‘l’imitation d’Homère n’apparaît que dans les scènes de dénouement (le procès de Babylone, la guerre des Égyptiens contre le Grand Roi, où elle s’avoue par des citations. Au contraire les situations romanesques empruntées à Euripide (le transport du fantôme, les fausses funérailles, la fuite de l’épouse aux côtés de son premier mari) sont mentionnées plusieurs fois au cours de l’intrigue, mais seulement par allusions ou jeu de mots.’



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text invites us to undertake.746 It is of course important if, on the syntactic level of the plot, Callirhoe is ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ Helen and/or Penelope, but it is essential to consider for whom each version is presented as being the valid one and what its relationship is with the overarching ‘authorial’ one, which supposedly culminates with the allusion to Odysseus’ and Penelope’s reunion at the novel’s end. The focalisation of the mythical pattern through the different embedded actors as opposed to the ‘authorial’ version therefore demonstrates the narrator’s ingenious playing with the mythical megatext for the purposes of a fictional plotting of a love scenario. The recognitive itinerary that these embedded readers undergo is endorsed by verbs suggesting knowledge, e.g. γνωρίζω, οἶδα and their derivatives, which make it all the more obvious to the external reader the kind of approach s/he is also required to undertake. Hitherto, given that the embedded audience often has a restricted understanding of the plot, these verbs have had to hint at the possibility of misunderstandings, misrecognitions and hence misreadings which could endanger the novel’s anticipated ‘happy ending’. The embedded focalisers considered here are Callirhoe’s three suitors: Chaereas, Dionysius and Artaxerxes. Unlike the last two, Chaereas is the only one who ‘reads the novel’ from beginning to end and is given a second chance, whereas Dionysius and Artaxerxes start theirs in medias res. Yet, even Chaereas is far from being the ‘ideal’ reader of the Callirhoe, which, ultimately, prompts the reader to question his/her view of the plot. Chaereas’ first misreading The supreme beauty of Callirhoe is probably legendary among her novelistic sœurs, to borrow the title of the article by Reardon (2001). This does not mean that the other female characters do not possess the same quality of divine beauty, but merely that Callirhoe alone is presented as the incarnation of Aphrodite on earth.747 The comparison with Aphrodite lends her beauty a carnal aspect lacking in other protagonists who are compared to Artemis or the Nymphs.748 On the syntagmatic level of 746 A similar approach is adopted by De Temmerman 2014, 51–57 who rightly emphasises the differences in the treatment of the Penelope/Helen pattern. 747 Char. 1 1 1, ‘Her beauty was more than human, it was divine, and it was not the beauty of a Nereid or of a mountain nymph at that, but of the (maiden) Aphrodite herself.’ Other famous Aphrodite-like heroines are Melite, 5.11.5, and Hero in Musaeus’ Hero and Leander, who is also a virgin priestess of Aphrodite. 748 On the vocabulary of ‘love’ and ‘beauty’ between Chariton and Sappho see Bierl 2002. The other novelistic protagonists Anthia in 1.2.7, Leucippe in 7.15.2, Chariclea in 1.2.6, Callirhoe are compared to Artemis. But gradually these comparisons resonate more with the Helen-Penelope megatext: e.g. 1.1.16 Callirhoe as Artemis before the wedding, 3.8.6 Callirhoe as Artemis or Athena holding a baby, 4.7.5 comparison to Artemis/Aphrodite citing Hom. Od. 17.39 and 19.54 (Penelope), 6.4.6 Callirhoe as Nausicaa as in Hom. Od. 6.102 – however, this virginal Callirhoe

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characterisation and analogy, and unlike the beautiful virgins, Callirhoe seems to be the epitome of female beauty, reminiscent of the visual artists’ obsession with depicting Helen’s beauty. To reinforce the connection between the goddess and her protégée the novel assigns a central role to Eros, the schemer, and to the festival of Aphrodite at which Callirhoe sees Chaereas for the first time, just as Eros is present in the meeting of Helen and Paris in the visual testimony, presiding over their coup de foudre. Early on the text provides cues about the rumours of Callirhoe’s beauty attracting crowds of suitors to Syracuse.749 However, out of all these sons of kings and lords Eros decides to match Callirhoe with a peer from Syracuse, the son of Hermocrates’ political rival: Chaereas, son of Ariston. And whereas one might have thought how this unwelcome marriage will take place, just a few pages later the two marry without complications and the ‘real story’ begins. Their marriage, we learn, is compared to that of Thetis and Peleus, which set the Trojan War in motion due to Envy.750 The first paragraphs thus provide the two initial motifs, based on characterisation and analogy, corresponding to Motifs A and B of the megatext: suitor competition and seduction. There are two famous suitor councils in Greek myth, one in Sparta and one on Ithaca, and Chariton makes use of both. At the first, the suitors of Helen, heeding Odysseus’ advice, decide to leave the groom selection to Tyndareus and to support the man chosen in case of danger.751 In this way, Odysseus minimises the risk of civil war between the Greek kingdoms. At the other council on Ithaca, Penelope’s suitors conspire and resolve to ambush Telemachus upon his return from Sparta and Pylos in Odyssey 4.625–786. In Chariton, we learn that the suitors are distressed and angry at their failure to win Callirhoe’s hand. So whereas they had previously been rivals, now they fall into accord, a phrase recalling the pact among the Greek princes during Helen’s engagement.752 Nevertheless, the text soon moves from Helen to Penelope since their plans are not to support the groom but are dictated by Envy. The narrator appears only in Artaxerxes’ fantasies. The passage is discussed above in the ‘Phaedra’ chapter. As with the Thetis comparison, this is a syntagmatic element that does not influence the paradigmatic influence of the Helen motif. 749 Char. 1.1.2. In an interesting story reported by Plu. Mor. 774d, King Phocos is killed by the suitors of his daughter, Callirhoe. However, it is impossible to determine whether Chariton had this legend in mind. 750 Char. 1 1 16. Again in 3.3.6 (unlike Thetis who remained faithful to Peleus until the end, Callirhoe leaves Chaereas alone), 6.3.4 (Artaxerxes thinks she is immortal Thetis, emerging from the sea). 751 Ps.-Apollod. 3.10.8. 752 This is in my view an ironic comment on the otherwise celebrated Roman Concordia/Homonoia, a principle flourishing in both the civic and the private sphere; for the civic see Swain 1996, 178–82 and Sheppard 1984; for images of the imperial couple depicted with crossed hands and allusions to homonoia see Kantorowicz 1960 and the analysis in Lefteratou 2018a.



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moves easily from the Beauty’s suitors to the conspirators against Telemachus in the Odyssey, thus unifying the Penelope and Helen patterns into a single megatext. The speech by the tyrant of Rhegium demonstrates best the shift between the two mythical examples while chiming with the megatext, since in both cases Penelope and Helen are considered the precious prizes of the competition:753 1.2.2–3: If one of us had married her, I should not have been angry … but we have been passed over for a man who made no effort to win the bride … and with kings competing for the prize, this fancy-boy, this poor man who is everybody’s inferior (πόρνος καὶ πένης καὶ μηδενὸς κρείττων) carries it off without lifting a finger (ἀκονιτὶ τὸν στέφανον ἤρατο).

Had there been only one winner from their class, like Menelaus, the others would have acknowledged him, according to a Helen version. But the paradigmatic evidence is still problematic: Chaereas does not participate in the initial competition, like Menelaus, who according to some sources remains at home while Agamemnon acts on his behalf; but Menelaus is not poor – on the contrary, he offers more, according to the Hesiodic tradition. Conversely, Chaereas is described as inferior and ‘poor’, which may recall the strange participation of Odysseus in the bow contest.754 The novel shifts its intertextual analogues continuously, from the unanimous and peaceful council of suitors at Sparta to the conspiracy in Ithaca (dangerous for the hero) when Sicilian and Italian youths decide to plot against Chaereas.755 Thus the suitor competition and the seduction motifs as presented by the authorial focalisation leave open all the options available from the megatext. This reading of the Callirhoe, or rather its misreading, is not enabled so much at the level of the omniscient narrator or by the information that he discloses to his immediate readership but at the level of the internal readers/narrators, such as the tyrant of Acragas, who fabricates the calumny plot against Callirhoe. Thus suspense is created by opposing the two levels of plot understanding, those of the external and internal readers. Chaereas is the most exemplary unskilful reader of his wife’s tale, although he is the most important actor in it and one of the principle narrators of the ‘recapitulations’ of parts of her tale. On the other hand, the suitors, and especially the tyrant of Acragas, seem to have a good comprehension of the principal female heroine when they characterise her as being ‘sensible’ and a person beyond malice and suspicion. Unlike Chaereas, who appears prone to

753 For Penelope and Helen as prizes see Clader 1976, 7. 754 Hom. Od. 21.325–329, ‘Indeed, those men wooing the wife of that brave man (Odysseus) / are far worse than him … and yet another man, / a beggar (πτωχὸς ἀνὴρ ἀλαλημένος) who came here on his travels,/ did so with ease.’ 755 Char. 1.2.6.

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jealousy and passion, she is well-balanced and innocent.756 This portrayal does not make her a full-fledged Penelope, but provides some clues in this direction. It is according to this accurate characterisation that the further plan against Chaereas is conceived the preferred beloved of Callirhoe engages in a reading of his wife’s tale according to the suitors’ plot. In what appears to be a plot from a wider folktale tradition, Callirhoe becomes the ‘innocent slandered wife’ or the ‘calumniated wife’ of lore: unjustly punished by her jealous husband – which often leads the woman, with or without her child(ren), into exile.757 The first part of the Callirhoe then presents the external reader with two contradictory views of the suitors’ ploy: a Penelope-based approach as presented by the female protagonist and a Helen-based one as focalised through Chaereas and influenced by the suitors’ scheming plot. 758 Chaereas eagerly believes that his wife has been unfaithful to him, when it was only Callirhoe’s supposedly virtuous handmaiden who had an affair. In his mind, Callirhoe is unfaithful like Helen. The narrator’s voice blends with the version provided by the suitors, further merging the myths of Helen and Penelope: for example at 1.1.14 we learn that on the night of her supposed infidelity, Callirhoe waits in the darkness of their bedroom, ‘sitting on her bed, longing for Chaereas.’ This mourning position mirrors the seated Mourning Penelope image discussed above. The jealous Chaereas, believing his wife is cheating on him, rushes into their bedroom and, despite his initial intention to spare Callirhoe like Menelaus, he acts unlike any mythical precedent.759 His jealousy overwhelming him, he kicks her, resulting in her apparent death. Chaereas may appear to be a good reader of Homer, but as an ‘actor’ he goes well beyond the protocol of the megatext: instead of reclaiming his wife through a series of ‘chastity tests’, as is the case in the Odyssey, he kills her at first glance. Callirhoe’s death at the very beginning of the novel surprises the reader because it is something that could not have been anticipated through the megatext as not even Menelaus dared to kill Helen. In the first chapter we saw how Callirhoe’s Scheintod, focalised through Polycharmus, shows affinities with the 756 Char. 1.2.6. 757 In folktale literature it is classified under the Tale Type AT 712, e.g. the ‘Tale of Crescentia’, where the husband persecutes his wife. Often her children are born while she is in exile and raised outside the household, sometimes they are killed or kidnapped; in the end the husband realises his mistake and is reunited with his chaste wife. 758 Cf. the important observation by De Temmerman 2014, 59 that ‘nowhere in the whole novel does Chaereas consciously characterise her as sophron … Chaereas’ perception of Callirhoe’s sophrosyne is interwined with his self-position within the narrative.’ 759 Char. 1.4.7, Chaereas says that he will spare Callirhoe even if she is guilty (καὶ ἀδικούσης), which shows a mild predisposition; the outcome of course is different.



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plot of the Iphigenia myth. That being said, from the point of view of Chaereas, his apparently fatal blow seems to hark back to a different tradition of Scheintod motifs, which we find in other popular fictions of the time that treat the motif of the Beauty and her suitors, but not necessarily according to the Penelope/Helen megatext. In tales of the ‘calumniated wife’ type, the supposed adulteress is often put to death only to be miraculously saved later, as is also the case in Chariton or in ther ‘fringe novels, such as Antonius Diogenes’ that experiment with t these folktale possibilities.760 Nonetheless, despite the folktale elements, the mythical register still echoes vibrantly in the narrator’s voice, since in the descriptions of Callirhoe’s funeral, Syracuse is compared to a city sacked by the enemy, having lost its most precious treasure, recalling the loss of Helen.761 The merging of that kind of popular storytelling motif with those of the mythical megatext allows for a greater deal of surprise in the sequence of the events. It also demonstrates the important influence of the so-called ‘fringe fictions’ on the ‘canonical’ novels and contradicts the dominance of the mythical scenarios. Simultaneously, this not-necessarily-mythical storytelling material is double-edged since, because it is universal, it can also be found in folktales and folktale-inspired narratives. Thus, for the more careful readers, Chaereas’ punishment of his wife triggers intertextual connections and connotations found in historiographical works too as it recalls the behaviour of some famous tyrants against their beloveds – often pregnant – out of desire for control, sexual posessiveness, or uncertainty over paternity.762 Myth, storytelling and historiography merge in a tale that creatively combines narrative traditions, each appealing to a different literary background of the readership. It is precisely this unexpected turn of events that the external narrator, Chariton, points out at a metaliterary level when he claims that even the 760 E.g. Phot. Biblioth. 116,110b of Antonius Diogenes mentions that when Dercyllis, reaches Thule, Thruscanus, one of her suitors, kills himself after killing Paapis, believing his beloved (falsely, we presume) to be dead. See Morgan 1998b. 761 Char. 1.5.1, πόλεως ἁλώσει. Alvares 1997, 618 argues that Callirhoe ‘is rather like Syracuse’s living Palladium.’ For Callirhoe’s Laconian origin see De Temmermann 2014,192. 762 Chaereas may allude to Chabrias, see Salmon 1961, or Cassius Chaereas, the assassin of Caligula, see Bowie 2002; for Chaereas’ resemblance to Polycrates, Nero and/or Herodes Atticus, famous for mistreating their pregnant wives, see Hunter 1994, 1079–80 and Ameling 1986. Recently an interesting evolutionary approach is suggested by Deacy 2013. The mythical ‘characterisation’ of Chaereas assimilates him to Achilles and Nireus (the most handsome hero of the Trojan War), Hippolytus (most chaste) and Alcibiades (fierce nature); Alexander the Great as a ‘semi-historical’ model for Chaereas is echoed in the capture of Tyre in 7.2.7. Cf. also Arr. An. 1.12.1 for the relationship of Alexander and Hephaestion modelled on Achilles and Patroclus; Alexander, like Chaereas, had a reputation for killing his lovers, e.g. Clitus in An. 4.8.9 and 4.9.3. For jealousy inspired by comic plots see Crismani 1997, 40. Also De Temmerman 2014, 110.

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tyrant of Acragas, the mastermind behind the conspiracy, attended the funeral, ‘radiant and proud at having brought off a feat beyond everyone’s expectations.’763 Chariton appears here as a master of not only authorial intrusions but also anticipatory remarks: the careful reader would have already noticed the subtlety in the report of Callirhoe lying in state and giving ‘to everyone the impression (εἰκόνα) of being dead.’764 The mention of ‘everyone’ contrasts the internal readers with the external one. The narrator thereby establishes the two levels of reading as early as 1.5.1: a basic one, addressed to ‘everyone’ – namely, the internal audience and any inattentive external readers – and a more refined one for the careful external readers who are closely following the cues in the text and working their way through a set of meticulously anticipated, signposted expectations towards the end. While moving towards Book 2, the Helen-related undertones are reinforced by Callirhoe blaming her own beauty, like Helen in the Iliad 3.86, and by the mention of the sea journey that separates her from her beloved, echoing Helen’s embarkation. Her own ‘real’ version of the plot has shifted from being that of Penelope to that of the Abducted Bride (AT 301). The following passage stresses the importance of the metaliterary and metafictional pun ‘truly’ in the text that makes this second adventure of Callirhoe more significant than her first:765 1.14.7–10: Envious Fortune, your curse is with me. You are pursuing me on land and sea ... my celebrated beauty I was given to this end ... Truly (ἀληθῶς) I am lost to you Chaereas, separated from you by so vast an ocean! You are mourning for me and repenting and sitting by an empty tomb, proclaiming my chastity (σωφροσύνην) now that I am dead.’

Even so, whereas Callirhoe probably includes herself among the faithful wives, her lament and the comparison of her story with that of the Beautiful Spartan queen raise the reader’s expectations for a Helen tale rather than for a Penelope tale. The cherished sophrosyne that assimilates her to Penelope is questioned: not only is she in a foreign land but she also has a new lord, the widower, Dionysius; furthermore, she is gorgeous. It is therefore to nobody’s surprise that the lord of Miletus engages in another suitor-competition motif and introduces another pattern under the Helen template. The narrator once more signals a change in

763 Char. 1.5.3, ἔργον ὃ μηδεὶς ἂν προσεδόκησε. 764 Char. 1.5.1. 765 Theron may be assuming the role of Hermes in Euripides, who transfers Helen to Egypt. See Laplace 1980, 90. For Theron’s crucial role in manipulating the plot of the Callirhoe as an alter-ego for the narrator see Kasprzyk 2001.



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pattern since ‘Fortune laid the plot against Callirhoe’s loyalty (σωφροσύνη) to her husband.’766 The emphasis on sophrosyne, Motif B2, that was the cornerstone of Callirhoe’s lamentation above, moves back to B1; upon discovering she is pregnant, the heroine does not use guile to postpone Dionysius’ advances but rather, conspiring with Plagon, orchestrates her wedding to lead her new husband to believe the child to be his own. This new ‘unexpected and incredible feat’,767 as the narrator characterises it, is a metaliterary marker that urges the reader to observe how his/ her expectations have drifted, once more, away from the classical mythical megatext, entering spheres more incredible than myth. This observation is marked by a preeminent self-awareness of what this tale is doing differently from other tales, whether mythical or not. By deconstructing through this authorial intrusion Callirhoe’s otherwise anticipated faithfulness and by modelling it beyond Penelope’s cunning and Helen’s infidelity, the Callirhoe moves not alongside but past the mythical pattern.768 If either chastity or infidelity were expected from the mythical heroines, legitimate children outside the initial wedlock, but illegitimate within the new one, would probably have been unheard of.769 The way Callirhoe’s sophrosyne is undermined,770 is important not because it enables the continuation of the Helen pattern that is, Motifs B1 and C of the megatext,771 but because it offers another paradigm to the established mythical canon: an unexpected pregnancy as justi766 Char. 2.8.4. 767 Char. 2.8.3, παράδοξον, ἄπιστον. 768 Tilg 2010a, 171, argues that Chariton is exceptionally polemical towards myth and mythical ‘fictions’, presenting his own tale as ‘true’. But by marking the ‘incredibility’ of his own story, he only aligns it with other incredible tales, mythical or not. 769 In the Homeric tradition Helen has only one daughter from Menelaus, Hermione. Outside the legitimate marriage, she has Iphigenia, fathered by Theseus; Corythus, Bounaeus/Bounicus, Idaios, and maybe a daughter, also called Helen, from Paris; FGrH 12b, Schol. in Lyc. 851, ‘θηλύπαιδος τῆς Ἑλένης. ‘Just as Homer says, Helen did not bear a son but a daughter, Hermione (Od. 4.12), according to Duris she also gave birth to Iphigenia by Theseus. Others though say that she bore Nicostratus and Athiolas to Menelaus (Sch. D Γ 175), and to Alexander she is said to have born more than four: Bounicus, Corythus, Aganos and Idaeus.’ See also Clader 1976, 74. On Helen’s ‘aberrant’ sexuality - a beauty who, like Persephone, fails to have offspring, see Gumpert 2001, 62 with literature. On Callirhoe’s sophrosyne and her child see also the analysis by Kanavou 2015, 941–945. Callirhoe models her acts according the myths of exposed babies that differ considerably from her own situation. Cf. Char. 2 9.5. Cyrus, Zethus and Amphion are exposed babies. Antiope, according to the myth, was raped by Zeus and was forced to expose the twins; there was no reunion with the partner. Ps.-Apollod. 3.5.5. Similarily, see the tale about Cyrus in Hdt. 1.107–122. But Callirhoe’s child is legitimate in both weddings, indicating that Callirhoe’s situation is unique. On the influence of Christianity and Callirhoe as Mary see Ramelli 2001, 39–40. 770 Char. 2.8.3, ‘It is worthwhile to hear how (τὸν τρόπον) this came about.’ 771 Cf. Montiglio 2010, 33, the readers anticipating Callirhoe’s infidelity.

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fication for the infidelity.772 The suspense regarding Callirhoe’s whereabouts and her chastity is the outcome of the clash between the two focalisers of her tale, that of the external narrator and that of Chaereas’, in favour of the misreading enacted by Chaereas. The closure of Book 2 and the wedding of Callirhoe to Dionysius blur temporarily the associations with the Penelope pattern in favour of the Helen myth. Upon discovery of the empty tomb, Chaereas simply accepts that, just as it happens in the mythical tradition, a god stole Callirhoe from him; while Callirhoe was ‘forced’ to follow her new companion, just as Ariadne and Semele had to follow Dionysus and Zeus, respectively.773 He adds the belated awareness that he was indeed wedded to a goddess, but instead of bringing in Helen, who would have been the negative example, he strives for a comparison with Thetis who, although a goddess, remained with Peleus and gave him a son. 774 In doing so, he is ironically and unconsciously connoting Callirhoe’s pregnancy. The mythical exempla given here may be characteristic of one aspect of the abduction motif but, like the ones evoked by Callirhoe, they describe the current narrative situation at the level of immediate analogy.775 That said, the reader is encouraged to contrast these versions to the overarching theme of faithfulness and faithlessness, exemplified by the Penelope/ Helen pattern.776 Conversely, the intertextual paradigms that Chaereas evokes do influence the overall pattern, which further focuses on the hero’s hunt for the whereabouts of the (presumably) dead Callirhoe, only to become a quest about her faithfulness.777 Chaereas’ reading, despite the revelation of the slander plot, remains largely within the realm of the Helen mythical megatext. In his version 772 Hunter 1994, 1073 argues that there might have been some hints in Callirhoe’s coma. However, it is not certain whether even the most well-informed reader would have been able to anticipate such an outcome following Callirhoe’s sudden death and her signs of ‘morning sickness’. 773 Char. 3.3.4, ‘Against her will but forced (βιαζομένην) by a superior fate.’ 774 Char. 3.3.5, ‘It may be that I did not know I was married to a goddess for a wife, much superior to the kind of myself.’ See also De Temmerman 2014, 60, on Callirhoe and Thetis. As opposed to Cueva 1996 who lists a number of obscure Ariadne intertexts De Temmermann 2014, 143, emphasises the contrast between paradigm and Callirhoe’s story. 775 E.g. Cueva 1996, demonstrates via a number of rather obscure intertexts the function of Ariadne’s tale in Calirhoe’s story, but not that of Semele, although the myths are paratactically connected. Cf. also De Temmerman 2014, 143 on the contrast between paradigm and Callirhoe’s story in Chariton. 776 Cf. Bergman 1994, 232 shows excellently how Roman audiences could juxtapose and read simultaneously a variety of mythical tales. For example Fig. 17, Helen’s embarkation, is juxtaposed in the same room with a painting depicting Briseis and another showing Alcestis, highlighting thus the characterisation of each of these women. For similar readings see Lorenz 2008. 777 Char. 3.3.4, ‘But where is the dead body?’



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the departure of his wife is interpreted as involuntary, not as elopement, which was part of the Helen megatext too. But most importantly for the pattern Chaereas stresses the importance of his quest, promising to pursue his search across land and sea, even in the air.778 There is an array of intertextual pointers, emphasised by the Chariton-narrator, that illustrate the affinities with Helen of Chaereas’ expedition for the recovery of Callirhoe, the most explicit of which being Phocas’ anticipation of the incident resulting in a small-scale war against Dionysius’ household. 779 Hence, notwithstanding Callirhoe’s own reading of her tale as a Penelope one, the plot of the first three books of the novel radically shifts towards the Helen myth, incorporating the motif of suitor competition that results in seduction/abduction, references to faraway lands and a marriage to a rival suitor. Chaereas’ adventure is a scenario full of misrecognitions.780 Chariton here uses a verb hinting at the recognitive itinerary undertaken by this embedded reader: Chaereas, we are told, recognised the funerary offerings which function here as a pars pro toto for Callirhoe the character and Callirhoe the work.781 This false recognition and interpretation of the tale is supported by the lamentation of Callirhoe’s mother, who is also presented as recognising thoroughly all the items. The oscillation between the information required to solve the riddle of Callirhoe’s absence and the actual evidence is encapsulated as a metaliterary comment in the phrase: ‘I recognise everything, you alone my child are missing.’782 Again Theron’s confession includes everything, besides the name of Callirhoe’s new master.783 These formulaic expressions are of metaliterary importance as they mark the amount of available information and the way this is released, how the internal readers make sense of the story is based on them alone, and how their reading contrasts with the one available to the external readers. Dionysius’ Homeric misreadings Each suitor of Callirhoe enables either a new bride-competition plot or a Helen pattern that incorporates different elements of the megatext but which, as we shall see, ultimately lead to Motif C, the ‘man on a quest for his lost wife’. So does Dionysius, lord of Miletus. This new focaliser of Callirhoe’s tale is presented very 778 Char. 3.3.7, ‘I will search for you.’ As opposed to Theseus and Peleus, who did not search for Ariadne or Thetis respectively. 779 Char. 3.7.2. 780 As Alvares 1997, 619 points out, ‘his voyage to recover Callirhoe recalls Menelaus’ expedition to Troy as well as historic conflicts between Greek and Persian forces on the Ionian coast.’ 781 Char. 3.3.16, γνωρίσας τὰ ἐντάφια. 782 Char. 3.4.2. 783 Char. 3.4.14, ‘In all his story the only thing he left out was the name of Callirhoe’s purchaser.’

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differently from her other suitors: he is a man of good education, extraordinary virtue and self-restraint.784 Such a positive characterisation qualifies Dionysius to play the role of the wise man, like Proteus, who would offer her hospitality and respect.785 Such is Callirhoe’s first reading of him, after their first meeting, as she leaves convinced that she will not be forced against her will, whereas Dionysius despairs at having to let her go.786 The transformation of Dionysius from a pious widower to a love-stricken, Paris-like suitor is astounding.787 He decides not to return her to her father in Sicily but to keep her in his custody in the hope that she will eventually reciprocate his feelings.788 Dionysius’ hesitations, already apparent in Book 2, anticipate the suitor-competition that his plot will bring about, since he is aware that, once he marries Callirhoe, her beauty will soon be reported to the Great King and would invite the jealousy of other men.789 But although Dionysius believes himself to be in control of Callirhoe’s future, what he knows from her tale is not everything. Callirhoe told him the ‘whole truth’, omitting her first marriage, which makes him only second to Chaereas as far as information is concerned.790 Because of Callirhoe’s half-truths we might never learn whether Dionysius would have returned his beautiful guest had he known she was married.791 He therefore acts within a plot in which he fashions himself as the rescuer of the abducted princess who was sold by a man called Theron.792 Dionysius is aware of and carefully turns the lady’s difficult situation 784 Char. 2.4.1, ἐξαιρέτως ἀρετῆς, and 2.4.5. 785 E. Hel. 47, Proteus, the wisest (σωφρονέστατος) of mortals. 786 Char. 2.5.11 and 2.6.1. De Temmerman, Demoen 2011, 14, especially on Challirhoe’s Helen-like eloquence, her peitho. 787 Char. 2.4.5, ‘But Eros … took the man’s self-control (σωφροσύνην) as an insult, so he stroked the fire hotter in a soul that was trying to reason philosophically about a matter of love.’ (transl. Trzaskoma). Cf. De Temmerman 2014, 5–52, on Dionysius transformation. 788 Char. 2.6.4, Eros is by nature optimistic (εὔελπις), 2.7.1, ‘neither being able to part from Callirhoe nor to take her with him.’ 789 Char. 2.7.1 and 3.2.7. 790 After revealing part of her tale to Dionysius - except for Chaereas 2.5.11 (πάντα … μόνον Χαιρέαν ἐσίγησεν). 791 Cf. in Hom. Od. 7.311–316, Alcinous offers Odysseus the option to stay as his son-in-law, but only if he wishes to do so. If he does so unwillingly then it is against Zeus’ hospitality (316). Odysseus, although repressing the information about his wife at home, expresses his will to leave (333), which establishes a relationship between peers, cf. Murnaghan 1987, 69–71, and not between a subordinate groom and the father-in-law. Equally Callirhoe begs Dionysius, bringing the example of Alcinous in 2.5.11. Like Odysseus Callirhoe does not mention her wedding. 792 The very name ‘Theron’, literally ‘hunter’, may associate the pirate with bestial beings that in folktale often detain princesses, e.g. Perseus saves the princess from the beast and marries Andromeda e.g. AT 68.1, ‘Princess offered as a prize to rescuer’; for Perseus’ bestial side see Dowden 2013, 50.



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to his favour.793 In this respect Dionysius appears as an acute reader of his own Callirhoe tale and demonstrates his inventiveness in terms of love stories. The ‘corrected’ and ‘best’ – in Dionysius’ metaliterary observation – version of the tale eventually becomes the ‘real’ one, since Callirhoe is forced by circumstances into accepting his proposal and appears to give herself in marriage, supposedly as repayment of his kindness to her.794 Whereas Dionysius’ declamatory skills did not lack in imagination and inventiveness,795 the mythical examples at his avail for that kind of scenario come from the epic version of Helen, which, for the time being, is presented as a positive example. In his confession to Leonas he mentions how he had started to imagine (ἀνέπλαττον ἐμαυτῷ) being Callirhoe’s most happy spouse, happier than Menelaus (ὑπὲρ Μενελέων), husband of Helen.796 The suitor-competition motif, which awarded Helen to Menelaus, is used as a means for making sense of one’s life. Dionysius then half-consciously reconstructs a plot, which is further supported and brought into fulfilment by his servant Plangon and which ultimately makes him the husband of the Syracusan Beauty.797 It is no coincidence that, on the day of her departure from Dionysius’ rural estate en route to her new marriage, Callirhoe visits the temple of Aphrodite and steps on board the ship that carries her swiftly to the city. This detail recalls Helen’s embarkation theme from the reader’s visual database, especially since it is Callirhoe’s beauty that is stressed by the onlookers.798 Following his initial Helen-reading, after the wedding Dionysius becomes all the more jealous and careful of/about his wife. His suspicions grow when Callirhoe reports that she learnt from the priestess of the temple of Aphrodite 793 Char. 3.2.8, ‘Even if I were to be believed as telling the truth, I am a thief’s accomplice. Dionysius, practice (μελέτα) your defence, you may have to rehearse it in front of the Great King. It is therefore best for you to say that “I happened to learn about a woman who was visiting here, as she gave herself in marriage I wedded her in the city openly and according to the laws.”’ 794 These cases were very rare, cf. Evans-Grubbs 2002, 122 (in Egypt, without dowry), 33 (a widow) gives two examples of brides giving themselves in marriage without their kyrios. See also Lalanne 2006, 297 and Kanavou 2015, 940. 795 For the importance of imagination in the construction of legal arguments see Webb 2009, 132. 796 Char. 2.6.1, ‘I thought of her being a present by Aphrodite, and I was imagining for myself a life more blessed than that of Menelaus, the husband of the Lacaedemonian woman.’ 797 Equally in her previous wedding, Chaereas was set up by this suitors in a plot that ended with the abduction of his bride. On Plangon and Theron controlling Callirhoe see De Temmerman 2014, 75. 798 Char. 3.2.13. The temple is next to the seashore; upon exiting ‘the boatmen were overwhelmed with awe on seeing her, as though Aphrodite herself were coming to embark … so ardently did they row that in less time than it takes to tell the ship sailed into the harbor.’

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about a trireme approaching Miletus.799 Once again Callirhoe, as she relates this incident to Dionysius grosso modo, withholds the part of the story that makes her suspect that it was Chaereas’ trireme.800 This omission reminds the reader of Euripides’ Helen, who also hides from Theoclymenus Menelaus’ arrival. It is after Callirhoe’s confession of her previous marriage that Dionysius starts believing all the more that he is an actor within an adultery pattern.801 Upon hearing of the destruction of the trireme by his steward, Phocas, Dionysius is happy to receive news about Chaereas’ death, although Phocas did not ensure that his rival’s body was among the dead.802 In his turn, Dionysius presents an altered version of the story to his wife, requesting Phocas to tell her openly (φανερῶς) what happened, but omitting two details (δύο σιγᾶν): Phocas’ plot behind the shipwreck and the news about the survivors.803 In a manipulative manner, Dionysius, in what appears to Callirhoe to be a magnanimous gesture, orders the construction of a funerary monument for Chaereas,804 although the reader knows that there are survivors. The empty-tomb motif reminds the reader of Helen’s ruse in the eponymous Euripidean drama, where she claimed Menelaus was dead in order to aid his escape, the sole difference here being that it is Dionysius using the ruse to trick his wife, and not vice versa. Thus Dionysius uses the Euripidean version, anticipated by Callirhoe, to support his own Homeric reading: one in which it is he who seduces the beautiful wife and steals her from her first husband. To add to the complexity, halfway through the novel, the first internal reader of the tale, Chaereas, also arrives at a Homeric conclusion. We saw above that, 799 One of the most characteristic passages is when Dionysius learns that two youths were praying at his Aphrodite shrine. He reacts violently, asking his slaves why the two youths were honouring his Aphrodite (διατί δὲ τὴν ἐμὴν Ἀφροδίτην προσεκύνουν, 3.9.5). The phrase is ironic because it means both the statue of Aphrodite in the shrine as well as the image of Callirhoe which Chaereas and Polycharmus were admiring; also, Callirhoe is considered the incarnation of Aphrodite on earth. A similar instance is Men. Sam. 337, when Demeas calls his wife ‘τὴν ἐμὴν Ἑλένην.’ 800 Char. 3 9.4, ‘Rejoining Dionysius, she told him only (τοῦτο μόνον εἶπεν) what she heard from the priestess.’ 801 Char. 3.9.7, convinced that it was a case of seduction he was investigating. 802 Char. 3.9.11–12. Like Theoclymenus, who is happy to learn that Menelaus is dead, Dionysius is happy to learn the news. Laplace 1980, 94. 803 Char. 3.10.1. 804 Char. 4.1.3, ‘“For even if the poor man’s body cannot be found,” Dionysius argues, “it is an old Greek custom to offer the honour of a tomb (καὶ τοὺς ἀφανεῖς τάφοις κοσμεῖν) even to those who are lost.”’ Cf. the famous Thuc. 2.34.3, ‘Among these is carried one empty coffin decked for the missing (μία δὲ κλίνη κενὴ … τῶν ἀφανῶν). This allusion can be added to the other Thucydidean passages discussed by Trzaskoma 2011. The intertext points also to Euripides’ Helen and her trick of Menelaus’ shipboard funeral in order to escape Theoclymenus, see Laplace 1980, 90.



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despite the evidence relatng to Callirhoe’s chastity, Chaereas’ mythological interpretation did not exculpate his wife from the abduction motif possibility. Hence, once in Miletus, this doubting reader is eagerly drawn into Dionysius’ plot and used as a pawn by Callirhoe’s new husband. Unable to imagine that Callirhoe was forced into a second marriage, he thinks that she has betrayed him, being the unworthy ‘cause of the troubles of their voyage.’805 The phrase is similar to the many accusations of the Argives against Helen, and the association between the Callirhoe and the Helen pattern is made all the more obvious. When Mithridates, his master in slavery, relates to him a full – in his view – account of Callirhoe, her official wedding to Dionysius and the birth of their son, Chaereas, stricken with grief, further compares Callirhoe to Helen, the unfaithful: 4.3.10: ‘Faithless (ἄπιστε) Callirhoe! Wickedest of all women (ἀσεβεστάτη πασῶν γυναικῶν)! I have been sold into slavery on account of you ... and you were living in luxury, you were celebrating your marriage, while I was in chains. And you were not satisfied to become another man’s wife, while Chaereas was still alive! You became a mother too!’

Yet, Mithridates is another biased suitor captivataed by Callirhoe’s beauty,806 a political enemy of Dionysius and an actor in Dionysius’ jealousy plot. Having seen Callirhoe at the funeral held at Dionysius’ expense for Chaereas’ supposed death, he uses him to take revenge: he urges Chaereas to write a letter to his ex-wife explaining the new situation to her and how he could get her back. In this letter Chaereas expresses clearly his anticipation from his original Callirhoe version: 4.4.7: ‘I have expected (προσεδόκων) death – I am human, but I would have never imagined (οὐκ ἤλπισα) you marrying … Change your mind … remember our bridal chamber and that night of initiation, when you first knew a man and I a woman.’

Chaereas’ recapitulation of the events known to him contrasts with the Helen plot he has in mind as he beseeches his wife to ‘change her mind’. Against his original understanding of Callirhoe’s tale as a Helen scenario he opposes the ‘ideal’, or novelistic, one in which both lovers were virginal and pure during their first wedding night and remain so forever. In a curious metaliterary comment he stresses that the plausibility of death is higher than the mythological probability of a second mar805 Char. 4.3.4, τῶν κακῶν αἰτίαν, cf. E. El. 214–215, ‘All Greeks blame for the many evils (κακῶν … αἰτίαν) Helen, your mother’s sister.’ 806 Char. 4.4.1, Mithridates, for his part, was revelling in the hope of getting a bye, so to speak, as in athletic games, while Chaereas and Dionysius competed for Callirhoe, then himself carrying off the prize without struggle (ἀκονιτὶ τὸν στέφανον). Cf. the similar formula used by Callirhoe’s suitors in 1.2.3 for Chaereas.

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riage for the protagonist.807 Chaereas’ letter presents a metaliterary version of what would have been anticipated (οὐκ ἤλπισα) by a love novel. Nonetheless, Chaereas’ reading here is not the dominant one, since he is still unaware of Callirhoe’s real motivation. Thus Dionysius’ plotting of his own Helen pattern dictates both Mithridates’ and Chaereas’ understanding of the story. Artaxerxes’ Egyptian reading Whereas Mithridates promises to Chaereas that he will help him find his wife, Chaereas’ expectations are meticulously disappointed.808 Tyche once more ‘ordained an issue different from what was intended; she initiated matters of greater moment.’809 Against all anticipations the letter does not reach Callirhoe but Dionysius, confirming his initial suspicions about a seduction plot against his wife and misreading the available evidence.810 We learn that he is overwhelmed by a variety of emotions, ‘for he did not believe (οὐκ ἐπίστευε) Chaereas to be alive – because he did not want (to believe) that at all – although on the other hand, he suspected (ὑπελάμβανε) an adulterous calumny by Mithridates, who wanted to seduce Callirhoe.’811 Belief and disbelief are crucial metaliterary puns for the understanding of the Helen pattern Dionysius has in mind: a suitor-competition, in which he is the legal husband of the Beauty, who is nonetheless susceptible to a variety of seduction plots (Motif B1). Dionysius is so entwined in his own version that he disregards Phocas’ previous clues regarding survivors from the shipwreck of the Syracusan trireme. Thus he introduces another suitor-competition pattern, this time before the Great King. In a twist of events Callirhoe and her husband are presented as departing from Caria as if on an expedition against Babylon.812 In Babylon, Callirhoe resumes her Helen assimilation before Artaxerxes, who is now in the role of Paris, not only the judge of her beauty but also another 807 It is not clear from Char. 4.4.7 whether Chaereas anticipates his own or Callirhoe’s death. There are two possible translations of the passage (θάνατον μὲν γὰρ ἄνθρωπος ὢν προσεδόκων, τὸν δὲ σὸν γάμον οὐκ ἤλπισα); cf. transl. Trzaskoma: ‘Being human, I expected to die, but I wouldn’t expect you to get married’ as opposed to transl. Reardon: ‘Death I expected – I am human, but I never thought to find you married.’ 808 Char. 4.5 1, ‘He also promised that he would find a stratagem so that they are reunited to each other.’ 809 Char. 4.5.3, μειζόνων πραγμάτων ἐκίνησεν ἀρχήν. 810 On Dionysius’ selective reading see Rosenmeyer 2001, 142–44. In Euripidean drama a famous letter that fell into the wrong hands is that of Agamemnon in IA 34–40. See Rosenmeyer 2001, 80 and Poltera 2013. Letters that reach the wrong recipients are common in New Comedy, Rosenmeyer 2001, 17–16. 811 Char. 4.5.10 and again in 5.7.8. 812 Char. 4.5.7, ‘Eros was sending this one expedition (στόλος) from Caria.’ Laplace 1980, 96.



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suitor.813 Once again, her identity becomes the cornerstone of the dubious Helen pattern since the arbiter of her innocence is unable to decide. Here the narrative presents her in full beauty using the Homeric formula employed for Penelope’s Artemis- and Aphrodite-like looks in the Odyssey: she too is ‘Αρτέμιδι ἰκέλη ἢ χρυσείῃ Ἀφροδίτη.’814 Is then Callirhoe a Penelope analogue or a regretful Helen, suddenly moved by memories of home and family?815 Even when Callirhoe appears before the court, her identity will constantly alternate between Penelope and Helen. The merging of the two Homeric passages appear in one sentence, one describing Helen at the wall of Troy before the duel of Paris and Menelaus, a very sensual image of her; the other describing the feelings of the suitors upon Penelope’s arrival, a rather sexualised depiction and an arguably debatable moment with respect to her chastity:816 5.5.8–9: So she entered the courtroom looking like Helen when the divine Homer describes her as appearing among the elders ‘around Priam and Panthous and Thymoetes’ (Hom Il. 3 146). Her appearance produced stunned astonishment and silence, ‘everyone prayed to lie in bed beside her.’ (Hom. Od. 18.213).

