Book contents
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustration and Tables
- Places of Original Publication
- Preface
- Editions and Abbreviations
- Introduction to Volume II: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels
- 1 Who is Dicaeopolis? (1988)
- 2 Marginalia Obsceniora: Some Problems in Aristophanes’ Wasps (1990)
- 3 Wine in Old Comedy (1995)
- 4 Ionian Iambus and Attic Komoidia: Father and Daughter, or Just Cousins? (2002)
- 5 Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Audience of Attic Comedy (2007)
- 6 Aristophanes’ Clouds: An Agonistic Note (2015)
- 7 The Lesson of Book 2 (2018)
- 8 Theocritus’ Seventh Idyll, Philetas and Longus (1985)
- 9 Frame and Framed in Theocritus Poems 6 and 7 (1996)
- 10 The Reception of Apollonius Rhodius in Imperial Greek Literature (2000)
- 11 Time and Place, Narrative and Speech in Philicus, Philodamus and Limenius (2015)
- 12 Greek Sophists and Greek Poetry in the Second Sophistic (1989)
- 13 Poetry and Poets in Asia and Achaea (1989)
- 14 Greek Poetry in the Antonine Age (1990)
- 15 Hadrian and Greek Poetry (2002)
- 16 Dionysius of Alexandria: A Greek Poet in the Roman Empire (2004)
- 17 Luxury Cruisers? Philip’s Epigrammatists between Greece and Rome (2012)
- 18 Doing Doric (2016)
- 19 The Novels and the Real World (1977)
- 20 The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World (1994)
- 21 Philostratus: Writer of Fiction (1994)
- 22 Names and a Gem: Aspects of Allusion in the Aethiopica of Heliodorus (1995)
- 23 The Ancient Readers of the Greek Novels (1996)
- 24 Phoenician Games in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (1998)
- 25 The Chronology of the Earlier Greek Novels since B. E. Perry: Revisions and Precisions (2002)
- 26 The Function of Mythology in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2003)
- 27 Metaphor in Daphnis and Chloe (2005)
- 28 The Construction of the Classical Past in the Ancient Greek Novels (2006)
- 29 Viewing and Listening on the Novelist’s Page (2006)
- 30 Direct Speech in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2006)
- 31 Pulling the Other? Longus on Tragedy (2007)
- 32 Links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius (2007)
- 33 Literary Milieux (2008)
- 34 The Uses of Bookishness (2009)
- 35 Country Virtues, City Vices in Longus, Daphnis and Chloe? (2009)
- 36 Socrates’ Cock and Daphnis’ Goats: The Rarity of Vows in the Religious Practice of the Greek Novels (2012)
- 37 Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving ‘Reality’ (2013)
- 38 ‘Milesian Tales’ (2013)
- 39 A Land without Priests? Religious Authority in Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (2015)
- 40 Poetic Elements in the Greek Novelists’ Prose (2017)
- 41 Captured Moments: Illustrating Longus’ Prose (2018)
- 42 Λέξεις Λόγγου (2019)
- 43 Animals, Slaves and Masters in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2019)
- 44 The Demotion of the Literary Cowherd (2019)
- 45 Callimachus and Longus (2019)
- 46 Silence in Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles Tatius and Longus (2020)
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index of Greek Terms
- General Index
38 - ‘Milesian Tales’ (2013)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2023
Book contents
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustration and Tables
- Places of Original Publication
- Preface
- Editions and Abbreviations
- Introduction to Volume II: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels
- 1 Who is Dicaeopolis? (1988)
- 2 Marginalia Obsceniora: Some Problems in Aristophanes’ Wasps (1990)
- 3 Wine in Old Comedy (1995)
- 4 Ionian Iambus and Attic Komoidia: Father and Daughter, or Just Cousins? (2002)
- 5 Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Audience of Attic Comedy (2007)
- 6 Aristophanes’ Clouds: An Agonistic Note (2015)
- 7 The Lesson of Book 2 (2018)
