Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon [Revised] 0674990501, 9780674990500

Achilles Tatius was a Greek from Alexandria in Egypt; he is now believed to have flourished in the second century CE. Of

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Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon [Revised]
 0674990501, 9780674990500

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HANDBOUND AT THE

TTMTVFPS1TV OF

ft) fit THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY E.

CAPPS, Ph.D. LL.D.

T. E.

PAGE,

Litt.D.

W. H. D. ROUSE, Litt.D.

ACHILLES TATIUS

ACHILLES TATIUS WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY

GASELEE,

S.

M.A.

FELLOW AND LIBRARIAN OF JIAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS :

:

MCMXVII

£ \

1

CONTENTS PAGE

INTRODUCTION

vii

2

BOOK

I

BOOK

II

BOOK

III

134

BOOK IV

190

book v

236

BOOK VI

304

book

vii

348

book

viii

390

INDEX

56

457

INTRODUCTION his work), but the

statement that he ended

in the

episcopate should be looked upon with caution it is probably a reflection of the similar story told of :

Heliodorus, the older novelist.

His date

is

not easy

to place with accuracy it seems certain that in his style or language he imitates certain writers of the :

third century a.d., and on the other

hand palaeoconsiderations forbid us to attach a much graphical later date

than the early fourth century to the Oxyrhynchus papyrus fragment mentioned below, so that we shall not be far wrong if we give the end of the third century as the approximate date of the

position of the novel.

There

com-

no particular reason to doubt the statement of Suidas and of some of is

the MSS. of the novel that the author was a native of Alexandria, and the somewhat exaggerated description of the beauties of the city at the beginning of Book V. would seem to be evidence of the

The

writer's patriotism. calls

him an orator

been an advocate

:

scholiast

(pr'/roip),

Thomas Magister

and he may well have

his general style

is

redolent of

the rhetorician, and the lawsuit towards the end of

the romance betrays a practised hand in the speeches on both sides. It will by now be apparent to the reader Tatius viii

how much is

little

of our knowledge of Achilles more than conjecture on somewhat

INTRODUCTION narrow grounds one can only say that he seems come towards the end of the school of the Greek :

to

novelists

x

which flourished from the

first

to

the

third century a.d., and he certainly became one of the most popular, for he was widely read throughout later Greek and Byzantine days.

Beyond the passage of Suidas mentioned above, the references to our author in antiquity are very few. Photius 2 in his great Bibliotheca has more than one reference to him, praising his literary art

and powers as a raconteur, but censuring some of the episodes and digressions as inconsistent with the standard of purity that a Patriarch could desire " in this respect alone is Achilles Tatius inferior to :

We

have a formal comparison of the two authors from the pen of Michael Psellus it Heliodorus."

;

too long to

is

give

here,

but

pp. cvi-cxiv of Jacobs' edition,

may be found on

and

is

an interesting

example of eleventh century criticism, for, besides etiiical comparisons, the styles of narration are set against one another with plentiful illustration and

considerable acumen. 1

See a short general article on the Greek novelists printed to the Loeb Series edition of Longus and Parthenius. 2 a man of real Patriarch of Constantinople, 858-886 erudition, bat not quite equal judgment.

as an appendix

:

ix

INTRODUCTION Almost the only other reference to our author in is an epigram in the Palatine An-

ancient literature thologi/ (ix.

"

203),

which

ascribed in the lemma as

is

by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople

say that

:

but others

by Leon the philosopher."

it is

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