Artaxerxes’ reading of Callirhoe’s tale has been invited by Dionysius’ plea. His version comes to compete with the two misreadings described above: Chaereas’ first reading, according to which his wife is (probably not) a chaste Penelope, and Dionysius’ reading, according to which Callirhoe is his lawful but (potentially) unfaithful wife. It is shortly before the trial that Chaereas learns that Callirhoe thought of him being dead. Only then is he eager to revise his previous accusations that lead to a partial recognition of Callirhoe’s chastity. In a kind of palinode, he modifies his accusation of her infidelity: 5.5.2: Oh Callirhoe, it is not your fault (οὐδὲν ἀδικεῖς) – you do not know (οὐ γὰρ οἶδας) that Chaereas is alive. It is I who am the wickedest (πάντων ἀσεβέστατος) man on earth.817 I am forbidden to look at you – and coward that I am, so enamoured of life, I submit to such gross tyranny! If you had had such an order, you would not have chosen to live.

813 Laplace 1980, 98. 814 Hom. Od. 17.37 and 19.54. 815 Char. 5.1.3, πόθος πατρίδος καὶ συγγενῶν. Hom. Il.3.139–140, ‘So spoke the goddess, and she instilled in her heart longing for her previous husband, for her city, and her parents, (ἵμερον … ἀνδρός τε προτέρου καὶ ἄστεος ἠδὲ τοκήων). 816 For the double Helen-Penelope assimilation see Morgan 2008, 220 and De Temmerman 2014, 54. For the sexualised Penelopean aspect see Hirschberger 2001, 167 ‘Penelope, the Beauty’. 817 Cf. Char. 4.3.10, πασῶν ἀσεβεστάτη.

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Whereas Chaereas reconsiders the recantations, Dionysius realises all the more that he has set up a Helen plot which will eventually turn against him. This is the moral learnt from myth: 4.7.6–7: The extent of his good fortune only increased his (Dionysius’) fears, for he was an educated man and was aware how inconstant Eros is – that is why poets and sculptors depict him with bow and arrows and associate him with fire, the most insubstantial of mutable attributes. He began to recollect ancient legends (παλαιῶν διηγημάτων) and all the changes (μεταβολαί) that had happened to their beautiful women. In short, Dionysius was frightened of everything.

In the Persian capital, the reader follows Dionysius as he loses control of the Helen pattern he has created for himself; he continuously misreads the details of the novelistic plot only to fill them in with expectations anticipated by the Helen myth. This Babylon, in Dionysius’ words, ‘is full of men like Mithridates;’818 and whereas Menelaus could not keep Helen imprisoned ‘in virtuous (σώφρονι) Sparta, king though he was, a barbarian shepherd supplanted him, and there are many such men as Paris among the Persians.’819 It is the Persians who are so fond of women, as the narrator emphasises, reminding the reader once again of Paris’ reputation as a womaniser. From fashioning himself as Menelaus in his first meeting with Callirhoe, and later as a kind of Paris, upon learning about Chaereas Dionysius ultimately incarnates the king of Sparta. Having thus placed the two readings of the Callirhoe within the context of her chastity, Artaxerxes is presented as a third judge and reader of the protagonist’s tale. This judgement recalls Paris’ Judgement in which he chooses Helen and Aphrodite among the other gifts, and which is also popular in the visual arts too. This part of the Helen megatext is a reenactment of the beauty contest (ἀγῶνα) between her, the ‘Greek beauty’, and the ‘Persian beauty’, Rhodogyne.820 Again, Aphrodite-Callirhoe wins over the judge. But in reality it is not a judgement about beauty but about faithfulness. Dionysius proceeds to accuse Mithridates of adultery, and Mithridates, in his first speech, asks him to recant with a Palinode and withdraw his charges.821 Unlike Chaereas, who revised his accusations against Callirhoe, Dionysius blindly continues with his own reading, so the allusion to 818 Char. 5.2.8. 819 Char. 5.2.6, βάρβαρον γυναιμανές; cf. Hom. Il. 3.39 and 13.719, ‘Evil Paris, you most fair, a womaniser, you beguiler’ (Δύσπαρι εἶδος ἄριστε γυναιμανὲς ἠπεπορευτά). He further compares Mithridates to Paris, who abused Menelaus’ hospitality, 5.6.6, ‘Mithridates came to Miletus and met my wife in the course of customary hospitality (τὸ τῆς ξενίας δίκαιον), he proceeded not like a friend.’ Laplace 1980, 98. 820 Char. 5.3 1–10. 821 Char. 5.7.7.



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the Palinode only stresses his own blindness as a reader. In a theatrical setting Mithridates presents Chaereas revived and on stage.822 Even so, the recognition scene is not complete, since in her attempt to run to Chaereas and kiss him, which would have been the typical novelistic reunion scene,823 Callirhoe is held back by Dionysius, who now fulfils the role of the adulterer.824 Thus Dionysius’ own reading of the Helen myth, and his conscious role as the woman’s snatcher, now puts the novelistic expectations of the embedded readership at risk. The audiences of this play, like the reader, attempt to decipher the plot’s outcome.825 Each spectator seems to identify and empathise with a different character: we learn for example that they praise Mithridates, they are overjoyed with Chaereas, they pity Dionysius, but they are at a loss (ἠπόρουν) regarding Callirhoe’s reaction.826 Yet, to this male audience, the narrator breaks the impasse by suggesting that a female take on the story. Callirhoe’s paralysis is commented upon by Stateira, who empathetically provides a more subtle interpretation of the tale: ‘Take courage, woman, and stop lamenting, the king is a good man, you will get the man you want.’827 Still, despite the queen’s enquiries, Callirhoe never gives a straight answer and maintains her silence.828 This silence is also characteristic for the readers, who, like Stateira, desire to peek into the heroine’s soul and read the plot with their own eyes. Yet the situation turns more complex. As the day of judgement comes closer the echoes of the Helen myth become more explicit and numerous: namely the Great King is portrayed as burning with love for Callirhoe, ‘the most beautiful prize of all, like the Spartan queen over whom even the gods would fight.’829 Like Dionysius, Artaxerxes initiates another seduction motif, aware that he is involved in a suitor competition.830 Like Dionysius, Artaxerxes initiates another seduction motif, aware that he is involved in a suitor-competition. Yet at this point the Homeric allusions diminish 822 Char. 5.8.1, οὕτω γὰρ ἦν διατεταγμένον. 823 See also Montiglio 2012, 33 on the mutuality of the novelistic recognition scene. 824 Char. 5.8.2, ‘But Dionysius held her back, stood in the middle, and would not let them embrace.’ 825 For the empathetic identification of the reader with the protagonists and how this affects the individual empirical reading see Keen 2007. 826 Char. 5.8.3. 827 Char. 5.9.3. 828 Char. 5 9.7. Dionysius and Chaereas interpret Callirhoe’s silence differently: Char. 5.9.5, Callirhoe, ‘How could he bear not to embrace me? We parted without even a kiss!;’ Dionysius 5 9.8– 5 10.4, ‘He tried to endure what was happening to him in a spirit of nobility … and to make matters worse, I do not know which of us Callirhoe prefers.’ Chaereas 5.10.7–8, ‘Callirhoe saw me and did not come to me, did not embrace me … my wife, for wife I call you even if you love another.’ 829 Char. 6.2.2. 830 Char. 6.1.11, he considers himself superior to his two slaves, Dionysius and Chaereas.

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and the Euripidean and Penelopean background comes forth. When an eunuch praises Artaxerxes to Callirhoe we learn that he does so without taking into account that Callirhoe was ‘a well-born Greek, chaste (σώφρων), who loves her husband.’831 This line creates echoes in the reader’s mind that are not without irony, since the whole novel plays with the relative notion of chastity (σωφροσύνη), and the ambiguous adjective φίλανδρος can mean both ‘lewd’ and ‘caring for one’s husband.’ Yet Callirhoe now gains control of her fate and, starting with the eunuch, asks him to reconsider and make a recantation, a palinode.832 It is her beauty that Callirhoe then laments, once more, as the cause of her misfortune, but this time, like the Euripidean Helen, she thinks of death as the only solution.833 6.5.4: ‘My beauty, my treacherous beauty, you are the cause of all my troubles. It was because of you that I was carried off and sold. … How many times have you handed me over to pirates, to the sea, to the tomb, slavery, judgement? But the heaviest burden I have had to bear is the king’s love … come Callirhoe, conceive some plan of noble kind, worthy of Hermocrates: Kill yourself!’

The Judgement at Babylon therefore injects a third suitor into the already convoluted pattern of suitor competition and seduction motifs. Callirhoe’s impasse at the court is now taken further and her fate, like that of Helen, will be decided by a war. Chaereas’ recantation The account of a sudden war between Persia and Egypt is not because of Callirhoe but it does serve her cause. Chariton’s narrator once more signals the metaliterary level of this twist by having Tyche inventing ‘a plot of newer events.’834 This unexpected war affects the expectations of each of the participants differently: we learn that Dionysius seeks glory and displays eagerness for heroic achievements, but with the ‘faint hope’835 that, if he demonstrates his bravery, the king will award him Callirhoe without trial. It is also this version that his servants deliver to Chaereas who now wants to fight a war for his wife and against his rival.836 Artax831 Char. 6.4.10. On this new kind of chastity see Kasprzyk 2009, 98 and Kanavou 2015, 948. 832 Char. 6.6.8, παλινῳδίαν. For this episode contrasting with that with Plangon see De Temmerman 56–72, who observes that Callirhoe matures and takes the situation into her hands. 833 E. Hel. 260–297, ‘My life and my deeds have been amazing (τέρας), on the one hand because of Hera, on the other because of my beauty (κάλλος αἴτιον), and so, from free parents, I ended up a slave.’ On Helen’s suicidal fantasies either by noose or by sword see E. Hel. 301. 834 Char. 6.8.1, καινοτέρων πραγμάτων ὑπόθεσιν. For the metaliterary use of the word kainos see Tilg 2010a, 174. 835 Char. 6.9.3, ἐλπίδος κούφης. 836 Char. 71.4 ‘Hearing these stories, Chaereas eagerly believed them.’ Char. 7.2.3–4, Chaereas is fighting for a woman for love (διὰ γυναῖκα, θανάτου καὶ ἀμύνης ἔρωτα).



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erxes uses the war to ‘carry off’ Callirhoe together with his family and concubines, thus initiating impulsively a metaphorical seduction/abduction motif.837 The war also makes our silent protagonist rejoice, this time voicing clearly her hopes for a ‘twist of events’, a line with metaliterary load indeed.838 In Callirhoe’s expectations war and the end of the trial are interlocked, making it all the more likely to think of this war as an alternative, ‘newer’ Iliad. Chaereas’ third reading of the Callirhoe on Dionysius’ doorstep turns his narrative once more towards an ideal scenario about a faithful wife: 71.5–6: (Chaereas) ‘Faithless (ἄπιστε) Babylon! Inhospitable city – a very desert to me! A fine judge prostituting another man’s wife! A wedding in wartime! When I was preparing my case, I was convinced it would be just, and I lose it by default! Dionysius has won without saying a word! But he will gain nothing by winning, Callirhoe will not live if Chaereas is near and she is separated from him even the first time, she was misled by the thought that I was dead.’

The mention of ἄπιστε, once used for the Helen-like Callirhoe, is now used for the city where her beauty and chastity were mis-judged: Chaereas has thus fully revised his previous interpretation of the Callirhoe and is ready to be reunited with his wife, especially after displaying his bravery by capturing Tyre, as if he had won his own Trojan War.839 However, in a final twist of the plot, Tyche risks not allowing the separated couple to meet but his interference brings about a cathartic ending to the adventures.840 The passage, despite the metaliterarily dictated shift towards a novelistic happy ending, retains the echoes of the Helen megatext, since in it Callirhoe is presented as a prize better than that of Aphrodite to Paris.841 Moreover, Callirhoe among the Persian captive women strongly recalls Helen among the captive Trojan women, a theme popular from both tragedy and

837 The texts bears signs of the passion governing Artaxerxes, 6.9.5. ‘being urged by his passion (βιαζομένης δὲ τῆς ὁρμῆς).’ 838 Char. 6 9.8, ‘And Callirhoe left Babylon – not to her displeasure, because she thought Chaereas would be leaving to war brings many unforeseeable events in its train, including improvement in the lives of those in distress.’ 839 For other mythical associations pointing to his newly acquired sophrosyne see De Temmerman 2014, 115–16 on Chaereas’ evolving characterisation around a variety of mythical paradigms: Menelaus, Odysseus, Achilles, Protesilaus, Theseus, Zeus. On the historical echoes of Alexander the Great in the incident of the capture of Tyre see Reardon 1996, 327. See also Robian 2008, 426. 840 Rijksbaron 1984, Montiglio 2012, 40. 841 Char. 8.1.3 δρον κάλλιστον … οἷον οὐδὲ Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Πάρις.

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the visual representations of the Iliupersis.842 But the story poses one more test of Callirhoe’s faithfulness in order to present her as a counter-analogue of Helen. While in captivity, one of Chaereas’ underlings tells Callirhoe that his master will spare her because he is not only brave but also caring about women by nature.843 From former experience from Dionysius’ case she interprets φιλογύναιος as meaning not one who is gallant but a womaniser. Whereas upon Troy’s fall Helen succeeds in seducing Menelaus by bearing her breasts, Callirhoe covers herself and lies on the ground, desiring death.844 When the admiral learns of her reaction, he admires and praises her chastity, and does not intend to force her, thus rejecting the possibility of another ‘suitor-competition’ pattern.845 This is a trial not only of the φίλανδρος Callirhoe but also of the φιλογύναιος Chaereas:846 by sparing a chaste woman Chaereas becomes unlike Dionysius and Artaxerxes and ensures the novelistic happy ending.847 Chaereas has thus revisited his own version of the Callirhoe-Helen pattern, by preventing another seduction motif.848 When Chaereas sees the kneeling woman covered in veils, we learn that his soul was upset and he felt excitement. 849 But he still fails to identify her, because her being there does not match his expectations.850

842 In the Little Iliad Helen bares her breasts so that Menelaus may spare her, cf. also Euripides’ Trojan Women and Hecuba, where Helen applies all her persuasiveness to convince Menelaus not to kill her. Cf. Scodel 1980, Scodel 1998. 843 The adjective is used twice for Dionysius at Char. 1 12.7 and 1.2.5 and once for Chaereas at 7.6.7 844 Char. 7.6.10, ἔρριπται χαμαί; 8 1.7, ἐρριμένη καὶ ἐγκεκαλυμμένην. For Callirhoe being veiled in both her first meeting with Chaereas at 1.1.15 and here see Montiglio 2012, 30–31, where she also discusses extensively the parallel recognition scenes between the newlywed and the reunited couple. 845 Char. 7.6.7, ‘will marry you’, and 7.6.12, ‘πρέπει γὰρ σωφροσύνην τιμᾶν’. The episode echoes Xenophon’s Panthia in the Cyr. 6.4.3, see Perry 1967, 169–170 and Smith 2007a, 163–73. Panthia and Penelope as models of chastity appear together in Plu. Mor. 706d, ‘For the one who desires an expensive harlot it is neither possible to bring Penelope on stage nor to marry Panthia.’ 846 For the symmetric characterisation here see Robiano 2008, 427. 847 For Chaereas’ recognition of the mourning woman and his respect for her situation see Montiglio 2012, 18–19. See also the unique emphasis on recognition via his voice in the analysis in Montiglio 2012, 27–30. 848 Char. 8.1.3 ‘But now that Chaereas had made honourable amends to Eros … Aphrodite took pity on him.’ 849 Char. 8 1.7. 850 Char. 8.7.1, ‘He would have certainly recognised her, had he not been utterly convinced that Dionysius had recovered her.’ Montiglio 2012, 16 finds allusions in this passage to the Alcestis. Yet this is syntagmatic intertextuality, and it does not prevent the paradigmatic function of the Penelope/Helen megatext that is prominent throughout the novel.



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The recognition scene is described with all the requisite romantic touches: the two lovers fall into each other’s arms and faint with sudden bliss.851 When they are finally able to see each other in private it is in the king’s royal chamber filled with Tyrian purple and Babylonian bed-linens, echoing the beautiful fabrics Paris brought home from his wanderings in Tyre and Sidon when sailing back to Troy with Helen in the Iliad, or when Helen returned to Sparta with Menelaus via Sidon in the Odyssey.852 It is in the royal bedchamber that Chaereas and Callirhoe revisit their adventures, like Penelope and Odysseus in the Odyssey, and only after having revealed to each other the full truth are they reunited as a couple, in an allusion to the telos or peras of the Odyssey 23.296, ‘they gladly returned to the pact of their bed as of old.’853 However the novel, like the epic, does not end here contrasting the reservations of some ancient critics. Like the Odyssey, the novel culminates with the couple recognition but ends with that by her father and her countrymen in Syracuse, suggesting that the real telos is reserved for those readers who fulfil their recognitive task. Callirhoe’s other readings Despite the reunion the ending is immediately endangered. Chaereas, who wants to keep the queen and Rhodogyne as hostages,854 thus endangers the happy ending. Should he do this, Callirhoe argues, Chaereas would cause a great war.855 This is reminiscent of the war with Egypt but also of mythical wars over women between Asia and Greece, like those described by Herodotus in his Histories.856 By returning Stateira to Artaxerxes he returns a faithful wife to a husband who is, by pure coincidence, faithful.857 Artaxerxes, therefore, receives his queen as a counter gift, an ἀντίδωρον from Callirhoe, when the better gift – previously described as the most beautiful present δῶρον κάλλιστον – would have been Callirhoe herself.858 In an ironic twist, Callirhoe, who almost became a cause for a war, turns into the peacemaker who protects Greece from another oriental invasion.859 In this way Callirhoe 851 Char. 8.1.10, περιχυθέντες δὲ ἀλλήλοις, λιποψυχήσαντες ἔπεσον. 852 Hom. Il. 6.289–290, Od. 4.218. 853 Rikjsbaron 1984; see also Hunter 2014, 146 referring also to Char. 8 1.4 and the cathartic character of the last book in Aristotelian terms. 854 Cf. Alexander’s respect for the captive Sisygambris in Arr. An. 2.12.6. 855 Char. 8.2.5, μέγαν πόλεμον. 856 Hdt. 1.1.3. 857 The two reunion scenes, of Callirhoe and Stateira with Chaereas and Artaxerxes, respectively, are introduced with the same formula: cf. 8 1 17, ἐπεὶ δὲ ἅλις ἦν δακρύων καὶ διηγημάτων, and 8.5.9, ἐπεὶ δὲ ἅλις ἦν τῶν διηγημάτων. For the parallels see Montiglio 2012, 43. 858 Char. 8.5.8. 859 Char. 8.3.7.

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takes charge of the Helen pattern that her suitors were weaving around her and directs it towards a novelistic happy ending for both herself and Stateira. Despite this ideal closure, Callirhoe tells of a different conclusion too. In her farewell letter to her ex-husband, secretly delivered by Stateira, she states that she has unwillingly followed Chaereas and that she still cares for Dionysius. Callirhoe writes that her soul remains with him only, as did (supposedly his) son.860 This, together with the child she leaves behind, is another echo of the Homeric Helen that Dionysius has been using to interpret the narrative all along.861 In his misfortune, Dionysius is eager to interpret her words as ἀπολογία, ‘a speech in defence,’ recalling the sophistic rewritings of the Helen megatext.862 The text therefore leaves a shadow of Helen still darkening her chastity, although Callirhoe’s sidestepping this time allows an empathetic reading of Dionysius’ own understanding of her tale. Furthermore, upon her departure Callirhoe revisits this crucial motif of the Helen pattern but revises it: now the ship no longer carries her away from her beloved but brings her home: 8.4.8: Callirhoe made an obeisance to Aphrodite: ‘I thank you lady,’ she said, ‘for what is happening now. You are reconciled to me now; grant that I see Syracuse too. A great stretch of sea separates me from there; an ocean is waiting for me that is frightening to cross; but I am not frightened if you are sailing with me.’

Yet neither of these endings are available to the internal audience. Chaereas never learns of Artaxerxes’ reunion with his wife nor of the letter to Dionysius. Contrarily, the Syracusan crowds and Hermocrates in Book 8 are more prone to consider a novelistic ending beyond expectation: 8.6.6: Syracusans made various conjectures about it, but guessed everything except the truth (πάντα δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ ἀληθὲς εἴκαζον), for since they were already convinced that Chaereas was dead, it was quite out of the question that they should expect him to land back home alive and amid such luxury … Callirhoe could be seen … Chaereas … sat beside her.’

The now-formulaic phrase ‘everything … but’, emerges once more and now indicates the absence of any manipulation of information in this endgame of the recognition plot. The audience cannot believe their eyes, especially since they are missing the sequel to the Callirhoe set at Syracuse immediately after Chaereas’ departure to Miletus. The recognition scene with the fellow citizens and espe860 Char. 8.4.5, and 8.5.14, ὑπεδήλου ὡς ἄκουσα αὐτὸν καταλίποι. 861 On Callirhoe’s child and on Helen’s see Schmeling 2005. Also Montiglio 2012, 44–45 and Kanavou 2015. 862 For Dionysius’ continued misreadings of letters see Rosenmeyer 2001, 146–47.



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cially with Hermocrates echoes the reunion of Odysseus with Laertes, but also bears a distinctive novelistic touch, as Hermocrates embraces Callirhoe:863 8.6.8: Hermocrates leapt on board, ran to the tent, and threw his arms around his daughter. (Hermocrates) ‘Are you alive! my child’ he cried ‘or is this too an illusion (πεπλάνημαι)?’ I am alive father! I am really alive now (νῦν ἀληθῶς) that I have seen you!’ They all wept for joy.

Hermocrates’ question whether he has recovered his daughter indeed or whether this is still a fake reunion, a plot of fiction (πεπλάνημαι), is a metaliterary highlight to the kind of plot offered to Callirhoe’s readers, a story of misreadings and misinterpretations. The father-child reunion is followed by recapitulatory narratives: just as in the couple’s reunion on Aradus the recognition follows the Odyssean pattern, recognition and exchange of narratives take place upon their arrival to Syracuse.864 Chaereas reports all the stories of ‘their entire journey’, at least the ones that he knows first hand and whatever Callirhoe revealed.865 It is as if the whole narrative were structured around this one, final recognition scene in an ironic conspiracy with the reader who, together with Callirhoe, knows the full truth, which is based on the omission of one detail out of many. In summary Chariton’s Callirhoe reworks the available megatext of the Penelope/Helen myth through quotations of earlier texts, allusions to particular myths as examples, echoes of broader themes, or even manipulation of vocabulary that triggers particular myth-related connotations in the reader’s mind, as in the case of ‘eidolon’ or ‘athlon’. Furthermore visual themes, such as the Mourning Penelope or Helen’s embarkation, are also called upon to assist the reader with the identification of the megatext. The progress of the anticipated plot is based on the Penelope/Helen megatext, and it can be summarised in the five broadly understood motifs and their main variations: ‘suitor competition’, ‘seduction/abduction’ and/or ‘seduction/faithfulness’, ‘quest of the hero’ and ‘reunion’ with/without ‘recognition’. These basic indicators, together with the relevant allusions, citations and echoes, 863 Like Odysseus who needs to be recognized by Laertes at 24.205, Callirhoe needs her father being present before fully returning to her homecity. At 8.6.7, we learn Chaereas’ parents do not appear in public, mourning their son, but Hermocrates still manages the public affairs, despite his grief. The recognition between Callirhoe and her father at is also mutual and does not remind of the painstaiking recognition between Laertes and Odysseus. 864 Cf. Montiglio 2012, 43 describing the arrival of the couple hidden in their trireme as an echo of Odysseus’ arrival at Ithaca in disguise. She continues by analysing the recognition of the characters by the Syracusans. See also Lefteratou 2018b. 865 Char. 8.7.3, πάντα τὰ τῆς ἀποδημίας διηγήματα. For example, he does not know about her letter to Dionysius that she entrusted Stateira with.

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show that the Helen megatext reverberates through the different embedded readings of the Callirhoe, shaping the expectations of both the internal and external audiences accordingly. Next to the mythical material, the novel manipulates a variety of other non-mythical motifs and themes of novelistic and folktale storytelling, such as the motif of the calumniated wife. These motifs may have been in the repertoire of novelistic (or other fictional) production long before Chariton, and they certainly continued their independent existence after him. However, in this novel they appear jointly with the expectations raised by the mythical megatext and intersect the sequence of the pattern, making it more difficult for the reader to guess what comes next. However, distorted and debated as it may be, Callirhoe’s chastity seems to be a crucial element for the plot. The ideal reunion of husband and wife, shows that Chariton plays with a notion of sophrosyne that was way beyond the logic of the myths of Penelope and/or of Helen. Since we do not have other earlier models that describe the adventures of the chaste wife, one might feel tempted to argue for Chariton’s first in this respect.866 That being said the folkloric themes might suggest that such a pattern might have been available to Chariton through other sources, not necessarily mythical. In reading Callirhoe alongside the Penelope/Helen pattern, it might be interesting to compare it with the imperial Mythenkritik too. The novel adds folkloric touches that revise the pattern, such as Callirhoe’s pregnancy, which are used as metamythological blows to the various traditions regarding Penelope’s and Helen’s contested chastity: e.g. unlike any Stesichorean/Euripidean imagery, Callirhoe is not carried away but buried alive and revived; she also commits adultery, but out of chastity, and her faithfulness, despite the paradox, is revisited, which is not the case in any explanation of Helen’s elopement. On the other hand, Chaereas’ transformation from a passive husband into a victorious general of the Achilles and Alexander type echoes those ancient Homeric readings that longed for a union between the best-looking of the Achaeans and Helen the Beautiful. This is the case in Philostratus, or a union of two handsome young people, such as the romance of Helen and Paris in Dio’s Trojan Discourse. Moreover the war that takes place, irrespective of the Beauty, is another twist on the well-known mythical pattern, where the war was on behalf of Helen whether or not she was physically in Troy. Finally, Chariton seems to question and endorse the criticism regarding the end of the Odyssey. Just as the epic does not end with the bedscene at 23.296, the novel too ends in Syracuse and only after rounding up all the missing narrative threads. These alternative mythical scenarios enrich the megatext’s paradigms without distorting the sequence of the motifs in the pattern. 866 As Tilg 2010a argues.



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Yet, most important is the development of the various focalised patterns that explore Callirhoe’s chastity. The external reader, then, needs to follow each of these embedded patterns carefully, attuned to cues in the text that lead to the final recognition and reunion of the protagonists. Throughout this endeavour s/he is expected to re-evaluate at each stage the questions regarding the protagonist’s chastity, shifting opinions as s/he focalises through a particular character and reaching different layers of ‘recognition’. After such a long recognitive journey, the external reader is privileged with a piece of knowledge that is unavailable to the other embedded characters: while Chaereas spends the last chapters at the theatre (the public domain), recapitulating the (known to him) adventures of Callirhoe, the reader follows his wife, who, before entering home and disappearing entirely into the private sphere, visits Aphrodite’s temple (a semi-public space). In it, Callirhoe erases the previous expectations from her story as part of her fate – ταῦτα εἵμαρτό μοι – but voices in her petition her hopes for an ideal love closure, a ‘happily ever after’ outcome with Chaereas, summarised into a blessed life and a simultaneous death.867 Callirhoe’s prayer thus confirms the protagonist’s own anticipation that, this time, is in accordance with the authorial plan of Aphrodite, who ‘having harassed by land and sea the handsome couple she had originally brought together, she decided to reunite them again.’868 This kind of reunion, although similar to that of Odysseus and Penelope, has nonetheless a distinct novelistic touch. This rich play between novelistic, folkloric and mythical themes shows, in my view, that Chariton was well aware of some novelistic conventions related to the heroine’s chastity, maritime adventures, and the happy reunion and homecoming of the long-lost spouses. His crafty thwarting of the readerly expectations illustrates that the novel might have been addressed to an experienced readership whose anticipations were challenged by the tale’s coups de théâtre, such as the heroine’s pregnancy, which is nowhere to be found in either the novelistic or the mythical logic of the pattern. These innovations would rather make Callirhoe one of the first ideal novels, but not necessarily the first of its kind, as the rich intertextual layers suggest a more complex reading milieu.

867 Char. 8.8.16. 868 Char. 8.1.3–4, πάλιν ἠθέλησεν ἀλλήλοις ἀποδοῦναι.

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3.4.2 Xenophon of Ephesus Thematic allusions to the Penelope/Helen megatext Xenophon presents his readers with a supposedly more straightforward narrative that also makes ample use of the tale of the Beauty and which is no less sensitive to the options opened by the suitor-competition motif. It is difficult to determine the precise route that intertextuality has taken into the novel, since unlike in Chariton᾽s text, there are no direct allusions to the Homeric or Euripidean megatext. Still, it has been rightly argued that Xenophon seems well aware of the novelistic tradition, as well as of that of Homer and Herodotus.869 With respect to the myth about Helen, the novel refers to a certain ‘Menelaus’ river canal’ next to Alexandria.870 O’Sullivan (1995), 172 argues in favour of a particular connection between the two trials of Habrocomes before the Archon of Egypt871 and the trial of Paris before the Pharaoh as reported in Herodotus,872 the general significance of Egypt as the location of the traditional Helen-Paris romance notwithstanding. Anthia’s numerous travels suggest therefore an implicit Helen pattern and, as O’Sullivan’s ‘Appendix’ suggests, her erotic travails may evoke the Cypria, echoing the archetypical sea adventures of two lovers which would have been representative of the poem’s folktale character.873 That being said, the Cypria differ from Xenophon’s reworking of the romantic theme too: in the novel the couple does not elope, and neither is the bride stolen by some sort of suitor (Motif B1) as in the Helen myth and its variation in the Callirhoe. Unlike the mythical and novelistic precedents, the oracle at Claros is responsible for their wanderings that follow their wedding.874

869 O’Sullivan 1995 explores Xenophon’s formulaic patterns in comparison with those of Homer; against O’Sullivan see Lowe 2000, 230, n. 10 and the more sceptical Morgan 1996c. On the imitation of the style of Herodotus see Ruiz-Montero 1988, 102–03. On echoes from Thucydides see Trzaskoma 2011. For various mythical influences on Xenophon see the less convincing Ruiz-Montero 2003 (1995). 870 X. Eph. 4.1.3. Trzaskoma 2010, 163 voices some doubts whether this Menelaus inspired by the brother of King Ptolemy I or the Homeric hero who, according to the epic tradition, visited Egypt with Helen on his way back from Troy. 871 X. Eph. 4.2.1. 872 Hdt. 2.112. 873 Davies 2010. 874 X. Eph. 1.7.2. This is an odd debut into the adventure plot that has been little discussed. For example, Frye 1976, 113 interprets their travel as a ‘silly’ way to avoid their fate. To me it recalls much more the passive (Christian?) reaction to the will of god. Some work towards this reading has been done by Chance Bradley 1988 and especially by Bale 2011 focusing on the divine prophecy of wandering and martyrdom in Acts 1:6–8. Yet both of them explore more the narrative conventions than the similarities between Xenophon and the Acts.



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On the other hand, Xenophon’s plot and Anthia’s exemplary chastity made scholars investigate in depth the Penelopean echoes in the novel. The novel’s purported programmatic Odyssean echo appears to be the lengthy description of Habrocomes’ and Anthia’s nuptial bed. The bed-canopy illustrates the loves of Ares and Aphrodite,875 supposedly alluding to Demodocus’ song in the Odyssey.876 I have argued elsewhere for the resemblance of this scene not to the affair in Demodocus’ song in the Odyssey but to the imperial visual representations of Mars and Venus.877 To summarise my argument, there I show that a direct association of the above passage with Demodocus’ song is disproportionate, since the epic song discusses the affair between Ares and Aphrodite, Hephaestus’ trick with the nets, and the laughter of the gods at the two unlucky lovers. Contrarily, in the Roman frescoes, Ares and Aphrodite, the propatores of the Romans, embody the ideal couple, and their representation stresses the familial and erotic harmony between the Emperor and his wife, and later the love between the couples of the elite.878 Mars was considered as an analogue of their male and female virtues, namely bravery, and Aphrodite incarnated beauty. Their union symbolises the Concordia of the Emperor and his wife or of the individuals.879 Thus, the erotic message of the ekphrasis is programmatic in that it illustrates in a nutshell the ideal of sexual symmetry and chastity. The relationship of the ekphrasis to the new marital status of Habrocomes is further emphasised by the oaths sworn on their first night. Habrocomes blesses Anthia ‘for having as a husband the man who loves her’ and prays that she ‘can live with him as a

875 X.Eph. 1.8.2–3, ‘Cupids were playing, some attending Aphrodite, who was also represented, some riding on Nabataean ostriches (sparrows), some weaving garlands, others bringing flowers. They were on one half of the canopy, on the other was Ares, not in armour, but dressed in a cloak and wearing a garland, adorned for his lover Aphrodite. Eros was leading the way with a lighted torch.’ 876 Hom. Od. 8.266–332. Tagliabue 2012 argues for a direct influence of the Odyssey in the two bedroom scenes in 1.8.2 and 5.15.1. See also De Temmerman 2014, 143. On the contrary, Dalmeyda 1962 (1926), 11, n. 1 may have a point when arguing that the description of the ecphrasis is incomplete, since it omits the most sensual part, that of Aphrodite. Dalmeyda considers this to be a mistake of the epitomist, although it could just as well be an error in transmission. 877 Lefteratou 2018b. 878 Cf. LIMC s.v. ‘Ares/Mars’, Fig. 375–377 and Kousser 2010. 879 Zanker 2010, 38, 42 discusses a group of statues depicting a married couple from a funerary monument in Ostia. In it, the wife is represented as Aphrodite, whereas the husband wears a helmet and is portrayed as Ares. The Venus-Mars couple was originally intended to represent the harmony of the emperor and his wife. For the faces as portraits and not idealised representations see De Carolis 2001, 41. Moreover, Brisson and Tihanyi 2008 (1996) argue that the Stoics interpreted the Ares-Aphrodite story allegorically.

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faithful (σώφρονι) wife until death.’880 Thus the novel lays bare the constraints of the novelistic plot that combines both passion and lawful marriage. The oaths of fidelity are renewed after the couple’s departure, on their way to Alexandria, during a storm.881 This time the oaths place much greater emphasis on mutual chastity,882 introducing the tonality of the work with respect to symmetrical female and male sophrosyne.883 This programmatic statement regarding mutual chastity is of significant metaliterary importance since it illustrates the main plot constraint in Xenophon and goes beyond the allusions to the Penelope/Helen megatext. With such an explicitly programmatic restriction, the novel signals at a metaliterary level its opposition not only to previous mythical material but also to ‘other’ novels. The use, therefore, of the Penelope/Helen megatext, ought to be explored not only on the basis of allusions but mainly on the level of patterning. Anthia’s suitors Xenophon’s tale takes the form of an elaborate Beauty pattern, susceptible to a continuous suitor-competition motif. Already in Book 1, the first threats to the lovers’ sophrosyne and mutual faithfulness – the seduction attempts of Corybus and Euxeinus, respectively – mark the beginning of the adventure tale proper. Thus the real ‘beginning’ of the novel, also anticipated by the oracle of Apollo,884 is not the wedding but occurs at the end of the first book. Habrocomes points that out at a metaliterary level in his observation that now ‘the oracle is fulfilling (ἄρχεται) itself.’885 Thus at the very start (ἀρχή) of the novel, the erotic illness and the wedding, is followed by another beginning that associates the adventure plot with the motif of suitor competition. Such subtle metaliterary comments not only point to the novel’s own structure intratextually but also echo Chariton’s second beginning of Callirhoe’s adventures, which also starts immediately after the couple’s wedding. Anthia’s tale follows an elaborate Helen pattern in which the motif of suitor-competition is followed by a variation of the ‘seduction/abduction’ motif or by the Iphigenia substitution motif: for example, Anthia and Habrocomes are spared the pirates’ attempts only because the boss, Aspyrtus, believes they could 880 X. Eph. 1.9.3. 881 X. Eph. 1.11.6, ὅρκους φοβερωτέρους. 882 X. Eph. 1.11.4, ‘If it is fated (Habrocomes said) that we suffer some disaster and be separated, let us swear to one another, my dearest, that you will remain chaste (μενεῖς ἁγνή) to me and not submit to any other man and that I should never live with another woman in wedlock.’ 883 Konstan 1994, 26. 884 Cf. Whitmarsh 2011, 226 on the novel’s beginning and end, X. Eph. 1.6.1, ‘Why do you wish to learn the beginning and the end of the illness (τέλος ἠδὲ καὶ ἀρχήν)?’ 885 X. Eph. 2.1.2.



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make a valuable investment; Anthia further escapes Moeris’ attempts, convinces Lampon to keep her chaste,886 avoids being murdered by being sold again, and is saved by the pirates due to another shipwreck; having being freed by Perilaus from sacrifice, she avoids the upcoming marriage by means of a (near) suicide.887 Later Anthia is found alive by other pirates and sold again to a certain Psammis in Alexandria, whom she tricks into believing that she is a priestess of Isis, thus gaining some time before their wedding. When Psammis’ caravan is attacked by Hippothous’ bandits, Anthia is later saved from Hippothous’ death sentence by another suitor, Amphinomus, whose name recalls the virtuous suitor of Penelope,888 until she is recovered by Polyidus,889 who carries her home as his (eventual) concubine.890 Polyidus’ wife then sells the beautiful slave and potential rival to a brothel at Syracuse, exposing her to an indefinite number of suitors. This might echo the minor versions of Penelope’s affair with the suitors, since, once at the brothel, Anthia is – potentially – available to everyone.891 Anthia’s lament at the brothel vividly recalls not only her previous despair but also those of Helen and her novelistic sister, Callirhoe:892 5.7.1–2: So, she lamented bitterly over her misfortunes: ‘Are my previous disasters not enough,’ she exclaimed, ‘the chains and the bandit’s lair? Must I now be a prostitute as well? My beauty is justly disgraced for it remains with me to my cost. But why do I lament like this and not find some way (μηχανήν) to guard the chastity I have preserved till now (τὴν μέχρι νῦν σωφροσύνην τετηρημένην)?’

This final lamentation, however, interestingly combines beauty with wit.893 In the example above, her mention of the ruse, (μηχανή) to maintain her chastity, is probably one of the key Odyssean references in the novel, and, as Richard Hunter (1996) 68 observes, it leads back to Penelope’s cunning over the suitors and to

886 For E. El. as a model of Anthia’s wedding to Lampon see Reardon 2008, 45 and Trzaskoma 2010, 148. For the folkloric origin of the motif see Trenkner 1958, 44–45. 887 X. Eph. 3.8.5. 888 Bierl 2012a, 27. 889 X. Eph. 5.3.1, Polyidus is presented as a handsome young man (νεανίσκον χαρίεντα), unlike previous rapists. However it may be that this description is corrupted and belongs to Perilaus’ characterisation above, since Polyidus, being married, is not a match for Anthia. 890 X. Eph. 2.2.1 (Moeris and Lampon), 2.11.10 (shipwrecked in Cilicia), 3.6.1 (near suicide), 3.11.3 (Psammis), 4.3 1 (Hippothous re-captures Anthia), 4.5 1 (Anchialus), 5.5.1 (Rhenaea episode). 891 Cf. Penelope as a mother of Pan. 892 Cf. X. Eph. 2.11.2, κάλλος ἐπίβουλον, ἄκαιρον εὐμορφίαν (referring to both her and Habrocomes’ beauty in Tyre), 5.5.3 (at Polydius’ household). 893 On Anthia’s cunning see Hunter 1996, 191. De Temmerman 2014, 135 on how Anthia appeals to reason and not just to emotion.

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Motif B2 of the Penelope/Helen megatext.894 Yet, most importantly, Anthia, as her adventures continue, grows all the more conscious of the repetitiveness of her tale, as becomes clear in the passage above that stresses her so far well-kept chastity (τὴν μέχρι νῦν) and her prayer to Isis: ‘O mistress of Egypt, save me again (πάλιν), me whom you have helped so many times (πολλάκις).’895 The metaliterary and metafictional importance of the repetition of ‘until now’ or ‘many times’ indicates Anthia as a careful reader of her own tale, and one who is now acting according to her anticipation of an ideal plot scenario. Unlike Penelope, and more like Helen, Anthia travels the world and faces many more dangers than the secluded Queen of Ithaca. Moreover she has remained faithful to her beloved Habrocomes, by luck and wit, by being bold and beautiful. Habrocomes misunderstands Chrysion’s reading It is interesting to see not only how Anthia successfully rewrites Penelopean ethics within a Helen adventure plot but also how Habrocomes reads her tale, which to a great extent resembles a detective story. Like Menelaus and Chaereas, Xenophon’s hero travels in search of her whereabouts and comes to Lampon, the first suitor, from whom he attempts to extract information regarding the girl from Tyre.896 Lampon gives Habrocomes a summary of the latest events, stressing his continence as opposed to Moeris’ passion, which resulted in Anthia being sold. He finishes his story by mentioning that the girl had always been calling for a certain Habrocomes.897 Lampon, albeit unaware of the man who inquires about Anthia, proves here to be a careful reader: this last remark, namely the allusion to Anthia’s beloved Habrocomes, shows that he probably suspects who the stranger is and this comment probably aims to make his interlocutor reveal his own name. However, we learn that Habrocomes carefully conceals his identity and leaves for Cilicia, knowing not only that his bride is alive but also that she is truly devoted to him. His disguise assimilates him a bit to the disguised Odysseus who also tests Penelope’s faithfulness.898 This is an important twist vis-à-vis Chaereas’ first reading, whose search becomes a quest to confirm Callirhoe’s whereabouts but mainly her faithfulness. Habrocomes’ second quest is based on the information he receives from Hippothous in Book 3. In what seems to be an intimate setting, the two men exchange their 894 For futher Odyssean echoes see Hunter 1996, 191, esp. on Anthia having wandered on earth and sea at Hld. 5.14.1. See also Tagliabue 2012, 25. 895 X. Eph. 5.4.6. 896 X. Eph. 2.12.2. 897 X. Eph. 2.9.4, 2.11.4. 898 X. Eph. 2.13.2, (Lampon) ἔλεγέ τε ὡς ἀεί τινος Ἁβροκόμου μέμνηται ἡ κόρη. ὁ δὲ (Habrocomes) αὑτὸν ὅστις ἦν οὐ λέγει. Murnaghan 1987, 89–90 on Oysseus.



