28 - The Construction of the Classical Past in the Ancient Greek Novels (2006)

Summary

This chapter documents the differences in the five novelists’ representation of the Greek past – mythical, archaic, classical and Hellenistic. I distinguished two groups: Xenophon and Longus each offer very little myth or history before the period of the events they narrate; Chariton, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, on the other hand, not only use much circumstantial detail to build up a classical or (in Achilles Tatius’ case) Hellenistic world in which their story is set, but also give that world temporal depth by exploitation of mythology, and occasionally by introducing events or persons from earlier Greek history. Xenophon’s and Achilles Tatius’ worlds are such that their similarity with that of readers can almost be taken for granted, with little incentive to ask in what way and to what effect these worlds are to any degree different from their own. Chariton and Heliodorus are different: the more or less determinable historical setting combines with a decidedly contemporary σφραγίς to give readers both a strong sense of Greek cultural continuity and the opportunity to identify features where their contemporary Greek world might be significantly different: the most important such difference is Roman control of the Greek world, which is also strongly hinted at by Longus despite his choice of a timeless, predominantly rural context.