- 8 Theocritus’ Seventh Idyll, Philetas and Longus (1985)
- 9 Frame and Framed in Theocritus Poems 6 and 7 (1996)
- 10 The Reception of Apollonius Rhodius in Imperial Greek Literature (2000)
- 11 Time and Place, Narrative and Speech in Philicus, Philodamus and Limenius (2015)
- 12 Greek Sophists and Greek Poetry in the Second Sophistic (1989)
- 13 Poetry and Poets in Asia and Achaea (1989)
- 14 Greek Poetry in the Antonine Age (1990)
- 15 Hadrian and Greek Poetry (2002)
- 16 Dionysius of Alexandria: A Greek Poet in the Roman Empire (2004)
- 17 Luxury Cruisers? Philip’s Epigrammatists between Greece and Rome (2012)
- 18 Doing Doric (2016)
- 19 The Novels and the Real World (1977)
- 20 The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World (1994)
- 21 Philostratus: Writer of Fiction (1994)
- 22 Names and a Gem: Aspects of Allusion in the Aethiopica of Heliodorus (1995)
- 23 The Ancient Readers of the Greek Novels (1996)
- 24 Phoenician Games in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (1998)
- 25 The Chronology of the Earlier Greek Novels since B. E. Perry: Revisions and Precisions (2002)
- 26 The Function of Mythology in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2003)
- 27 Metaphor in Daphnis and Chloe (2005)
- 28 The Construction of the Classical Past in the Ancient Greek Novels (2006)
- 29 Viewing and Listening on the Novelist’s Page (2006)
- 30 Direct Speech in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2006)
- 31 Pulling the Other? Longus on Tragedy (2007)
- 32 Links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius (2007)
- 33 Literary Milieux (2008)
- 34 The Uses of Bookishness (2009)
- 35 Country Virtues, City Vices in Longus, Daphnis and Chloe? (2009)
- 36 Socrates’ Cock and Daphnis’ Goats: The Rarity of Vows in the Religious Practice of the Greek Novels (2012)
- 37 Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving ‘Reality’ (2013)
- 38 ‘Milesian Tales’ (2013)
- 39 A Land without Priests? Religious Authority in Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (2015)
- 40 Poetic Elements in the Greek Novelists’ Prose (2017)
- 41 Captured Moments: Illustrating Longus’ Prose (2018)
- 42 Λέξεις Λόγγου (2019)
- 43 Animals, Slaves and Masters in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (2019)
- 44 The Demotion of the Literary Cowherd (2019)
- 45 Callimachus and Longus (2019)
- 46 Silence in Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles Tatius and Longus (2020)
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index of Greek Terms
- General Index
Summary
The chapter first reviews hypotheses concerning the nature of ‘Milesian tales’. Harrison 1998 had proposed a modified version of Bürger 1992, suggesting that in this genre an anchor-narrator told of scabrous events in a quasi-ethnographic account of his visits to various places; Jennson 2004 had suggested that the Amores transmitted as Lucian’s pointed to Μιλησιακά in which the key-narrator recounted adventures that were both his own and told to him by others, i.e. just what we find Encolpius doing in the Satyrica; and Regine May had argued in 2010 that the prosimetric ass-papyrus P.Oxy. 4762 preserves part of Aristides’ Μιλησιακά, ‘Milesian Tales’. After noting these hypotheses the chapter briefly explores the impact of Μιλησιακά on the Greek novels. Finally it investigates their earlier history, suggesting that just as Sybaritica, ‘Sybaritic tales’, linked to them by Ovid, are shown by Aristophanes’ Wasps already to be a form of λόγοι, ‘stories’, circulating in the 420s BC, so too Μιλησιακοὶ λόγοι, ‘Milesian stories’, may have already been current in Athens by then, linked to Miletus’ fame as a provider of dildoes (cf. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata) and as Aspasia’s city of origin.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture , pp. 760 - 776Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023