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respective love tales. Yet only at the very end does Hippothous remember that he left something out that would make sense of Habrocomes’ story.899 The emphasis on this omitted detail reminds readers of Chariton’s recognitive quest of Callirhoe and the formulaic ‘everything … but’ (πάντα … μόνον) phrase. Hippothous’ tale deals with the capture of a beautiful girl who was ‘the same age as you (Habrocomes) and said she was from your homeland.’900 During this short description which includes beauty, age and country, Habrocomes instantly recognises his beloved Anthia as being Hippothous’ victim. He then rushes to exclaim, ‘You saw my Anthia, Hippo­ thous!’901 Like Chaereas, Habrocomes is a hasty reader, interfering in the narrative and focusing on the information related to the object of his desire.902 His detective-like quest is a collection of partial recognition scenes, a catalogue of the whereabouts of his beloved and of the evidence regarding her faithfulness. The most complete revision of Anthia’s tale comes to life in Chrysion’s summary. The old woman tells Habrocomes and Hippothous the (by then) famous local tale about Anthia’s and Perilaus’ disastrous wedding, described as pathos:903 3 9.5–7: ‘Listen strangers to an erotic tale (πάθος) that happened not long ago in the city. One of the most prominent men in the city, Perilaus … went out to hunt for robbers and brought back some he had captured, together with a beautiful girl, whom he persuaded to marry him. Everything was ready for the marriage. She came into the bridal chamber, and either because she was mad or because she was in love with someone else (εἴτε μανεῖσα εἴτε ἄλλου τινὸς ἐρῶσα), she drank a poison she had somehow obtained. This is how it is said she died.’ Hippothous listened and said, ‘This is the girl that Habrocomes is looking for!’ Habrocomes was now listening to the tale but had been too depressed to notice. But at length and with difficulty he leapt up when he heard Hippothous and exclaimed: ‘Now it is clear (νῦν μὲν σαφῶς τέθνηκεν) that Anthia is dead! Perhaps her tomb is here and the body is still intact.’ He asked the old woman Chrysion to bring him to Anthia’s tomb and show him the body. But she cried aloud: ‘This is the saddest part of the poor girl’s story. Perilaus certainly gave her a sumptuous burial and provided her grave with ornaments, but pirates found out what was buried with her, opened the grave, took the treasure, and spirited away the body. And on 899 X. Eph. 3.3.3, ἄλλο διήγημα παρῆλθον. 900 X. Eph. 3.3.4. 901 X. Eph. 3.3.5, ἔτι λέγοντος αὐτοῦ ἀνεβόησεν Ἁβροκόμης. For the immediate recognition on this occasion see also Montiglio 2012, 58. 902 Montiglio 2012, 58, observes ‘the quickness of a lover’s eye’ in the cases of Habrocomes and Chaereas. 903 Reardon 1989, 152 translates πάθος as ‘tragic event’. It may be that Xenophon here alludes to Chariton’s opening where the tale of Callirhoe is described as πάθος ἐρωτικόν 1.1.1, and later, the report of her (apparent) death is also spread through Φήμη δὲ ἄγγελος τοῦ πάθους in 1.5.3. Tilg 2010a, 245–249, although discusses the importance of rumour in spreading such pathos-tales does not include Xenophon in his analysis. Probably the best translation of the passage is Morgan 1993, 216 ‘love affairs’ like the stories found in Parthenius’ Erotica pathemata; Reardon reads ‘tragic event’ but Trzaskoma 2010 ‘sad story.’

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that account Perilaus is searching far and wide (πολλὴ καὶ μεγάλη ζήτησις).’ When he heard this, Habrocomes tore his tunic to shreds and in a loud voice mourned Anthia’s chaste and noble death, and her unhappy disappearance afterwards.

The whole episode is reminiscent of Callirhoe’s forced acceptance of Dionysius’ proposal, but Xenophon’s heroine is no adulteress,904 so the explanation offered by Chrysion does not cast any dark shadows on Anthia’s reputation. Like a keen reader, Chrysion tries to find grounds for her decision, which, although known to the external reader, is admittedly unknown to her. Chrysion fills in the parts she does not know and her interpretation illustrates careful empathy with the protagonist of her tale: to the immediate, easy explanation that ‘she died becaused by madness,’905 she opposes in the second, and thus stronger, hypothesis that the girl may have been enamoured of someone else.906 This later suggestion is closer to the more romantic scenarios where Callirhoe, for example, is presented as being more eager to choose death than marriage.907 Chrysion’s only gap in the tale is the Eudoxus part, which is of course not for her the most important – she mentions that the girl got hold of the medicine ‘somehow’ but cannot propose an explanation for it. In the second part of the story Chrysion introduces the motif of the ‘spirited away’, or of the quest (ζήτησις) of the abducted, lover – here it is the dead body of Anthia that has disappeared – who is pursued by the husband, namely Perilaus. Habrocomes, for his part, is immersed in his own sorrows and only able to ‘recognise’ Anthia after Hippothous’ interpretation. Hearing the news of her suicide, Habrocomes is quick to believe his wife truly deceased, as opposed to his earlier suspicions. ‘Now,’ he says, she is ‘really’ dead, and he expects to find at least the tomb as evidence of both her death and her (and their mutual) tale.908 904 X. Eph. 2.13.7, Perilaus, like Dionysius, is single (although not widowed with a child) and suggests to Anthia that she become ‘his wife and mistress of the household and (mother of) his children.’ An interesting detail is that Perilaus seems aware of the existence of Habrocomes, supposedly known only to Eudoxus, Anthia’s confidant (3.7.3), while Dionysius does not learn about Chaereas until later in the story. 905 Cf. Women’s irrational or overemotional outbursts are often attributed – by their male partners, audiences, relatives – to madness; see Gerolemou 2011 on women’s madness in Greek tragedy and its social construction. 906 This Chrysion might have known it from Perilaus’ monologue that displays knowledge of Anthia’s previous marriage, X. Eph. 3.7.3. 907 This is another novelistic theme that owes much to the universal lore, e.g. tales like AT.311.2.1 ‘Girl dies instead of marrying a man she does not love’. Cf. Char. 2.8.1, Dionysius is aware that Callirhoe prefers death to remarrying, and in 6.6.5 Callirhoe threatens to commit suicide on a couple of occasions rather than be raped by the King, thus proving her faithfulness to Chaereas. For suicide as a characteristic feature of the novel see Perkins 2009, 78. 908 X. Eph. 3.9.7, ἀλλὰ νῦν μὲν σαφῶς τέθνηκεν Ἀνθία.



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The phrase ‘νῦν ... σαφῶς’ is a metaliterary marker that demonstrates the clash between the expectations of the external and embedded reader – here, those of Habrocomes – that have failed. However, the lack of a tomb and especially of the corpse is an indication that the end, perhaps even an unhappy one, is still to come. The disappearance of her body is described in terms that recall Motif B1, abduction: he mentions characteristically that she is lost (to him) even after her death and he suspects a robber, enamoured of her, of carrying away her corpse, thus re-enacting the never-ending cycle of seduction motifs.909 We also recall that Chaereas too expressed his astonishment at the disappearance of Callirhoe’s body in similar mythical terms.910 By alluding to the Helen megatext and the abduction of the Beauty, Habrocomes shows some faint traces of hope of recovering at least her physical remains, while her suicide is already a sign of her chastity. In what follows, Habrocomes abandons his official search together with Hippothous and sails off alone to Alexandria in the forlorn hope that he may catch the pirates who stole her.911 The remark of his forlorn hope (ἐλπὶς δυστυχής), designating the motivation for the character’s further wanderings, characterises Habrocomes as a despairing reader whose actions no longer make sense when considered alongside the cues of the text.912 Habrocomes leaps into an interminable quest, having no real focus but criss-crossing earth and sea until he should learn anything at all about Anthia, as he confesses to his host in Sicily, Aegialus. Upon hearing Aegialus’ love tale of undying love for a now-mummified but at some point beautiful companion, Thelxinoe, Habrocomes realises that his readerly role is bound up in the never-ending quest: ‘Now I have truly learnt that true love has no age boundary.’913 The ‘end of love’ and the ‘end of age’ seem entangled with what could be a metaliterary comment regarding Motif C (the quest) and the ‘end’ of the story: if love does not end, then the quest for the beloved does not end, and thus the story cannot end either – at least not before the ‘ever-after’. That the quest for Anthia is 909 X. Eph. 3.10.1, ‘You have been unluckily lost after your death. Which robber desired you so much that that he lusts after you although dead?’ 910 Char. 3.3.5, evoking the rapes of Semele, Ariadne, and the wedding of Thetis, alongside the Helen megatext. 911 X. Eph. 2 14.4, ἤλπιζε … τὴν Ἀνθίαν εὑρήσειν, 3.10.5, ἐλπὶς δυστυχής, to Italy in 4.4.2, in Sicily 5 1 12, after listening to Aegialus’ tale, he expresses the wish to find Anthia, even though dead (πότε ἀνευρήσω κἂν νεκράν), 5 10.4, ἤλπιζε … καὶ περὶ Ἀνθίας τι πυθέσθαι. 912 Habrocomes’ hope functions as a metaliterary comment on other occasions too: early in the novel he is optimistic that he will find Anthia alive (μικρὰ εὔελπις ἦ, 2.8.2) or catch up with the bandits (ἐλπίζων, 3.10.4). Finding no clues at Nucerium, he manages to hold onto his wits if not his hopes (εἰ μὲν εἶχόν τινα ἐλπίδα εὑρήσειν σε, 5.8.4), and lasts at least until Ephesus (καρτέρησον, 5.10.5). 913 X. Eph. 5.1.12, ἔρως ἀληθινὸς ὅρον ἡλικίας οὐκ ἔχει. For the metaliterary character of this embedded tale see Whitmarsh 2011, 1–16, 19.

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the main engine of the story can be observed in Habrocomes’ hesitation to return to Ephesus. Having lost all trace of Anthia, even of her dead body, his life is void of all meaning, ‘for this woman was the purpose of his wandering and his whole existence.’914 The word ὑπόθεσις, translated both as ‘purpouse’ and ‘plot’, here not only signifies the reason for his travels but also alludes to the plot of the novel at a metaliterary level. Wandering becomes the purpose of Habrocomes’ adventures as well as of the narrative, echoing thus the recognitive quest the reader is urged to undertake according to the Penelope/Helen pattern. Hippothous’ lucky reading Habrocomes drags Hippothous into his search for Anthia, eventually making him the most successful reader.915 When Habrocomes leaves, Hippothous continues the search for his friend’s wife. At the Ethiopian border, Hippothous recaptures Anthia but this time, despite the information he already has, he is notably unable to recognise her.916 Moreover, compounding the embedded reader’s lack of skill, the plot thickens as the girl does not reveal her real identity but presents herself as a certain Memphitis from Egypt, not Anthia from Ephesus.917 Unlike in the Odyssey, where the hero memorably wins over the Cyclops and the suitors by offering various false names,918 the misidentification of Anthia leads to further complications and appears to impede the recognitive efforts of the embedded audience. Thus, although Hippothous partially recognises the girl from his previous adventures he is still unable to identify her as the lost wife of his friend, and has her put to death for a second time. By the beginning of Book 5, Hippothous has lost track of both Habrocomes and Anthia. It is only by pure coincidence that, upon arriving in Tarentum in Sicily, he meets the beautiful protagonist at the pimp’s house. Immediately, Hippothous recognises her as the girl from Memphis, condemned to die in the dog den, and is 914 X. Eph. 5.8.2, τοῦ βίου παντὸς καὶ τῆς πλάνης ἡ ὑπόθεσις. Cf. Char. 6.8.1, ‘a plot of novel events (καινοτέρων πραγμάτων ὑπόθεσιν).’ Reardon translates: ‘events took a quite different turn’; Ach. Tat. 7.5.1, ‘this new plot of disasters’ (καινὴν ὑπόθεσιν συμφορῶν); Hld. 9.24.4, ‘Our entire story-plot’ (τῆς ὅλης καθ’ ἡμᾶς ὑποθέσεως). 915 We saw at Char. 8.1 9 that Polycharmus also contributes to the recognition/reunion of the lovers but his role is not so prominent as that of Hippothous. 916  X. Eph. 4.6.3. 917 X. Eph. 4.3.6. For the complexity of disguise see Perry 1967, 289 and Montiglio 2012, 55–56 ‘Xenophon possibly felt that a recognition between Hippothous and Anthia at this point risked short-circuiting the story and bringing the novel to a premature closure; and in order for more adventures to happen, he blinded Anthia to Hippothous’ identity and vice versa and added the name change to secure the mistake.’ 918 Murnaghan 1987, 85.



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amazed at her good luck.919 Surprisingly, Anthia does not recognise Hippothous at all, although he put her twice to death.920 This difficulty in recognising Hippothous may hint at the convention of the genre that wants only mutually-infatuated lovers to recognise one another, even under the most unexpected circumstances.921 Yet, when Hippothous meets her for the third time, he suddenly expresses desire for Anthia, which he had not done in previous encounters.922 His desire is of course a threat to the happy ending, but it may also have a metaliterary meaning as well: it was out of implicit erotic desire for Habrocomes that Hippothous joined him in his search for Anthia.923 Equally, it is partially due to desire for Anthia that Hippothous is able to push the plot forward. If recognition is reserved only for the pair of lovers, by inserting Hippothous’ desire at this time of the plot the novel turns this recognition scene into an imitation of a couple-reunion motif. Hippothous needs to become emotionally involved in the story to read it accurately.924 In order to avoid his advances, Anthia decides to tell Hippothous the full story about her wedding, her wanderings and her vows to Habrocomes; that is the first part of the story, since Hippothous, in recognising her as the Memphitis, knows part of her Egyptian adventures already. The word πάντα, 925 everything, so crucial in Callirhoe’s recognition, reminds the reader of the embedded audience’s limited access to the information upon which the recognition process is built, and contrasts this ‘true’ version with the false story that Anthia delivered to the pimp earlier. This is the third time that Anthia reveals the whole truth, after Lampon and Eudoxus,926 but now her interlocutor is not a total stranger, at least when it comes to narratives. At last, Hippothous recognises her as the wife of his best friend and keeps her chaste (ἁγνή) at his home, while initiating a search for Habrocomes.927 The reader 919 X. Eph. 5.9.3, καὶ ὁρᾷ τὴν Ἀνθίαν καὶ γνωρίζει. 920 X. Eph. 5.9.6, ἐγνώρισε δὲ αὐτὸν οὐδαμῶς; and again in 5 9.8, ἀλλὰ σὲ οὐ γινώσκω τὸ σύνολον. 921 Cf. Montiglio 2012, 55–56. 922 Jones 2012, 200 claims that this is an ephemeral desire (epithymia), nothing anywhere near the more permanent feelings of Hippothous for Hyperanthes. Montiglio 2012, 56 compares Hippothous’ discovery of Anthia at the brothel with both comic and Christian texts and argues for the first, with contamination from the latter. 923 For Hippothous’ feelings for Habrocomes see Schmeling 1980, 52; for the parallel, namely falling for Anthia too see Montiglio 2012, 57. 924 For the contrast between Habrocomes’ true love and Hippothous’ lust see Montiglio 2012, 58. 925 X. Eph. 5.6.7, πάντα ἤδη μεμαθηκότα τὰ κατ’ ἐμέ. 926 To Lampon 2.9.4 she summarises her name, aristocratic origin, her marriage, and her capture. Later Anthia begs Eudoxus, 3.5.8, to report everything (πάντα τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἀποδημίαν) to her parents in Ephesus, now that he has learned it from her. 927 See Montiglio 2012, 58 on the symmetry of Hippothous’ meeting with Habrocomes and Anthia.

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thus rests assured that since Hippothous has succeeded in finding Anthia he will eventually succeed in recovering Habrocomes.928 Hippothous’ role therefore is of metaliterary importance for the interpretation of the plot. He embodies an ideal, passionate and engaged reader who needs to fall in love with both characters of the tale before following them and eventually recognising them. As long as he has no emotions for Anthia, he is unable to fulfil his role as the go-between and he functions as a seducer, thrice putting the heroine in danger. Desire, one of the main ingredients in the recognition scene is responsible for the recognitive journey of the reader, and is materialised vividly in Hippothous’ engagement with both protagonists. Hence he is neither another bandit nor a suitor enamoured with the female beauty but a reader who is looking carefully for clues, although the results clash with his own expectations of the plot.929 Unlike Dionysius in Chariton, who impedes the reunion of the lovers out of his own lust for Callirhoe, Hippothous relinquishes his own desire and expectations of/from Anthia demonstrating good knowledge of the constraints of a genre that wants each new suitor to start another ‘competition-seduction-and-quest’ pattern. With Anthia under the protection of such a trustworthy companion, the narrative is now ripe for the final recognition to occur. So the last shall be first, and the first be last 930 Anthia’s identification by Hippothous accelerates the endgame of the couple’s recognition process. The first recognition results from a reading in which the verbs ‘read’ and ‘recognise’ are fused, as the recognition of the protagonists relies upon inscriptions:931 for example, Leucon and Rhode, who are left out of the narrative in the very first books, learn en route to Ephesus that the parents of their masters have committed suicide because of grief. Instead of returning to Ephesus they decide to remain in Rhodes, in hope of some news but without actively looking for their masters.932 It is no coincidence that the name of Rhode (Ῥόδη) echoes the name of the island where the couple’s recognition takes place, Rhodes (Ῥόδος), and it may have been one of several hints to the reader that this is where the recognition scene will take place. 928 Montiglio 2012, 55 in a similar vein. 929 On desire and the ending of the Greek novel see mainly Whitmarsh 2011, 138–41. 930 Mt 20:16. 931 For the importance of the inscriptions see Morgan 2007a, 28. For the metaliterary character of this passage see also Whitmarsh 2011, 60–61. For the ‘graphical translation’ of Anthia’s and Habrocomes’ tale in the form of an aretalogy see also Bierl 2006, 80–81. 932 X.Eph. 5.6.4, μέχρις οὗ τι περὶ τῶν δεσποτῶν πύθωνται. It would have been unacceptable for them, being slaves, to return to Ephesus, since their masters were still missing. They opt therefore for their convenience.



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The former slaves and now freedmen offer to Helios a golden pillar inscribed with their masters’ names. At a metaliterary level this votive pillar is another embedded narrative representing the novel qua written narrative. Thus the final recognition is a procedure of reading for both the embedded and the external audiences of the book. Habrocomes sees the votive offering, reads it, and recognises the authors.933 Fortune contrives that Leucon and Rhode happen to be at the temple at this very moment, but they do not recognise the man lamenting before their offering.934 They need to engage him in small talk, and he introduces himself as the pitiful Habrocomes. Even with this personal introduction, Leucon and Rhode are amazed, and they ‘gradually recover and recognise him by his appearance and his voice, from what he said and from his references to Anthia.’935 Anthia’s story, then, is the cornerstone of the recognition process and not any other sign of identification. Leucon and Rhode are granted another opportunity to ‘read’ another part of the story of Anthia, just as Habrocomes ‘reads’ his own tale engraved in the dedications offered by Leucon and Rhode. This time it is Anthia who laments next to their oblation, leaving her lock of hair936 as a votive offering of her own with an inscription of her name and that of Habrocomes, thus providing the next chapter to the inscribed tale. Leucon and Rhode first see the hair, then they read the votive offering; a day later they encounter the unknown woman in the temple weeping and deduce her identity:937 They came and saw Anthia but as yet did not recognise her (ἔτι ἄγνωστος αὐτοῖς), but they put everything together (συμβάλλουσι δὲ πάντα): the girl’s love, her tears, the offerings, the names and her appearance, and in this way they gradually recognised her. But she wondered who they were and what they wanted, for she never expected (οὐ γὰρ ἤλπισεν) to see Leucon and Rhode … when Anthia heard this (that Habrocomes is in Rhodes) she was amazed at the news. She came to herself with difficulty, recognised them (γνωρίσασα) … and learnt (μανθάνει) in the greatest detail all about Habrocomes.

The recognition of Anthia and Habrocomes by Leucon and Rhode is therefore a painstaking, slow-motion operation. Unlike Hippothous, the two slaves, worried 933 X. Eph. 5.10.7, ἀναγνοὺς οὖν καὶ γνωρίσας τοὺς ἀναθέντας. In Hom. Od. 8 92 Odysseus also is recognised while laments at his own story, Demodocus’ ‘Trojan horse’. Similarily, Habrocomes’ tears upon reading the inscription initiate his recognition. Yet, before arguing for an allusion, one could also consider this as being part of a more broadly employed ‘delayed recognition’ story pattern. 934 X. Eph. 5.10 9, γνωρίζουσι μὲν οὐχί. 935 X. Eph. 5.10 9. On the slow recognition process see also Montiglio 2012, 47–49, 63–64. 936 Anthia’s golden hair (1.2.6), is a key to her first recognition by Habrocomes (3.3.5), κόμη ξανθή. Tokens such as hair might echo Orestes’ lock in S. El. 871–919, Montiglio 2012, 51, note 133. 937 For Xenophon’s knowledge of Aristotelian recognition categories see Montiglio 2012, 47–49.

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as they may be, are not really inclined towards their masters. It is also not a coincidence that the masters are unable to recognise their slaves, because they are not emotionally engaged in this recognition. Anthia and Habrocomes, as readers of their own tale, only hope and wish to find each other. Anthia, we are told earlier, never expected to meet Leucon and Rhode again, therefore she is unable to recognise them.938 Once more, recognition, we are implicitly told, is about expectations that are shaped through a longer procedure of anticipation on the part of the internal and the external reader(s). Rhode and Leucon, at a metaliterary level, are like those readers that skip pages, rushing from the first to the last ones, hoping to discover the wished-for ending. Yet, because they have missed out on the details, and although present in the recognition scene, they have difficulties and are as a consequence slow in the last recognitive part of the story. These ‘first readers’ therefore come last, ἔσχατοι, when it comes to interpretation and need more than one clue before reaching the conclusion.939 The opposite is true for Anthia and Habrocomes, the main protagonists and chief readers of the tale, whose immediate recognition is the climax of the ending. Habrocomes’ hopes are renewed when Rhode and Leucon report Anthia’s offering of hair at the temple of Helios.940 In the long-anticipated delayed recognition scene between Anthia and Habrocomes, the theme of hope and the subsequent narrative expectations are again emphasised as being integral to the recognitive journey: 5.13.3: When they saw each other they recognised each other at once (εὐθὺς ἀνεγνώρισαν), for that was their fervent desire (τοῦτο γὰρ ἐβούλοντο αὐτοῖς αἱ ψυχαί); they embraced each other and they fell to the ground.

This is a typical novelistic recognition scene, which bears only mild resemblance to Penelope’s reluctant recognition of Odysseus and Chaereas’ gradual recognition.941 It is a scene in which both lovers collapse into each other’s arms without question, as befits an ideal romance and as in the climactic reunion in the Callirhoe. Anthia’s cross-examination of Habrocomes’ faithfulness takes place only later in the bedroom scene, unlike the case of Penelope, but much like that of Callirhoe. 938 X. Eph. 5 12.4, οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε Λεύκωνα καὶ Ῥόδην ἰδεῖν ἤλπισεν, as opposed to her expectation regarding Habrocomes, e.g. 4.5.6, ἀλλ’ ἔτι ὑπὲρ Ἁβροκόμου τι ἤλπιζε, moreover in 5.4 11, Anthia has a clear oracle from Apis that foretells her reunion with Habrocomes. 939 Cf. at X. Eph. 5.10.9, οὓς ἰδεῖν εὔχομαι μετὰ Ἀνθίαν, Habrocomes expresses the wish to see Leucon and Rhode after seeing his beloved one. 940 X. Eph. 5 12.3. 941 For this scene see Tagliabue 2012, 25–27, who argues for explicit allusions to both the Odyssey and to Chariton. That said the emotion load of the recognition and the immediate reaction of both lovers distinguishes them from Odysseus and Penelope, see Montiglio 2012, 50–51.



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As in Chariton, we are allowed a glimpse into the couple’s bedroom during their most intimate recognition, whereas in the Odyssey the cross-checking of the host’s identity takes place in public, in front of Telemachus and Euryclea. Having no other ‘special signs’, like Odysseus’ immobile bed or the precious ‘virginity signs’ that appear in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, Anthia and Habrocomes are eager to convince each other of their fidelity using secret verbal signs and their vows of chastity, because this was their fervent wish.942 This shows, in my view, the slight irony inherent in the traditional mythical and novelistic topos that demonstrates the frailty of the generic couple recognition rule, both at a metaliterary as well as at a metapoetic/metamythological level. Unlike in the Odyssey Xenophon’s oaths are not clear indications of the couple’s faithfulness; yet unlike Chariton, Anthia’s loyalty to Habrocomes is certainly beyond doubt. In Xenophon, clear evidence (Penelope) or rhetorical manipulation (Helen/Callirhoe) are replaced by desire and hope. It is these emotions that build expectation and finally lead to the conclusion. In this respect, in both Chariton and Xenophon the logic of the narrative is rooted in the anticipation of the readers, both embedded and not, who despite the obstacles patiently endure the investigation of the identity, location and chastity of the characters, provided that this endeavour brings about the longed for happy ending. But this ending, just as in the Odyssey and in the Callirhoe, is not fulfilled with the mutual recognition of the two spouses but is followed by a coda that leads the narrative back to Ephesus, the city, where everything started.943 In doing so, the Ephesiaca suggests that the ideal ending of both the epic and the novel is part of a broader recognition and return pattern and the actual telos corresponds with the return to the original social milieu. However, as opposed to the Odyssey and the Callirhoe, the Ephesiaca do not culminate with the protagonists’ reunion with their families. As opposed to Laertes, the Syracusans, and Hermocrates, both Anthia’s and Habrocomes’ parents, Megamedes and Euippe and Lycomedes and Themisto respectively, have all died in despair, like Odysseus’ mother Anticlea.944 These parents show a kind of negative readerly paradigm as they were not able to believe nor able to wait, until the fulfilment of the last line of the oracle: ‘but still after their sufferings a better fate is in store.’ Is that a touch of Mythenkritik or of rationalizing?945 Since Hermocrates in Chariton appears too in the final recognition scenes why is it that Anthia’s and Habrocomes’ parents are all absent? Rather 942 X. Eph. 5.15.1, ἐπεὶ τοῦτο ἤθελον. 943 Whitmarsh 2011, 60, ‘Closure is not a state but a process.’ 944 Hom. Od. 11 172–173, 11.198–203. 945 Moulton 1974, 161–164, on Hom. Od. 24.205–411, Laertes’ recognition of Odysseus. For a comparison with of the dead parents with Anticlea see Whitmarsh 2011, 142, n. 17.

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than a revision of the ending of the Odyssey, I believe, Xenophon’s last chapters eliminate the parent-child relationship from the novelistic scenario, in favour of an ending illustrating the power of love. Whereas Chaereas needs Hermocrates’ blessings to return victorious in Syracuse, Anthia and Habrocomes need only their love for each other. Thus, to some extent, the return theme of Xenophon deconstructs both the mythical as well as the novelistic expectations focusing on the return of the protagonists alone. In summary Xenophon’s distancing from the mythical megatext allows for a variety of other paradigms to enter the sequence of the motifs, which in their turn may be seen as an alternative response to those novels that make ample use of the mythical material, such as Chariton’s, without relinquishing the mythical altogether. Examples of such alternative treatments of motifs that bear traces of folk literature with respect to Motif B2 are: the successful supplication of the suitor/would-be rapist who eventually pities his victim (Lampon, Perilaus, Polyidus and Amphinomus), which are not reported in traditional myth; killing the would be rapist, which is another way of renewing Motif B2 (Anchialus), is also not a traditional mythical practice but recalls other Near Eastern narratives, such as that of Judith and/or Sinonis; Anthia’s attempted suicide with a sleep drug, especially given the abundance of superficial, never-to-be-realised suicidel threats encountered in Chariton; further, her Scheintod due to a potion echoes vividly the amount of folklore motifs found in the novels. More conventional and myth-related seem to be Anthia’s lies regarding her consecration to Isis, or her faking of epilepsy, which may be regarded as creative adjustments to the Penelope/Helen megatext and especially to Penelope’s wit in her effort to gain time and outwit the suitors (Motif B2). Equally, a Helen-Paris romance, ideally perceived, may be echoed in the geographic locations that Habrocomes and Anthia visit on their journey (Motif B1). However, by avoiding both the mythical (and also novelistic) reason for travelling – that is, elopement – and also Callirhoe’s novelistic reason for her transportation to Miletus, her Scheintod, Xenophon’s novel provides a new context for the Beauty’s wandering: in it, the narrative centres around Apollo’s oracle and has the plot guided by Providence. The novel also innovates with respect to Motif C in that the friend of the male protagonist eventually becomes more active and engaged in the recognition process than Habrocomes himself. Moreover, the reunion motif is always accompanied by a recognition, which centres on and reveals the chastity of both characters. The reunion scene, with lovemaking that recalls the one from the novel’s opening, can be viewed as both a metaliterary and a metamythological comment on the Odyssey and its contested ending. And just as in the epic and in Chariton the lovemaking



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scene is not the ending but is followed by a coda, in Xenophon the novel does not end with the couple’s reunion but with their return to Ephesus. At a metaliterary level, all characters seem to have an awareness of the plot in which they are involved: for example, Anthia’s increasing cognisance of the repetitiveness of the seduction patterns launched by Tyche makes her all the more prone to adhere to a feminine solution: promising but not fulfilling, a combination of Motifs B1 and B2. However, despite the successful defence of her chastity she is unable to avoid being transported to all possible destinations east and west, according to the whim of each of her suitors. Habrocomes’ expectations are also shaped by his recurrent searches and his (albeit forlorn) hopes of recovering his wife. Yet, the title of most careful and successful reader goes to Hippothous, who, as both an actor in and a reader of the novel, succeeds in his quest to retrieve the two threads of Anthia’s and Habrocomes’ adventures that were divided in Tyre. Thus, Hippothous proves a passionate reader who, by empathising – eventually – with both characters, is able to bring the story to its fortuitous finish.

3.4.3 Achilles Tatius Parody, irony and subversion are the main tools of Achilles Tatius’ narrator.946 Already in the programmatic mythical parallels enlisted by Clitophon in the Introduction of this book, both Penelope and Helen represent the embodiment of misfortune: ‘the fiery torch, lit for Helen’s marriage, lit another fire hurled against Troy! The wedding of the chaste Penelope was the death of so many suitors!’947 Thus Achilles Tatius’ novel begins with a peculiarity: Clitophon advertises his adventures as a ‘tale of woe because of Eros’,948 but, whereas one would expect a devastating love scenario, the immediate narrated events do not fulfil these heightened mythical expectations. Clitophon’s tale starts with his upcoming arranged wedding to his half-sister, Calligone, a plot recalling the opening scenarios of New Comedy. Clitophon, upon his cousin Leucippe’s arrival, no longer has eyes for another woman despite his former engagement. What is more, the name of Clitophon’s wife-to-be suspiciously recalls both the protagonist of the Callirhoe and of the fragmentary novel Calligone, therefore exhibiting the novelistic potential of the liaison. On the other hand, Leucippe’s name bears mythical 946 Cf. revising Durham 1938, who thinks the novel is a parody of Heliodorus. Also Fusillo 1991 (1989), 97–108, Billault 1998b, and in various places in Morales 2004. 947 Ach. Tat. 1.8.4. 948 Ach. Tat. 1.2.1, τοσαύτας ὕβρεις ἐξ ἔρωτος παθών. On the epic tragic background of these tales of woe see Most 1989.

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and Platonic associations that might bias her characterization.949 Thus at the very opening the reader is confronted with a wide selection of both mythical and novelistic intertexts, with hints of New Comedy.950 Just as in comic plots the wedding between half-siblings functions only as an impediment to the real lovers’ marriage and is never expected to be realised, the reader has no high hopes for Clitophon’s engagement.951 That said, the otherwise mythical name Leucippe does not suggest a novelistic plot either. Things take a more complex turn when the characters are foced to move out of the household, and the subsequent comic readerly expectations, and are thrown into the novelistic world of rival suitors and adventure. Callisthenes’ misrecognition Callisthenes is a reckless youth from Byzantium who desires Leucippe and is responsible for the first Helen pattern of the novel.952 Once his proposal is rejected by Sostratus, he decides to follow her to Tyre in order to abduct her. There are many hints of the Helen myth, starting with the character’s origins: Callisthenes’ journey from Byzantium, a city near Ilion, for the sake of a Beauty is a theme well-embedded in the Helen megatext; moreover the destination is not Sparta in the west but eastern Tyre, which was nonetheless associated with the Paris’ and Helen’s and the Menelaus’ and Helen’s adventures before or after the conquest of Troy.953 Furthermore, we learn that Callisthenes fell in love with the beauti-

949 See Morales 2004, 42, note 34, 56, 66 esp. on the influence from Plato’s Phaedrus. See also Anderson 2000, 153, for folkloric origins of the name, like Snow White. Leucippe in myth is: one of Persephone’s friends and an Oceanid in hCer. 418; a certain Leucippe in Anacreon Fr. 63; the mother of Priam (Pherecydes, FGrHi 3 F 136c); the wife of Euenor in Pl. Cri. 113d; mother of Aegyptus in Thrasyllus’ Aegyptiaca, fr. 2; one of Minyas’ daughters Plu. Mor. 299e6; a woman dressed as a man in Ant. Lib. Met. 41 and Hyginus 189, 190. For her name as novelistic see De Temmerman 2014, 80 n. 119. 950 Ach. Tat. 1.3.2. In Char. 8.4.6, Callirhoe advises Dionysius to marry the two half-siblings excluding a possible love romance for her son but strengthening his status in Dionysius’ household but diminishing the chances for a romance. 951 Hunter 1989, 12–13, Lowe 2002, 192–194 and Lape 2004, 27–27, New Comedy does not promote half-sibling marriage, which was a practice adopted by aristocracy. For comic elements in this novel see Brethes 2007. 952 Morales 2004, 88–89 mentions Alcibiades and his passion for Medonitis, whom he had never seen before, as a model for Callisthenes. However besides the historical analogue there is the mythical precedent of Paris’ love for Helen. 953 Sidon, the neighbouring city, is part of Helen’s adventures with Paris as well as with Menelaus as described in the Il. 6.289–290; Tyre appears in the Od. 4.618. Helen’s presence in Phoenicia brought forth other romantic outcomes: e.g. King Solomon married the daughter of the Phoenician king, Hiram (Εἴραμος), during the visit of Menelaus and Helen, Tat. Or. adv. Gr. 58 and



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ful protagonist just through hearsay, never having seen her before.954 Such is the sophistic revisions of the myth, as is the case with Paris in Dio’s Trojan Discourse as well as with Achilles in Philostratus’ version in the Heroicus.955 Thus Clitophon builds here on a theme that was part of the megatext, with the sole exception that Callisthenes is presented – at least in the beginning – as the villainous suitor. Yet to further perplex the readerly expectations his name, especially the first compound, suggests to someone familiar with the genre a potential union between the two Calli- characters, Calligone and Callisthenes. Callisthenes and Clitophon offer two different versions of Leucippe’s stunning beauty:956 the Byzantine youth falls for her only by hearing of her beauty, whereas the Tyrian falls in love at first sight. The two readings, and subsequent suitor themes, are contrasted further since Callisthenes’ hastiness makes him prone to misread crucial elements of the plot: 2.16.1: Now Callisthenes had never seen Leucippe, so when he saw my sister, Calligone, and recognised (ἐγνώρισε) Sostratus’ wife with her, he thought she was Leucippe. He was so struck with the sight of her beauty that he made no inquires (πυθόμενος οὐδέν) but pointed her out to his most trusted servant: he told him to gather a band of men, and explained to him in detail how to carry out the kidnapping.

In his hastiness he recognises only Sostratus’ wife, and on this evidence, without even inquiring further (πυθόμενος οὐδέν), he decides to abduct the false ‘Leucippe’ in a tale that recalls the replacement of Helen by a cloud, a Nephele, in Euripides’ eponymous play. The story of Clitophon’s half-sister bears further resemblance to the Helen megatext in more than one respect: Calligone’s physical person is fused with a name that is not hers, recalling thus the oscillation between name and body in the Euripidean version of the myth.957 In abducting Calligone instead, Callisthenes gets the betrothed girl, not the single one, thus reversing the rape prefigured in the Europa painting into a variation of the Helen megatext.958 Callisthenes becomes a kind of Paris who threatens the wedding of Clem. Alex. Strom. 1.21.114. Thus the double abduction theme, that of Calligone by Callisthenes and that of Leucippe and Clitophon, might have some resonance on local lore too. 954 Morales 2004, 94 on viewing, and akolasia as part of the reading procedure. 955 D. Chrys. Or. 11.47 and Philsotr. Her. 54.3. 956 For the contrast between the two see Morales 2004, 88. On seeing and hearing, and especially Clitophon’s superfluous vision, see Montiglio 2012, 75–76. 957 E. Hel. 588, τοὔνομα γένοιτ’ ἂν πολλαχοῦ, τὸ σῶμα δ’ οὔ, see Laplace 2007, 575 who rightly argues, that she suffers just like Helen from the oscillation between the ‘bruit du nom et réalité visible᾽ and here follows the famous article by Solmsen 1934. 958 For the programmatic role of the Europa ekphrasis for Calligone’s and Leucippe’s sea adventures see Bartsch 1989, 54 and 63; Morales 2004, 47–50 for a more complex transcultural

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the two half-siblings.959 Moreover, because Callisthenes is presented here as a pirate, and later we learn of a certain slave trader with the same name,960 the abduction of Calligone also exhibits traces of novelistic reworkings of the seduction/abduction motif of the Helen megatext. That said, contrary to all pattern expectations Clitophon is simply glad that the wedding will not be taking place any time soon, and instead of launching a quest for his abducted bride he decides to enjoy the time with his cousin:961 2.18.5–6: When they reached Sarepta, Callisthenes received their signal from a distance and sailed out, took the girl aboard, and headed for the high seas. I breathed a sigh of relief at this curious solution to the problem of my wedding, yet I was not without grief at the fate that had befallen my sister.

Callisthenes’ abduction of Calligone eventually comes to a happy ending, as we learn, but only in the final chapters of the book, so the negative mythical resonance of the kidapping/rape looms large over the whole narrative.962 Contrary to mythical expectations but according to novelistic constraints, Callisthenes’ desire does not overwhelm him: he respects Calligone’s virginity even after recognising her as ‘not Leucippe’963 and marries her only after proving his skills in the war of the Illyrians against Byzantium and obtaining her father’s permission. Therefore, the ‘Calligone novella’ is based on the Penelope/Helen pattern from which Motifs A and B are the prominent ones, whereas Motif D2, recognition, is thoroughly deconstructed, since Callisthenes needs to recognise his beautiful captive as ‘not Leucippe’. B1 is soon to be transformed into B2, not because of Calligone’s wits but because of Callisthenes’ sudden change of character. Once he has been proclaimed an equal of Sostratus, and after the war, he confesses to Sostratus the rape of Calligone and asks him for a ‘reference letter’ for his future evaluation of the opening ekphrasis, assimilating Leucippe to Selene, Astarte and Aphrodite, depending on the visual cultural stock of the narrator/narratee. 959 Ach. Tat. 2.12.3 (allusions to Zeus’ eagle), 2.15.4 (allusions to the Europa myth). 960 Ach. Tat. 2 17.3, φύσει πειρατικός. The name Callisthenes appears once more as that of Leucippe’s slave dealer. In examining this strange coincidence Repath 2006 comes to the conclusion that the biased information the reader receives from Sostratus does not raise the suspicion that Callisthenes may also have been, among other things, Leucippe’s slave dealer. 961 On cross-dressing and the likeness of Clitophon to Callisthenes’ bandits in 6.3.2 and Thersander’s effeminate behaviour in 8.9.2 see Jones 2012, 256. 962 Ach. Tat. 8.171–8.18.5. 963 Notice the brevity of Callisthenes’ ‘recognition’ of his mistake, which moves from the realisation of his error to his passion for the new girl: 8.17.3, ‘When Callisthenes learned (μαθών) during the voyage that she was not my daughter and that all his work had been a mistake, he loved Calligone nevertheless.’ Cf. Montiglio 2012, 74–75.



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father-in-law.964 Here, the resemblances with the Callirhoe must also be taken into consideration, since both Callisthenes and Chaereas undergo a radical transformation from violent, emotional lovers to distinguished generals and loving husbands.965 The subplot of the Calligone novella may therefore be seen as a metaliterary comment on the treatment of the Beauty abduction theme on both the mythical and fictional levels. On the one hand, it deconstructs the Helen pattern, skipping the motif of the husband’s quest and deforming the characteristic recognition/ reunion motif. Instead, it implements the pattern with an elaborate Motif A, which was a crucial part of the Penelope/Helen megatexts. On the other hand, the mythical pattern is implemented by the main themes of the novel, namely chastity and romance, since in the end, Callisthenes does not force Calligone but gives her the freedom of choice that allows her to fall gradually in love with him. Nonetheless, the lack of the initial coup de foudre weakens the story, despite the hints that the two Calli–stoi of the novella will eventually marry, and sets an example that is later adopted and adapted in the main pattern as well: like Callisthenes, Clitophon falls immediately for Leucippe (unbeknown to him the right girl!), but Leucippe, like Calligone, comes to love Clitophon only after a two-book-long courtship during which much peitho is required. Yet this function of peitho, well-known from Gorgias’ Encomium, as well as from the imperial visual representations of Helen, endangers the ideal novelistic prospects and hints to the possibility of a mythical outcome. Clitophon’s seduction of the Beauty Clitophon does not take much time grieving over the loss of his fiancée, much less searching for her. Even before Calligone is spirited away from the main plot, he attempts to persuade Leucippe regarding his feelings.966 Clitophon decides to slowly woo his beloved, first with a kiss, which she does not resist, even before Calligone’s kidnapping.967 Unlike the more manly abduction of ‘Leucippe’ by Callisthenes, Clitophon’s bravery is dependent upon his servant’s arrangements.968 964 Ach. Tat. 8 18.5. 965 The character transformation is pointed out by Hägg 1983 (1980), 53 and chiefly attributed to the ‘natural violence of youth’, see Jones 2006, 80. Abrupt character change is discussed in De Temmerman 2014, 108. 966 The seduction scene is analysed by Morales 2004, 81–82. 967 Ach. Tat. 2.7.7. 968 At Ach. Tat. 2.23.2 Satyrus, with a wine-drug, puts the faithful slave and watchdog of Leucippe’s mother to sleep, and Clitophon, like Odysseus in the Cyclops’ cave, is encouraged to penetrate Leucippe’s adyton. The house as an expression of patriarchal power is discussed in Whitmarsh 2010b, who also points out that, unlike other meeting scenes, Leucippe and Clitophon do not meet in public but at home.

