Sphragis 1

This chapter represents the first of this volume’s two attempts at breaking open Heliodorus’ brief, allegedly autobiographical ‘seal’ at the end of the text. Beginning from the ambiguous position of this paratext (is it within or without the text?), it turns to focus on Heliodorus’ relationship with his predecessors in the romance genre. It then considers the author’s self-identification as a ‘Phoenician man’ in the context of similar phrasing in the Odyssey , and as an echo of Achilles Tatius’ Phoenician characters. Next up, the words ‘end’ ( peras ) and ‘race’ ( genos ) are considered in connection with the wider text’s thematics. Finally, it considers the implications of reading Heliodorus’ past-tense account of his own authorship of the text as yet another fiction embedded within the text as a whole.

Art · Context (archaeology) · Linguistics · Literature · Paratext · Performative utterance · Phoenician · Romance · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Philosophy