The Ancient Readers of the Greek Novels

Bibliographic Data

ID20046947
AuthorsEwen Bowie (corresponding author)
Year1996
Pages87-106
Publication date1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueThe Novel in the Ancient World (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004217638_005
OpenAlexW754038945
ISBN9789004217638
LanguageEN
Citations received22

Scholars who ascribe isolation and deracinement to Hellenistic man are doubtless influenced by our image of these two huge cities. Tomas Hagg is happy to allow that Achilles Tatius, Longus and Heliodorus were themselves highly educated and envisaged similarly educated readers as the primary readership of their works. The argument is based on the frequency and subtlety of intertextuality with earlier literature, some of it more recondite than the stuff of basic secondary educational curricula. A further fourth-century reader for Heliodorus has been enticingly proposed by Bowersock. The first man, therefore, to show certain knowledge of Heliodorus is Socrates Scholasticus whose history of the church, written in Constantinople and stopping at A.D. 439, alleges that he became bishop of Trikka in Thessaly.Of the diverse novels considered one might well expect an example of any category to have been in Cleitophon's hands in that early scene in Achilles Tatius. Keywords: Greek novels; Heliodorus; Hellenistic period; Socrates Scholasticus

Aesthetics · Ancient Greek · Art · Audience measurement · Intertextuality · Literature · Political science · SOCRATES · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Medicine

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