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Thus, Clitophon asks Leucippe for more and arranges a more intimate rendez-vous where eloquence and persuation play a chief role: 2.19.1–2: ‘How long will we stop at mere kisses, dearest? The overture is delightful, but now let us add erotic grace notes. We can exchange promises to be faithful to each other (ἀνάγκην ἐπιθῶμεν πίστεως). Once Aphrodite has initiated us into her mysteries, no other power can contravene her will.’ By repeating this charm frequently enough it persuaded (ἐπέπεικεν) her to admit me to her bedroom at night.

This is doubtless one of the most outstanding examples of subverting the ideal novelistic rhetoric and stands as a metaliterary comment on the themes of ideal love and ideal mutual chastity.969 The passage recalls the traditional ‘oaths of fidelity’, so important in Xenophon, but placed outside the marriage chamber those claims are no longer powerful, binding or ideal. This non-ideal aspect is hinted behind the mention of necessity of faithfulness, ἀνάγκην πίστεως, that sounds so much different from the oaths Anthia and Habrocomes exchange. The first question the text poses concerns Leucippe’s virginity, and the evidence of the first books does not conform to the rules of the ‘ideal’ plot, since Leucippe puts up so little resistance to Clitophon’s plans and allows him to seduce her, just like Helen in some versions of the megatext. It is by novelistic coincidence only that Leucippe’s mother, Panthia, wakes up from an ominous dream and rushes into the supposedly secure bedroom, allowing Clitophon only a few seconds to escape and bringing about a hasty end to their rendez-vous.970 In the scene between mother and daughter, Panthia with a raised voice accuses her shameless daughter of being saved from war and rape only to lose her virginity to a slave.971 Leucippe, who was one step shy of losing her virginity to Clitophon, realises that her mother did not recognise her lover, and retaliates with a vehement defence of her virginity.972 Leucippe adds that she does not know whether the intruder was a ‘god (δαίμων), a hero (ἥρως), or a burglar (λῃστής).’ This remark shifts the action from the mythical back to the novelistic, since bandits are primary threats to a heroine’s virginity, and toys with paradigms

969 Morales 2004, 124; De Temmerman 2014, 166 on Clitophon’s preference for one-off sexual adventures rather than long-term relationships. Cf. Brethes 2007, 210, who argus that the book that Clitophon carries around with him in order to seduce/persuade Leucippe is a novel, thus he is aware of the novelistic conventions. 970 The Homeric setting demonstrates precisely how far removed Clitophon is from the epic Odysseus; cf. Morales 2004, 86 and Jones 2012, 124 on manliness and cowardice. 971 Ach. Tat. 2.24.4. Sleeping with slaves was a typical theme in Graeco-Roman mimes; see Easterling and Hall 2002, 199 and especially the Moecheutria. 972 Ach. Tat. 2.25.2, ‘Of one thing though I am sure, no one has disgraced my virginity.’



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available both from the mythical as well as the novelistic sphere.973 It is in defence of her suddenly rediscovered virginity that, to the reader’s great surprise at this reconfiguration of the novelistic expectations, Leucippe decides to elope with Clitophon to dodge her mother’s accusations: 2.30.2: Under the stress of so many afflictions, Leucippe did not put up with her mother’s attack. It was just then that I dispatched Satyrus to her to sound her out about an elopement. But before he could get a word in, she said: ‘I beg you, by all the gods, ours and anyone else’s, get me out of my mother’s sight, anywhere you like. If you go and leave me behind I will hang myself.’ When I heard this, I cast most of my troubles to the wind. We waited two more days while my father was out of town, all the while preparing for our escape.

Even the elopement tale in this novel is radically revised so as to present a metaliterary twist on the theme: Leucippe, a woman and a virgin, is more willing to elope than the man. Thus, Motifs B1 and B2 are blurred, as are the roles of the female and male protagonists. Leucippe shares some similarities with Helen, that is, being seduced in her own household and agreeing to elope with her beloved, but she goes far beyond the mythical megatext. Moreover, the uncertainty about Leucippe’s chastity makes the reader wonder about the novel’s development, since there are strong hints that Leucippe is an anti-novelistic heroine and that the already fraught Helen pattern risks collapsing into a parody of both the mythical and the relevant novelistic expectations. What Clitophon seems to be reading, or wishes to read, is a seduction of a Beauty at home, but without taking on any risks and without a subsequent adventure story. Leucippe, for her part, not only lets herself be seduced but initiates their elopement. Is Clitophon the mythmanic974 reader of the novel who creates the possibilities for a Helen pattern or is Leucippe an avid reader of romance tales?975 Clitophon’s virginal Beauty in Egypt The transition to Egyptian soil is interspersed with echoes of the Helen myth. Among the explicit allusions to the Helen megatext is a certain Menelaus, a lovestricken Egyptian, who is wandering about after the death of his lover, echoing thus Motif C of the megatext.976 However, in a subversion of the mythical expec973 E.g. Leda was seduced by a god, Zeus, Helen by a hero, Paris, but in the novel the seducers are of different, lower, calibre. 974 Cf. Clitophon’s characterization as a mythomane see Tilg 2010b. 975 Brethes 2007, 192–202, suggests that Clitophon is well-aware of the novelistic constraints and that he attempts to fashion himself as a novelistic hero. He even suggests that the book Clitophon carries at 1.6.6, before his meeting with Leucippe, is a novel. See also Morgan 2007b. 976 Ach. Tat. 2.33.1. For echoes of the Helen myth in the Egyptian chapters see Laplace 2007, 576.

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tations, the erotic quest of this Menelaus is not caused by a woman, but by a now-dead man, recalling Hippothous’ wanderings in Xenophon. His homosexuality immediately does not endanger the couple and – in spite of his name – he is not perceived as a threat to the protagonist’s virginity. Menelaus, like Hippothous, becomes the right-hand man of Clitophon in his Egyptian adventures, helping him to save both Leucippe’s life and her virginity. Halfway through the eight-book-long narrative, and right after Leucippe miraculously survives shipwreck, bandits, and sacrifice, Clitophon is reunited with his two lost friends, Menelaus and Satyrus, in a scene that echoes Habrocomes’ reunion with Leucon and Rhode. Like Habrocomes Clitophon cannot rejoice at the sight of his friends, believing Leucippe dead. In this way, the narrative focuses on the pending recognition with the resurrected beloved. Menelaus performs a mock magic act and ‘brings back’ Leucippe from the dead. Only then does the second, equally brief recognition scene take place: Leucippe throws herself into his arms, kisses him, and both fall to the ground.977 Clitophon’s reluctance to recognise his beloved in the ‘resurrected ghost’ before he hears the true story undermines this scene: despite Leucippe’s eagerness to kiss and hug, a typical novelistic feature, Clitophon is shy. The scene, taking place as it does on Egyptian soil with a namesake of Menelaus as the main parameter in Leucippe’s recognition, alludes to the Euripidean variation of the myth, where the king of Sparta recognises the beautiful Helen-like woman only after hearing of the flight of the false, Nephele-like Helen.978 In the play Menelaus is unable to identify Helen on his own but requires the help of his attendant, who recognises the beautiful woman as Helen as early as 616 while Menlaus needs until 623. Equally, Clitophon requires Menelaus’ help to know the woman standing before him as Leucippe. Thus, this recognition scene draws on the Penelope/ Helen megatext, especially its Euripidean Egyptian version, whereas the novelistic recognition is left unfulfilled.979 Only after her narrow escape from the Boucoloi, does Leucippe elect to take a far more conservative novelistic approach to their relationship. When Clitophon asks to consummate their joy, her reaction is now negative: 4.1.4: It would be wrong to do that. The day before yesterday, when I was crying because I was going to be butchered, Artemis appeared, standing above me in my sleep, and said, ‘Do not be sad, you shall not die … you will remain virgin until I myself give you away as a bride. No one but Clitophon will marry you.’ 977 Ach. Tat. 3.17.7, ‘She fell into my arms’ embrace (περιπλέκεται), we pressed close, and then we both collapsed (ἄμφω κατεπέσομεν).’ 978 E. Hel. 622–624. 979 According Montiglio 2012, 81, the recognition scenes are weakened throughout the novel.



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Upon hearing Leucippe’s Artemis dream, Clitophon recalls his own Aphrodite dream of the night before. In it, Aphrodite in person encouraged him to wait a bit longer before she declares him a priest of the temple.980 Clitophon interprets this dream as a sign that he should respect Leucippe, and he decides to make ‘no further attempt to force himself on her,’981 which would have linked him either to the gods and heroes of myth or to the more realistic bandits of the novels, and/or Callisthenes in the programmatic novella. The Artemis dream marks a change in mood in the further course of the novel and its reception of the Helen myth in that it endorses Motif B2, the successful safekeeping of Leucippe’s chastity. In Egypt, three men desire Leucippe simultaneously in a war context reminiscent of the Trojan War, but which does not take place because of Leucippe: Charmides (a general), Gorgias (a soldier) and Chaereas (a fisherman and mercenary).982 The Platonic resonance of the suitors’ names together with the Helen pattern evokes the Platonic reworkings of the myth in Aristides and in Maximus of Tyre, discussed above. This may to some extent ‘tune’ the reader for a tale of verisimilitude, in which what one sees is not what it seems. Yet it is difficult to argue with certainty, this fusion of the mythical pattern with the Platonic echoes a broader concern about versimilitude in fiction.983 The next chapters echo both the Helen myth as well as the novelistic versions of the Beauty: the first suitor, Charmides, the general in the war against the Boucoloi, wants Leucippe not as a prize of war, as it would have been in Helen’s case, but, as he says, as a pre-war interlude: ‘sex before war is a good omen for success.’ He portrays himself as Ares on his way to meet Aphrodite, recalling the relevant imperial iconography known from Xenophon’s canopy.984 Leucippe does not actively safeguard her chastity; instead Menelaus comes up with a trick, suggesting that Charmides to wait until her menstruation is over.985 It is only due to a twist of novelistic fortune that Gorgias ‘saves’ Leucippe from her potential ravisher by giving her a love potion. The use of poison and the military doctor’s efforts to save Leucippe with a sleep medicine harks back to Xenophon.986 Moreover, at the level of Motif B2, the tincture protects Leucippe from Charmides’ 980 Ach. Tat. 4.1.7. 981 Ach. Tat. 4.1.8, βιάσεσθαι. 982 I am grateful to Tim Whitmarsh for pointing out to me that Chaereas’ name breaks the otherwise Platonic sequence. I am also thankful to Ian Repath for sharing with me some of his forthcoming work on Plato in the novels, especially his fourth chapter which deals with naming in Achilles Tatius. See also Laplace 2007, e.g. 32–36 on Achilles Tatius and Plato. 983 For an allegorical Platonic reading of the text see Laplace 2007. 984 Ach. Tat. 4.7.2. 985 Ach. Tat. 4.7.7. 986 Ach. Tat. 4.10.3 ; cf. X. Eph. 3.6.8, Eudoxus.

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attempts and appears as a vestige of Anthia’s ‘faked epilepsy’.987 Love elixirs are part of popular folklore traditions but also of the novel.988 As a result, just as in Xenophon, the Penelope/Helen pattern is implemented with elements absent from the core megatext and better known from folktale and novelistic narratives. The name of the third suitor, Chaereas, associates him with both the young male characters from New Comedy and Chariton’s protagonist, suggesting that he too, like Callisthenes, is a candidate for a love romance. His characterisation as ‘a man of the sea’,989 like Callisthenes’ previous labelling as a pirate, gradually exposes the real intentions of this new suitor. Clitophon, in order to maintain the suspense, does not immediately reveal Chaereas’ plans but, even retrospectively, presents him as saviour and god-sent.990 When later in 5.3.2 we learn of Chaereas’ relationship to the island of Pharos and his career as fisherman and mercenary, the reader’s expectations are set to regard him as an ally of the couple, just as Proteus had been to Helen. Having built this positive portrayal of Chaereas, Clitophon leads his narratee to the realisation that ‘unbeknownst to us, Chaereas had long been lusting after Leucippe.’991 Despite – or because of – the Egyptian setting, Chaereas proves to be a Theoclymenus and a dangerous Paris as well, offering false hospitality to his guests. Pretending to be the couple’s friend, he lures them into a trap and arranges for a gang of pirates to abscond with Leucippe by boat.992 Leucippe’s abduction bears a resemblance to that of Calligone above, only this time Clitophon is slightly more engaged in it. This second time he tries to pursue the kidnappers, although, having been stabbed early on, he is replaced by the general in command.993 Whereas the Egyptian chapters weave a complicated and alternating sequence of seduction motifs, Chaereas’ plot is carried out swiftly, encompassing in only a few lines all the motifs: A, B1 and an unsuccessful and only partially-executed Motif C. No further quest or journey of the thwarted lover is undertaken. Clitophon is faced with two choices, either to return to Tyre or to wait for Leucippe’s father in Alexandria.994 Achilles Tatius’ novel revisits the options offered by both Chariton and Xenophon, but he aligns his plot with the theme of kidnapping by a suitor-pirate, which is also never realised to its full potential in either Chariton or

987 Morales 2004, 218. 988 Cf, Babyloniaca 74b3, and famously in Apul. Met, Stephens-Winkler 1995, 73–75. 989 Ach. Tat. 5.3.2, θαλάσσιος ἄνθρωπος. See also Laplace 2007, 578. 990 Ach. Tat. 4.15.2, σωτήρ, θεόπεμπτος. 991 Ach. Tat. 5.3.1. 992 Ach. Tat. 5.7.1. 993 Ach. Tat. 5.7.2. 994 Ach. Tat. 5.11.3.



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in Xenophon, where pirates usually serve as slave dealers, not suitors.995 Hence Calligone’s novella functions at a metaliterary level as the novel’s answer to the variety of existing B2 motifs. In this novel, none of the initiated seduction patterns moves past the motifs of the B category and no real quest is ever launched. In this respect, Clitophon’s reaction to the news of Calligone’s abduction is similar to his passivity following Leucippe’s kidnapping. As there is no one to look for the Beauty, the Helen pattern and the readerly expectations are placed at great risk. In Melite’s review of the Egyptian chapters, she stresses their mythical aspect but also points out their novelty. Frustrated by her new partner’s reluctance to have sex with her, she laments her ‘new’ (καινόν) woe:996 not the usual empty tomb (κενοτάφιον) but a marriage devoid of sex (κενογάμιον).997 The alliteration between κενοτάφιον and κενογάμιον in association with the strange situation, καινόν,998 is reminiscent of Euripides’ Helen.999 Not only does the adjective καινόν points to Aristophanes’ characterisation of the play as a ‘new’ Helen,1000 it also points to Helen’s trick to save Menelaus in the play. Thus, on the one hand, the adjective emphasises at both a metaliterary and a metamythological level the novelty of (re)working the mythical material in Clitophon’s Egyptian chapters. On the other hand, the novelty of the pattern may be simultaneously understood as a metaliterary comment on the reworkings of the myth and the abductions of Beauties as found in other novels, especially of the empty-tomb theme added to the Helen megatext by Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus.1001

995 With the exception of Euxeinus and Corymbus in 1.15.1, although the pattern includes only Motif A and is not further developed due to the storm and the shipwreck. 996 Later in 5.18.6 Leucippe in her letter wishes Clitophon all the best for his ‘new wedding’ (καινῶν γάμων)’, which also cannot pass unnoticed: indeed Clitophon is newly-wed, but surprisingly, he has not (until then) consummated his marriage, recalling thus the previous reference to the κενογάμιον. 997 Ach. Tat. 5.14.4, ‘This is a novelty (καινόν) that befell me! I have heard before of a tomb without a tenant (κενοτάφιον), but not of a bride’s empty bed (κενογάμιον).’ 998 In the alliteration one ought to take into consideration the differences in pronunciation of / αι/ and of /ε/ in the second century, which brought them closer to each other. 999 E. Hel. 1057–1058, (Helen) ‘I will beg the tyrant of this country for permission to bury you in an empty tomb, as if you had really died at sea.’ See also Laplace 2007, 177. 1000 Ar. Thes. 411. 1001 Tilg 2010a, 191 rightly interprets it as being an allusion to Chariton but it probably does not allude only to Chariton’s novelty since, given the importance of the Helen megatext, it would have been impossible for the reader not to think of the mythical scenario next to the novelistic one.

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Clitophon’s Lacaena in Ephesus The move from Alexandria to Ephesus signals a shift from the oriental erotic setting to Artemis’ whereabouts. Just as in Egypt, in Ephesus Leucippe is the protagonist in a plot where, despite the advances of Sosthenes, she preserves her chastity (B2) until she is reunited with her beloved (D2). After successfully avoiding Sosthenes, Leucippe is faced with another suitor, Thersander, the husband of Melite and master of the household. It is this Lacaena that Thersander plans to marry, if not willingly then by force, thus recalling Theoclymenus’ assault on Helen.1002 Leucippe laments her Helen-like fate, which has ‘stolen’ from her parents, husband, country and, finally, her name. In her monologue, which Thersander and Sosthenes overhear, she reveals her true identity; however, it does not lead to any recognition. Thus in order to escape the perilous situation she decides to re-enact Helen’s role and postpone the recognition: ‘Come, I shall again return to my play – come, I shall again put on the disguise of the Lacaena.’1003In commenting on the theatricality of her situation, Leucippe seems conscious of acting in a play: the adverb πάλιν, again, in her speech hints at the recurrence of her Helen-like adventures and is of metaliterary importance since it shows that Leucippe realises the open-endness of her Helen-like adventures. However, unlike Anthia, whose fervent defence of chastity Leucippe seems to be mimicking, Clitophon’s fiancée takes no drastic measures against her suitors. Leucippe is unable to prevent – either by force or by wit or out of realism– her suitors from mistreating her, and the reader is also bystander to the near-rape scene between her and Thersander, oddly reported and visualised by Clitophon.1004 Nonetheless she is cognisant of the repetitive pattern in the play of her life, an awareness which appears twice as a metaliterary comment regarding Motif B2 in the following bold statement:1005 6.22.3–4: Even if you kill me in your senseless rage, someone will say: ‘Leucippe was a virgin after the Boucoloi, a virgin after Chaereas, a virgin even after Sosthenes.’ These are modest claims, the greater encomium is ‘a virgin even after Thersander, a more wanton sinner than any cut-throat.’

1002 Laplace 2007, 580. 1003 Ach. Tat. 6 16.5. On Helen as Lacaena cf. E. Hec. 651, Λάκαινα κόρη; Λάκαινα is also called the Spartan friend of Lysistrata in Ar. Lys. 78. See also De Temmerman 2014, 192. 1004 Ach. Tat. 6.18.4–6. Rape of slaves is a recurrent threat in Old Comedy; in New Comedy either citizen or other free women are victims of rape, Sommerstein 1998, 105–109. Leucippe belongs to both these categories, as she is a citizen but currently Thersander’s slave. 1005 De Temmerman 2014, 190–92 compares these episodes with the one in Chariton, Callirhoe before Artaxates. However to me her speech seems much more generic.



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Eventually Leucippe decides to take the initiative and escapes Sosthenes’ prison. We are told that Leucippe acted in this way because ‘her memory of having been so often (πολλάκις) and unexpectedly saved from present dangers encouraged her to use this opportunity.’1006 Leucippe thus anticipates the upcoming plot against all odds (παρὰ δόξαν), according to the hopes/expectations (ἐλπίδα) raised by the recurring B2 motifs that she has so far experienced. These metaliterary comments hint that the unabated series of suitor-competition motifs is about to end. Indeed the final recognition motif comes to save Leucippe and return her to her beloved. But even the final reunion is undermined. Upon seeing Sostratus and Clitophon Leucippe runs towards her father, the one who in this novel undertakes the quest for the lost Beauty. Leucippe’s embrace of her father is the one originally reserved for the hero of the motif ‘Quest for the Beauty’, and in this case it is the father who went searching for Leucippe, not Clitophon.1007 Moreover, Sostratus is also an actor in the Iphigenia pattern as he is the kinsman with whom the nearly-putto-death Leucippe reunites. This detail reminds the reader that s/he is far removed from the passionate couple recognition scenes of Chariton and Xenophon, confirming once again Achilles Tatius’ playful toying with the motifs of the pattern. The reader’s expectations of a fancy reunion are therefore foiled, although the pattern itself maintains its logic, as the Beauty returns home safe and virgin. The novel famously ends with the pre-wedding rituals for both Leucippe’s and Calligone’s marriage to Clitophon and Callisthenes respectively. No mention of their first night is mentioned here, to contrast with the erotic rendezvous of Book 2, when Leucippe almost lost her virginity to her cousin. This also subverts the readerly expectations since both Chariton and Xenophon feature the ‘reunion night’ based on the epic reunion and recognition pattern. Ultimately, the novel ends conspicuously with a ring composition: the Beauty returns not to Tyre but to Byzantium, the place where Callisthenes fell in love with her by hearsay, highlighting thus the importance of the Helen pattern for the novel, since Troy is in the vicinity.

1006 Ach. Tat. 7.13.1, μνήμη γὰρ αὐτῇ τοῦ πολλάκις παρὰ δόξαν σεσῶσθαι πρὸς τὸ παρὸν τῶν κινδύνων τὴν ἐλπίδα προὐξένει ἀποχρῆσθαι τῇ τύχῃ. For Leucippe’s characterisation here see De Temmerman 2014, 177. 1007 In Ach. Tat. 5 10.6–11 Hippias receives from his brother a letter in which he gives Leucippe in marriage to Clitophon; ironically the letter arrives one day after the couple’s elopement to Alexandria. Simultaneously Sostratus has a dream of Artemis guiding him to Ephesus, where he arrives as part of a theoria to the Ephesian goddess, 7.12.4.

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Leucippe’s Penelopes Part of Penelope’s famous story is the chastity test: coming home after a long absence, Odysseus asks his wife about their bed, which was not movable.1008 Yet in Achilles Tatius the theme of the chastity test returns amplified, echoing vividly the Homeric model. Three people are tried as part of this elaborative pattern cadenza: Clitophon, Leucippe, and Melite. All the three of them bear appropriately Penelopean characteristics. Clitophon’s tricky chastity 1009 is tried by Leucippe at Ephesus and through Melite’s test. Leucippe’s mannish appearance,1010 after her hair was cut, makes it possible for her to assume not Penelope’s role but Odysseus’ in secretly examining the theme of her spouse’s sophrosyne, as she learns from Melite that her new husband is unwilling to sleep with her.1011 The partial and unfulfilled recognition between Clitophon and the female slave is characteristic:1012 Clitophon’s weakness may serve not only to dampen the novelistic expectations of a reunion scene1013 but also as a mythical comment on the problem of the ‘early recognition’ in the Odyssey. Just as Penelope might have had an inkling about the man in rags, so does Clitophon, at least in retrospect;1014 and in order to make sense to his interlocutor,1015 he says that the woman looked like Leucippe although the narrative opts for a later recognition. Thus not only are Leucippe and Melite associated with Penelope but also Clitophon is cast into the role of the faithful, waiting spouse, avoiding Melite’s advances until Aphrodite convinces him to do otherwise, under the auspices of a Phaedra pattern.

1008 Hom. Od. 23.203, ἔμπεδον … λέχος. 1009 Ach. Tat. 8.5.7. For the subversion of the traditional topos see Jones 2012, 244. 1010 Cf. Men. Perikeiromene, Polemon cuts off Glycera’s hair. 1011 Ach. Tat. 5 17.5. For Clitphon’s association with Odysseus and his stay at Melite’s as comparable with Odysseus’ liaison with Calypso see Laplace 1991, 45 and now De Temmerman 2014, 173–74. 1012 Ach. Tat. 5.17.7, ‘She seemed to share some features of Leucippe (καὶ γάρ τι ἐδόκει Λευκίππης ἔχειν).’ 1013 For this problematic recognition as a reconsideration of the novelistic stereotype see Montiglio 2012, 85. 1014 Cf. Hom. Od. 24.120–190, esp. 167–169, αὐτὰρ ὁ ἣν ἄλοχον πολυκερδείῃσιν ἄνωγε/τόξον μνηστήρεσσι θέμεν πολιόν τε σίδηρον,/ ἡμῖν αἰνομόροισιν ἀέθλια καὶ φόνου ἀρχήν. (‘Then in his great cunning he bade his wife set before the wooers his bow and the grey iron to be a contest for us ill-fated men and the beginning of death.’) This is a similarly retrospective interpretation of Penelope’s bow contest by Amphimedon. The now-dead suitor in Hades says that the queen plotted this kind of revenge together with Odysseus and Telemachus. This too is an a posteriori interpretation. 1015 For Clitophon’s efforts to beautify his deeds see Montiglio 2012, 70.



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But more important for the novel is the insertion of two chastity tests. This new chastity test is not explicitly required for the reunion (Motif D1) but seems to serve solely as a climax for the denouement of the novel, merging within it the themes of chastity and recognition at a metaphorical level.1016 Leucippe’s fidelity and virginity are not cross-checked by the couple in a private sphere, as in the novels and the Penelope/Helen megatext, but their confirmation becomes a public spectacle through a near-death pattern.1017 Surprisingly enough, in order to confirm Leucippe’s virginity, another mythical paradigm is brought up: the myth of Syrinx, a myth of rape at the heart of the action in the virginity test in the cave of pipes.1018 The audience is also invited to recall that Pan was known as the offspring of Penelope’s union with the suitors, playing thus on the ambiguity of the Penelope theme. Leucippe comes out virgin indeed, but in a nice metaliterary comment, the priest of Artemis congratulates her for her ‘sophrosyne and her good fortune’,1019 reminding the credulous reader that chastity is not a matter decided by an individual alone but also by luck, which the novel here makes happen. Yet the novel, ironically, describes one more chastity test: Melite’s, and ultimately Clitophon’s, faithfulness also undergoes examination and revision. Despite her primary role in the Phaedra pattern, the Ephesian widow flirts with the Penelope/Helen megatext as well. We learn early in the narrative that Melite, besides possessing youth and beauty, also has a considerable fortune to dispose of as she pleases. As for her husband, Satyrus reports that he died at sea.1020 This last detail associates her with the Penelope/Helen myth, where both queens initially believe their husbands to be lost at sea. However, because of Melite’s origin, the reader does not expect the Ephesian widow to demonstrate any continence when it comes to love and, upon seeing Clitophon, Melite wants to remarry as soon as possible. Melite’s second marriage does not need to echo Callirhoe’s, and it seems to be part of a comic revision of the tale of the ‘homecoming husband’ and of the Odyssey in particular, especially in relation to Penelope’s much-contested chastity.1021 1016 According to Byzantine law at 2.13.3 a man who rapes a virgin becomes her husband. Had Leucippe been found to be not a virgin, then Clitophon would not have been able to prove to her father that it was not because of him, and he might have been forced to marry her anyway in order to save the reputation of the family (had Leucippe been raped by a bandit or another suitor). 1017 Ach. Tat. 8.6.11. 1018 Ach. Tat. 8 13.3, ‘Pan is a god fond of virgins.’ Pan guarantees Chloe’s virginity in Longus too. 1019 Ach. Tat. 8.71. 1020 Ach. Tat. 5.11.6. 1021 On the possible influence of Chariton in Melite’s second marriage see Tilg 2010a, 275. Yet myth and folktale probably offered enough paradigms for us not to consider the Callirhoe to be Achilles Tatius’ only source: e.g. Clytemnestra is remarried and ruins her husband’s nostos.

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In a further subtle allusion to the Penelopean megatext, Melite joins Clitophon in jail followed by one of her most faithful servants, Melantho. The very name Melantho raises suspicions against Melite’s chastity: this is the name of the queen’s most faithless servant, who chastises Odysseus in rags.1022 Thus, for the knowing reader, this is an indication of Melite’s rather lascivious character. An ironic twist is also given with respect to Thersander, who, although described as having read his Homer at school,1023 is unable to sort out the situation in his household with wit and endurance, like Odysseus; instead of coming in disguise, he hastens to punish Melite’s adulter.1024 Upon his arrival Melite attempts to re-enact a kind of a recognition scene that is bound to fail: she tries to embrace him but he, instead, rushes in and punches Clitophon.1025 Still, Melite and Clitophon are both exonerated by the ordeal of the fountain of the Styx. To the great amazement of the reader, Melite, who was unfaithful not before but after her husband’s return, successfully passes the test.1026 With Melite’s dubiously-proven innocence, the novel delivers the final blow to the previous ideal, novelistic version of female chastity represented by Leucippe.1027 The small Phaedra-like and quasi-Penelopean universe of Melite proves to be a farce. By blending elements of the two mythical heroines together, the narrator makes of Melite an extreme and unique model of what a bold, beautiful, lucky and faithful, novelistic heroine is made of. In summary Achilles Tatius’ novel plays extensively with the Penelope/Helen megatext, making chastity – and, for the first time in our extant novels, virginity and faithfulness, however dubious – the main focus and climax of the narrative, even more so than recognition. Where as Callirhoe’s and Anthia’s sailed off to lands of adventure after their weddings, Leucippe is a virgin facing the big, threatening (male) world. This is a new twist to Motif B2 of the megatext that is not employed without ironical comments, especially when the qualities that are attributed to Leucippe are also used for Clitophon and Melite. Motif B2 is further revised through entanglement with the Iphigenia motif, since Leucippe’s boldness is threatened with death. The 1022 In Hom. Od. 18.321 and in 19.65. 1023 Ach. Tat. 8 9.3, ὁμηρίζων τὰ πολλά. Maybe echoing Dionysius’ paideia in Chariton. 1024 Ach. Tat. 5.23.4–5. For Odysseus returning disguised home as opposed to Agamemnon see Murnaghan 1987, 1–3, 48, 92. 1025 Ach. Tat. 5.23.5–7 ‘Melite leapt up in astonishment at the incredible turn of events and tried to embrace her husband. He shoved her roughly aside without a thought, and catching sight of me, he muttered,’ ‘There is the adulter!” 1026 Ach. Tat. 5.22.4. 1027 As Goldhill 1995, 120–121 observes, it is mainly the subversive treatment of virginity that is typical of the slyness of Achilles Tatius as he juxtaposes Melite’s and Leucippe’s triumphant public displays of chastity.



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suitor-seduction plots, that of Charmides and that of Chaereas, bring about the apparent death of the protagonist, weakening Leucippe’s own display of will. Leucippe, unlike both Helen and Penelope, does not use any witty scheme to shun the unwanted suitors; instead she faces Thersander head-on. Moreover, the elimination of Motif C, that of the ‘quest’, now attributed partially to Leucippe’s father, and the subsequent carrying out of the reunion and the ‘recognition’ motifs through pure chance, lend another twist to the tale by reducing the recognitive aids that the reader has in hand. If everything can be accredited to pure Tyche, then searching is no longer necessary. All initiated Motifs A, the various suitor attempts, are luckily averted and turned into Motifs B2, but without Leucippe actively participating in any except the last: her escape from Sosthenes’ prison and her realisation regarding the recurrent pattern. The recognition motif is also highly distorted in the novel and, despite the echoes of previous mythical and/or novelistic treatments, Achilles Tatius presents a series of misrecognitions: e.g. Callisthenes’ misidentification of Calligone, Clitophon’s recurrent doubts regarding Leucippe, and a part-recognition, not resulting in an embrace, at their final reunion at Ephesus. Instead, a solemn chastity trial is set up for all the participants – Leucippe, Melite, and Clitophon – with all the ironic turns mentioned above. Achilles Tatius’ structural re-arrangement of the main Penelope/Helen myth displays a taste for subversion of the traditional narratives: e.g. Motif B1 in the programmatic novella about Calligone echoes the theme of rape that links together the tale in the prologue about Europa with the one about Helen. Europa’s case is that of a single girl, whereas Helen is betrothed. Yet both Calligone and Leucippe are, albeit in a different ways, each committed to a man. Calligone’s abduction and Leucippe’s elopement therefore are neither novelistic (there is no initial mutual love) nor purely mythical, but an arrangement that befits both narratives and leads to a happier – we presume – ending. Equally the motif of recognition and the theme of chastity are thoroughly reworked. We saw above how Clitophon’s summary of his first meeting in Ephesus with the disguised Leucippe might play with the issues around early recognition from the Odyssey. Like Penelope, who did not necessarily recognise her man in rags, Clitophon does not know his shaven beloved, although once gifted with hindsight he says he did, alluding probably to those critics who wished to see an earlier recognition taking place in the epic. Clitophon’s conclusion is that something like this might have been possible, but only in a second reading, like the one he is providing for Leucippe. The above examples show that, at a metaliterary level, the narrator of Leucippe’s adventures was well-informed on the mythical and novelistic constraints, which he uses ironically and subversively but without dismissing them altogether. Clitophon’s ineptness in searching for Leucippe – unlike Sostratus’ and Menelaus’ wanderings, which are presented as metaliterary remarks on what the main plot

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is not about – demonstrates the character’s anti-novelistic approach to the Helen pattern. But irony and parody tend to consolidate those elements that he criticises. Hence the emphasis on virginity, panegyrically celebrated at the end of the novel and simultaneously questioned, which offers the listener a two-layered reading of the novel: on the one hand, following the adventures of Leucippe, the novel can be read as the epitome of a suitor competition motif where the chastity of the heroine goes well beyond that of Callirhoe or even Anthia. On the other hand, if focalised through Clitophon, the story seems to be a racy, adult, erotic affair in which Leucippe is the only naïve, unaware participant and trusting reader. This ambiguity seems to shadow also this novel’s ending: whereas the story ends in recognition, primarily between daughter and father and only secondly between Clitophon and Leucippe, no lengthy description of their wedding night is offered, as opposed to Clitophon’s near first night with Leucippe in Book 2 or his tryst with Melite in prison. The novel seems to stop the action with the motif of chastity test, whereas the reunion and wedding, albeit mentioned, are no longer in focus.1028 And yet, like Chariton and Xenophon, Achilles Tatius mentions the trip back home, though not in great detail. Can this be Achilles Tatius’ subversion of both the Odyssean and the novelistic telos? Perhaps, but given that Clitophon signs the last lines we can not be certain about anything.1029 Still, the Penelope/ Helen megatext may provide a hint about what the reader expected but never saw it fulfilled.

3.4.4 Longus Longus’ novel presents a very young heroine who is gradually initiated into the mysteries of love. The sexual ‘education of Chloe’1030 is the main topic of a novel that ends with a lovemaking scene. Chloe’s story does not begin when the heroine is in late puberty, like Callirhoe and Anthia, but with her birth, and it progesses through her childhood and early puberty up to her wedding. This circumstance casts quite a different light on the themes of all-consuming love, quest and recognition. Therefore, as a child, Chloe is – at least until the end of the narrative – not comparable to the other novelistic Beauties, least of all Helen; only upon hers Daphnis’ recognition as part of the elite are the two children allowed to enter the 1028 Whitmarsh 2011, 205–207, 254. 1029 Most 1989, proposes many other reasons why the novel ends so abruptly. 1030 There is a rich literature on love and education in Longus. To cite a few among the many, see Winkler 1990a, Morgan 1996c, Bierl 2007, Repath 2011, and for the broader context see Lalanne 2006; see also Jones 2012, 77–79.



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more ‘adult’ novelistic universe. Although the bucolic setting leaves little space for elopement or a quest, the threats to the couple’s happiness, and especially Chloe’s virginity, are not dispelled. The novel stages an entirely new twist on the ideals of beauty and fidelity since, in Longus’ confined pastoral placement, events that might have been taken seriously or ironically in other novels are presented lightly and with an ample dose of humour. The plot in the novel is focalised either through the all-knowing narrator of the prologue, who transcribes the painting with the adventures of Daphnis and Chloe, or through the protagonists’ own more naïve point of view. The ironic distance between the two is already evident in the prologue, where the narrator explicitly contrasts his own experience of love with that found in the story.1031 Writing about the passions of others in the ‘fictional universe’ while remaining sober in the ‘real’ world, which is nonetheless the fictional world of the narrator, demonstrates the metaliterary concerns of a novel that is well aware of the core genre as well as its own twisting of it.1032 In what follows I briefly highlight the echoes of both the mythical and novelistic reworking of the Penelope/Helen pattern and Longus’ take on it. Chloe’s pastoral suitors Of all the motifs of the Penelope/Helen pattern, Longus, as we shall see, makes use mainly of Motif A, suitor-competition, and B2, threatening thus the chastity theme. Unlike in the other novels, the motif of suitor-competition is initiated even before Chloe realises her feelings for Daphnis and vice versa, which makes the reworking of the motif appear all the more naïve since it denies the protagonist a clear overview of the plot. Dorcon is the first failed suitor of Chloe, competing with Daphnis for her kisses: 1.15.4: One day, for now Daphnis had to know the deeds of love, Dorcon got into an argument with him about beauty (ὑπὲρ κάλλους ἔρις). Chloe acted as a judge, and the winner’s prize (ἆθλον τῷ νικήσαντι) was to kiss Chloe.

This passage, besides its Theocritean background of typical shepherds’ competition scenes,1033 recalls Paris’ Judgement of the three goddesses with Chloe standing for the prize.1034 The visual intertexts regarding Paris’ Judgement might 1031 Long. 1.4 ‘For ourselves, may the god grant us to remain chaste (σωφρονοῦσι) in writing the story of others.’ Cf. Goldhill 1995, 6, 14. 1032 For the metaliterary references in Longus’ proem see Briand 2006, 50–52. 1033 Morgan 2004a, 164. 1034 Cf. Char. 6.2.2, ἆθλον κάλλος τὸ πρῶτον. An interesting intertext may be Theocritus’ Epithalamion for Helen (Id. 18), where the heroine is presented in all her virginal beauty.

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have also been influential as they reinforce the pastoral context of this part of the myth. Like the other famous Beauties, such as Helen and Callirhoe, little Chloe is the reward for the victor. Yet, in a subtle subversion, the famous beauty that the two young men end up debating is not the girl’s but their own. Dorcon praises his beard, his professed manly characteristics and his wealth, whereas Daphnis praises his dark skin and his myth-like birth-and-exposure story, which casts him in the league of mythical heroes who, like Paris, were exposed at birth.1035 Daphnis’ educational curriculum does not yet include learning the ‘name and the deeds of love’, nor the myths of love, as will become clearer below. At this formative stage Daphnis does not yet know the story of Paris and Helen, which is part of the erotic mythical curriculum, but he instead cites the more popular and pastoral tales of the infant Zeus and Dionysus, appropriate for his tender age. Thus the two readings, that of the narrator (who is aware of the mythical intertextual potential of the passage) and that of the embedded characters, create a comic tension that is preserved throughout the story. On the other hand, for the well versed reader of the Greek novel, this incident triggers a humorous reaction, since it intelligently subverts the mythical and novelistic clichés regarding Motif B1, seduction/abduction. When Chloe rejects Dorcon by kissing Daphnis instead, and when Chloe’s father subsequently rejects Dorcon’s request for her hand in marriage, the cowherd decides to employ the second part of his more forceful plan.1036 Dressed like a wolf, he attempts to rape Chloe, but the couple’s dogs attack him. This masquerade, compared with the suitors’ conspiracies of the other novels, is also naïve, and the comment that he uses ‘a trick apt for a cowherd’1037 may be seen as a metaliterary marker with respect to Motif B1 in other novels. Thus rape and hoax are strangely equated in a luckily-averted-seduction/rape pattern. Abduction by pirates was a common event in the Greek novel, based on the theme of Helen’s embarkation. Here the twist is double: not only is the male character abducted instead of the female,1038 but also the dying Dorcon saves his rival by lending Chloe his magic syrinx in

1035 Long. 1.16 1–4. And for Paris see E. IA 1285. 1036 The two attempts ‘by gifts’ and ‘by force’ had been signalled earlier, so the reader knows what to expect, Morgan 2004a, 163. 1037 Long. 1.20 1. 1038 In Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, the main couples are often kidnapped by pirates, who in some cases become the suitors of the female protagonists. Only Xenophon, however, presents a double seduction scene of Anthia and Habrocomes by Corymbus and Euxeinus, respectively. Moreover, pirates tend to desire the female protagonist in later novels, especially in Heliodorus, whereas in the early ones they function more as slave dealers: cf. Theron and Callisthenes.



