Beyond the Second Sophistic. Tim Whitmarsh
see Rhet. ad Her. 1.13; Quint., Inst. 2.4.2; see further Barwick 1928.
21. Ar., Thesm. 871–928.
22. Webb 2006, especially 43–44; Van Mal-Maeder 2007 explores the fictionality of the declamations while resisting the temptation to see them as genetic ancestors of the novel: see pp. 115–46.
23. Fusillo 1989, 43–55, 77–83; Whitmarsh 2005a, 86–89; see, however, Van Mal-Maeder, previous note, for reservations.
24. Aul. Gell. 6.5.1–8.
25. See ch. 4.
26. Feeney 1991.
27. P. Herc. 1428 fr. 19, with Henrichs 1975, 107–23; Plat., Prot. 320C–323A.
28. Testimonia in Winiarczyk 1991; discussion in Winiarczyk 2002.
29. Winiarczyk 2002, 136.
30. See ch. 12.
31. FGrH 32; Rusten 1982 adds three other fragments. For the influence of Euhemerus see Winiarczyk 2002, 139–42.
32. As emphasized by Rusten 1982, e.g., p. 112 (on the Libyan stories): “A work of fiction.”
33. Goldhill 2002a, 49–50.
34. On the wiles of this poem see especially Hopkinson 1984.
35. On this trend in imperial literature see especially Kim 2010a.
36. Lloyd 1987, 56–70.
37. Packman 1991.
38. Romm 1992.
39. Walbank 1960.
40. Text: FGrH 688; see also the Budé edition of Lenfant 2004 and Stronk 2010. On Ctesias’s importance in the history of fiction see especially Holzberg 1993 and Whitmarsh, forthcoming a.
41. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 23–71.
42. Billault 2004.
43. These traditions are discussed in Whitmarsh, forthcoming a.
44. Holzberg 1993, 81–82. And indeed the summary of the story preserved by Nicolaus of Damascus and, since Felix Jacoby, included among the Ctesian fragments (F 8C Stronk) is considerably more “romantic.”
45. For this phenomenon see Whitmarsh 2010a.
46. CA, 5–8, 12–18; Cameron 1995, 47–53.
47. Lloyd-Jones 1999a, 1999b.
48. C. P. Jones 2001a, and below, chapter 6.
49. Rohde 1914, 42–59.
50. Bowie, forthcoming.
51. See Lightfoot 1999, 224–34.
52. Ibid., 256–63.
53. As, e.g., Lavagnini 1921 does.
54. On this material see Whitmarsh and Thomson, forthcoming; Whitmarsh, forthcoming a, discusses Ctesias and the Cyropaedia in terms of cultural bifocality.
55. Diod. Sic. 2.32.4 = FGrH 688 T3, F 5; Diod. Sic. 2.22.5 = FGrH F 1b. On the question of the historicity of the “royal parchments” see Llewellyn-Jones 2010, 58–63; Stronk 2010, 15–25. For diphtheria as parchment books see Hdt. 5.58.3.
56. Perry 1967, 166–73; Reichel 2010, 425–30.
57. Val. Max. 5.7 ext.; Plut., Demetr. 38; Luc., DDS 17–18; App., Syr. 308–27; further sources at Lightfoot 2003, 373–74.
58. Luc., DDS 19–27; see Lightfoot 2003, 373–402, with copious reference to Semitic parallels.
59. CA, 5, 1.
60. Parthenius 11, incorporating his own hexameter version, fr. 33 Lightfoot = SH 648.
61. Brown 2002. Sources discussed at Rohde 1914, 101–3; Lightfoot 1999, 433–36.
62. Brown 2002, 59–60.
63. See especially Wills 1995, 2002.
64. Braun 1934.
65. Bohak 1996 argues for the second century B.C.E. on the basis of claimed links with the temple of Onias IV at Heliopolis; Kraemer 1998, 225–85, sees the work as late antique. Further discussion of this dating (and other issues) in Whitmarsh, forthcoming a; see also Whitmarsh 2012.
66. See further Philonenko 1968, 43–48; S. West 1974.
67. Selden 1998; Stephens 2003.
68. Barns 1956.
69. I. Rutherford 2000. On the issue as a whole see I. Rutherford, forthcoming; Stephens, forthcoming.
70. Nimis 2004.
71. Hdt. 2.102–11; Maneth. fr. 34 Robbins; Diod. Sic. 1.53.
72. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 252–66.
73. Which I cite from Kroll’s 1926 edition of the A recension. Fuller discussion of the Romance is in Whitmarsh, forthcoming a, and below chapter 6.
74. There are useful summaries of scholarship on utopias in Holzberg 2003; see also ch. 3.
75. See, e.g., Dawson 1992.
76. Pl., Rep. 449c–50a.
77. Romm 1992, especially 172–214.
78. Pavel 1989.
2
The Romance of Genre
The previous chapter sought to sketch a large-scale narrative of the development of Greek prose fiction, a venture that involved setting aside the paradigm of the “imperial romance.” Cultural history cannot proceed by reverse engineering: we cannot comprehend ideas of fiction in the classical and Hellenistic periods if we view them simply as proleptic of later developments. That is teleological thinking of the most unhelpful kind. The previous chapter, then, sought to provide a narrative with no metanarrative, in which developments occur locally and adventitiously rather than according to some higher plan.
This book as a whole is about experimenting with precisely that kind of decentering motion. If we adjust the parameters, if we rewrite some of the received “certainties,” if we explore alternative literary genealogies, what kind of picture do we come up with? Yet while my interest elsewhere in the book is exclusively in the noncanonical, it seems unthinkable to present an account of prose fiction that ignores the imperial romance.1 In this chapter I consider how this particular galaxy might be located within the complex firmament of Greek fiction. There is, I believe, an answer to this question. But the crucial point (in view of the themes of this book) is a larger one, which should be borne in mind throughout: among Greek fictional texts the coherence of the romances as a body of texts is an exception rather than the norm.
Whatever phrase we use—my imperial romance corresponds to others’ ideal novel, ideal romance, or even just Greek novel—there is little ambiguity as to what we are talking of. Almost all scholars recognize a discrete grouping of texts, within the wider field of the ancient novel, consisting of the five surviving Greek prose romances: Xenophon of Ephesus’s Anthia and Habrocomes, Chariton’s Callirhoe (both probably first century C.E.), Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon (probably second century C.E.), Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe (second or perhaps early third century C.E.), and Heliodorus’s Charicleia and Theagenes (probably fourth century C.E.); there are also a number of now-fragmentary novels such as those known to modern scholars as Metiochus and Parthenope and Ninus. Yet to be able to itemize individual examples of the form is not the same thing, as Socrates might have said, as giving an account of it. How do we know, as readers, that these texts belong to the same category? What difference does this make to the reading experience? These are the questions that I aim to address in this chapter.
Let us begin with the much-debated issue of genre.2 For a long time it was simply taken for granted that these five surviving texts, and probably much of the fragmentary material, operate generically. All are built around an aristocratic, gorgeous, heterosexual pair, who undergo trials and separations of various kinds before being reunited at the end. Marriage plays a central