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Aspects of the Greek Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

B. P. Reardon
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Extract

When Anthia was imprisoned in the robbers' cave one of her guards, Anchialus, a spirited man and one of the most prominent of the band, fell in love with her. At first he tried to win her with words, hoping that she would be given to him as a present by the leader. But Anthia repelled his every attempt, dismayed by nothing, not the cave, nor her chains, nor the robber's threats. She wanted to keep herself for Habrocomes, even though she thought him dead, and often when no one was there to hear her cried: ‘I want to stay Habrocomes' wife and his alone, even though I die, though I suffer worse than I have suffered yet!’ This cast Anchialus into worse torment, and the daily sight of Anthia inflamed his love. Unable to bear it longer, he laid violent hands on her; one night when the robbers and their leader were away, he threw himself on Anthia and tried to violate her. Anthia, in desperate straits, seized a sword that lay to hand and struck Anchialus a mortal blow, for as he was on the point of embracing and kissing her his whole body loomed over her, and she thrust the sword upward into his breast. He had paid the penalty for his wicked passion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , October 1976 , pp. 118 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

NOTES

1. The passage quoted is 4.5, slightly modified.

2. This paper develops material published elsewhere, e.g. Phoenix 23 (1969), 291–309; versions of it have been read to meetings at Birkbeck College and elsewhere. I am grateful to E. L. Bowie, M. D. Reeve, and Stephanie West for discussing with me, in an Oxford seminar, some of the points made. For the scholarship and bibliography on the topic, it will be convenient to make comprehensive reference here to the article mentioned above and to my Courants littéraires grecs des IIe et IIIe siècles après J.-C. (Paris, 1971), 309–403. Further references here will for the most part be confined to some major studies and some subsequent work.

3. The Ancient Romances: a Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins (Berkeley/ Los Angeles, 1967), 175.

4. One useful question is tackled in Hägg's, T.Narrative Technique in Ancient Greek Romances (Stockholm, 1971).Google Scholar Rohde (see n.6) would not have thought it a worthwhile use of time to examine the structure of these stories, which he considered puerile (or worse). Schissel's, O.Entwicklungsgeschichte des griechischen Romanes im Altertum (Halle, 1913)Google Scholar is however lively and interesting, if erratic.

5. Hägg, T., Classica et Mediaevalia 27 (1966), 118–61.Google Scholar

6. Der griechische Roman und seine Vorlaüfer (Leipzig, 1876; 4th edn. Hildesheim, 1960)—the standard work on the novel.

7. Fünf Vorträge über den griechischen Roman (Berlin, 1896).

8. Kerényi, K., Die griecbiscb-orientaliscbe Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung (Tübingen, 1927; 3rd edn. Darmstadt, 1973)Google Scholar; Merkelbach, R., Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich/Berlin, 1962).Google Scholar

9. Op. cit. 336, n.17(cf. 32).

10. Perry, , op. cit. 115Google Scholar; Rattenbury, R. M., ‘Traces of Lost Greek Novels’, in Powell, J. U. (ed.), New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature (Oxford, 1933), 256–7.Google Scholar

11. Very recently there have been some particularly interesting publications, especially Henrichs, A., Die Phoinikika des Lollianos (Bonn, 1972)Google Scholar (cf. ZPE 4, 1969, 205–15, and subsequently), and Parsons, Peter, BICS 18 (1971), 53–68.Google Scholar

12. Cf. my remarks in ‘The Second Sophistic and the Novel’, in Bowersock, G. W. (ed.), Approaches to the Second Sophistic (University Park, Pennsylvania, APA, 1974), 23–9.Google Scholar

13. Op cit. 90.

14. Actes du Ve Congrès international de papyrologie (Brussels, 1938), 192–209.

15. Reeve, M. D., CQ 21 (1971), 514–39.Google Scholar

16. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965).