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return for a kiss that she purposefully neglects to confess to Daphnis:1039 Chloe, we learn, recounts everything to Daphnis except this kiss with Dorcon,1040 a phrase reminiscent of Callirhoe’s half-true declarations structured around the everything but one, πάντα-μόνον, opposition that points to the reader that the novelistic protagonist is not always nor throughout chaste. In Book 2 the Methymnians declare war against the locals.1041 The pretext is that Daphnis’ goats ate the rope of a Methymnian ship, hinting once more at Daphnis’ associations with (a pastoral) Paris, responsible for a war.1042 Nonetheless, the Methymnians are not suitors. In the turmoil Chloe is captured by the Methymnian youths and risks enslavement or ending up the booty of war, like so many other characters in the novelistic world.1043 Daphnis’ lack of courage is exemplary and recalls Habrocomes’ and Clitophon’s unreliability in carrying out a ‘quest and recovery’ pattern. Just like these novelistic predecessors, Daphnis needs the help of a more capable male character, and luckily the god Pan – here depicted as an expert in warfare1044 – saves Chloe and restores her to Daphnis. Finally, in order to deal the final blow to the theme of the war while maintaining its function as the main mode of keeping the characters apart, Longus’ Lesbian winter is presented as ‘much more bitter than war.’1045 Once more the combination of war, winter and separation demonstrates the distance between Longus’ story and that of the other four novels, as well as its humorous, subtle, metaliterary self-conscious use of the motifs of the Helen megatext. By Book 3, where the third suitor-attempt takes place, as Chloe develops from a child to a virgin, and ends with her coming of age and the preparations for her engagement to one of the multitude of suitors.1046 Daphnis is among them but, being a goatherd, he supposedly does not stand a chance next to his wealthier rivals. The situation resembles that of Chaereas, who was supposedly inferior to the other Sicilian princes,1047 but also that of Paris, the shepherd who won Helen

1039 Long. 1.29.1–3 and 1.31.1. 1040 Long. 1.31.2, διηγεῖται πάντα … μόνον τὸ φίλημα οὐκ εἶπεν. 1041 For the Thucydidean-coloured motif see Morgan 2004a, 189. 1042 The echoes of the pastoral theme, ‘The judgement of Paris’, are further exploited in that the Mythemnians ask Philetas to be the judge of Daphnis’ ‘crime’, 2 15.1, βουκόλον ἔχοντες δικαστήν. 1043 Long. 2.23.3 (the Nymphs to Daphnis), ‘So that she will not be taken to Methymna to be a slave nor will she be an item of the spoils of war (μέρος λείας πολεμικῆς)’ (transl. Morgan). 1044 Long. 2.23.4,the echo here is not just the Trojan War but also the battle at Marathon, Trzaskoma 2005, 87. 1045 Long. 3.3.1. 1046 Long. 3.25.1. 1047 Cf. Lamon in 3.26.2–4 hesitates to give Chloe to Daphnis, and his mother is afraid that her son may commit suicide (τι θανατῶδες). Cf. the same reaction of the protagonist in Chariton,

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with Aphrodite’s help. In Longus, the Nymphs decide to help Daphnis defeat his rivals by providing him with a treasure and foretelling that he will be a rich man in the near future.1048 Thus the military exploits required by the mythical and folktale traditions are rapidly overcome and overwritten, thanks to the Nymphs’ prompt assistance.1049 Upon finding the purse, we learn that: 3.28.3: He picked it up and put it in his bag, and did not leave until he had proclaimed the name of the Nymphs and the very sea. For, although he was a goatherd, he had come to think that the sea was sweeter than the land, as it was helping him to marry Chloe.

Daphnis’ prayer by the seashore – addressed to the pastoral Nymphs of the woods that the shepherd knows, and not to those of the sea – is an oxymoron.1050 The scene recalls the epicleseis to the sea Nymphs, and especially the allusions to Thetis or to Aphrodite with whom Callirhoe is repeatedly compared.1051 Yet the themes of the ‘sea apparition’ and ‘shipwreck’, despite their subverted presence, demonstrate the novel’s knowledge of the genre’s constraints. Now, Daphnis, we learn, starts to appreciate the sea much more than the land, since it contributed to his eligibility to wed Chloe. Hence, whereas the themes of embarkation and shipwreck have a negative connotation both in the mythical and in the novelistic pattern, in Longus they become the hero’s helpers. When Daphnis finds the money and officially wins Chloe’s hand, the first concrete allusion to the Helen myth appears in the form of a ripe apple:

when he learns about the rich suitors of Callirhoe: 1.1.8, (Chaereas) ‘Said to his parents that he is in love and he will not live if he does not make Callirhoe his wife.’ 1048 Long. 3.27.1. 1049 According AT 500–559 (Supernatural Helpers) this scene could be summarised as follows: hero in distress gets hep from Supernatural Helper, who provides him with a ‘magical object’: e.g. 3.27.1 (Daphnis) τὰς Νύμφας … ἐκάλει βοηθούς. The magical object is the purse, a remnant of the shipwreck of the Methymnian ship, that was lying next to a decaying dolphin. The humour of the passage and its metamythological revision of the Arion myth is characteristic: the dolphin, in a Lesbian setting, is the protagonist animal helper in the myth of Arion, who like the ship is also from Methymna. The analogy with Daphnis’ tale, a rotting dolphin, is beyond burlesque, and shows the debt as well as the distance that the novel creates to/from its mythical material. 1050 Longus has been building on the motif of the sea since the first kidnapping of Daphnis, playing thus with the convention that the shepherds are afraid of the sea, e.g. 1.32.4, Daphnis is more afraid of seeing Chloe in her bath than of the sea, in 2 15.3 the Methymnians accuse Daphnis of herding his goats by the water. For the sea and other Odyssean allusions see Hunter 1983, 60–62. 1051 Cf. Char. 2.4.8, μία Νυμφῶν ἢ Νηρηΐδων ἐκ θαλάσσης ἀνελήλυθε and 3.2.5 (Callirhoe to Dionysius) τὴν θάλασσαν τὴν κομίσασάν μερός σε.



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3.34.1–3: When Daphnis saw this apple, he just had to climb up and pick it … Daphnis ran up the tree, succeeded in picking the apple and bringing it to Chloe as a gift (δῶρον). And this is how he spoke to her in her fury: ‘Beautiful seasons brought forth this apple, a beautiful tree nursed it under the ripening sun, and Fortune watched over it … That is what Aphrodite won as a prize (ἆθλον) for beauty, and this is what I give you to mark your triumph. You and she have the same sort of person to bear your witness (ὁμοίους ἔχετε τοὺς μάρτυρας): he was a shepherd, and I am a goatherd.’ And with these words he put it into her bosom, and as he drew close she kissed him. So Daphnis did not regret his boldness in climbing to such a height, for the kiss he won was better than even a golden apple.

Morgan (2004b), 231–33 observes that the passage above merges the famous Sapphic Fr. 105a LP/Voigt about the reddening apple with the story of Paris’ Judgement and the golden apple he gives to Aphrodite.1052 He also argues that Paris’ name is not mentioned here in order to avoid the negative connotations with the Trojan War, but in my view this omission facilitates the fusion with both the Sapphic fragment as well as with Theocritus’ Idyll 27, Oaristes, where the maiden compares her lover, Daphnis, to Paris.1053 Longus’ novel is not just about Helen but also about the hitherto poetic genre, the pastoral.1054 The reader is encouraged to move seamlessly between texts and genres, according to the rules of the sophisticated, but seemingly naïve, pastoral mode.1055 The mention of Helen’s abduction by Paris here is nonetheless a foreshadowing of Chloe’s abduction by one of the failed suitors, Lampis, in the next crucial episode. Lampis, jealous of Daphnis’ marvellous garden, decides to take revenge by stealing Chloe. Daphnis, who has just been recognised as the son of the landowner, is unable to pursue the rapist. Instead, Gnathon, a parasite previously enamoured of Daphnis, helps him to recover his beloved. In what seems to be an echo of Xenophon’s Ephesiaca as well as of Achilles Tatius’ novel, the homosexual friend/helper is the one responsible for safeguarding the female protago-

1052 Sapph. fr. 105A L-P, Voigt ‘Like the sweet apple that reddens at the end of the branch.’ Cf. also Hunter 1983, 73–76 on Longus and Sappho. Bowie, in his forthcoming Longus Commentary, for a copy of which I am deeply grateful, suggests that here there is echo of the Beauty Contest in Chariton’s novel 6.2.2. 1053 Theocr. Id. 27, ‘The prudent (πινυτάν) Helen was raped by another cowherd.’ Notice the irony in the combination of πινυτάν with Helen. Cf. Hunter 1983, 22, on Daphnis as a legendary hero in Theocritus Id. 8, 9, 27. 1054 For the relationship with bucolic poetry see Rohde 1937, on the relationship with Philetas show has apparently also treated the myth of Atalanta and the three golden apples see Morgan 2011; on Philetas and Longus see Spanoudakis 2002. For mythology in Longus see Bowie 2004. 1055 See also Holzberg 1995, 70–71, who argues that the adventures are merely a subplot in Longus, whereas love and its fulfilment are the main topic.

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nist.1056 Chloe’s rescue directs the narrative path towards the recognition of her tokens and her elevated civic status. Moreover, Chloe needs to be recognised as a virgin maiden, since Daphnis swears to his father that they have not gone beyond kissing and taking oaths.1057 The amorous oaths are reminiscent of the traditional novel topos. In what follows, Chloe is recognised as the daughter of one of the noblest couples of Mytilene; she is therefore bathed, combed and dressed in luxurious garments so her real beauty shines through. Daphnis has trouble recognising his fiancée and former playmate,1058 as now her beauty is such that ‘many a very rich lady begged the gods that she herself might pass for the mother of so lovely a daughter.’1059 With this extraordinary beauty Chloe finally enters the Helen-led constellation of beautiful women.1060 Once Chloe’s origins are confirmed her chastity and virginity are tested too. Throughout the novel the narrative plays with the possibility of Chloe being raped not so much by other aggressors but even by Daphnis.1061 This accidentally safeguarded virginity of Chloe is once more investigated upon her marrying the nowrich Daphnis. Even in these last chapters, Chloe’s lack of virginity would have been an impediment to the happy ending.1062 Only after Daphnis swears that they have not proceeded further than kissing and exchanging oaths, the stage allowed by the novelistic constraints, may he take Chloe as his wife. Moreover, just to titillate the reader, during the recognition process we learn that the servant who exposed Daphnis at birth was called Sophrosyne.1063 This delayed information connects two themes otherwise known from the novelistic tradition. If a maiden called Sophrosyne exposed Daphnis, it prefigured his further conduct and his protection of Chloe’s virginity, whether accidental or not. The mini-recognition scene between 1056 As in the episode with the Methymnians, Daphnis is once again helpless with grief, when Gnathon overhears his laments, 4.29.1–3, and decides to help him. Gnathon and his henchmen attack Lampis’ hut, and ‘he is keen to tie Lampis up and take him home as a sort of prisoner of war.’ 1057 Long. 4.31.1. 1058 Long. 4.32.2, μόλις ἐγνώρισε. 1059 Long. 4.33.4. 1060 Reardon 2001. And Montiglio 2012, 99 on Chloe’s beauty being the social requirement of her recognition and her relationship with the beautiful upper-cass novelistic heroines. 1061 Long. 3.25.2, Nape expresses the fear that Chloe might be raped by one of the shepherds. For logismos taking place of impulse see De Temmerman 2014, 225. For the importance of Chloe’s virginity see also Morgan 2004, 243–244, notes that ‘the mores of the bourgeois society differ from those of the pasture.’ 1062 In Long. 4.31.3, Dionysophanes questions Daphnis regarding Chloe’s chastity. 1063 Long. 4.21.3. Morgan 2004a, 238, Herrmann 2007, 226. Merkelbach 1988, 148, relates the name of the servant woman to the Dionysiac mysteries as part of a symbolic exposure where the child was laid on the earth.



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Daphnis and the dressed-up Chloe echoes similar couple recognition scenes that abound in the endings of novels. Nevertheless, ‘recognition proper’ on the island of Lesbos is no longer the Odyssean type but alludes to New Comedy models as well, featuring a reunion between exposed children and their biological parents.1064 Yet it is not a child-parent recognition that closes the scene but the wedding night.1065 It is only then that Chloe recognises all the previous erotic plots as a pastoral game demonstrating that the recognitive path of this novel passes mainly through that of sexuality. 1066 ‘Paignia’, games, Morgan 2004a, 249 argues is a literary term that works as a literary sphragis:1067 ‘in a final conceit the “shepherds’ games (ποιμένων παίγνια)” are identified with the “pastoral paignion” which gives them their existence, namely Longus’ novel.’ Longus not only here reveals his Alexandrian lineage but also comments on the ending of the novelistic genre. Characteristically, our novel ends where the other novels only pause: the night of lovemaking. Whereas Chariton and Xenophon, following the Homeric model add the return-tohome coda after the couples’ reunion, and whereas Achilles Tatius remains silent about the wedding altogether, Longus presents a panygeric first night. Chloe’s ignorance is thus opposed to Daphnis’ knowledge and, ultimately, to the knowledge of the reader who might, as suggested, find himself oscillating between a narrative supposedly written as an exercise in sophrosyne, and the playful sexual attitude of the narrative, which is open to pastoral sexual fantasies.1068

1064 Schönberger 1998, 15 cites the double recognition scene with tokens and compares this with Menand. Epitr. Perik. and Heros. Cf. also characters with names borrowed from the stage of New Comedy, e.g. Lycaenion, Gnathon. The opposition of country and city is also of great importance for both Longus and New Comedy. A good overview is offered by Zeitlin 1990, 427–28 with literature. More on recognition scenes and the importance of tokens with updated bibliography can be found in Montiglio 2012. 1065 The ending has been interpreted as a discord with the otherwise naïve character of the novel, see Winkler 1990, 124 and Zeitlin 1990, 457. I here follow Morgan’s 2004, 248–249 interpretation that finds the lovemaking night the appropriate climax of the novel. 1066 Long. 4.33.1, πρῶτον ἔμαθεν … ποιμένων παίγνια; for more associations with the Helen megatext see Zeitlin 1990, 425, n. 23 on the echo of Gorgias’ Enc. Hel., ending in 11.131–132, where he argues that the text is meant as a game, ‘ἐμὸν παίγνιον᾽. See also Herrmann 2007, 23 with respect to the philosophical background of the passage. The scholarly discussion regarding Chloe’s education is extensive. I cite here selectively Pandiri 1985, Winkler 1990b, Macqueen 1990, and Bowie 2004. 1067 According Morgan, 2004, 249, it was the title used of a poem by Philetas and Theocritus; cf. see also Ael. Nat. Anim. 15.19. See also Morgan 2011, 140. 1068 Goldhill 1995, 30.

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Lycaenion’s geese The above analysis of the tale of Chloe as exhibiting a small-scale Helen pattern necessarily prompts the question regarding the amount of influence the Penelope myth had on this novel. Among the most important Odyssean allusions but not patterning is Lycaenion’s trick to lure Daphnis into the woods in Book 3: 3.16.1–3: Save me Daphnis, I am in trouble. An eagle has carried off one of my twenty geese, the best one. With such a heavy weight to carry, he couldn’t get air-borne and take him to that rock up there where he usually goes, but has come to earth with him in this wood down here. Please, in the name of the Nymphs and Pan over there, come with me into the woods – I am afraid to go by myself – and rescue my goose (transl. Morgan).

Lycaenion’s request echoes Penelope’s dream in the Odyssey, slightly before Odysseus’ revelation of his identity.1069 Morgan (2004b), 211 rightly notes that ‘ironically a dream of the archetypical chaste wife (Penelope) is transposed into an instrument of seduction by a promiscuous and predatory female.’ For Lycaenion, who leaves her home to look for Daphnis in the woods, has nothing in common with Penelope, but rather with Phaedra. Furthermore, as Pattoni (2004), 93 observes, the metaphor of the geese is also relevant for Helen: Telemachus, before leaving Menelaus’ palace, sees a goose being carried off.1070 Helen interprets the omen as foretelling the return of Odysseus. Helen, like Lycaenion, mentions a single goose, while Penelope counts twenty, equal to the number of the suitors. That the same omen about Odysseus’ homecoming is revealed to both Penelope and Helen suggests an interesting interpretation of the above-stated blended reception of the Penelope/Helen megatext in Longus. It is not simply ironic because of the alteration between the predator and its victim; it is appealing because of the ambivalence of Lycaenion’s subplot as being either that of Helen or of Penelope, which recalls other faithhful and bold female characters, such as Callirhoe or Melite. As Pattoni (2004) rightly observes, Longus’ use of genres follows the rules of hybridity indeed. In summary Longus’ Helen pattern is adapted to the pastoral microcosm, and its mythical and novelistic dimensions are downplayed. Everything is reduced to a miniature form, 1069 Hom. Od. 19.536, ‘Twenty geese I have in the house that come forth from the water and eat wheat, and my heart warms with joy as I watch them. But forth from the mountain there came a great eagle with crooked beak and broke all their necks and killed them (transl. Murray).’ 1070 Hom. Od. 15.171–178, ‘Even as this eagle came from the mountain, where are his kin, and where he was born, and snatched up the goose that was bred in the house, even so shall Odysseus return to his home.’ Pattoni 2004, 90 continues the discussion with a comparison of Lycaenion to Penelope and a less convincing comparison to Nausicaa.



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but most motifs – suitor-competition (A), seduction/rape (B), defence of chastity/ virginity (B2), beauty and reunion with a small-scale recognition – are present. The motif of quest (C) is, just as in Xenophon and in Achilles Tatius, entrusted either to luck or a protective divinity, such as Pan, or to a homosexual friend, Gnathon. The mythical echoes of the Penelope/Helen megatext can be observed at the thematic level regarding the mentions of the ‘golden apple’, of ‘war’ and of ‘a Beauty as prize’, but are accordingly shaped so as to fit the Lesbian and idyllic universe of the Pastorals. This usage demonstrates the narrator’s awareness of the role of mythology in other, more ‘canonical’, novels, like those of Chariton and Achilles Tatius. On the other hand, the downplaying of the traditional mythical universe for the sake of a supposedly more naïve and hybrid tale illustrates a metaliterary concern about the excessive use of mythical paradigms. A characteristic example of Longus’ approach is the use of the Sapphic intertext and the pastoral aspects of the myth that it echoes, which shares the same taste as the wall paintings of the first three centuries CE, during which ‘Paris’ Judgement’ was among the most popular themes, minly because of the erotic and pastoral setting of the myth and almost devoid of its negative epic connotations. In other words, Longus replaces the classical typical intertexts with a subtler one, expecting his reader to be seasoned not only in the basic curriculum but also in its details. Ulimately Longus revises the ending of the ideal novels too, featuring the first lovemaking night as the novels’ climax, whereas in the other novels return is a must. His innovation is therefore indebted to both traditional myth and its novelistic revisions, without which the miniature world of the Pastorals would have been harder to interpret.

3.4.5 Heliodorus Scholars have long established the close connection between Heliodorus’ novel and Homer’s Odyssey: the beginning in medias res, the cunning of Calasiris and his ‘Odyssean’ lies, his further revision of the Egyptian Homer, and Chariclea’s assimilation to Penelope at 5.22.3 because of her chastity and her wit, all of which top up the novelistic topos of adventure and travel. There is almost nothing in the whole Heliodoran narrative that is not constructed autour de or vis-à-vis Homer.1071 Not only do the heroes of the novels undertake an Odyssean travel 1071 The scholarship is extensive I cite here selectively the classic surveys by Keyes 1922 with emphasis on the ‘in medias res’ beginning, Hefti 1950, 98–103, Feuillâtre 1966, and Sandy 1982a, the intertextual approach by Fusillo 1991 (1989), Winkler 1982 for Calasiris, the analysis of the narrative significance of the Penelope dream in Hld. 5.22.3 by Morgan 1989a, 303; cf. the similar size of the novel: Lowe 2000, 243 counts a 39-day span for the Aethiopica, Hägg 1971a, 308, pre-

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from Delphi to Meroe, but also the narrative is structured as a series of (mis-) recognitions that enable readers, embedded or not, to discover gradually more about the characters’ past, Chariclea’s in particular.1072 The reversed order of the tale also contributes towards this recognitive model: the first tableau of the novel is situated in Egypt where the reader together with Thyamis and Cnemon gets a first glimpse of Chariclea’s adventures;1073 then Calasiris offers Cnemon and the reader an extensive flashback on the events that led them to the Nilotic mouth and some foretastes of the future, through oracles and dreams. It is only starting Book 6 that the reader finds him/herself again in the midst of the action. In order to make sense out of this pastiche of events, the embedded and external readers face the very difficult task of having to put all the details together,1074 pending the ultimate theatrical climax of the novel, described as ‘λαμπάδιον δράματος.᾽1075 And yet Heliodorus’ intertextual preferences are difficult to pin down, since the majority of them are given with great stylistic subtlety and originality. For example, Calasiris’ dream of Odysseus is characteristic of Heliodorus’ implicit approach to his mythical intertext: the priest has a vision of an unnamed old man with a leather helmet, whose expression is ‘cunning and of many wiles and who was lame in one leg because of a scar,’1076 and who tells him the following: 5.22.2–3: ‘You, my fine friend, are the only man who has ever treated us with such utter contempt. All others whose ships have passed by the island of Cephallonia have paid a visit to our home … You, on the other hand, have been so neglectful as to grant me not even the common courtesy of salutation, despite my dwelling in the vicinity (ἐν γειτόνων). But your omissions will be visited on you very soon. Ordeals like mine shall you undergo, land and sea you shall find united in enmity against you. However, to the maiden you have with

viously Futre Pinheiro 1998 and recently 2014 arguing for a more flexible 45-day span; Regarding cultural and identity problems concerning Homeric intertextuality see Whitmarsh 1998 and Elmer 2008, more recently on Homeric programmatic allusion in the novel’s prologue see Telò 2011. See for Homeric intertextuality the latest account see Pinheiro 2014. An interesting study of Chariton and Heliodorus with the Homeric scholia is Hunter 2014 with detailed literature. 1072 See now Montiglio 2012 and esp. 152–156 on reading (anagnosis) and recognition (anagnorisis) in the Aethiopica. 1073 For the opening scene see Winkler 1982, Bartsch 1989, 47–50, Morgan 1991, Winkler 2001, Whitmarsh 2005b, Telò 2011, Tagliabue 2015, and Lefteratou 2018a. 1074 For the ‘hermeneutic mode’ in the novel see Morgan 1989a; for uncertainty and ambiguity see Morgan 1989a and Winkler 1982; for the impact of the reverse narrative on characterisation see De Temmerman 2014, 246–58. 1075 Hld. 10.39.2. Walden 1894, 30–33 and Arnott 1965 for parallels in Menander and Plutarch. 1076 Hld. 5.22 1, ἀγχίνουν καὶ πολύτροπον. Cf. Hom. Od. 13.332, οὕνεκ’ ἐπητής ἐσσι καὶ ἀγχίνοος καὶ ἐχέφρων (Athena to Odysseus), Hom. Od. 1.1 ἄνδρα πολύτροπον and Od. 10.330, Ὀδυσσεύς ἐσσι πολύτροπος.



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you my wife sends greetings and wishes her joy, since she esteems chastity (σωφροσύνην) above all things. Good tidings too she sends her: her story has a happy ending.’

The text renders precisely the broadened Heliodoran notion of mythical intertextuality: the portrait of Odysseus includes a number of Homeric allusions from both the Odyssey and the Iliad, such as the helmet and the scar,1077 pointing to an overall reception of Odysseus-related mythical megatext. The immediate description does not give away the name of Odysseus, despite referring to his cunning, wit and wound, a characteristic catalyst for his recognition by Euryclea. It is with the reference to Odysseus’ scar that the identity of the character is fully revealed, just as in the epic – if the reader has not recognised him already from the helmet and his cunning looks.1078 The text also does not give away the name of Penelope, alluded to here through her famous sophrosyne. What is more, the text does not even mention Ithaca, but only the neighbouring island of Cephallonia. At a metaliterary level now, just as Calarisirs sails close to Ithaca (ἐν γειτόνων), at a metaphorical level the Aethiopica passes close to the famous Odyssean destination. Its recherché allusion invites the reader to decipher it according to his own intelligence.1079 If the sloppy reader has not yet realised it, now, halfway through the plot, is the time for him/her to see the connection.1080 The recognition of Odysseus in Book 5, therefore, is indicative of the allusive technique of the novel and functions as a guide for the reader of how a well-known mythical megatext ought to be digested.

1077 The leather (boar’s-tusk) helmet, a present from Autolycus, appears in the Doloneia in Il. 10.261–265; the boar’s scar on Odysseus’ knee, which he earned while hunting with his grandfather Autolycus appears in the Niptra, Od. 19.386–475. Strauss Clay 1983, 81 suggests that the helmet is also a kind of disguise. The image of Odysseus merges the two epic poems together around a common theme, the boar hunting that gave the hero the helmet, important for his heroic achievements in Troy, and the scar, crucial for his recognition at home. 1078 Both protagonists have an Odyssean scar, but they are not used in the mutual recognition: Theagenes’ scar received while boar hunting, and Chariclea’s black birthmole, illustrating her Ethiopian ancestry, Hld. 5.5.2 (Theagenes) cf. Hom. Od. 19.392 and its echo in E. El. 572 (Orestes has a scar too), Chariclea has a black mark (περίδρομος) around her arm 10 15.2, of which even Theagenes is unaware. Moreover, in the recognition scene at Nausicles’ house, the ransom for Chariclea is a ring of amethyst, see Laplace 1996. In 5.5.2 in the couple’s mutual recognition he shows her his scar and she shows her father’s ring (δακτύλιος). For the association of the black mole and the amethyst ring see Stephens 1994, 72. For Theagenes’ scar as Greek/Hellenising while Chariclea’s birthmark is part of Heliodorus’ contestation of Hellenism see Montiglio 2012, 231. 1079 Morgan in Reardon 1989, 462. 1080 For the importance of this middle book see Grethlein 2016. For the impact of the order of the events in a narratie see Shklovsky 1991 (1929).

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Cnemon in the land of Proteus The narrative famously starts at the Nilotic mouth with Calasiris, as we learn later, witnessing the scene from afar. 1081 The first focalisers are a band of Egyptian bandits; all, together with the reader, question the identity of the beautiful pair on the shore, especially that of the maiden.1082 So far the external reader has only the aid of these untrustworthy, non-Hellenised Egyptians to decipher Chariclea’s identity.1083 The girl, surprisingly for the reader, is not stunned by the appearance of bandits, which might hint at previous adventures. Indeed, in order to confirm those expectations, she gives a very brief and oblique summary of their fates: 1.3.1: ‘If you are the ghosts of those who here lie dead … you are wrong to trouble us … those that we slew we slew in self-defence and in retribution of your outrage against chastity. But if you are living men, you lead the life of brigands, it seems, your appearance is timely (εἰς καιρόν). Set us free from the woes (δρᾶμα τὸ περὶ ἡμᾶς … καταστρέψαντες) that beset us! Kill us and so bring our story to a close.’ But of this tragic outburst they could understand not a word (οὐδὲν συνιέναι).

Chariclea ambiguously explains the scene, their tragic lives, their fight to protect their chastity, and her expectations that the bandits will behave as such – hence her invitation to kill and be done with them. But the Egyptians, unlike the external readers, do not understand her.1084 What Chariclea offers to the seasoned reader is the story of two stranded, exceptionally beautiful young people who are safeguarding their chastity. The themes evoked, such as chastity, the brigands, the Egyptian setting, and the character’s near-death are metaliterary sign to the kind of story it is about. Moreover the expression ‘τὸ περὶ ἡμᾶς δρᾶμα᾽ not only points to the dramatic character of the tale but also to the generic peri- titles of the novels.1085 Soon this first set of unreliable readers is replaced by Thyamis’ group, who focus immediately on the girl and the wounded man, and not only on the battlefield,1086 again hinting to the external readerhip that it should concentrate 1081 For the opening scene see Winkler 1982. For a comparison with visual art see Lefteratou 2018a 1082 See characteristically Winkler 1982, 95–114, Bartsch 1989, 109–77, Morgan 1991, Morgan 1994 and now De Temmerman 2014, 49–52. 1083 Cf. the opposition between ‘reality’ and ‘not-reality’ in Hld. 1.2.6, ‘That’s what they thought (ἐγίγνωσκον), but they did not yet know the truth (οὔπω ἐγίνωσκον).’ So the bandits interpret the scene according to their own mythical standards, cf. Chariclea to the local Isis, Hld. 1.2.6. Later Chariclea makes a short monologue lamenting their fate but the bandits do not understand the words, 1.3.2. On fictionality see Morgan 1993. 1084 See Said 1992, 177 on the linguistic barrier. 1085 For which see Whitmarsh 2005a. 1086 Hld. 1.3.2. For different embedded hints of visualization see Lefteratou 2018a.



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on the shipwrecked Beauties, namely the novelistic ingredients, rather than the battle scene, which may have been more appropriate in an epic or historiographical work. In what follows Chariclea will be compared with a variety of beautiful mythical heroines, Helen included.1087 This is approximately where the second embedded focaliser of the Egyptian chapters, Cnemon, enters the story. Unlike the Egyptians who, after a couple of lines, face a recognitive impasse due to cultural and linguistic obstacles, Cnemon is a Greek and an Athenian. Yet, like the external reader, Cnemon too needs to put pieces together in order to recognise Chariclea and her story. But he too does not always get to the truth: for example, upon being asked about her origins Chariclea tells Thyamis, with Cnemon as her translator, a falsehood that recalls the basic plot of the Ephesiaca: a tale of adventure and wandering, with the sole difference being that the protagonists are siblings, not lovers. Yet the reader, and maybe Cnemon who has been eavesdropping on the private exchanges between the pair, has already some hints that this is a lie and the two characters are a couple.1088 For the knowing reader, Thyamis’ proposal introduces a suitor-competition motif, and Chariclea readily pretends to accept. Chariclea’s tale is patterned according to Odysseus’ famous made-up identities and Penelope’s trick with the shroud, used in order to postpone the suitors’ advances.1089 That said, it also points to the novelistic reworking of the Penelope megatext: it is not fortuitous that the story of her and Theagenes as two Ephesians on a pilgrimage to Egypt has lot of similarities with that of Xenophon of Ephesus, which may serve here as a model, considering the mention of Ephesus as well as the sea adventures described.1090 Just as Anthia reproduces Penelope’s ruse with the shroud in her 1087 Cf. Hld. 8.7.4, ὦ δαιμονία … τρύχουσα καὶ καταναλίσκουσα μάτην; cf. E. Hel. 1285, τρύχουσα σαυτήν. For the analogy between Chariclea and Helen in Egypt see also Sandy 1982b, 147. 1088 Hld. 1.8.2–4, Early in the narrative Chariclea once more laments and recapitulates their fates, Cnemon seems to be present in this scene as he responds to Theagenes’ mention of the medicine he gave him at 1.8.5; Cnemon appears to be eavesdropping as he comes in only when the discussion turns to him. 1089 De Temmerman 2014, 260–262, on the Odyssean characterisation of Chariclea. 1090 For the fusion of reality and fiction see De Temmerman 2014, 306; Chariclea mentions as their place of origin Ephesus, 1.22.2, just like Anthia and Habrocomes. In the Ephesiaca the couple’s destination was Egypt, but in Heliodorus, the main destination is Delos (although the storm brings them, finally, to Egypt). The curious detail is Chariclea’s elaborate description of the departure scene, the absence of their parents, and the boats of other citizens that bid them farewell in Hld. 1.22.3. She mentions that their parents did not join the celebration, because they were weary and afraid of the sea, however in X. Eph. 1.10.10, the parents of Anthia and Habrocomes join the departure rites. It is in Char. 8.6.7 that the parents do not join the crowds at the welcoming scene. On the theme of demitting the priesthood before the wedding and it being used to trick a suitor, see Anthia’s tales to Psammis in X. Eph. 3.11.4–5.

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encounter with Psammis,1091 Chariclea too successfully distracts Thyamis’ desire by promising to marry him once they reach Memphis. To titillate the reader, and crosscheck Chariclea’s generically anticipated chastity,1092 the narrative presents an odd reaction from Theagenes’ side. Chariclea’s beloved recognises her device of passing him off as her brother as an inspired invention and her story about Ionia and Delos and their wanderings (πλάνην) as a ‘covering’ (ἐπικαλύμματα) and a ‘lie’ (πλάνην).1093 Indeed, the repetition of the same noun, πλάνη, to indicate both the traveller’s wanderings, Odyssean in origin, as well as the narrative make-belief lies, of Odyssean character too, may be viewed here as a metaliterary and metafictional comment: what Theagenes seems to suggest is that this made-up lie sounds like truth, just as the novel is also meant to be read as a fiction. However, despite Theagenes’ understanding of her ‘invention’ and her intention in doing so, he is unwilling to understand the motivation behind her eager acceptance of Thyamis’ proposal, which he perceives as a sign of faithlessness.1094 By questioning Chariclea’s faithfulness Theagenes seems to interpret her Motif B2 as B1 and cannot believe how his darling has so eagerly changed her mind. The Helen megatext provides such precedent: Helen in Euripides’ eponymous play also hides Menelaus’ true identity from Theoclymenus, presenting him as the herald of Menelaus’ death.1095 Menelaus, who cannot trust his wife, accuses her of accepting Theoclymenus’ offer, while Helen tries to persuade him by vowing that she will follow him immediately into death.1096 In doing so Heliodorus’ depiction of Theagenes’ take on

1091 X. Eph. 3.11.4. 1092 Anderson 1997, 311 shows how Chariclea’s sophrosyne is also a theme that finds its climax in the end of the novel, since ‘Heliodorus … thrusts the principle (of sophrosyne) upon his readers with overwhelming vigor, not merely by maintaining the physical integrity of his protagonists through-out, but by parading their virginity publicly as a kind of sacramental purity at his novel’s close.’ 1093 Hld. 1.25.6, ‘Making out that I am your brother was an exceedingly clever ruse … I realised that the story about Ionia and losing our way (πλάνης) to Delos was a way of concealing the truth, intended to make those who heard it lose their way indeed (πλάνην). ’On make-believe and fiction in the novels see Morgan 1993, 195, ‘Reader and text are both playing a double game of belief and disbelief, truth and fiction.’ 1094 Hld. 1.26.1. 1095 E. Hel. 1077–1078. 1096 E. Hel. 834–837, ‘(Men.) You betrayer! The force you allege is an excuse! (Hel.) But I have sworn a solemn oath by your own head … (Men.) What are you saying? That you swear to die? And you will never change your mate? (Hel.) Yes, by the same sword you use, and I shall lie beside you. (Men.) Well then, on those terms take my right hand (transl. Burian).’ Cf. Hld. 1.25.2, καὶ τί γένοιτ᾽ ἂν καινότερον ... ἢ ὅρκων μὲν καὶ σπονδῶν παραβαινομένων.



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the plot recalls Chaereas’ doubts about his wife, since no other male character in the Greek novel is so openly concerned with a girl’s chastity and faithfulness. The text brings forth more details from the Helen megatext during the battle scene between the robbers. Chariclea, we are told, is led to a cave by Cnemon. Yet a cave on Egyptian soil is a suspiciously telling allusion to the Helen megatext, and Heliodorus makes further use of the possibilities offered to him from his material. In the play, Menelaus hides his ‘fake’ nebulous wife in a cave while he is exploring the new land. Upon meeting with the real Helen, he learns from the messenger that his adulterous Trojan wife has fled to the sky.1097 The opposition between chastity and vice is also present in Chariclea’s double: Thisbe is to Chariclea what the lustful phantom had been for Helen.1098 Thisbe thus embodies the juxtaposition between seeming and being, φαίνεσθαι and εἶναι, just as in the Helen the reconciliation between the name of the protagonist and the purity of her body are central.1099 Theagenes, when he realises the truth, remarks that he has been lamenting the right woman but in another body, and urges the lame Cnemon to stop being afraid of ‘ghosts and shades,’1100 echoing once again the theme of Helen’s εἴδωλον. A similar exchange takes place in Euripides’ Helen 630 when the disappearance of Helen’s ghost enables the final recognition of the pair in a pathetic duet.1101 Unlike in the play, where the couple meet alone, in the novel Cnemon is a catalyst in the couple’s reunion. Not only he is the one who knows where Chariclea was hidden, but also because he is not emotionally involved, as opposed to Theagenes’ despair, he can read the hints and anticipates that Chariclea is alive. Cnemon’s recognitive reading1102 is contrasted with both Theagenes’ hasty emotional reading of the story as well as with that of the external readers, who, like our focaliser Cnemon, know that the dead body is very likely not the protagonist’s. Had it really been Chariclea, the text would not have presented Thyamis’ victim

1097 E. Hel. 424. 1098 For the tale of Cnemon as an example of ‘bad Athenian’ love, as opposed to Chariclea’s and Theagenes’ tale, see Morgan 1998a. 1099 Hld. 2.7.2, ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ σώματι. Cf. E. Hel. 43, 66, 199. See also on 66–67, ‘So, although my name is ignominious (ὄνομα δυσκλεές) in Greece, at least here my body (σῶμα) should not suffer from shame.’ 1100 Hld. 2.11.3, εἴδωλά τε καὶ σκιάς. 1101 Cf. E. Hel. 652, ἔχεις, ἐγώ τε σ᾽. Hld. 2.6.3, ‘Theagenes (ἔχω σε),’ she said, ‘you are alive (ζῇς μοι).’ 1102 See how later he uses the word ‘I know’ (οἶδα) to explain his certainty that the dead body is not Chariclea’s. Hld. 1.2 1. Cf. also later 2.5.3, ‘For the voice that falls upon my ears comes from the furthest depths of the cave, from the very part where I know (οἶδα) I left her.’ See also Montilgio 2012, 108–111, on Cnemon’s recognition of Chariclea.

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with an impersonal pronoun, as ‘somebody speaking Greek,’ but as the beautiful maiden of the prologue.1103 Thus Theagenes proves a hasty reader of Chariclea’s tale, whereas Cnemon seems to dwell on and make better use of the details that lead to the desired reunion. Soon after Theagenes is finally enfolding Chariclea in a solemn embrace in which both of them faint and fall to the ground as if dead. Yet were it not for Cnemon, we are told, they might have just as well died on the spot from too much happiness, during this, undoubtedly unique, sample of novelistic recognition with tragic overtones.1104 Thus ends the first suitor-plot of the Aethiopica. In this first part the reader admires Chariclea’s Penelopean wit and her shunning of the unwanted suitor, Motif B2, as well as Euripides’ clever Helen. However not all doubts related to the heroine’s chastity have been removed. Her near-death nonetheless merges the pattern of Penelope/Helen with that of Iphigenia, as in other novels too, and brings a new twist that breaks with the mythical story logic: instead of the heroine’s clever postponement until the husband’s/beloved’s return, Chariclea is saved from Thyamis due to Thisbe’s accidental presence in the area. Motif B2 is not followed by a quest but by a novelistic couple-recognition scene. This is the whole story that is available to Cnemon and the external reader up to this point. Only upon meeting with Calasiris, does the Athenian find the first thread that leads him to the background story of the two beautiful prisoners.1105 Calasiris’ reaction to the news stresses the metaliterary importance of recognition as part of the novel’s gradual ‘recognitive’ strategy: 2.23.2–4: (Calasiris) ‘But tell me please, how you come to have made their acquaintance (ἐγνώρισας)?’ ‘Not only have I made their acquaintance (οὐκ ἐγνώρισα μόνον),’ replied Cnemon, ‘but I am the bringer of good news (εὐαγγελίζομαι): they are alive and safe.’ ‘Apollo!’ exclaimed the old man, ‘and gods! Where in the world are they? Tell me! I shall account you my saviour and on a level with the gods.’ ‘What shall I gain from it?’ … ‘I shall

1103 Hld. 1.30.3, τινι Ἑλληνίδι τῇ γλώττῃ προσφθεγγομένῃ. See also Perkins 1999, 204–05 on the linguistic mishaprehension between the Egyptian- and the Greek-speaking characters as crucial for the misrecognition taking place here. Montiglio 2012, 109 argues that the ‘tension does not slacken until readers and characters find out that the dead woman is Thisbe.’ However at 1.30.7, at the actual scene of the murder, we learn that Thyamis ‘encountered somebody’ (περὶ τὸ στόμιον ἐντυχών τινι), but the name of Chariclea is not mentioned at all; cf. also later 1.31.1, καὶ ἡ μὲν ἔκειτο πικρῶς. The ambiguity is obvious to the careful reader. 1104 Hld. 2.7.3, ‘They contined in this vein, until in the end they collapsed, both at once, to the ground, where they lay clasped in a mute embrace that seemed to fuse their very beings, but brought them so close to death … they had escaped death, but now they were in mortal danger, had not Cnemon scratched in the earth to make a well of sorts.’ Montiglio 2012, 151, on the tragic quality of such recognition scenes. 1105 Hld. 2.23.2, ‘Are Theagenes and Chariclea really your children?’



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consider myself paid in full if you would consent to tell me all (ἅπαν) about them – where they come from, who their parents are, how they came here, what adventures they have had.’

