Sourcing Callirhoe

Chariton’s Callirhoe is the earliest extant example of the Greek novel. What preceding texts are there that resemble it? Martin Braun demonstrated in the 1930s that many of the motifs that we think of as characteristically novelistic are found in Josephus’s retelling of the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Does that tell us that Josephus was influenced by now-lost novels? Or that Jewish storytelling influenced the course of the novel? Or that these motifs were shared between Greek and Jewish culture, without firm boundaries of genre?

Archaeology · Art · Evolutionary biology · Extant taxon · Genealogy · Josephus · Judaism · Literature · Narrative · Storytelling · Theology · Wife · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Philosophy