Although this is the last chapter in this volume, the modern reception of ancient texts should not be considered a mere learned appendix. We inevitably read any kind of text from the perspective of our culture; a creative rewriting by a modern artist is an extension of the process of cultural dialogue that underlies all interpretation. The specific case of the novel is quite complex, because modern attitudes towards this genre have slowly changed from hostility to acceptance, finally achieving the dominant position they have now. This process has influenced not only our understanding but even our conceptualisation of the ancient novel. The analysis of contemporary rewritings, as we shall discover, can shed new light on these issues. Let us begin with a significant date: 1876. In this year Erwin Rohde - a prominent figure in the worlds of classical philology and the history of religion, a supporter of Friedrich Nietzsche in his polemic against the German academy - published a huge work on the Greek novel, still considered a critical masterpiece. In the same year Leo Tolstoy was completing the publication of Anna Karenina, which he had begun in 1873. This synchronism can be a good starting point for getting to grips with the meaning of the ancient novel in contemporary culture. At the end of the ninenteenth century, a new philological approach to the ancient novel began just at the time when the modern novel definitively reached a hegemonic position in the system of literary genres, and enjoyed its most flourishing era.