Cnemon’s reply hints at a multilayered recognition scene: one in absentia of the characters involved, but in the presence of the person seeking them, Calasiris, another important narrator and focaliser of Chariclea’s story. Cnemon’s demand to hear the full story (ἅπαν) is reminiscent of Chariton’s partial recapitulations in which one or more ‘truths’ are hidden;1106 besides, this request cannot be fulfilled since Calasiris does not know the full story, whose second part is now only known to Cnemon. In order to complete the story, Cnemon substitutes one tale for another, one set of information for another, and that in chronological order. The recognitive importance is underscored in the priest’s first vivid narration of the events at Delphi, during which Cnemon partially ‘recognises’ the protagonists through Calasiris’ description of them, thus blending reality with fiction.1107 This is a metafictional intrusion that, by merging ‘reality’ and ‘narration’, drags both narrator and narratee into its illusion. Cnemon thinks he is ‘seeing’ the couple as if he were there (at Delphi), and Calasiris thinks that they are actually there (at Nausicles’ place). Such handling demonstrates how important recognition in Heliodorus’ narrative is for the detective approach. The Egyptian episodes in which Cnemon participates take place, under the protection of a Proteus-like character. Since Calasiris was with the couple in their adventures, Cnemon easily associates him with the lord of Pharos.1108 What is more, in order to endorse the mythical connection, the novel inserts various details that make Calasiris a ‘real’ Proteus analogue: for example, Calasiris is an old man with prophetic powers but he also has two – admittedly aggressive – sons.1109 Like the mythical King Proteus, he has two sons who fail to follow the 1106 Cnemon’s request to learn about the characters’ parents, homecountries, and adventures, reminds the biginnings of novels such as Xenophon of Ephesus, that indeed produce this information in the very beginning. 1107 The phrasing is similar in 2.23.3, καὶ θεοί, καὶ ποῦ γῆς οὗτοι δείκνυε and in 3.4.7 καὶ ποῦ γῆς οὗτοι δείκνυε πρὸς θεῶν. For Cnemon as reader see Morgan 1991. 1108 Hld. 2.4.4, ‘You are like Proteus from Pharos.’ Proteus appears as a simile for Sophistic elusiveness in Pl. Euthd. 288b8. Cnemon’s comparison addresses, of course, Calasiris’ Sophistic skills, not his role in the Helen pattern. On the Homeric background see Hunter 2014, 150–54. 1109 Hld. 3 11.2. After fighting over the priesthood, Calasiris’ elder son, Thyamis, becomes a bandit, and the second, Petosiris, abuses his brother and his priesthood at Memphis, 1.33.2, 7.4.4. The attempted fratricide revisits the Oedipus myth, not the myth of Proteus, cf. Morgan 1996a, 438. For the allusion to Eteocles and Polyneices see Alaux and Létoublon 1998. There are different stories regarding Proteus, all of which seem to reflect a side of Calasiris. Greek literature knows two figures called Proteus, the first a son of Poseidon, Od. 4.365, 4.385. In Hdt. 2 11.2 Pro-

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example of their father’s piety.1110 Calasiris, just like Proteus, flees because of his sons,1111 and his Weltanschauung brings him to Thebes, Meroe and Delphi, and back to Memphis.1112 If the reader has not already linked the tale of Chariclea with the Egyptian version of Helen’s myth, the information is revealed to him/her through the evocation of the mythical Egyptian king. In Nausicles’ household, however, Cnemon’s recognitive capacities will be tested. Whereas he was able to read correctly Chariclea’s story in the wilderness, now, haunted by the presence of Nausicles’ beautiful slave named Thisbe, he cannot identify her as ‘not-Thisbe’,1113 despite having seen Thisbe dead. He cannot imagine that Nausicles’ new acquisition, the so-called ‘much better Thisbe’, is Chariclea, although this mention hints to the reader that this supreme Beauty must be the protagonist.1114 The girl is eventually brought before them, veiled, just as Callirhoe was standing veiled in front of Chaereas before the final recognition.1115 They recognise her in a solemn theatre-like scene, with tears and embraces and lots of emotion, that appears as a dramatic piece within the novel.1116 With this partial recognition of the heroine, Cnemon’s focalisation ends at Nausicles’ household. His departure from the narrative is of metaliterary importance, as his last words to the newly-found Chariclea illustrate his recognitive impasse: 6.7.5 ‘O Fate! … Which way should I turn? What ought I to do? Am I to abandon Chariclea before she has been reunited with Theagenes? What a cruel and sinful thing to do, O Earth! Should I go with her then and join her quest? If we were assured of finding him, efforts spent in the expectations of success would be efforts well spent (τὸ μοχθεῖν ἐπ’ἐλπίδι). But on the other hand, if the future is uncertain and merely holds yet more misfortune, then it is also uncertain what end there will ever be to my wanderings.’

teus becomes a mortal king of Egypt, see also Paus. 3.18 16. A third Proteus is found in Ps.-Apollod. 2.5.9; he is still a son of Poseidon, who, among his many voyages, goes to Thrace. There he marries Torone and has two aggressive sons, Polygonus and Telegonus or Tmolos, cf. Tzetzes, Schol. Lycophr. 124. Because his sons deliberately kill every stranger setting foot in Thrace, Proteus prays to his father Poseidon to re-establish him in Egypt; this last Proteus has the most in common with Calasiris. 1110 Cf. Hdt. 2 112–118. 1111 In the myth, Proteus flees from Thrace to Egypt, whereas Calasiris flees from Egypt to Greece. The Thracian woman in the Proteus myth, Torone, is represented in Calasiris’ case in the person of the beautiful courtesan Rhodopis, who was originally from Thrace; for her mention in Herodotus and the Aethiopica see Bucher 1989. 1112 For the ambiguous presence of Calasiris at Delphi and his journey see Pinheiro 1991. 1113 For an extensive analysis of the scene see Montiglio 2012, 110–112. 1114 Hld. 5.1.7, βελτίονα Θίσβην ἐκτησάμην. 1115 On the veil see also Montiglio 2012, 202. 1116 Hld. 5.11.1–2, καθάπερ ἐπὶ σκηνῆς ἀναγνωρισμός; Montiglio 2012, 112, on beauty as a stereotypical theme in the recognition scenes of the novelistic protagonist.



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But, whatever the excuses, Cnemon’s ending smacks of egocentricity: he leaves the novel as he found it, in medias res. His opting out, he says, is because Chariclea’s tale may take forever to resolve. Despite Calasiris’ reminder of the higher-providential guidance that led him to Chariclea and all their near escapes from death and slavery, Cnemon is not optimistic: had he been, he would have happily joined them, as hope stimulates (τὸ μοχθεῖν ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι). He still believes that this is not ‘evident’ (πρόδηλον) but ‘uncertain’ (ἄδηλον) and thus decides to leave the story – and subsequently the Penelope/Helen pattern, where the motif of ‘quest’ begins (τὰ τῆς ἅλης), having heretofore seen mainly an Penelope/ Helen (Thyamis) and an Iphgenia pattern (Thisbe).1117 Finally Cnemon resolves to accompany them halfway to the Boucoloi area in their search for the lost Theagenes. In case they succeed, he says, he will happily deliver her over to Theagenes, proving himself a worthy guardian of his treasure;1118 otherwise, he will leave her with Calasiris to continue their quest. Cnemon’s absence is all the more highlighted as the quest which the characters now launch is not that of the male for the female protagonist but vice versa, echoing Isis’ quest of Osiris.1119 Whereas other novelistic secondary characters find their happy end after the main couple’s reunion, Cnemon marries first, causing Chariclea to despair, for her own ‘drama’ is not over.1120 Cnemon in his farewell speech mentions how he initially expected ‘to live together with them for the rest of his time,’1121 reminding us of a wide range of novelistic characters including Polycharmus, Rhode, Leucon, Hippothous, and Clinias. The motif of the quest for but also of Chariclea is therefore disrupted: although recognised twice by Cnemon, Chariclea is still not securely reunited with her beloved. Cnemon’s reading of Chariclea’s adventures shows therefore that an exemplary reader must not only be clever but also patient and resilient, qualities that Cnemon seems not to possess.1122

1117 Cf. Cnemon’s poor expectations for the outcome at Hld. 6.7.4, μικράν τινα χρηστὴν ἐλπίδα. On the metanarrative significance of this passage see Grethlein 2016, 324–25. 1118 Hld. 6.7.7, χρηστὸς φύλαξ παρακαταθήκης. Cf. Char. 5.9.2, 6.1.6, Callirhoe as Stateira’s παρακαταθήκη. And maybe also in Char. 8.3.14, καλὴν παραθήκην. 1119 Lefteratou 2013 213–14. 1120 Hld. 6.8.4–5, ‘The drama in which you have cast us is infinitely protracted, more tragic than anything on stage.’ Paulsen 1992, 139–40. 1121 Hld. 6.7.4. For Cnemon’s empty words see Paulsen 1992, 141, ‘der Autor läβt keinen Zweifel daran, daβ diese Ankündigung eine Fiktion ist.’ 1122 Here I am more tempted to follow Winkler 1980, 143 who sees Cnemon as illustrating the ‘comedy of misreading’ as opposed to milder interpretations of his readerly role in Bartsch 1989, 120–22 and Morgan 1991, 99. The view of him as exemplifying the reader moved by desire for a novelistic erotic narrative, expressed recently by Whitmarsh 2011, 171–73, takes the interpretation too far, and, as I assert, his reluctance to follow shows his not-so-ideal view of Chariclea’s tale.

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Charicles’ reading of the Beauty’s elopement The story that Calasiris reports to Cnemon, including the tales of Charicles and of Sisimithres, casts Chariclea as not merely a beautiful heroine but a Beauty of mythical calibre. As the Egyptian recedes into the background, the Greek tableau at Delphi suggests a change of tune. Heliodorus’ Chariclea may possess the unearthly beauty of Callirhoe and the Artemis-like associations of Anthia, but she seems to surpass the first in that the circumstances of her conception bring her closer to the mythical heroine. Her well-cherished chastity is not just guided by her worship of Artemis but is supported by an elaborate mythical network that make of her the embodiment of Artemisian chastity and Aphroditean beauty. Heliodorus’ recounting of Chariclea’s infancy is unique among the Greek novelists, who, with the exception of Longus, tend to start with characters already in their late teens. Here, the reader learns not only of her exposure at birth but also of her early childhood. Calasiris is aware of this part of the story through Charicles’ and Sisimithres’ narrations, but he had probably also heard it personally from Persinna,1123 Chariclea’s mother, at Meroe. The function of the tale about Andromeda’s painting, besides the comparison of Chariclea to the mythical Ethiopian heroine, is to establish a myth-like precedent, a miraculous conception, proper for a divine beauty and a future protagonist.1124 Like Helen, Chariclea’s conception bears markers of supernatural involvement and, subsequently, of illegetimacy. While in bed with her husband, queen Persinna looks at the painting of Andromeda at the crucial moment; the baby of this union is born white to black Ethiopian parents. Fearing slander, Persinna spirits the newborn away, but unlike Leda’s affair with Zeus, Queen Persinna was not unfaithful to her Ethiopian husband, just as. 1125 By the time Chariclea reaches age seven she is, like Helen, a great beauty and looks like she has already come of age.1126 As with Helen, the age of seven is the right time for the first abduction, or for the first voyage outside the homeland,1127 so Chariclea travels to Delphi with her foster

1123 For what Calasiris knows or pretends not to know see the major contribution by Winkler 1982 and Pinheiro 1991. For Calasiris’ technique being applied to the rest of the novel see Morgan 1994. 1124 For the associations of the painting as a work of art and its embodiment in Chariclea see Bartsch 1989, 48, Billault 1990, Laplace 1992, 216, Elmer 2008, 4310–431. For the miraculous conception see Reeve 1988 and Olsen 2012. 1125 There is a long discussion of chastity on the embroidered ribbon by Persinna that relates to the question of legal offspring, Anderson 1997, 313. A similar adoption case is also recorded for Helen, since according to one source Tyndareus and Leda were her adoptive parents cf. Ps.-Apollod. 3.10.7. 1126 Hld. 2.31.3. 1127 For the number ‘seven’ see Tzetzes’ Schol. Lycophr. 5132, which report a tradition going back to Duris FGrH 76 F 92. See also Hellanicus FGrH 323a F18 and F19. Becoming seven was part



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father. It is a transitional age that corresponds with the end of childhood and the beginning of puberty. The seven-year-old Chariclea is no longer described as child, παῖς, but looks like a virgin, κόρη, mature enough for marriage. The megatext might remind the reader that, at the same age, Helen was stolen by Theseus.1128 Chariclea shares with Helen this premature femininity and god-like beauty. Moreover, she becomes a priestess of Artemis at Delphi, which is vaguely reminiscent of Plutarch’s remark that Helen was a priestess of the Spartan Artemis Orthia when Theseus abducted her.1129 Like Helen and like other female protagonists of the Greek novels, she worships Artemis, the goddess of virgins, and what is more, she is a passionate admirer of virginity.1130 The first Helen pattern of the novel involves Chariclea’s coming of age and the preparations for her betrothal. Charicles has already chosen his nephew Alcamenes to become Chariclea’s husband,1131 and this promise makes the Beauty unavailable to Theagenes. Implicitly therefore Charicles, engineers a plot in which Theagenes, like Clitophon, is cast in the role of both the beloved and the abductor of the virgin. The intertextual association of the name Alcamenes with both a famous sculptor and a Spartan king gives the learned reader some hints as to where the narrative is headed with respect to the Helen pattern: Sparta.1132 The choice of the name Alcamenes thus engenders a series of rather dangerous connotations, since Theagenes threatens to kill him, echoing the ominous results of the mythical Beauty’s engagement.1133 Theagenes’ Thessalian origin subtly relates to the Helen megatext too.1134 In the traditional lists of Helen’s suitors Achilles is not included, since he was too young to be among them; had he been one, Menelaus would have had no chance against him.1135 The first mention of Achilles of a ritual: Cf. Ar. Lys. 641, ‘At seven years I was carrying the symbols in the procession.’ See also Henderson 1989, 159, Burkert and Raffan 1987, 229. 1128 Duris FGrH 76 F 92, Ant. Lib. 27, Paus. 2.22.6. 1129 Hld. 2.33.4 cf. Plu. Thes. 31.2. 1130 Hld. 2.33.5. 1131 Hld. 4.6.6. 1132 The name seems to refer to a Spartan king, cf. Ps.-Plu. Apophth. Lac. 216e, but also to a sculptor, cf. D. Chr. Or. 12.45 and Paus. 5.10.8. In Pausanias’ description of Olympia, Alcamenes is said to have sculpted a Centauromachy (also famous was the Centauromachy by Phidias on the Parthenon metope); the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths is alluded to in Hld. 3.3.5 in the description of Theagenes’ chiton. In my view, this hints to the reader what is about to occur, i.e. Chariclea’s abduction. If one thinks of Alcamenes the Spartan king, then the connection between the Heliodoran Alcamenes and Menelaus becomes more obvious. 1133 At Hld. 4.6.6, we are reminded of the death penalty for rapists, see Lateiner 1997, 421. 1134 Jones 2006, 550–51 mentions two namesakes for the hero: a Homeric exegete, famous for his allegorical interpretation, and an athlete. 1135 Cf. Hes. Frag. 196. (Merkelbach-West) and Ps.-Apollod. 3.10.8.

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among the suitors is Euripides’ Helen 99.1136 Theagenes, the Thessalian and Achilles’ descendant, defeats Alcamenes, whose name hints at a Spartan connection. Here Heliodorus seems to recall a variant vividly presented in the earlier Heroicus by Philostratus, which shows a taste for reuniting the most beautiful with the bravest characters of the Trojan War. Theagenes’ Achillean courtship, drowning out Alcamenes’ Spartan echoes, is therefore suggestive of the romantic revision of the Helen myth as envisioned by Philostratus.1137 Thus, although Calasiris supports the elopement, his intervention is only secondary to the wedding theme that Charicles has orchestrated, making thus Apollo’s priest the main reader of the story. Fearing bloodshed, Calasiris, like Odysseus, plays the role of the peacemaker to avoid slaughter between the suitors and the Beauty’s father. Calasiris dissuades Theagenes from any thoughtless actions and suggests instead the well-known motif, abduction and/or elopement. According to Charicles’ fashioning of the Chariclea tale alongside the Helen megatext, Calasiris fabricates a myth-like story that could only be convincing to the priest and the Delphians. The subsequent adventures of the Ethiopian princess are therefore the outcome of the initial B1 Motif, that of abduction.1138 The Egyptian priest orchestrates a credible story, displacing the ‘real motivation’ for his journey – namely to return Chariclea to her Ethiopian parents – with a romance. Indeed, his story is successful inasmuch as he convinces Chariclea’s desperate adoptive father that Theagenes is the embodiment of evil, a devil who starts a war for the beautiful Chariclea and absconds with both the priestess and her possessions – just like Helen, who departed with Paris taking Menelaus’ wealth with them. Upon the couple’s departure Charicles is depicted in complete distress: 4.17.3–4: The commander in this campaign (πόλεμον) of love was Theagenes, who had formed the young men from the procession into a squadron of soldiers. With a sudden outburst of loud shouting they banged their shields, which filled all who heard anything at all of the noise with terror ... torches ablaze, they burst into Chariclea’s room and snatched her away. She submitted willingly to this violent assault, which came as no surprise to her, for she knew in advance exactly what was to take place. They also made off with such items as the girl wished to take with her, not a few ... and as they ran through the streets of Delphi, endlessly in turn they cried aloud the name of Chariclea.

The description above is repeated in Charicles’ version at the Ethiopian court before Hydaspes much later.1139 The heroine, against Charicles’ will, elopes with 1136 Allan 2008, 160. 1137 This may be added to the other similarities between the two authors discussed by Morgan 2009a. 1138 For the laws concerning abduction and marriage in Heliodorus’ time see Lateiner 1997. 1139 Hld. 10.35.1.



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her beloved by boat, since Calasiris has already planned to embark on a Phoenician ship;1140 not only does the kidnapping resemble a war, but a real war ensues because of the elopement. The general Hegesias, moved by Charicles’ lamentations and angered by the Thessalian assault, commands the Delphians to attack the Thessalians, stressing the importance of the incident as the cause of war, rather than Charicles’ emotional collapse. Within the Helen megatext, which is omnipresent in Heliodorus’ account, the internal strife might well echo both the Sacred Wars around Delphi the mythical wars fought for Helen the Beauty, such as the battle of Aphidna. 1141 While Charicles imagines Chariclea abducted by soldiers, as expected in a Helen pattern, she and Theagenes, wishing to fulfill their love and find Chariclea’s biological parents, are hiding in Calasiris’ house. Meanwhile the couple, obeying the novelistic conventions and not the mythical ones, exchange the kind of secret oaths that figure so prominently in the recognition pattern in Xenophon. Chariclea has the priest bless their voyage and has Theagenes’ promiss not to touch her merging Motifs B1 and B2 early on in a successful chaste elopement.1142 His promise echoes the oaths of love found in Xenophon of Ephesus, with the difference that Theagenes is only a fiancé, not a husband. In this, he also recalls the precedent set by Clitophon, who decided albeit halfway through the narrative to wait for Leucippe’s consent. As such, Theagenes proves superior not only to Paris, but also to the faithful husband Habrocomes and the dubious suitor Clitophon. Although Helodorus’ version of elopement does not lack in adventure, it nonetheless exceeds in sophrosyne.1143 Calasiris’ Homeric sequel Once away from Delphi, Calasiris’ takes over the pattern of the Beauty where Charicles left it and becomes the major engineer of the plot, especially as they approach his country of origin, Egypt. Yet Calasiris’ Egypt like that of Euripides’ Proteus’ and Theoclymenus’ bears clear Homeric colours, blending a variety of intertexts from the Helen megatext. The Beauty and her lover sail away in a Phoe-

1140 Hld. 4.16.9. 1141 Hld. 4.19.1 and 4.20.1. The Delphians’ attack on their neighbours and co-amphictyons, the Thessalians and the Aenianes, may recall the First Sacred War (595–585) against Cirrha in the 6th c. BCE, but in Heliodorus’ context Chariclea is the only sacred reason, since according to Charicles 10.36.3 she was stolen from the temple’s adyton. For Aphidna see Plu. Thes. 33.1. 1142 Hld. 4.18.5–6. 1143 Anderson 1997, 312.

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nician boat to a mythically and novelistically anticipated destination: Egypt.1144 Their elopement, as in the other novels, brings on a series of suitor-competition motifs. Chariclea’s next suitor is not a chaste Achilles offspring but a Phoenician merchant. Simultaneously a pirate named Trachinus, who catches sight of her during their winter stay at Zante, falls in love and decides to abduct her. Both the origin of the Phoenician merchant and the name Trachinus are associated with Heracles, a hero known for erotic adventures and abducting girls.1145 During their maritime and then Egyptian adventures, Calasiris demonstrates an astonishing wit that helps safeguard her chastity despite potential violations. Within the logic of the Helen myth he therefore appears as the incarnation of the wise Proteus.1146 Calasiris’ avoids the merchant’s advances when Trachinus appears. For Trachinus understands his search and pursuit of Chariclea, as well as the battle to get hold of her, as part of his erotic scenario, namely Motif C of the megatext. 5.26.1: (Trachinus) ‘It was not in any sense against you, rather because (διὰ σέ) of you, that I have fought this battle (ὅδε ὁ πόλεμος), my beloved. I have been following you ever since the day you left Zacynthus, and it was for love (ἔρωτα) of you that I dared undertake such a lengthy and hazardous sea voyage (τοσοῦτον πέλαγος καὶ κίνδυνον). Take heart then! I tell you now that by my side you shall be queen of all my men.’

Trachinus’ version above recalls not only the Helen myth but also Chariton’s Helen revision. Like Chaereas, Trachinus portrays himself as crossing the sea for love, a recurrent theme in the Callirhoe.1147 However, Trachinus’ plans, like those of Paris in Herodotus’ version, fail upon reaching Proteus’, and Calasiris’, Egypt. Everything is prepared for the wedding when Calasiris discovers a way out by staging another suitor-competition motif: another brigand, Pelorus, already enamoured of Chariclea, incited by Calasiris attacks Trachinus. The fight between the pirates alludes to the Teichoscopia in the Iliad, where Helen, beautifully dressed in her robes, figures

1144 Helen and Paris visit Sidon, Hom. Il.6.289–291. For Phoenicia and Heliodorus, see Bowie 1998. 1145 Bowie 1998, 6. The Phoenician merchant mentions Heracles of Tyre, 4.16.6; the name Trachinus recalls Sophocles’ Trachiniae. In the play, Deaneira takes revenge on Heracles for capturing the city of Oechalia and bringing back Iole as his mistress. Heracles captured the city for the sake of Iole, thus recalling the Helen myth. Heracles was also known for the first capture of Troy that took place because of Hesione, Ps.-Apollod. 2.5 9. 1146 E.g. Calasiris’ efforts to postpone the engagement between Chariclea and the Tyrian Pythionikes 5.19 1, and 5.26.2, Chariclea feigning interest in Trachinus. For Chariclea being Calasiris’ apprentice see De Temmernan 2014, 269–269, and 272. 1147 Cf. Char. 3.5.1, ἕτοιμος ὢν διὰ τὸν ἔρωτα ζεύξας σχεδίαν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος ἑαυτὸν ἀφεῖναι a romantic version of Odysseus raft from Hom. Od. 5.33.



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as the prize in the battle between Trojans and Achaeans.1148 The pirates divide into two parties while Chariclea watches, attired in a splendid gown. The contest is settled by a duel, which recalls the one between Menelaus and Paris.1149 Pelorus’ victory is followed by a battle, alluding to Iliad 4, with corpses strewn around both attackers and attacked. Meanwhile Chariclea, just like Helen in the Odyssey and in Euripides’ play, empowers Theagenes by reminding him of his heroism, ἀνδρίζου φίλτατε.1150 Chariclea’s support for Theagenes turns him into a Menelaus’ analogue, the rightful husband. And just as in the Homeric duel, at the end of the conflict – but the very beginning of Heliodorus’ novel – Theagenes, like Menelaus, lies moribund in Chariclea’s arms, and Calasiris’ Homeric reworking of the Helen myth appears to have reached a dead end.1151 So far we have been following Calasiris’ narrative about Chariclea, which has been influenced by and has influenced in turn Charicles’ interpretation of the girl’s story. Whereas the Egyptian fabricates a Helen-like elopement for the beautiful girl, there is no way to say whether Charicles’ mythical fashioning of Chariclea’s childhood and early years did not provide fertile ground for the apt Calasiris to work towards a Homeric model. The final scene – what Calasiris witnesses while wandering away from the battlefield – corresponds with what the reader gets at the beginning of the novel.1152 The priest’s Homeric threading includes a suitor-competition that leads to a chaste elopement (B1), during which the heroine cleverly defends her chastity against other suitors (B2); yet, against all 1148 Hom. Il. 3.121. Cf. Hld. 5.32.1. 1149 Hld. 5.32.1–6. Pelorus’ and Trachinus’ duel is patterned on its Homeric prototype of the duel between Paris and Menelaus, with Pelorus and Trachinus cast alternately in the roles of Paris and Menelaus, since they both present themselves as the rightful ‘owners’ of Chariclea, while both are her kidnappers. Theagenes, on the other hand, the only rightful consort of Chariclea, also shares some of Paris’ characteristics; he participates in the battle and kills Peloros, his main rival. 1150 Cf. Hom. Il. 4.450–453, ὀλλύντων τε καὶ ὀλλυμένων; cf. Hld. 5.32.1, βαλλόντων καὶ βαλλομένων. Rattenbury, Lumb and Maillon 1935, 81–84. Chariclea in the novel tries to encourage Theagenes ‘ἀνδρίζου φίλτατε’ at 5.32.5, echoing Helen’s interference in both the incident of the Trojan horse in Hom. Od. 4.277–280 (she simulates the voices of the Argives who were hiding in the wooden horse) and particular her cheering on Menelaus upon their escape from Theoclymenus’ soldiers in E. Hel. 1603–4, ποῦ τὸ Τρωϊκὸν κλέος; For this initial tableau, recapitulated here, as representing the Mnesterophonia see Tagliabue 2015. 1151 At the end of the Paris-Menelaus duel, although Menelaus wins, Pandarus shoots him with an arrow and wounds him, Hom. Il.4.126. Another echo is Hld. 1.2.3, ἡ παρειὰ καταρρέοντι τὧ αἵματι φοινιττομένη λευκότητι πλέον ἀντέλαμπεν; cf. Hom. Il. 4.141–147 (description of Menelaus’ wound) ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τίς τ᾽ ἐλέφαντα γυνὴ φοίνικη μιήνῃ. On the authorial play with adjectives meaning ‘Phoenician’ see Bowie 1998. 1152 Hld. 5.33 1, ἡμέρας γενομένης; cf. 1.1.1 ἡμέρας διαγελώσης. For the narrative doublet see Morgan 1998a, 71. See also Grethlein 2016 on this second beginning half-way through the plot.

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expectations Chariclea’s engagement to Alcamenes results in Theagenes mortally wounded and Chariclea stranded in Egypt among the bandits. Calasiris’ version seems to fall short, indicating that the Homeric model does not work and is yet another interlude of the greater plot patterning. Chariclea’s quest and Theagenes’ misreading Upon being reunited with Chariclea at Nausicles’, and with Theagenes’ fate still hanging in the balance, the first extensive quest motif begins, but even this is subverted. Now, instead of fabricating a plot, Calisiris follows Chariclea’s search for her beloved. Chariclea distinguishes herself from her mythical and novelistic predecessors in that she alone launches a quest for her beloved. The novels play with the motif of the man in quest for the lost bride but Heliodorus reverses the readerly expectations and has the girl looking for the boy. Female goddesses such as Demeter or Isis1153 may wander too but most human women and virgins who are presented as roaming the earth do so after being maddened by the gods.1154 Chariclea’s quest for her beloved brings her eventually to Memphis, in Book 7,1155 suggesting a stronger connection with the patroness of Egypt.1156 Just like Isis who wanders in disguise searching of Osiris’ body, Chariclea too disguises herself as a beggar after leaving Naucratis, alluding thsu both to the Odyssean but also to the Egyptian model.1157 And just as Isis attempts to resurrect Osiris, Chariclea too witnesses an underworld scene that echoes both the Egyptian myth and the

1153 Cf. Plu. De Is. 356d. Lefteratou 2013, 213–241. 1154 As Montiglio 2005, 17–19 argues, women were too well rooted in Greek society. Only those women maddened by gods, who murder their husbands and children, wander into the wilderness, e.g. Io, the Lemnian women, Medea, and the daughters of Proetus. It is only Antigone who successfully accompany their father in his wanderings and returns safely to Thebes, at least in Sophocles’ version. 1155 Chariclea’s disguise also likens her to Isis, who wandered in disguise to save her son. Cf. Behaeghel 1995, 76, ‘Dans le couple Isis-Osiris c’est Isis, la femme, qui est l’élément actif, c’est elle qui part à la recherche de son divin époux.’ For the central role of Chariclea in the Aethiopica see Wieserma 1990, 109–23. 1156 For the Isis myth as being influential for the novel see Merkelbach 1962 and especially his chapter on Xenophon. For Isis and its archetypical role in the shaping of the novel see Kerényi 1927, 98 and 104 on Memphis and the children oracle, reported also in X. Eph. 5.4.11. For the Isis myth and its Neo-Platonic interpretation see Witt 1997, 150. For the Greek novel see also Zeitlin 2008, 93–94 with references. 1157 Hld. 6.10.2, Rattenbury, Lumb 1937, 102, Paulsen 1992, 163, Montiglio 2012, 114–1115 and De Temmerman 2014, 280. For Isis’ disguise see Plu. De Is. 356d, ‘Isis, when these things reached her, at once cut off one of her tresses and out on a garment of mourning … but Isis wandered everywhere at her wits’ end’ (transl. Babbitt).



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Homeric Nekyia. 1158 Just as Isis resurrects Osiris in the Egyptian myth, the old woman of the story resurrects her dead son, who confirms Chariclea’s association to Isis: she too is a ‘girl maddened by love who roams the earth in search of her beloved.’1159 This last sentence underscores all the more clearly the connection between Chariclea’s wanderings and those of Isis, but always within the frame of the Odyssean wanderings of Calasiris. It is within the context of this Homeric and yet Egyptian mythology that the major couple-recognition scene should be interpreted. Calasiris arrives in time at Memphis and manages to stop his sons’ duel for the priesthood. Then a double recognition takes place: on the one hand, Calasiris’ sons recognise their father at the very last moment before killing each other, averting a family tragedy,1160 and opting instead for an Odyssean reunion ending. 1161 On the other hand, the two lovers meet and recognise each other, as part of the romantic scenario that associates wandering (and disguise) with recognition and reunion.1162 But unlike typical mutual novelistic recognitions, full of mutual passion, this is one-sided. Chariclea recognises Theagenes first: not only does she distinguish him from a distance, but she also runs to him and hugs him, actions that accompany a typical mutual-recognition scene in which the partner reciprocates. However, Theagenes’ recognitive skills are mediocre, and he demands a test. 7.7.6–7: The sight of her face, hideously disguised with filth, and of her tattered and ragged garments led him to suppose that she truly was some mendicant vagabond, and he tried to push her away and elbow her aside. But she refused to let him go and made such a nuisance of herself … that eventually he cuffed her round the face (διερράπισεν). ‘O Pythian’, she whispered, ‘have you forgotten the torch?’ Her words pierced Theagenes’ heart like an arrow, for he recognised (γνωρίσας) the torch as one of the signs that they had agreed upon. He gazed hard at Chariclea and was dazzled (καταυγασθείς) by the brilliance of her eyes, as if by a shaft of sunlight shining out between the clouds. He took her in his arms and held her tight.

1158 Cf. Keyes 1922, 42–51 and Luck 1999, 153. 1159 Hld. 6.15.4. Cf. Plu. De Is. 356e, πλανωμένην δε πάντῃ, Merkelbach 1962, 104. 1160 Hld. 7.7.3, διηκριβοῦντο τὸν ἀναγνωρισμόν. For Calasiris’ sons’ assimilation to Oedipus’ see also Morgan 1996a. It can be added that just as Antigone leaves with her father disguised like beggars from Thebes in the opening lines of S. OC, Calasiris too wanders with his surrogate daughter Chariclea. 1161 E.g. Hld. 7.7.3, Calasiris throws off his rags to reveal himself to his sons like Odysseus; cf. Whitmarsh 1998, 112 and Montiglio 2012, 116. 1162 Montiglio 2012, 117–19.

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In none of the other novels except Chariton’s does the hero not only fail to recognise his beloved but also exerts physical violence over her.1163 It may be that Chariclea is disguised like Isis but the scene bears novelistic and comic characteristics too. The scene might be reminiscient of Clitophon’s misrecognition of the shaved Leucippe, and instead of a Perikeiromene, Heliodorus opts for staging a Rhapizomene,1164 reinforcing his ties to both Achilles Tatius and drama. What both Menandrean comedies and the novel have as a basic plot pattern is the motif of jealousy, which, rightly or not, results in physical violence against a supposedly unfaithful female character. As a result, when Theagenes slaps Chariclea, the reader is invited to attend to a humorous twist of the theme of chastity via the Menandrean context and in combination with the overarching Helen megatext. Whereas in the plays and in the novels the female character is punished for supposedly being adulterous, Theagenes here thinks that the woman in rags threatens his own faithfulness to Chariclea! The time that separates the couple between Naucratis and Memphis is the only time that they spend apart. Unlike other novelistic heroes, Theagenes knows where his beloved is and does not initiate a long-term quest for her, as Chaereas or Haborcomes do. He is also certain about her faithfulness, as opposed to other novelistic characters. But Theagenes’ reading skills fall short as opposed to Chariclea’s who recognises him immediately and from afar.1165 This new recognitive impasse requires the revelation of the recognition symbols that the couple had agreed to use in an emergency, the ‘Pythikos’ and the ‘Pythias’.1166 The exchange of secret ‘signs’ recalls the famous Odyssean recognition between Penelope and her husband but also echoes the famous chastity oath of Anthia and Habrocomes. It takes a few seconds for Theagenes to realise the mistake. The mention of him being dazzled, καταυγασθείς, implies illumination and suggests an interpretation

1163 Montiglio 2012, 123, interprets Theagenes’ error as intentional by an author who wanted to demonstrate that ‘by staying within the bounds of common experience, Theagenes fails in the role of Platonic lover that Heliodorus has assigned to him, a role greater than life.’ However, Theagenes’ slapping Chariclea may have been a comic reminiscence, especially since Chariclea, some chapters earlier, was still Nausicles’ slave. Thus Heliodorus may have been playing with recognition on two levels: the higher level of Platonic recognition and the (more novelistic?) level of a comedy of errors. 1164 Rhapizomene, frag. 321–332 is the title of another of Menander’s lost plays, see Webster 1974, 179. The Egyptian background of this tale might also allude to Isis’ decapitation by Horus: Plu. De Is. 358d, because Isis failed to punish Seth, Horus, her son, decapitated her, stealing the kingship. 1165 Hld. 7.7.4, πορρώθεν ἀναγνωρίσασα, 7.7.5 περιφῦσα τοῦ αὐχένος … κατησπάζετο θρήνοις. 1166 Hld. 5.5 1–2, together with their scars and the torch and phoenix symbols.



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within a Neo-Platonic context.1167 From the survey of the visual arts above, we have seen Penelope’s allegorical personification of Philosophy, to whom Odysseus returns after his long wanderings. This correspondence is also visible in the famous late antique mosaic from Apamea discussed above, showing Penelope embracing Odysseus upon his homecoming. 1168 Theagenes’ illumination during his recognition with Chariclea therefore can also be interpreted as a deeper recognition between their two souls. Their reunion makes their bond stronger for the difficult events described in Book 7 and 8 to come. Chariclea’s immediate recognition of her beloved, her correct reading, assimilates her with Lady Philosophy, as it shows her supreme intellect. The recognition scene that Heliodorus stages therefore plays with multilayered intertexts, all of which represent different paradigms of Motif D2: Menandrean comedy, novelistic antecedents, Odyssean patterns and Neo-Platonic vulgate all contribute to the refinement of the well-known topos. The combination of the less obvious Isis myth that introduced Motif C with the Neo-Platonic resonances of Motif D2 may offer the reader a deeper, more exotic view of the Egyptian part of the tale.1169 The narrator’s final metaliterary comment expresses the onlookers’ perspective as they empathise with the action: 7.8.2: But all were agreed that the high point of the drama (τὸ ἐρωτικὸν μέρος τοῦ δράματος) was its romantic side, in the shape of Theagenes and Chariclea, two charming young people in the full bloom of their youth, who against all expectation were now reunited (ἀλλήλους ἀπειληφότες): the eyes of the city were turned upon them more than upon any of the other participants.

This kind of double recognition gives the the public the opportunity to side with one or more participants: the young men side with Theagenes, the older men with Thyamis, the girls with Chariclea, and the aged men with Calasiris.1170 This empathetic identification and focalisation of the recognition scene through a mixed readership of various interests is very characteristic. It recalls the equivalent recognition scene between Chariclea and Chaereas at court in Chariton’s novel, where the spectators also side with one or the other of the three characters.1171 This remark further signals the conclusion of the main Helen pattern that began 1167 See Lamberton 1992 and Sandy 2001. For the Platonic background of this recognition scene see now Montiglio 2012, 117–20, with bibliography. Cf. Whitmarsh 2005a, 99–101, on Heliodorus’ themes of light and darkness. See also Morgan 2005, ‘le blanc et et le noir.’ 1168 Cf. Figure 13. 1169 The allegorising tendency of Heliodorus is evident in his treatment of the aetiological myth of the Neiloa in Hld. 9.9.4. See Sandy 1982, 157. 1170 Hld. 7.8.3. 1171 Char. 5.8.3.

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with the various unsuccessful suitor attempts and continued with the quest for Theagenes, to end at Meroe, where Calasiris will meet his doom and transmit care for the safety of Chariclea and Theagenes to his sons.1172 It is not fortuitous than the major focaliser of a large part of Chariclea’s adventures, Calasiris, exits the scene precisely at the end of a pattern that he staged himself, in the very moment of a Homeric recognition scene which, like the one with his own children, is based on the Penelope/Helen megatext. Just as Cnemon opts out of the novel upon the first partial recognition of Chariclea with the priest, Calasiris too opts out once the couple recognition takes place. Just like Cnemon, he too leaves the narrative in medias res, at the very point where his own tale intersects with Chariclea’s. That said, unlike Cnemon, Calasiris knows in advance that Chariclea’s tale ends happily.1173 Whereas Cnemon illustrates the kind of egocentric reader who prefers to withdraw from the story halfway through, Calasiris needs to quit reading out of necessity. Yet the question remains: would Calasiris have followed the couple all the way to Meroe, now that his own narrative is settled? Charicles’ Palinode: Penelope at Meroe With Calasiris’ death the thread of the Penelope/Helen pattern comes to an end, as Books 7 and 8 focus on the Phaedra pattern and Books 9 and 10 on the Iphigenia one. That being said, the last book returns to the Penelope/Helen megatext to conclude it: on the one hand the couple needs to pass a final chastity test, to eradicate any remaining readerly doubts regarding their conduct, both Theagenes and Chariclea are found virginal.1174 This chastity test, like the exchange of oaths at Memphis, redirects the reader towards a Penelope conclusion, as with Leucippe’s chastity test in the novel’s closure. On the other hand, the novel brings back a character that was left in the midst of the first Helen pattern at Delphi, Charicles, and resumes his reading of Chariclea’s tale. The appearance of the priest of Delphi is not compulsory as the novel could have ended happily even without him. However his presence at the Ethiopian altars acts as a catalyst for the outcome of the plot. Upon Charicles’ arrival, after the recognition of Chariclea as Hydaspes’ lost daughter, her cousin Meroebos returns victorious from a battle against the Persians, bearing valuable gifts. This episode re-enacts the suitor-competition motif at Delphi, where Charicles tried to betroth his nephew Alcamenes to Chariclea 1172 Hld. 7.11.4. 1173 At Hld. 2.24.6, Calasiris foresees his sons’ quarrel but is unable to predict how it will end. Later, 2.26.4, he learns from the Oracle at Delphi that this too will have a happy end. Equally at 2.35.5 he learns that Chariclea and Theagenes will reach the ‘dark land’ (κυανέη χθόνα). 1174 Hld. 10.9.3.



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and which resulted, together with the revelation of her Ethiopian origins, in her elopement.1175 It serves to remind the reader who is entangled in the near-death pattern that another narrative threat lurks: yet another suitor-competition. The Ethiopian onlookers suggest that Theagenes fight Meroebus’ champion in hope that his life will be spared.1176 On the other hand, Theagenes decides to face the Ethiopian champion to stir up his beloved’s pity, recalling thus the very novel’s first suitor-theme in Egypt. As in the episode with Chariclea’s fake promises to Thyamis, Theagenes eagerly accepts that his beloved has forgotten about him and hopes that a match in which he is hurt may spur her pity and restore her memory (ἡμῶν ἀπεγνωκυῖαν).1177 Theagenes’ words hint metaliterarily at the recognition to come.1178 Surprisingly, Theagenes wins the match but his sacrifice is not cancelled, resuming the Iphigenia pattern. Only then does Charicles arrive at Meroe, and since Chariclea is still counselling with her mother in a tent, unable to tell the truth about Theagenes, it is the priest who recognises Theagenes in front of the sacrificial altars. Like Hippothous and Sostratus in Xenophon and in Achilles Tatius respectively, Charicles recognises one of the two protagonists of the story assisting with the overall recognitive closure. The recognitive path to Meroe that Charicles undertakes is highlighted in the description of his route to Ethiopia: 10.35.4–5: I had a daughter … until this paragon, a Thessalian … stole her slyly away and looted the holy shrine of Apollo… surmising that the goal of their flight was Memphis, Calasiris’ hometown, I made my way there … however, his son Thyamis told me everything there was to tell about my daughter (ἅπαντα τὰ περὶ τὴν θυγατέρα ἐκδιδαχθείς), including the fact that she had been dispatched to Oroondates at Syene. But though I went to Syene I … was overtaken by the war in Elephantine … now … you have the abductor, now take up the search (ἐπιζήτησον) for my daughter.’

Like a good detective, Charicles puts together the bigger pieces of the puzzle of what he believes to be the whole truth (ἅπαντα) about his daughter. But from his tale he omits the detail that Chariclea, according to his recent knowledge, is the daughter of the King of Ethiopia.1179 This omission is due probably to Charicles’ faint hope 1175 Morgan 1988a, 77 on the doublet Alcamenes-Meroebus. 1176 Hld. 10.30.7. 1177 Hld. 10.31.1, ‘Then I might strike some blow, or receive one – that would jolt Chariclea out of her complacency, for till now she has resisted the temptation to speak the truth about us or else, most probably, has forgotten about me altogether.’ 1178 Cf. also Hydaspes’ reply, Hld. 10.31.2, ‘Your purpose in dropping Chariclea’s name into this conversation, you alone know (αὐτὸς ἂν γινώσκοις).’ 1179 Cf. the later comment by Sisimithres in 10.37.3, ‘The child you regarded as your daughter … is safe … though in truth she is, and has been discovered to be, the child of parents whose

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that he will make it in time to prevent a major recognition between daughter and parents, and he hopes to convince Chariclea to return with him.1180 While it would not be appropriate for Charicles’ arrival to take place during the more intimate recognition between Chariclea and her parents, his presence becomes a catalyst in the solving the Iphigenia pattern. The impasse is solved by Sisimithres, who reveals the whole truth, expecting a better ending, the famous λαμπάδιον δράματος, and highlighting the role of Charicles in it.1181 The Delphian priest, the sage tells, flew to Meroe as if ex machina. Had Charicles not appeared to confirm the romance between the young couple, Chariclea would not have made it to the desired happy ending. Sisimithres then appears as yet another enlightened reader of Chariclea’s tale. At this point Chariclea rushes out and throws herself at Charicles’ feet in a scene that recalls the reunion of Calasiris with his sons.1182 And just as in the Memphis double recognition scene Chariclea’s recognition at Meroe is followed by that of Theagenes which enables their wedding. Charicles, the first reader of the Chariclea narrative, is finally able to enjoy the finale after painstakingly decoding an excruciatingly complex narrative. Of all the embedded focalisers, Charicles – for his devotion, love and patience – is the one granted the complete ‘happy ending’. Charicles reads and contributes to the palinode for Chariclea, the beautiful and faithful, by revising his opinion about Theagenes. Thus, despite the impediments and misinterpretations of this meticulous reader’s intuitive construing, Charicles is able to discard them and ultimately follows his instinct, namely the anticipatory dream of the eagle in Book 4: 4.14.2: ‘I dreamt that an eagle, released from the hand of Pythian Apollo, suddently swooped down and, alas, snatched my poor daughter from my arms and flew off with her to one of the world’s remotest extremities (ἔσχατόν τι πέρας), a place teeming with dark and shadowy phantoms. I do not know (καὶ τέλος οὐδὲ γνῶναι) what he did to her in the end, for my vision was obstructed from keeping pace with the bird’s flight by the immensity of space between us.’

This dream, which in Book 4 is downplayed in Calasiris’ retrospective narrative, now gains new interpretative weight. Indeed Calasiris’ synopsis emphasises the importance of his own scheme, the elopement plot, and keeps Charicles from the

identity you know!’ 1180 For Charicles as exemplifying a more traditional outcome of the novel, return, see Whitmarsh 2011, 118–99. 1181 Hld. 10.37.2–3, καθάπερ ἐκ μηχανῆς, ἐκ μέσης τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐνταῦθα ἀναπέμψαντες. 1182 Yet another doublet. Hld. 7.7.3, καὶ τοῖς γόνασι περιφύντες πρῶτα … διηκριβοῦντο τὸν ἀναγνωρισμόν.; cf. Hld. 10.38.1, ἐμμανὲς ἐφέρετο καὶ τοῖς γόνασι τοῦ Χαρικλέους προσπεσοῦσα.



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real interpretation, pushing him away (πόρρω) from understanding the truth.1183 The words πέρας (the extremities) and τέλος (ending, and consummation/goal/ Ziel) are of particular metaliterary importance in two ways. On the one hand, they point to where the narrative is supposed to end. Most importantly, the combination of ἔσχατον πέρας is not just ‘an ending,’ such as the recognition of Theagenes and Chariclea in Book 7, but the very last wrap-up, as reflected in the final sphragis of the novel: ‘this is the ending (πέρας) of the composition (σύνταγμα) of Theagenes’ and Chariclea’s Ethiopian love story (τῶν περί).᾽1184 This phrase, which I have tried to translate as closely as possible to the original, reflects not only its power as the novel’s closure, but also its own recognitive trajectory: it is a syntagma, namely blocks of narrative chained together to lead a story to its resolution. In other words, this is Heliodorus’ understanding of the recognitive technique of the novel in a nutshell, which is here embodied by Charicles. On the other hand, this kind of extremity and consummation (πέρας καὶ τέλος) appears as an accurate Homeric criticism regarding the ending of the poem with or after the lovemaking scene between the long-lost spouses. Heliodorus is not alone in doing so, since Chariton seems, to our current knowledge, to be the first to commenting on this kind of Odyssean ending of the recognition pattern. Like Penelope and the Helen-and-Penelope-like Callirhoe, the exceptionally beautiful Chariclea finds happiness not just in the culmination but at the remotest – both geographically and narratively speaking – terminus, the ἔσχατον τέλος anticipated in Charicles’ dream.1185 Heliodorus’ sphragis at 10.41.1 repeats the word πέρας that coincides with the wedding of Chariclea and Theagenes, revising thus the ending of the Odyssey and that of Chariton. Unlike the epic poem and the novel, the Aethiopica end with the Odyssey 23.296, the wedding, just like Longus and Achilles Tatius. This subtle allusion to both the Odyssean and the novelistic background stresses Heliodorus’ own self-reflexive take on the story, which goes well beyond his mythical and novelistic models: the recognitive reading about 1183 Hld. 4.15.1, ‘The import of the dream he described was clear, but in an effort to dispel his despondency and deflect him from any intimation (ὑποψίας πόρρω) of what was to ensue.’ Calasiris then tells him how the dream symbolises the marriage of the girl, not her elopement. See Morgan 1989a, 302. 1184 Hld. 10.41.4, τοιόνδε πέρας ἔσχε τὸ σύνταγμα τῶν περὶ Θεαγένην καὶ Χαρίκλειαν Αἰθιοπικῶν. The translation is mine. Morgan in Reardon reads: ‘so concludes the Aithiopika, the story of Theagenes and Chariclea.’ Whitmarsh 2011, 115 seems closer in rendering the feeling of the sentence as he translates: ‘such was the peras of the story of the Ethiopian affair of Theagenes and Chariclea.’ For the self-reflexivness of the phrase see Whitmarsh 2011, 115. 1185 Whitmarsh 2011, 112 shows that the novel ends with the celebration of the mystical wedding of the couple, which also uses a word that meta-narratively points to the end Hld. 10.41.3, τῶν γάμων ... τελεσθησομένων. Also Grehtlein 2016, 329–330.

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Chariclea brings the reader to world’s furthest narrative reach, Ethiopia, a place that, not accidentally, happens to figure in the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey.1186 The novelistic and the epic ideal are here entirely reversed. In summary From the large amount of Heliodorus’ mythical criticism addressed in the previous analysis, I discuss some of the major points here. Heliodorus’ readers are illustrated in the three major focalisers of Chariclea’s story and have distinct recognitive tasks: Charicles, Calasiris and Cnemon. Each witnesses a different version of the Penelope/Helen megatext and each plays a different role in it. For Charicles, Chariclea is abducted like Helen, until his revision of this pattern in Meroe; Calasiris manipulates Charicles’ expectations relating to an exceptionally beautiful girl and stages accordingly a ‘seduction/abduction’ plot that only confirms the priest’s hints. Meanwhile Calasiris’ awareness of Chariclea’s Penelopean chastity is crucial to the megatext as it results in different takes on Motif B2, in order to thwart and avoid her suitors. On Egyptian soil now, Cnemon witnesses a story of caves, ghosts, and resurrections, of faithful but cunning beloveds, alluding to the Euripidean version of the myth and other novelistic tales. It is not fortuitous that all these versions of the Penelope/Helen megatext end with recognition: the couple-recognition at the Delta for Cnemon, and later that of Calasiris with Chariclea; the couple-recognition at Memphis for Calasiris; the parent-child- and -couple recognition for Charicles at Meroe. This similarity suggests that the embedded readers, and the external ones, were expected to follow the tale of the Beauty by using similar narrative strategies and by expecting and manipulating similar mythical motifs. That said, the order in which these versions of the Chariclea tale are disclosed is also important: the novel opens with Cnemon’s Egyptian version of the chaste Helen, namely an Athenian drama, which suits the fashioning of his own life as a tale from Euripides. Next, the perspective changes and moves into Charicles’ and Calasiris’ more sensual and erotic recounting of the couple’s elopement, where the majority of Homeric intertext may be found. This switching of mythical intertexts increases the reader’s doubts about the lost-but-found Chariclea. The pattern is resumed in Book 10: while all other focalisers drop out at crucial moments of the plot, only the Greek Charicles reaches Meroe. Whereas Cnemon is a selfish reader and Calasiris’ own plot runs aground after his death, this successful reader, despite the obstacles, seems to be the only one suitable and flexible enough to revise his own Homeric understanding of the tale of Chariclea’s abduction into a novelistic story led by providence. 1186 Hom. Od. 1.22. On the reverse view of what is far away, from the Ethiopian perspective, see Whitmarsh 1999, 22 and Whitmarsh 2011, 112–14.



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Equally important is Motif D2, reunion with recognition: Heliodorus follows the recognitive readings found in the Odyssey and in the other novels and supplements the epic recognitions with that of the Iphigenia pattern. The Aethiopica thus end with two regocnition, one between kinsmen and one between lovers. Just like Chariton, upon the final couple reunion scene, Heliodorus consciously alludes to the Odyssey and its famous telos in a self-reflexive way. This telos in both cases consists of the lovers’ reunion, namely the lovemaking scene in Chariton and the mystic marriage in Heliodorus. To some extent this shows that, at least for this genre, the Odyssey 23.293 was an important intertext that shaped the genre’s own understanding of the ending. Both Heliodorus and Chariton interfuse an otherwise generic happy ending, couple recognition and reunion, with the Penelope/Helen megatext, but whereas Chariton’s novel does not end with the lovemaking scene, Heliodorus’ ends with their wedding. This infused Iphigenia and Penelope/Helen pattern illustrates the ideal of death and marriage, intertwining these two chief themes. With respect to Heliodorus’ allusions to other novels, we saw how important Xenophon is for Chariclea’s account to Thyamis: Chariclea shares with Anthia the repeated maritime adventures and the rigorously defended sophrosyne. With Callirhoe she shares an astonishing, superhuman beauty. With Chloe she shares the ending of her tale with a wedding celebration. With Leucippe she also shares the Penelopean chastity test at the end of the novel that turns the Ethiopian princess into the epitome of virginity. This evidence shows that there was a rich tradition, and that the novel addressed itself to a seasoned readership. Yet Chariclea’s cunning makes her perhaps even more attractive and bold than her novelistic sœurs, and she often takes an active role in distracting the suitors. To some extent, among the novelistic protagonists, Chariclea is the epitome of Helen’s beauty and boldness and Penelope’s sophrosyne. Another stunning revision of Heliodorus is his implementation of the Penelope/ Helen pattern using elements from the exotic setting. We saw that the previous novels employed the hero’s (or a friend’s) quest for the heroine. Yet the Aethiopica present the female protagonist, Chariclea, now doubly associated with Odysseus and Isis, as searching for Theagenes. This kind of ‘dialogic’ view of culture and mythology befits the mid-fourth century CE date in which Heliodorus is placed, as it welcomes more complex, syncretistic and cumulative modes of interpretation.1187

1187 Onians 1980, Elsner 2006 on the cumulative aesthetics, and recently Squire 2013, 118 discussing the Arch of Constantine suggests that ‘by the fourth century, some objects would even combine different representational systems, and in the same single monument, inviting their audiences to compare and contrast not only divergent visual forms, but also whole modes, con-

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The Egyptianised version of the quest suggests that the novel was addressed to a readership who was familiar with several options and interpretative routes. This brief overview shows the importance of the Penelope/Helen pattern not only at the level of allusion but also as an interpretative tool for understanding the Aethiopica. If Aristotle was fond of the recognition scene of the Iphigenia among the Taurians and believed the Odyssey to be an anagnorisis throughout, then the Aethiopica embody the ideal of both the dramatic and the epic recognition supplemented by the romantic aspect of the novelistic couple-reunion. The ending of the novel is also the ending of the Iphigenia pattern, as well as of the Penelope/Helen one. Yet, and most importantly, the Aethiopica end with the novelistic wedding highlighting the ‘happy ever after.’

3.5 Penelope and Helen in focus The Greek novel famously presents on stage extremely beautiful heroines. Callirhoe, Anthia, Leucippe, Chloe, and Chariclea because of their beauty go through a variety of adventures, such as suitor plots, abductions, near-death experiences, but in the end they overcome these diffiulties, showing themselves to be beautiful and bold as well as faithful. They, thus subvert the expectations that supreme beauty bestowed upon them, which otherwise posed a great threat to their morals: Socrates used to advise the ugly young men who would look at their reflection in the mirror to make up for their ugliness by being virtuous and the handsome ones not to abase their beauty by being depraved. Therefore, it is also fitting that the mistress of the house, whenever she holds the mirror in her hands, asks herself as follows: the ugly one “How would I look if I were chaste (σώφρων)?” whereas the beautiful (καλή) one “How would I look if I were chaste too?”1188

Beautiful women have the reputation for being not necessarily faithful and myth and folktale abound in tales of suitor-competition and faithlessness. That being said, Greek myth traditionally attributed these two qualities, beauty and chastity, to two different women, and only in later revisions of the megatext, such as Euripides’ Helen, are these two mythical threads explicitly fused together. Unlike with other unfaithful mythical heroines, Helen’s love story had much to do with a deeper imagery of passionate love and its devastating consequences not just for a household, like Phaedra’s, but for Greeks and Trojans alike. Unlike the adulterstructed and reflected in the Arch’s different physical components.’ For similar aesthetics in literature see Roberts 1989. 1188 Plu. Conjug. 141d. (the translation is mine).



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ess Clytemnestra, Helen was not a murderess, and one finds as early as Gorgias and Isocrates many justifications of her elopement. Helen, albeit unfaithful, was unique because what she lacked in chastity she made up for in beauty. Whereas attempts to exonerate Helen come as early as Stesichorus, and even the Odyssey presents Helen and Menelaus finding a place in the Elysian fields, beautiful, clever and faithful wives were neither popular nor numerous in myth. The similarities and differences between the tales of Helen and Penelope were of equal importance for the construction of a solid megatext, the primary focus of which was marriage and faithfulness. The reunion of two long-lost spouses, their mutual recognition and the confirmation of at least the wife’s chastity are at the heart of this story pattern, which was continuously reworked. On the other hand, the Helen part of the megatext provided a unique opportunity to discuss love, beauty and the elopement of two mutually involved lovers, as well as travel to the ends of the earth. It was also a chance to implement a heroic tale, such as the man’s quest for the Beauty, either by her brothers or her husband, and a good opportunity to extol male epic triumphs. In sum, the megatext offered a flexible platform for discussing beauty, love, adventure/war and eventual reunion. Such stories also have their roots in folktale material: centuries-old oral tradition knows of many a ‘suitor-competition’ for various Beauties, of more or less ‘unjustly calumniated wives’, some of them abducted, as well as of other more or less lucky ‘homecoming husbands’. The mythical megatext based on the Helen and Penelope tales permitted a range of reworkings and adaptations that subconsciously prompted the reader to evaluate all the possibilities, and this as early as Homer.1189 Among the variety of options, the Second Sophistic favoured those versions in which the eidolon, or some other kind of doublet, replaces the Beauty – either because of its allegorical Platonising connotations or because of the other adventure options this enabled, such as the recognition and reunion of the couple in Egypt. Euripides’ Helen famously provides opportunity to discuss what reality is and is not, or what beauty is and what is merely its reflection.1190 The writers of the first three centuries, sensitive to the themes of beauty and Eros, also favoured the sophistic, idealised encounters of Helen with Paris or Achilles, who were either legally married and in love, as in Dio’s Trojan Discourse, or because of their coup-de-foudre, as in Philostratus’ Heroicus. With Menelaus removed from the bigger picture – he being a problematic husband indeed – these revisions attempt to rationalise all-powerful desire and fit it into Penelope’s chaste realm, while 1189 See for example Reece 2011 and Kelly 2011 on the archaic audience’s expectations. 1190 See Allan 2002, 46 for an excellent discussion of Helen as a ‘Tragedy of Ideas’ reversing Pippin Newton 1960. For Dio’s, for example, use of Platonising interpretation see Kindstrand 1973, 157–59 and Kim 2010, 95–97 on ‘Homer the liar’.

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maintaining the erotic adventure theme that formed the core of Helen’s story. In doing so they seem to chime with the visual evidence from the Empire, in which Helen’s beauty and Eros’ omnipotence were greatly celebrated. Helen became chaste and beautiful, at least in some imperial reworkings. Her name, as opposed to that of Penelope, embodied not only faithfulness but guaranteed the possibility of outdoor experiences, in faraway lands, away from the loom. The Egyptian version of her myth, as in Iphigenia’s case, had this pattern combine love-talk with discourses on otherness, opposing Greeks to barbarians and female cunning to male disempowerement. We saw above that, even in Dio’s groundbreaking deconstruction, the pattern of the Beauty still maintained the ingredients important for the readerly reconstruction: love, travel and war. Yet, the very ideal of war and heroic achievements were downplayed, almost unanimously, by the authors of the Second Sophistic. Its futility – parodied cleverly in Lucian’s Underworld, rationalised in Dio or idealised in Philostratus – seemed to pose some problems too, especially if this war was for Helen for a cloud as the messenger famously puts it in Helen 707. The Heroicus is a characteristic re-evaluation of what was or was not heroic about the Trojan War. The questioning of the very reason for this disaster, namely Helen as the real cause of it, seems now to be part of a broader questioning of the Greek heroic past and how it contributed to the fashioning of Greek identity.1191 Dio’s and Philostratus’ reworkings seem to question whether it makes sense for so many lives to be lost because of a woman’s whim. The novels by downplaying war seem to suggest that fictive plots and the world can do without superhuman heroic achievement, supporting the ideal of the Pax Romana. The Greek novels are aware of this trend and dwell more on the themes of love and adventure than on war or epic ideals. In doing so they also draw on other folktale sources that opened up options heretofore reserved only for Helen or Penelope. For example, Motif A is thoroughly reworked to revise the theme of chastity: while the first novels present the protagonist as married, the later ones have a female heroine who is single and virginal, or chastely betrothed to the male hero. Virginity was easier to prove than the chastity of a married woman, and Achilles Tatius makes this hilariously clear. This development owes something to emerging Judeo-Christian ideas about virginity, which probably made virginal heroines more appealing since their sexual inexperience offered more sensual and voyeuristic nuances.

1191 The Trojan War has been used to explain either enmity or a conciliatory approach towards Rome/Troy, Zeitlin 2001 Kim 2010. That the novels downplay this element, contrarily to the sophists, shows a predilection for erotic fiction instead of traditional tales.



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Yet surprisingly, male chastity also figures, but not without playful twists.1192 The continuously threatened and tested male chastity that was the chief focus of the Phaedra pattern discussed previously contributes to the Penelope/Helen megatext an idea missing from classical texts: what would have happened had Odysseus been as faithful as Penelope, had he not wasted so many years in Calypso’s and Circe’s beds? The programmatic abstract from the Penelopiad above illustrates this issue, but Greek novels do so as well. Still, unlike female virginity, male chastity is hard to prove, and only the two later novels stage a chastity test, explicitly or implicitly and with different outcomes, for the novelistic hero.1193 However, even as early as Chaereas or Metiochus, male chastity and marital fidelity were something desired for this new genre but as yet unknown to the megatext. Part of the heroine’s exoneration project was the transfer to another register of the theme ‘elopement with a Paris-like lover’, namely Motif B1. The famous faraway land adventures, as was the case in Iphigenia’s tale, provides an opportunity to discuss what is Greek and what is barbarian, how Greek versus barbarian suitors behave, or how a Greek maiden outwits a foreign king. The answers the novels give to these questions are as numerous as their revisions and takes on a pattern that was characteristic for its repetitiveness and open-endness, just like the Iphigenia one. Yet with Helen, an emblematic Homeric figure, relocation of the megatext was important. Whereas travels were part of the well-known myth and Egypt and Tyre were among the popular locations, these places were no longer exotic settings but integral parts of the Roman Empire. Clitophon is characteristically Tyrian, after all. Callirhoe is seduced not only in Paris’ Babylon but also in the Greek – but under Persian occupation – Miletus; Anthia not only faces similar suitor competition plots in Cilicia and Alexandria but risks being carried away to India; Charicles’ reading of the Helen brings about a Palinode in Meroe. It appears then that the novels question, albeit not to the same degree and not uniformally, the Greekness of a pattern of which the main heroine, Helen, had to be brought back from Troy to Sparta. The novels instead show an exceptional relativism when discussing otherness and transform Helen’s centripetal destiny into an open-ended tale that is resolved not through a heroic campaign but through beneficial erotic providence and human wit.

1192 These ideas, and especially the idea of male chastity, have been in focus for some time now, e.g. Konstan 1994 and Ramelli 2001. 1193 Later Neoplatonists and Christians alike attempted to exonerate Odysseus from his worldly carnal adventures, e.g. they stress how he overcame the seduction of the Sirens’ song, Clement Alex. Protrept. 12 91, Bas. De leg. 4.2 and also Rahner 1963; see also Lamberton 1992, 126 on Porph. de antro, in which Odysseus, encouraged by Athena, leaves behind his earthly tokens and takes up the disguise of a poor wanderer until his reunion with Penelope.

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Furthermore, the ‘novel’ element now is the folktale motif of pirate-abduction that becomes the main reason for Motif B1, the relocation of the heroine to a remote land: pirates who steal the apparently dead bodies of heroines later sell them as slaves or assault them and threaten them with death sentences, from which they are miraculously saved by other suitors; such elements are now implemented in the more traditional versions offered by the megatext.1194 Most amazingly Xenophon of Ephesus employs an oracle to see the protagonists off, where they eventually will have to face all of the above, and Callirhoe is abducted after an incredible Scheintod, which, at first hand, removes all suspicions related to her faithfulness. Yet we saw how differently each novel engages with Helen’s supposed faithlessness, and we observed how Theagenes in Heliodorus’ opening chapters is presented as still being unconvinced about Chariclea’s chastity. Helen’s shadow therefore, despite the virginity and programmatic chastity oaths of the novelistic characters, never leaves the scene. The most creative innovation to the pattern is the original reworking of Motif B2, which was strongly indebted to the myth of Penelope and reworked in Euripides’ Helen. Here is where motifs from oral tradition and folklore were eventually sanctioned in highbrow literature: magic potions, Scheintod, physical violence against a defamed female character, doubles, epileptic crises and magical resurrections were the ‘carte du jour’ for readers of this motif, which then became part of more elaborate metafictional debates within the novels. For example, Anthia, realising that she has managed to escape many assaults, is ready to avert yet another – just like Leucippe and Chariclea. The recurrent topos of the false priesthood also is a new addition to the pattern exploited by both Xenophon and Heliodorus. Most noticeably, all the novels make use of one or more of these devices to repel unwanted suitors, and an ongoing intertextual debate seems to exist between the novelists who rely on similar means. Yet, on a few occasions, the novelistic heroines face the unwanted suitors directly, like Leucippe’s confrontation with Thersander in the closing books, or Chariclea’s artful distraction of Thyamis, showing a closer reworking of the mythical material. Unlike the sophistic revisions of the Trojan War and its heroic code, the novels downplay Motif C, the quest of the hero and his military achievements. Instead, the focus is almost always on the female protagonist. Wars are fought during the Beauty’s abduction, but not necessarily for her. Yet, to some extent most of the novelistic female characters become a kind of war prize, like Helen, although 1194 But already in narratives as old as the Odyssey, e.g. at 15.403–430 we have Eumaeus’ story about his childhood, how he was spirited away by a handmaiden, who in turn was raped and carried away by pirates. In no tale is Helen carried away by pirates, a fate reserved for lower characters.



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this is more to express the risks men take for such Beauties than to catalogue their manly achievements. Only in Chariton’s novel and the Calligone novella are military victories crucial for plot. In this respect, Heliodorus innovates on both the mythical and the novelistic level, having Theagenes perform two labours of significance – fighting with a giant and taming a bull – rather than achieve a military victory to win Chariclea. Theagenes’ less combative aspect is contrasted with that of General Meroebus, who is unsuccessful in claiming Chariclea’s hand. Even Chaereas’ capture of Tyre is minor compared to Artaxerxes winning the war, but who loses Callirhoe to his Greek rival. Thus, although the Greek novels do not discount the overall sophistic debate on the origin, cause and historical existence of the Trojan War, whenever military victories are part of the plot, they are downplayed and presented more as Eros’ campaign and plotting. Like the Iliadic military achievements, the supposedly Odyssean quest and nostos is also seen through revisionistic prism. With the exception of Chariton’s Chaereas, who searches for and successfully recovers the heroine, the other novels present other options: for example, in Xenophon it is Hippothous who finally recovers Anthia while Habrocomes wanders aimlessly; in Longus Chloe saves Daphnis at least once, but Daphnis, comically, is unable to rescue her from either the Methymnians or from Lampis on his own. Surprisingly, Clitophon does not even contemplate a long wandering after Leucippe’s death but another marriage, and in Heliodorus it is the Isis-like Chariclea who searches for Theagenes and Charicles who pursuits her to the extremities. Thus a motif traditionally attributed to the male hero in search of his denigrated wife now becomes a dispute over manliness and courage, insinuating itself into the female repertoire as well. But seeking does not entail finding, unless Providence has arranged it so. Although the novels retain the Odyssean wanderings, the quests of the novelistic heroes do not automatically lead them home, nor to their respective Beauties: instead Chaereas risks leaving Aradus without finding his love, Habrocomes finally meets his because of Hippothous, and Theagenes never even starts looking for his. So other characters depart on various pursuits to recover the heroines, such as Sostratus in Achilles Tatius and Charicles in the Aethiopica, both hunting for their daughters at the ends of the world. We saw above how the famous Odyssean couple-recognition-with-reunion theme, Motif D2, although of great importance for the novels, plays a much more crucial role in deciphering the pattern when related to the Penelope/Helen megatext. Recognition in the IT or the Helen is more of a metaliterary procedure for decoding various clues regarding the heroine’s whereabouts and chastity before the couple’s actual reunion. Montiglio (2012), 23–25 shows how the novel often opts for immediate recognition scenes in which the lovers are presented swooning in each other’s arms, and she contrasts that with the reluctant Homeric reunion

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of Odysseus and his wife, as well as of Menelaus and Helen in the play. Chastity, in myth and the novels, is a hot and questionable topic but each novel suggests a different reunion: Callirhoe must explain her infidelity in terms of marital and motherly faithfulness but Anthia and Habrocomes or Daphnis and Chloe are too certain of their feelings; alternatively in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus an official chastity test preludes the final recognitions, although Achilles Tatius plays with the reader’s expectations of this turn of events. What is more, the last three novels orchestrate a get-together recognition in which other family members attend the reunion scene, unlike the unnamed crowds on Aradus and on Rhodes who take part in Callirhoe’s and Anthia’s reunions with their men. Sostratus in Ephesus, Charicles in Meroe, and the parents of both Daphnis and Chloe take active parts in their endings, thus transposing the importance of mutual chastity and faithfulness to a higher social level. In Chariton, Polycharmus’ version of the Iphigenia pattern is integrated into the solemn Penelopean couple-recognition; in Achilles Tatius, the recognition of Leucippe is crucial to save both her and Clitophon from an immediate death penalty; and Heliodorus’ narrative empowers the recognition motif by merging the Iphigenia and Penelope/Helen patterns into his grand finale. What used to be part of the romantic ending now becomes a more accredited, family-approved telos, whether at home or abroad. That being said, and more prominently, the novels owe to the Odyssey not just the couple-recognition scene but, the recognitive trajectory of the embedded and external readers that leads to this ending. At least two novels, Chariton and Heliodorus, the first and the last according to our dating, allude explicitly to the telos of the Odyssey and the famous lovemaking scene at Odyssey 23.296 as the epic and novelistic closure. This recognitive poetics, namely the deciphering of successive recognition scenes until reaching the happy ending, shows that Motif D2 is much more than just a part of the megatext but a reader’s digest. We saw how successful embedded readers misread, re-read and re-adapted the Penelope/ Helen megatext, creating their own versions. From these Charicles is the most characteristic case of meticulous, courageous reader. These embedded focalised views allow for a wide variety of revisions of the renowned love-elopement-andreunion tale that no narrator of classical and traditional tales, such as Helen’s, would have been able to match. Since the novelistic Beauties were not so bound to the imperial revision of Greek identity because they were not part of the traditional mythical lore, the interpretations of their stories could be more than plentiful. The revisions of the Beauty pattern as manipulated by the Greek novels resulted in a model heroine who was beautiful and chaste, an ideal protagonist, despite the metaliterary acknowledgement that such perfection was impossible



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even in the novelistic sphere. Callirhoe, Chloe and even Chariclea are not beyond doubt, despite, in the end, being shown as both beautiful and faithful. Besides their beauty and chastity these famous non-mythical Beauties also shared exceptional boldness as they wandered through unknown lands and faced diverse sexual and near-death threats. In sum, the novelistic hero had it all in one. Below is a tabular summary of the major novelistic additions to the megatext, which despite its abstractness, is useful for understanding the novel’s take on the mythical material.

Epilogue The majority of myths that we examined in the Greek novels are the very same myths that traditionally played an integral part in the Greek educational curriculum and that were handled by authors who were important cornerstones of Greek identity, such as Homer and Euripides. In other words, they were myths embedded in Greek culture and fundamental part of the imperial ‘mythical koine’. However analysis of the individual myths of women, such as Iphigenia, Phaedra, Penelope and Helen, shows that the mythical allusions in the Greek novels were indebted not only to particular and identifiable classical texts but also to a broadly understood mythical megatext that offered a variety of linear and vertical – and transferable – narrative options. Additionally, next to the classical texts the novels seem aware of a variety of novelistic themes that are not characteristic of Greek myths but which, nonetheless, were an essential part of the new genre, starting with its very happy ending. In the above analysis we saw how the novels, however differently, negotiate their own generic constraints, such as mutual love and chastity, travels and near-deaths, as well as joyful reunions, as they process the variety of narrative routes offered by the mythical megatext. This interplay between mythical and novelistic, or in some cases folkloric, options resulted in a fundamental transformation and amplification of the mythical megatext itself. For example, as discussed in the first part, whereas the Scheintod of a novel’s heroine may have been an important part of the novelistic scenario, since it appeals to universal fantasies about sex and death, her assimilation with Iphigenia would open different narrative routes, revisiting the substitution theme through novelistic and folkloric adaptations; most importantly, the Iphigenia pattern raised questions about chief components of the mythical megatext, such as kinship and friendship ties, to favour the latter over the former. Additionally, the very notion of sacrifice, whether situated at the world’s extremities or on Greek or Hellenised ground, oppugned the supposed cultural superiority of Greeks over barbarians, with Hellenised authors such as Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus presenting a reverse interpretation of what is culturally superior. The second part treated the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra from the perspective of the female characters’ erotic distress. Phaedra’s passion is now reconsidered, especially in those cases where the hero’s beloved and her rival are presented as love-struck. This contrast shows that, while desire per se is not condemnable, how one goes about satisfying it is crucial: unlike the chastely enduring heroine, the bold Phaedra-like temptresses, with the exception of the mellower Melite and Lycaenion, meet an unhappy end. Equally the criteria for a young man’s chastity are thoroughly reexamined, and, unlike Hippolytus’ hybristic excess, a milder variety, that of marital fidelity, is upheld. The revision of the Phaedra megatext DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-005



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in the Greek novels reflects the readerly desire to commend this new chastity concept and has the young man rewarded in the end. Finally, the Penelope and Helen megatexts offer the Greek novels a wide platform to depict beauty, love at first sight, desire and adventure as well as faithfulness, female wit and perseverance, the quintessence of the ideally bold and beautiful. On the other hand, the recognitive approach to narrative and conjugal reunion and recognition offer the possibility of reading the Greek novels as detective stories of marital devotion. The revision of these mythical megatexts shows a preference for amplified social settings, for example by replacing the often ill-fated kinsman relationships of myth with erotic and friendly bonds; the close space of the traditional city-states is now transported to far-flung parts of the known world, allowing for different outcomes, and the very closure of some of these stories is thoroughly reconsidered, with a preference for just, happy endings. The adaptation of traditional myths in the Greek novels takes them away from their original milieu – the city-state, the family, the oikos – and opens them up to the dangers and the charms of a bigger view of the world. The novel is not alone in this revision of mythology, and we saw that some authors of the Second Sophistic adapted the old myths along the same lines, especially when emending the bitter, unsatisfying outcomes of some myths. The difference in the adaptations of the mythical megatexts in the novels, as opposed to their contemporary sophistic reworkings, is that they were carried out in non-mythical terms. The examination of the use of myth in the Greek novels as a metaliterary vehicle to articulate the novelistic narrative prompts some reconsideration of both myth and novel.

Mythological afterthoughts In my initial definition of the term, based on Walter Burkert’s, ‘myth’ was understood as a traditional tale with a collective importance for a local (Greek) or a wider (Hellenised) community.’1195 On the one hand, the exploration of the mythical vulgate in the Greek novels reaffirms Zeitlin’s (2008) analysis of the mythical and religious elements in the Greek novels and their rich panorama of myths, festivals, prayers and rituals reported in the novels. The novels seem aware of a great variety of myths and ritual practices, such as the adaptation of the ritual descriptions that abound in the aetiological closures of Euripides IA that are adapted in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. To some extent, this observation complements the conclusions of Veyne (1983) analysis, namely that the Greeks did not stop believ-

1195 Cf. Burkert 1979, 23.

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ing in their myths despite strong rationalising criticism.1196 The novel’s thorough knowledge and reuse of the mythical vulgate shows how important myths were for anyone thinking or writing in Greek. It is the very ‘traditional’ nature and widespread use of the mythical vulgate that invites its playful manipulation of it in the Greek novels. Were they not standardised they would have made an unreliable medium. Myths, because they were part of a shared mythological langue, were used to make sense of other more or less realistic situations. The Progymnasmata, as Webb (2009) shows, illustrate how young men were trained in this kind of comparison and association.1197 Classical myths, such as Clinias’ enumeration of famous femmes fatales in the Introduction, were expanded, twisted, reversed and even subverted, so as to make sense of a similar or antithetical situation – but they remained myths, traditional tales. This is why Walter Burkert’s definition has been used as a starting point instead of other scholarly options, such as intertextuality, generic enrichment or reception. Myth, then, is a good story with which to start thinking about how other stories are born, and how they are told and retold, addressing both the linear syntagmatic correlation of themes and motifs and their paradigmatic interchangeability. Traditional myths provided the novelists with a literary and cultural constant, to borrow a term from the natural sciences, against which their own contribution could be appreciated. My analysis focused particularly on reconstructing the kinds of megatexts the novelists would have had access to by bringing together the visual evidence and the non-novelistic literary production of the first three centuries. Imperial literature and visual culture revised, in part or in full, the mythical tales in various degrees, giving them a different twist. Love and happy endings were now occasionally appended to tales that hitherto had turned out unhappily. Perhaps historical realia encouraged this approach: travel was much more common and safer during the Empire, and, during the Pax Romana, the world had opened up so to encompass not only the old Greek city-states but a new multi-ethnic community. The notion of identity broadened while retaining close attachments to the local, and the very use of the Greek language by Hellenised foreigners gave new substance to what it meant to be Greek.1198 Hence, the understanding of Greek iden1196 An updated analysis is Hawes 2014, 7. For Homer as being chiefly fiction rather than history see Kim 2010. 1197 Webb 2009, 120. The practice was well known from the Progymnasmata: e.g. Hermog. Prog. 7, discusses funerary encomium and cites Neoptolemus as a perfect example of a dead man’s brave offspring. In visual arts characterisation was also effected through comparison with mythical heroes. 1198 Among the many, see for example Bowie 1970, Swain 1996, Goldhill 2001, Whitmarsh 2010a; on the novel see Smith 2007a and Whitmarsh 2011.



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tity, encapsulated in these traditional tales, expanded as a result of the contributions of non-Greeks writing in the Greek language, who exuberantly adapted the ‘traditional tales’ to a variety of ‘comparanda’, such as presenting Stratonice as a benevolent Phaedra. Women gained more freedom than in classical Athens and were able to control, to some extent, their fates and choice of mate.1199 Marriage and childrearing was fostered by Roman law and an idealised concept of lovein-marriage was propounded by thinkers such as Plutarch.1200 Traditional myths were handy and flexible forms that facilitated discussion across a wide range of topics.1201 The novels seem to belong to the same cultural and ideological milieu with the literary production of the Second Sophsitic. But whereas other authors of the Second Sophistic use and reinvent myth to discuss the mythical at a metamythological level, the novelists use it to discuss the themes of their novels, making of myth a meta-literary tool, palimpsest au second degré. Novels of course engage in Mythenkritik when explicitly reusing the traditional tales. Inevitably, thinking about beautiful women entails thinking about Helen; not having a War for the Beauty as a central but only as a marginal theme constitutes an ideological statement that shows the novels’ opposition to the classical version; having a Phaedra-like heroine who does not slander her beloved also shows mythological sensitivity and interest in the emotional dimension; or staging a human sacrifice on either Greek or barbarian soil negotiates cultural identities and stereotypes. Consequently the novels enter the imperial revisionism of the ‘mythical’ heritage but do not stop there. The novels are aware of another tradition as well, and the further we move from Chariton to Heliodorus the more we observe how later reworkings of myth considered not only the megatext but also its previous novelistic adaptations. If we are unable to detect the folktale or oral sediments in the Greek novels, it is because, unlike with traditional myths, they had fewer chances of survival. In the foregoing analysis we saw how the novel supplements the well-known megatext with folktale motifs that are not known to us only through myth. These elements are not wholly foreign to myth and Trenkner’s (1950) original work on the clas1199 As a result, the trafficking of women in the Greek novel may be seen as a ‘female fantasy’ as in Egger 1994b. I side here with Haynes 2003, 159 arguing for caution when comparing/ reconstructing social reality from the novelistic model. For the novels as ritual and sentimental education for boys and girls see Lalanne 2006. 1200 Goldhill 1995. 1201 As Hawes 2014 observes, even in those cases of more rigorous mythographic rewriting and rationalisation, ‘the traditions of Greek storytelling are complex and pliable … Myth interpretation is guided by specific habits of thought: it is creative invention practised within the confines of convention. In effect, rationalisations are not created ex nihilo, nor are they crafted arbitrarily, rather, they represent plausible extensions of a wider body of knowledge.’

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sical novella or Hansen’s (2002) approach to myth are sensitive in traking them down. The novels’ receptivity to other oral, folkloric material involving similar topics and the non-mythical novelistic plot provided an ideal context for telling stories about the bold and beautiful heroines and their lovers, who, to the surprise of the one-sided mythologically erudite reader, happened to be faithful too. Neither being myths themselves, nor pretending to be the potential heirs of traditional myths, the Greek novels embedded the narrative logics of myth in their own fictional universe. Using Greek myth was not compulsory, but it certainly was a cherished option, at least for those novels – including the five of our selection – that addressed themselves to a Greek or Hellenised audience. No evolutionary model is proposed here. Greek myth did not give rise to the novel, nor did folklore. A story about a boy and a girl, their mutual attraction, their perilous journey, the threats to their life and mutual fidelity, and their happy homecoming needs not be pinned down to myth-based models. Such tales – the kind we call here novelistic, or which have been seen as the essence of romance – simply coexist inside, outside and alongside mythical narratives. And when they happen to appear in parallel likness and unlikeness may be seen: e.g. Stratonice’s attraction for Combabus is a story similar to Phaedra’s, but Lucian’s Stratonice is unlike Phaedra; equally Callirhoe’s suitors are like Helen’s, but Callirhoe is both like and unlike Helen. The blend of mythical and novelistic elements therefore broadens the horizons of readers’ expectations, providing an even greater range of possible outcomes. Still, whereas the happy ending of the Greek novel famously diverges from these traditional mythical tales, the majority of the novelistic narrative, nonetheless, does not address celebrations of the marriage or reunion but tragic, unpredictable, and nearly fatal adventures, and thus remains in constant dialogue with its mythical models. If, finally, all ends well, this kind of optimism does not necessarily say anything about the overall imperial view of the human condition, but it definitely shows that imperial audiences were not oblivious to the bright side of life.1202 If then the so-called canonical novels appear to us as ‘canonical’, this is because they rework those standard mythical narrative structures that were established throughout Greek literature. If they seem to share a ‘stereotypical’ or myth-like ‘form’ or ‘plot’, this is because they work around and with the readers’ expectations raised by mythical patterns, and because they seem to conform to the same kind of myth-related logic. However, whereas the readerly metaliterary background may be shaped by canonical and stereotypical expectations, the actual novels themselves refute, discuss, adapt, subvert and constantly negoti1202 Whitmarsh 2011, 230, ‘At the same time, this perspective is always opposed, implicitly or explicitly, to an alternative mode of reading, more patient and hopeful of a happy ending.’



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ate the logic of myth, and they fuse it with other novelistic scenarios. The term ‘canonical’ therefore does not so much refer to the structure of the plot with which each novel engages as it reflects the expectations of a readership well seasoned by centuries-old, and thus canonical, mythical logic.

Metaliterary reflections This book used myth, primarily, to understand the novel. Myth matters from the moment a particular novel consciously or even unconsciously employs it – as direct allusions, as themes or motifs and especially as patterns – within its own narrative composition. We saw that the two chiefly Euripides-influenced patterns, that of Iphigenia and that of Phaedra, tend to occupy particular parts of the novel while the epic-dramatic one, the conflation of the tale of Penelope with that of Helen, illustrates the recognitive reading that the reader undertakes in order to decipher the novel’s happy ending via the sequence of recognition scenes. This points to a certain influence of the genre in which a particular intertext was thought to be coined. If drama forms the kernel of a particular megatext, then it may be more appealing to shape specific episodes of the novelistic narrative using more concrete boundaries, while epic, a larger form, might appear more suitable for informing larger sections and sequences of a narrative. The use of the Penelope/Helen megatext is characteristic in that it combines both: in Heliodorus, for example, the Euripidean intertext provides the hypotext for the concise Egyptian chapters, while the Homeric Helen-Penelopean pattern stretches throughout the novel. Thus, drama-based patterns tend to be applied to smaller narrative units that are more manageable in terms of time and space, while the genre of epic suits the more spatio-temporally extensive unfolding of the novelistic narrative as a whole. The preference for an epic-style recognitive decoding at the end of most novels coincides with their choice of a less tragic, amplified and more open-ended view of the world. In Heliodorus, Charicles’ epic reading revises the tragic setting of the near-sacrifices and shows how the recognitive patterning was tantamount to the novel’s Protean and malleable reading. The ancient novel, unlike modern fiction, had no obvious literary predecessors. Unlike nineteenth-century romances, that may be contextualised and read against a long tradition of ‘sentimental’ literature, the Greek novels constructed their ‘self-fashioning’ alongside myth, the dominant literary discourse and other equally influential genres that contained narrative elements outside of the core myth scenario; these have been labelled throughout this study as ‘novelistic’. The self-reflexivity of the genre observed throughout our analysis indicates that even the ‘earliest’ of the five, Chariton, shows awareness of themes beyond myth

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that exhibit a novelistic prehistory: for example Callirhoe’s notorious Scheintod, which is part of a weak, embedded Iphigenia reading, nonetheless shows that, as early as the mid-first century, audiences may have been able to recognise through various hints that the heroine does not indeed die in the very first book. It no longer matters whether Chariton was the first to invent such a turn of events, but it is important that his readership might have been trained in processing these events through their knowledge of either mythical or other novelistic analogues. Moroever, in our analysis we observed some repetitive metafictional metaliterary puns. Phrases such as, ‘now indeed’, ‘now clearly’, ‘again’, ‘manytimes’, ‘all (the truth) … but one’ – νῦν ἀληθῶς or σαφῶς, πάλιν, πολλάκις, πάντα ... πλήν – show that the novel addressed itself to well-seasoned readership who could discern behind these words the nature of fiction. When does indeed an event take place? When do we really know it is true? Unlike the mythical heroines the novelistic ones are not exposed to one but to multiple near-deaths, suitors, and perilous situations. Iphigenia was once immolated at Aulis but Anthia and Leucippe face three near deaths, each more extreme than the previous. The embedded audience comments about the open-endness of these patterns that no longer appear as plausible since they seem to be false, or, better fictive. The ancient term ‘mythos’ played indeed with the plausibility of the narrated events. But the repetitiveness of characteristic mythical patterns within the novel and the self-reflexivity of these scenes indicates that the audience of the novels believed that to be a characteristic of fiction.1203 This brings us back to questions of readership and the selection and determination of the mythical megatext. The classical theory of structuralism, which has been used for the analysis of myth and myth-based texts, such as found in Lévi-Strauss’ analysis or in its metaphorical revision in Roland Barthes, was not used here to analyse the overall ‘form/structure’ of ‘romance’ as the reflection of a particular historical momentum. Rather, on the one hand, the quest for the mythical megatext was used as counterweight to the overwhelming trend towards meticulous intertextual analysis and, on the other, to stress the importance of a broader notion of mythical evidence when discussing the novel. My approach owes much to Segal’s (1983) article that aimed to reconstruct the mythical web of tragic myth through a reconsideration of the options available through the megatext. Segal’s approach in the early eighties was greatly influenced by the structuralist approaches to mythology. In my approach to the Greek novels, I have attempted to show that the structural take on a mythical tale can open up new ways of understanding both myth and novel by reconsidering the importance of readership in the light of this hypothesis of a megatext. 1203 A thorough discussion of metafiction is Hodkinson 2017.



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Structuralists were not inattentive to the importance of the readership in reconstructing gaps and making sense of the narrative.1204 However, their focus was mainly to construct a universal model that would potentially unlock, objectively, any narrative. More sensitive to the actual empirical readers is the approach of Cognitive Psycholinguistics. For example Mandler (1984) believes that there are cognitively pre-set story grammars based on the recipient’s expectations of ‘what comes next’.1205 In the words of Herman (2002), 85 ‘a sequence of actions, states, and events qualifies as a narrative by virtue of how it situates remarkable or tellable occurrences against a backdrop of stereotypical expectations about the world. Action structures can be thought of as mental models allowing storyteller and recipients to accommodate such blends of tellability and stereotypicality.’ Admittedly, it would be impossible to claim that a modern reader could gain access to the ‘mind’ of an ancient author or his/her readership: no methodology set currently available to the field of cognitive narratology – such as psycholinguistics, empirical reading, transcribed tapes or biochemical measurements of what takes place in the brain when reading a particular tale – is measurable for my pool of texts, no author’s diaries exist, nor ‘posthumous papers of a living author’, to use Robert Musil’s words. Still, despite these difficulties, thinking in cognitive terms about the metaliterary function of myth in the Greek novels might benefit from further narratological investigations. The reconstruction of the mythical megatext from the limited extant oral and visual material, but chiefly through the transmitted literary sources, might be taken as an attempt to compensate for the lack of other testimonies that would have been available if we had more information about the ‘actual’ readership. The same goes for the collection of evidence from the embedded readership, the shifting focalisation, the cases of embedded empathy, and the sign-posting of readerly reactions. This is the loose structural and narratological approach I have tried to apply to my corpus of the five Greek novels.

1204 Bernaerts 2013, 4–7 notes for example that ‘Culler’s notion of “naturalization” stems from the Russian formalists’ concept of “motivation” and the structuralist idea of “vraisemblablisation”, Culler 1975, 161. Readers tend to recuperate textual material by placing it in a “discursive order” that is already familiar to them.’ 1205 Herman 2002, 10–13 for an introduction to the function of the so-called ‘scripts’, ‘frames’, ‘schemata’ developed from studies on Artificial Intelligence. Brooks 1984 shows excellently how the desire for the ending and the desire to become immersed oneself in the plot takes place.

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Epimythion What happened next? What was the impact of the novelistic revision of myth? The so-called ‘ideal plot’ of the ‘canonical’ novels, with its ‘happily ever after’ ending, seems not to have to entered the constellation of mythical narratives: it did not become a ‘myth’ itself. In fact it did not disrupt the development of late antique myth-related revisions, such as Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. In one of the happiest heterosexual relationships described in the poem, which consists mainly of Zeus’ and Dionysus’ rapes of untamed virgins, the reader follows Harmonia into her private chambers, and shortly thereafter hears Cadmus’ proposal. The girl is clearly distressed and bursts into tears in her wet-nurse’s arms: Dion. 5.36–41: My mother, what has possessed you to cast off your own girl? Why do you set up your own daughter to some stranger like this? … I have others to woo me, and better ones, of our own city (μνηστῆρες πολῖται).

In what follows Harmonia needs much time and divine meddling by Aphrodite-Peisinoe before she is prepared to accept Cadmus’ proposal, since no ‘love at first sight’ takes place. This ‘nearly novel’ of Cadmus and Harmonia, as Hadjittofi (2009), 67 labels it, shows the distance from the ideal love stories examined here. Unlike Callirhoe, Harmonia does not marry a fellow citizen; the wedding celebrations do not take place at home but, eventually, at Thebes; no return is foreseen, but instead, a transformation into snakes and the faint promise of Elysium. Her role in the teleological plan of the poem is to bring forth Cadmus’ children, among whom is Semele, the future consort of Zeus and mother of Dionysus.1206 Unlike the novelistic heroines, Harmonia is part of an extant mythical plan over which she has little influence. She can only decide whether she will follow Cadmus more or less willingly. Still, her mention of other possible candidates for her hand, who are fellow citizens, acknowledges at a metaliterary level the other options proposed by the novel, in which peers and, mostly, fellow citizens fall instantly in love.1207 Even outside the mythical constraints, such a tale as that of Hero’s courtship by Leander in Musaeus’ epyllion displays awareness of, but does not adapt, the novelistic mode. Unlike the chastely waiting Leucippe, Hero and Leander start an illicit affair, outside the city boundaries, which engineers their tragic doom. Although not mythically bounded, the novelistic ending becomes

1206 For Nonnus and the novel see Miguelez-Cavero 2016. For the undisturbed continuation of Greek myth after the novel in late antiquity see also Graf in Futre-Pinheiro, Bierl, and Beck 2013, 38. 1207 Char. 3.10.7, 6.1.4, τὸν πρῶτον φιλήσαντα, τὸν πολίτην (your first love, your fellow citizen).

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impossible as soon as the constraint of novelistic chastity is neglected.1208 Both Nonnus’ and Musaeus’ poems seem to aknowledge the novelistic possibilities of a love story but eventually opt for a different ending. This account of the story’s aftermath and its adaptations of myth, far from being exhaustive, might prompt further thought. In Greek literature, myths traditionally provided the opportunity to think about big topicis such as the human condition, gods, and human and divine justice. But myths do so because each story is part of a megatext which was entangled with a character’s long, mythical prehistory and afterlife: for example, Oedipus’ tragic fate is part of a chain of hybris, including that of his father and followed by that of his children. In this sequence a character’s death is important for making sense, with hindsight, of his life, echoing Solon’s famous advice to Croesus that no man should be considered happy before meeting his doom.1209 Nonnus’ and Musaeus’ poems follow their characters to this bitter end. On the other hand, the happy endings in the ideal novels come relatively early, namely at the end of the couple’s narrated adventures, not at the very end of their lives. Only Calasiris, as we saw, dies happily, albeit leaving his authorial and readerly mission unaccomplished. We do have, indeed, hints that the novelistic lovers lived ‘happily ever after’. We even get some mentions about their offspring, as in the case of Callirhoe and of Daphnis and Chloe. Yet, primarily, the novelistic ending is the closure of the narrated erotic adventures and is not part of a larger tableau spread across a whole human life. If there is one epimythion to be extracted from these flexible and positive novelistic narratives it might take the form of a recommentaion of caution, advising meticulous deciphering of the details of the text in hand, keeping in mind that all adversities may be overcome if a proper reading is performed. Like the embedded readers of the novel who are encouraged to read meticulously right up to the ‘happy end’ but also learn how to stop and dwell on a given moment without asking questions about what comes next, the happy ending fuels the forward momentum. The novelistic happy ending is thus only a snapshot from a bigger tableau, but one that needs nonetheless to be appreciated for the momentary pleasure it provides. Despite the tribulations described during the novel’s adventures, this epimythion remains reassuring: even in tumultuous novelistic lives there is a point of a ‘happy ending’ that must be cherished and celebrated as a 1208 See also for similar analogy with Musaeus’ Hero and Leander, 181 ὡς ξεῖνος πολύφοιτος ἐμὴν εἰς πατρίδα μίμνειν. See Morales 1999 and Dümmler 2012. 1209 Hdt. 1.86, μηδένα εἶναι τῶν ζωόντων ὄλβιον. This is the same principle echoed in Walter Benjamin’s famous quote from ‘The Storyteller’, namely that ‘death is the sanction of all a storyteller can tell.’

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relative closure. Xenophon’s novel gives us a good example of this kind of ending: upon leaving Ephesus, Anthia and Habrocomes make their farewells with festivities and sacrifices, unaware of the mishaps that will soon befall them. Upon their return, we learn that they prayed to Artemis Ephesia ‘and spent the rest of their life celebrating their love every day.’1210 If Xenophon’s couple, then, despite all their misfortunes, was still able to celebrate and enjoy every day as if it were a festival, then the reader may rest reassured that, assuming similar calamities will probably not come to pass, ‘they lived well and we even better.’1211

1210 X. Eph. 1.12.2, ἑορτὴν ἄγουσι τὴν ἐπιδημίαν αὐτῶν and 5.15.3, καὶ αὐτοὶ τοῦ λοιποῦ διῆγον ἑορτὴν ἄγοντες τὸν μετ’ ἀλλήλων βίον. 1211 This is the standard closure in modern Greek folktales: και έζησαν αυτοί καλά και εμείς καλλίτερα. For the optimism of this ‘open-closure’ see Alexiou 2002, 212.

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Yildirim, B. 2004. “Identities and empire: local mythology and the self-representation of Aphrodisias.” In: Paideia: The world of the Second Sophistic, edited by B. Borg, 23–52. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Yohannan, J. D. 1968. Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in world literature: an anthology of the story of the chaste youth and the lustful stepmother. New York: New Directions. Zanker, P. 1999. “Phädras Trauer und Hippolytos’ Bildung: zu einem Sarcophag im Thermenmuseum.” In: Im Spiegel des Mythos. Bildwelt und Lebenswelt, edited by F. de Angelis and S. Muth, 131–142. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag. Zanker, P. 2010. Roman art. Santa Monica CA: J Paul Getty Museum. Zanker, P. and B. C. Ewald. 2012 (2004). Living with myths. The imagery of Roman sarcophagi (transl. J. Slater). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zanker, P. and A. Shapiro. 1988. The power of images in the age of Augustus. Jerome lectures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Zeitlin, F. 1990. “The poetics of Eros: nature, art, and imitation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.” In: Before Sexuality, edited by D. M. Halperin, J. J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin, 417–464. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zeitlin, F. 1993. “Gardens of desire in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.” In: The search for the ancient novel, edited by J. Tatum, 148–69. London, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Zeitlin, F. 1995. “Figuring fidelity in Homer’s Odyssey.” In: The distaff side: representing the female in Homer’s Odyssey, edited by B. Cohen, 117–152. Oxford: Oxford University PRess. Zeitlin, F. 2001. “Visions and revisions of Homer.” In: Being Greek under Rome, edited by S. Goldhill, 195–265. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zeitlin, F. 2003. “Living portraits and sculpted bodies in Chariton’s theater of romance.” In: The ancient novel and beyond, edited by S. Panayotakis and M. Zimmerman, 71–83. Leiden: Brill. Zeitlin, F. 2008. “Religion.” In: The Cambridge Companion on the Greek and the Roman novel, edited by T. Whitmarsh, 91–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zeitlin, F. 2013. “Landscapes and protraits. Signs of the uncanny and illusions of the real.” In: The construction of the real and the ideal in the ancient novel (ANS 17), edited by M. Paschalis and S. Panayotakis, 61–87. Groningen: Barkhuis. Zimmermann, B., A. Schlichtmann, and W. Schmid. 2011. Die Literatur der archaischen und klassischen Zeit. Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft. München: Beck. Zimmermann, R. 2001. Geschlechtermetaphorik und Gottesverhältnis. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Index locorum notabiliorum Cases Ach. Tat. 1.10.1 Ach.Tat. 1.12.4 Ach. Tat. 1.2.1 Ach. Tat. 1.5.5–7 Ach. Tat. 1.8.1–1.14.3 Ach. Tat. 1.8.4 Ach. Tat. 2.16.1 Ach. Tat. 2.17.3 Ach. Tat. 2.18.5–6 Ach. Tat. 2.19.1–2 Ach. Tat. 2.25.2 Ach. Tat. 2.30.2 Ach. Tat. 2.33.1 Ach. Tat. 3.15.1–5 Ach. Tat. 3.15.2 Ach.Tat. 3.16.4 Ach. Tat. 3.17.7 Ach. Tat. 4.1.4 Ach. Tat. 4.1.5 Ach. Tat. 4.15.2 Ach. Tat. 5.11.5–12.1 Ach. Tat. 5.11.6 Ach. Tat. 5.12.3 Ach. Tat. 5.14.4 Ach. Tat. 5.17.5 Ach. Tat. 5.17.7 Ach. Tat. 5.18.6 Ach. Tat. 5.19.1 Ach. Tat. 5.20.5 Ach. Tat. 5.24.3 Ach. Tat. 5.26.1–10 Ach. Tat. 5.27.2 Ach. Tat. 5.27.4 Ach. Tat. 5.3.2 Ach. Tat. 5.7.4 Ach. Tat. 5.7.4–8 Ach. Tat. 6.16.5 Ach. Tat. 6.2.3 Ach. Tat. 6.22.3–4 Ach. Tat. 6.3.1 Ach. Tat. 7.13.1 Ach. Tat. 7.5.1–4 DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-007

142 143 245 2 142 245 247 248 248 250 250 251 251 64 68 66 66, 252 252 141 254 144 259 145 255 258 258 255 69 145, 147 146 147 148 148 254 68 68 256 70 256 72 257 72

150 Ach. Tat. 8.12.1–9 Ach. Tat. 8.12.9 149 Ach. Tat. 8.13.1 76 Ach. Tat. 8.15.4 69 Ach. Tat. 8.16.1–7 70 Ach. Tat. 8.17.1–8.18.5 248 Ach. Tat. 8.17.3 248 Ach. Tat. 8.2.1 74 Ach. Tat. 8.4.1 76 Ach. Tat. 8.5.4 75 Ach. Tat. 8.5.7 147, 258 Ach. Tat. 8.7.1 259 Ach. Tat. 8.9.12 75 Ach. Tat. 8.9.3 260 Ant. Lib. Met. 27 41, 194 Ar. Lys. 641 283 Ar. Thes. 411 255 Arist. Po. 1454b, 16 93 Arist. Po. 1455a 30, 182 Arist. Po. 1459b 182 Arist. Po. 1454a 4–7 30 Arist. Po. 1454a 102 Aristid. Or. 1.128, Panathenaicus 194 Aristid. Or. 18, Palinode 194 Aristid. Or. 47.1 194 Aristid. Sacred Tales 1.1 194 Arr. An. 2.12.6 225 Arr. An. 5.18 88 Atwood, Penelopiad 176, 181 Char. 1.14.7–10 210 Char. 1.2.2–3 207 Char. 1.5.3 210 Char. 1.5.5 51 Char. 1.8.4 51 Char. 2.4.1 214 Char. 2.4.5 214 Char. 3.2.13 215 Char. 3.2.8 215 Char. 3.3.5 237 Char. 3.3.7 213 Char. 3.5.1 286 Char. 3.5.8 52

350 

 Index locorum notabiliorum

216 Char. 4.1.3 Char. 4.3.10 217, 219 Char. 4.3.1–5 53 Char. 4.3.4 217 Char. 4.4.7 217 Char. 4.7.6–7 220 Char. 5.1.3 219 Char. 5.2.6 220 Char. 5.5.2 219 Char. 6.5.4 222 Char. 6.6.8 222 Char. 6.9.8 223 Char. 7.1.4 222 Char. 7.1.5–6 223 Char. 8.1.10 225 Char. 8.1.3 129 Char. 8.1.3–4 229 Char. 8.1.4 225 Char. 8.1.9 54 Char. 8.2.5 225 Char. 8.4.5 226 Char. 8.4.8 226 Char. 8.5.14 226 Char. 8.6.6 226 Char. 8.8.12 54 Char. 8.8.16 229 Charition mime 42 D. Chr. Or. 11 195 D. Chr. Or. 11.41 196 D. Chr. Or. 11.67 196 D. Chr. Or. 2.13 195 D. Chr. Or. 20.23 194 D. Chr. Or. 64.2 118 D. Chr. Or. 74.13 117 E. Alc. 347–354 36 E. Alc. 348–349 52 E. El. 214–215 217 E. El. 572 273 E. Hel. 1057–1058 255 E. Hel. 1603–4 287 E. Hel. 260–297 222 E. Hel. 43, 66 277 E. Hel. 47 214 E. Hel. 588 247 E. Hel. 834–837 276 E. Hipp. 1238 143 E. Hipp. 1245–1248 143

153 E. Hipp. 208–214 E. Hipp. 51–56 133 E. Hipp. 516 146 E. Hipp. 525 152 E. Hipp. 731 136 E. Hipp. 802 167 E. Hipp. 88 132 E. IA 1186–7 89 E. IA 1194 88 E. IA 1195 88 E. IA 1579–1580 65 E. IA 460–491 94 E. IT 257–258 52 E. IT 905–906 54 E. IT 1458 52 E. IT 308–312 53 E. IT 356 40 E. Stheneboea Fr. 663 116 Euripides’ myth of Helen 192 Euripides’ myth of Iphigenia 31 Eustath. Comm. in Od. 2.14 184 Gen. 39:5 137 Gen. 45:9 139 Gorg. Hel. Enc. 11.131–132 296 Gorg. Hel. Enc. 19 188 Hdt. 2.112 230, 280 Hdt. 2.112–118 280 Hdt. 2.112–120 192 Hdt. 2.153 181 Hdt. 3.159 85 Hes. Frag. 23b 31, 41 Hes. Theog. 1014 187 Hes. Theog. 775–806 149 Hld. 1.1.1 287 Hld. 1.10.1–2 156 Hld. 1.11.2 157 Hld. 1.13.4 158 Hld. 1.14.1 158 Hld. 1.14.3 167 Hld. 1.18.3–4 81 Hld. 1.2.1 277 Hld. 1.2.6 274 276 Hld. 1.25.6 Hld. 1.3.1 274 Hld. 1.30.7 82 Hld. 1.31.1 81 Hld. 10.12.1–3 92



Hld. 10.17.1 Hld. 10.18.2–10.19.2 Hld. 10.20.2 Hld. 10.31.1 Hld. 10.31.2 Hld. 10.35.4–5 Hld. 10.37.2–3 Hld. 10.37.3 Hld. 10.38.1 Hld. 10.39.2 Hld. 10.41.3 Hld. 10.41.4 Hld. 10.9.3 Hld. 2.11.1–2 Hld. 2.11.4–5 Hld. 2.23.2–4 Hld. 2.31.3 Hld. 2.33.4–5 Hld. 2.33.5 Hld. 2.4.4 Hld. 2.6.3 Hld. 2.7.2 Hld. 2.7.3 Hld. 2.9.5 Hld. 3.17.4 Hld. 4.14.2 Hld. 4.17.3–4 Hld. 4.19.1 Hld. 5.1.7 Hld. 5.11.1–2 Hld. 5.22.1 Hld. 5.22.2–3 Hld. 5.26.1 Hld. 5.32.1 Hld. 5.32.1–6 Hld. 5.5.1 Hld. 6.15.4 Hld. 6.7.5 Hld. 6.8.2 Hld. 6.8.4–5 Hld. 7.11.4 Hld. 7.2.4 Hld. 7.20.4 Hld. 7.21.4–5 Hld. 7.7.3 Hld. 7.7.4 Hld. 7.7.5

Index locorum notabiliorum 

95 96 97 293 293 293 293 293 295 99 295 295 92, 292 161 83 278 282 163 283 279 277 277 277 162 163 294 284 285 280 280 272 272 286 287 287 290 289 280 164 281 292 163 165 165 289, 294 290 164

 351

289 Hld. 7.7.6–7 Hld. 7.8.2 291 Hld. 7.8.3 291 Hld. 8.11.3 86 Hld. 8.15.2 167 Hld. 8.5.11 166 Hld. 8.7.4 275 Hld. 8.9.9–11 84 Hld. 9.1.4 90 Hld. 9.2.1 90 Hom. Il. 13.719 220 Hom. Il. 3.146 219 Hom. Il. 3.139–140 219 Hom. Il. 3.39 220 Hom. Il. 3.86 210 Hom. Il. 4.450–453 287 Hom. Il. 6.155 114 Hom. Il. 6.289–290 225, 246 Hom. Od. 4.625–786 206 Hom. Od. 1.1 272 Hom. Od. 1.22 296 Hom. Od. 11.172–173 243 Hom. Od. 15.171–178 270 Hom. Od. 18.213 219 Hom. Od. 18.321 260 Hom. Od. 19.536 270 Hom. Od. 21.325–329 207 Hom. Od. 23.164–165 179 Hom. Od. 23.167–170 181 Hom. Od. 23.203 258 Hom. Od. 23.293 (see also telos) 297 Hom. Od. 23.296 35, 179, 184, 204, 225, 228, 295, 304 Hom. Od. 24.120–190 258 Hom. Od. 24.199–202 198 Hom. Od. 24.205–411 227 Hom. Od. 4.218 225 Hom. Od. 4.219–226 194 Hom. Od. 4.277–280 287 Hom. Od. 7.311–316 214 Hom. Od. 8.266–332 231 Hyg. Fab. 125 and 127 187 Joseph & Aseneth 7.2 109 Lollianus, Phoenicica 65 Long. 1.15.4 263 Long. 1.27.4 79 Long. 1.31.2 265

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 Index locorum notabiliorum

265 Long. 2.23.3 Long. 2.23.4 265 Long. 2.34.2 79 Long. 3.16.1–3 270 Long. 3.23.3 79 Long. 3.25.2 268 Long. 3.28.3 266 Long. 3.34.1–3 267 Long. 4.18.1 152 Long. 4.31.3 269 Long. 4.32.2 268 Long. 4.33.1 269 Luc. Cal. 23 118 Luc. DDeor. 12 195 Luc. DDeor. 2 187 Luc. DMeretri. 11 187 Luc. DMort. 5.1 195 Luc. Fug. 21 186 Luc. Im. 20 186 Luc. Sacr. 15 39 Luc. Salt. 2 117 Luc. Salt. 52 36 Luc. Syr.D. 17–18 120 Luc. Syr.D. 22 120 Luc. Tox. 38 Luc. Tox. 2–6 42 Luc. VH 2.15 195 Luc. VH 2.8–25 195 Luc.VH 29–36 187 Max. Tyr. Diss. 21.1 196 Men. Koneiazomenai 58 Men. Perikeiromene 129, 258 Men. Rhapizomene 290 Men. Sam. 337 216 Men. Sam. 116 Men. Thettale 146 Moecheutria, P. Oxy. 413 123, 250 Musaeus 181 318 Nonn. Dion. 26.137–142 40 Nonn. Dion. 5.36–41 318 Ov. Her. 3.3 138 Ov. Trist. 4.4.63–88 42 119 Parth. 34 Parth. 4 and 34 194 Paus. 1.22.1 109 Paus. 10.26.2 188 Paus. 3.12 186

Petr. Sat. 110–112 124 Petr. Sat. 126–133 124 Petr. Sat. 79–80, 137 Philo Jud. 41.257–250 109 Philostr. Her. 197, 284, 299, 300 Philostr. Her. 54.3 (De Lannoy). 197 Philostr. Im. 2.4 118 Philostr. VA 1.31–32 38 Philostr. VA 6.3 and 6.5 122 Philostr. VA 4.15.6 196 Pl. Phdr. 243a 193 Pl. Phdr. 241a 152 Pl. Symp. 196 e 116, 142, 152 Plaut. Casina, 910–935 159 Plin. Nat. Hist. 35.63. 177 Plu. Alex. 9.21 89 Plu. Amat. 17 116 Plu. Amat. 754e 121 Plu. Conjug. 25 185 Plu. De aud. 27 186 Plu. De Is. 356d 288 Plu. De Is. 358d 290 Plu. De lib. 7d 186 Plu. Pel. 21 37 Plu. Quest. Rom. 264e–256e 39 Plu. Soll. 898b 86 Plu. Thes. 28.2 118 Porph. Sent. 9.1–4 68 Ps.-Apollod. 2.3.1–2 116 Ps.-Apollod. 3.10 186 Ps.-Apollod. 7.16, 7.36–37 187 Ps.-Plu. Parallela Minora 314 118 Rameau, Hippolyte et Aricie 172 S. Aletes vide Aleites TrGF. 101–107 32 S. Chryses, TrGF 494–496 32 S. El. 1492 74 S. El. 871–919 241 S. Trach. 58 Sapph. fr. 105 LP/Voigt 267 Stesich. fr. 187–191 PMFG 188 Suda A 1842 s.v. ‘Anagyrasian’ 160 The Epic of Gilgamesh 166 108, 139 The Tale of Two Brothers Theocr. 1 152 Theocr. 8.71–74 153 Theocr. 27 267 Theocr. 5.88–89 153



Thuc. 2.34.3 216 Virg. Ecl. 5 152 Vita Aesop. 74–76 119 Walter Scott, Ivanhoe 25 X. Cyr. 58, 90 X. Cyr. 6.4.3 224 X. Eph. 1.1.4 132 X. Eph. 1.1.5 132 X. Eph. 1.11.4 232 X. Eph. 1.2.1 132 X. Eph. 1.2.3 132 X. Eph. 1.2.7–8 133 X. Eph. 1.6.1 232 X. Eph. 1.8.2–3 231 X. Eph. 1.9.3 232 X. Eph. 2.1.2 232 X. Eph. 2.10.1 138 X. Eph. 2.11.2 138, 233 X. Eph. 2.12.2 234 X. Eph. 2.13.2 56, 234 X. Eph. 2.14.4 237 X. Eph. 2.3.5 135 X. Eph. 2.6.1 136 X. Eph. 2.9.4 234 X. Eph. 3.10.1 237

Index locorum notabiliorum 

X. Eph. 3.12.5–6 X. Eph. 3.3.3 X. Eph. 3.3.4 X. Eph. 3.3.5 X. Eph. 3.4.1–4 X. Eph. 3.7.3 X. Eph. 3.7.4 X. Eph. 3.9.5–7 X. Eph. 3.9.7 X. Eph. 4.3.6 X. Eph. 4.5.6 X. Eph. 4.6.3 X. Eph. 4.6.4 X. Eph. 5.1.12 X. Eph. 5.10.7 X. Eph. 5.10.9 X. Eph. 5.12.3–6 X. Eph. 5.12.4 X. Eph. 5.3.1 X. Eph. 5.4.6 X. Eph. 5.6.7 X. Eph. 5.7.1–2 X. Eph. 5.8.2 X. Eph. 5.9.3 X. Eph. 5.9.6

 353

138 235 56 235 58 236 59 235 236 238 242 61 61 237 241 241 241 242 233 234 239 233 238 239 239

Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum Achilles and Chaereas 223, 228 and Theagenes 284 Aesop 54, 123 Agamemnon and Hydaspes 88, 94, 95 Alcamenes and Meroebus 293 Alcestis 36, 43, 49, 63 Alexander the Great 89, 90, 230 and Chaereas 90, 225 and Hydaspes 88, 89 Alexiou, Margaret 15, 320 Andromeda 35, 43, 56, 282 (painting) Anthia and Callirhoe 235, 239 and Chariclea’s Ephesiaca 275 and Leucippe 64, 67 and Chariclea 168 Anticlea and Laertes and Anthia’s and Habrocomes’ parents 243 Antigone 32, 49, 288, 289 and Anthia 60 Apelles painting The Slander 118 Aphrodite and Callirhoe’s / Melite’s beauty 205 and erotic hybris/vengeance 123, 129, 132, 144, 152 (sweet laughing), 169, passim. and visual representations 133, 143, 145, 192 Ares and Aphrodite 231 (Mars and Venus) Archon of Egypt 230 Aristotle 10 and catharsis 223 and Iphigenia 30 and recognition 183, passim Arsace and Demaenete 163 and Manto 163 Artaxerxes as reader 220

DOI 10.1515/9783110528695-008

Artemis and Anthia 61, 132-134 and Callirhoe 219 and Chariclea 163 (zakoros) and Clitophon 74 and Leucippe 67 and Melite 71 (Ephesia and bees) Barthes, Roland 316 Burkert, Walter 14–18, 311 Calame, Claude 14 Calasiris and Hippolytus 163 and Proteus 279 vs. Cnemon’s and Charicles’ readings 285 Calligone and Leucippe 255 the novel 303, 245 Callirhoe and Chloe 266 (the apple), 267 (the beauty) and Demaenete 157 (the kick) and dubious chastity 224 and Melite 205, 259, 270 Callisthenes and Calligone 246 and Chaereas 249 Cephallonia (and Ithaca) 272 Chaereas and Hydaspes 90 as reader 205 Chariclea and Anthia or Leucippe 81 and Habrocomes 85, 167 and Leucippe 84, 86, 91, 292 vs. Theagenes’ misreadings 288 Charicles as reader of the novel’s telos 292 Charition 60, 63 Chariton and Philostratus 228 (love by hearsay)



chastity oaths 149 (Melite’s tablet), 150, 231, 243, 285 Christianity 40, 58, 60,,71, 300, passim Chrysion as reader 234 Clitophon and Habrocomes 73, 147 Clytemnestra and Persinna 94 Cnemon as novelistic hero 161 as reader 274 Cognitive Studies 16, 22, 54 Concordia 233, 279 (less than ideal reader) Conte, Gian Biagio 17 Cybele as the nurse 83 Delphi the Oracle 292 the Sacred Wars 285 Demeter and Isis (female wanderers) 288 Dionysius and Perilaus 104, 236 as reader 59 ekphrasis 7, 118, 132, 231, 248, 323 embarkation (as adventure motif) 28, 199, 210, 227 empathy 86, 236, 317 erotic symmetry (D. Konstan) 108 folktale 20, 36, 44, 50, 56, 61, 72, 102, 140, 170, 208, 230, 266, 298, 313 AT 68.1, Princess offered to rescuer 43, 214 AT 300, The dragon slayer 35, 43 AT 300, Princess marries her savior 56 AT 301, Abducted bride 200, 210 AT 313, Girl as helper 36 AT 318, The faithless wife, The Tale of the Two Brothers 108, 125 AT 400, Quest for the lost bride 200 AT 500-559, Supernatural helpers 266 AT 590, Slandered youth saves a princess 130

Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum 

 355

AT 709, Snow White 50, 246 AT 712, Tale of Crescentia/ The calumniated wife 208 AT 830, The boastful deer hunter 44 AT 888, The faithful wife AT 926A, motif J1171, Judgment by testing love 137 AT 926, The clever judge/ Judgement of Solomon 137 AT 953, motif K527.2 and3, Substitution by a another human 68 AT 974, The home coming husband 184, 259 AT 990, Scheintod 26, 48 AT 1418, Motif K1513, The Wife’s equivocal Oath. 149 AT 1510, The Ephesian widow 128, 144, 259 AT b11.10, A virgin sacrificed 43 AT F451.5.1.2, The compassionate executioner 61 AT H310, Suitors’ test for supernatural wife 200 AT H331.4, Fight with the father in law 200 AT H480, Wife’s tests, chastity tests 200 AT K1557.1, Husband discovers paramours love letter 138 AT K1911, Substituted bride (the false bride) 159 AT K2120, Slandered chaste man 125 AT motif A1545.2, Substitution by animal 44 AT motif K512.4, magic potions 59 AT motif K1218.1, AT 1730, The chaste wife entraps the suitors 200 AT motif K2111, Potiphar’s Wife 125 AT motif R 10 AT 301, 302, 311, 312, Abduction of the princess 200 AT S31, The Stepmother 72 AT T68.1, Princess as a prize to her rescuer 43 Habrocomes and Theagenes 165, 287 happy ending 6,9, 41, 54, 74, passim.

356 

 Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum

Helen among the Captive Women and Callirhoe 223 and Achilles (love through hearsay) 247 and Anthia 232, 234 and Artemis Orthia 283 and Callirhoe 212, passim and Callirhoe’s suitors 209 and Chariclea 278, 282, passim and Chariclea Teichoscopia 286 and Leucippe 252 and Leucippe/Lacaena 256 and Lycaenion 270 and Peitho 188, 190, 214 and Stateira (returned to Artaxerxes) 225 Aphrodite’s apple and Chloe 266 as stepmother (Phaedra) to Corythus 119 and Judgement of Paris 189, 220, 263, 265, passim and elopement with Paris 191 Greek vs. barbarian 220, 301 in Egypt 49, 193, passim in Egypt, Tyre, Sidon the novel 192, 225, 286 in the Cypria 192 in the Homerkritik 196 on Leuce 41, 197 Helen’s suitors 198 Helen/Iphigenia embarkation 28 289 Helen-Nephele and Calligone 247 and Callirhoe 227 and Chariclea in the cave 277 and Leucippe 252 Hippolytus and Chaereas’ hybris 130 and Chariclea’s chastity 164 and Charicles as Theseus 143 and Clitophon 146 and Cnemon 156 and Combabus 120 and Daphnis 152 and Euthynicus 150 and Habrocomes 132 and Melancomas 118

and Metiochus 129 and Ninus 130 and Timasion 122 the aetion of the hero Anagyrus 160 the wedding aetion 241 Hippolytus and Bellerophon 114 Hippolytus and Phoenix 115 Hippolytus’ chastity and male chastity 16, 117, 125 Hippolytus’ death 118 Hippolytus velatus 111, 157 Hippothous and Menelaus 254 as reader 238 historiograpjy, historicity 10, 11, 37, 198, homosexual/homoerotic 16, 42, 135, 142, 173, 206 Intertextuality 8, 17, 301 Iphigenia and Alcestis 36 and Anthia 55 and Callirhoe 50 and Chariclea 81, 91 and Helen 40 (sacrifice), 33 (as escape tragedies) and human sacrifice 37, 45 and Leucippe 64 and Maidens of Death 31 and Polyxena 31,42, 49 and rescue (as motif) 67 and Scheintod 48, 54, 60, 66, 70, 102 and variations on the substitution theme 32, 43, 45, 104, passim substitution as metamorphosis 42, 79 substitution by animal 38, 66, 67, passim substitution by another person 97 substitution by a prostitute 69 (Leucippe), 82 (Chariclea) substitution by gender-swapping 71 substitution/rescue 103 and substitution as happy ending 31 successful escape without substitution 85 (pantarbe) successful escape via Scheintod and Christianity 49



and ritual resurrection 40 in Chariton 48 Greek vs. barbarian 39, 45, 74, 101 human sacrifice and execution 26 human sacrifice and voyeurism 103 human sacrifice as symbolic defloration 103 human sacrifice, xenoktonia and teknoktonia 37 Iphigenia and Orestes Chariclea and Theagenes as brother and sister 97 Clitophon and Leucippe as brother and sister 75 Iphigenia megatext 43 passim Isis 99, 235, 290 and Anthia 236 and Chariclea 97, 233,274, Joseph 108 and Habrocomes 137 (as curator) Judith 60, 244 Konstan, David 4, 108, 231 Laertes and Hermocrates 227 Megamedes and Lycomedes 243 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1, 316 local legends 10, 160 love potions 58, 146 magic 59, 66, 147 Manto and Melite 147 Melite and Ismenodora 144 and Stratonice 147 Menelaus and Chaereas 224 and Dionysius 222 and Habrocomes 234 and Theagenes 287 and Pelorus and Trachinus duel (Menelaus and Paris) 287 metafiction 73, 96, 151, 210, 234, 276, 287, passim.

Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum 

 357

metaliterary 8, 59, 60, 69, 72, 81, 82, 91, 136, 158, 211, 213, 227, 237, 240, 242, 257, 261, 278, 280, 282, 297, passim. Montiglio, Silvia 303 Musaeus 318 Mythenkritik 6, 313, passim and Helen/Penelpe 194, 197, 228, 243, and Iphigenia 38, 90, 101, 104 and Phaedra 121, 128, 166, 172, 173 Narratology 8,10, 19, 23,317, passim New Comedy 4, 124, 152, 218 Nonnus 318 Odysseus and the Aethiopica (and the Apamea mosaic) 291 and Calasiris 272, 273, 275, 284 and Habrocomes 234 and Hydaspes 88 and the Nekyia 289 and nostos (vs. kleos) 89, 100, 259, 303 Onasias’, the painter 177 Orestes and Chaereas (madness) 52 and Clitophon 69, 73 and Theagenes 98 Osiris and Theagenes 98 Pantheia 58, 186, pantomime 3, 64, 123 Paris and Artaxerxes 225 and Callisthenes 246 and Chaereas 223 and Daphnis 265, 267 and Dionysius 214 and Mithridates 220 parody 73, 142, 146, 245, 251, 262 Parthenope 7, 50 Pax Romana 300 Penelope and Anthia 231, 233 and Callirhoe 206, 208, 210, 213, 219 passim and Chariclea 292

358 

 Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum

and Clitophon’s chastity 260 and Leucippe 259 and Lycaenion 270 and Melite 260 and Pan 76, 181, 271 as Lady Philosophy 180, 291 chastity test 200, 259, 262, 292, passim Penelope and Odysseus Anthia and Habrocomes 243 Callirhoe and Chaereas 225 Chariclea and Theagenes 292 and the end/ telos of the Odyssey 184 285 telos 245, 264, 297, 298, 299 and Achilles Tatius 262 and Chariton 8.1.17 225 and Longus 271 and the peras of Heliodorus 83, 297 and Xenophon of Ephesus 243 Petronius 121, 124 Phaedra and Anthia 133 and Arsace 164 and Chariclea and Arsace 165 and Cyno 138 and Demaenete 156 and Ismenodora 119 and Lycaenion 153 and Manto 135 and Melite 149 and Potiphar’s Wife 108, 123, 125 and slander 103, 112, 117,118, 123 passim and Stratonice 119 and Thisbe 160 Greek vs. barbarian 127, 140, 162, 171 Helen and Corythus 119 Phaedra megatext 124 Phaedra pattern 125 Plato 12, 21, 24 Platonic echoes 68, 97, 116, 148, 180, 193, 196, 246, 253, 291 passim Progymnasmata 11, 314 Proteus 194, and Calasiris 274, 279 and Chaereas (in Ach. Tat.) 254 and Dionysius 214

Pylades and Orestes 29 and Hippothous and Chaereas 55 and Polycharmus and Chaereas 51, 54 and Satyrus and Menelaus 64 readership/ readerly expectations 7,8, 19, 22, 53, 63, 73, passim and Jauss, Hans Robert 19 recognition 242, passim dramatic and epic recognition 80, 99, 293 dramatic recognition 66, 69, 80, 83, 93, 100, 289, 290 epic misrecognitions 205, 213, 246, 290, epic recognition 656, 3, 74, 229 novelistic recognition 227, 244, 245, 254, 259, 271, 280, 291 partial recognition 70, 182, 219, 235, 292 recognitive reading 34, 184, 200, 205, 213, 229, 238, 242, 269, 272, 293, 296 passim romance 21 Segal, Charles and the notion of megatext 17, 316 Seleucus 120 Sinonis 60, 244 Socrates 298 Sophrosyne 122, 131, 151, 208, 232, 259, 273, passim and male virginity, 75, 147, Sophrosyne (character in Longus) 268 sphragis 269 (Longus), 295 (Heliodorus) Stesichorus 188, 192, passim and Aristides 194 and Chaereas’ palinode 219 and Charicles’ palinode 292 and Dionysius’ palinode 220 and Platonic revision 193, 196 Structuralism 19, 204, 316 Syrinx 76, 79, 259 Telemachus 183 and Chaereas 206



theatrical 7, 16, 27 metatheatre 66, 95, 142, 161 passim theatricality 67, 70, 91, 94, 113 Theseus and Charicles and the visual arts 144 and Aristippus 159 as father of Iphigenia 211 Thetis and Peleus and Callirhoe and Chaereas 206, 213

Index rerum/nominum notabiliorum 

 359

Trojan War 300 (Mythenkritik) and Hydaspes’ siege of Syene 87, 89 and Chaereas’ siege of Tyre 223, 225 and the Boukoloi 253 Troy and Byzantium 248, 259 Veyne, Paul 18, 311 Visual arts 16