By now it is clear that the Greek authors of the Roman Empire often turned to their classical heritage as a source of inspiration for fictional invention. This literary preference was inculcated by the educational system and reinforced by the demands of cultural elitism. Authors mined classical literature for proofs of authenticity or models of urban, rural, and exotic landscapes. It will be worthwhile to examine more closely historical novels and Homeric revisionism, which showcased the interpenetration of the historical or imaginary past of literature and the experience or imagination of author and reader.
Several novelists spun their stories off footnotes or forgotten chapters in ancient history, as if they were revealing lost or secret histories of great importance. One of the earliest novels, the fragmentary Ninus, derived its story from oriental, not classical, history. It recounted the love between Ninus, the Assyrian king and eponymous founder of Nineveh, and (probably) Semiramis, the Assyrian queen and founder of Babylon, even though these legendary figures supposedly lived in different millennia. A similar chronological discrepancy is found in the fragmentary Metiochus and Parthenope, which is set in Archaic Greece and adapts events recorded by Herodotus (3.124-51, 6.39-41). The four central characters in the preserved passages are Polycrates, tyrant of Samos from 540-522/1 bce, his daughter Parthenope, Metiochus, the son of Miltiades the Athenian general, and the Milesian philosopher Anaximenes. These individuals lived in two separate generations, but the novel depicts them as contemporaries. Other fictional works were launched from obscure moments in the past. The epistolary novel Chion of Heraclea portrays the feelings and relations of a Pontic aristocrat otherwise known only as the assassin of the tyrant Clearchus in 353/2 bce. The author, however, is concerned foremost to recreate the personal experience of Chion, and as a result the historical frame is inconsistent. Although Chion meets the historian Xenophon in Byzantium, which, given Xenophon’s career, could only have been in c.400/399, he returns to Heraclea for the conspiracy against Clearchus after only five years.
One well documented example of this historicizing tendency in prose fiction is the novel by Chariton. Certain characters and events in this work recall events in the classical historians. Hermocrates, the father of Callirhoe, is the Syracusan general who defeated the Athenian expedition of 415-13 bce, while Ariston, the father of Chaereas, was a helmsman in the Syracusan navy (Thuc. 7.39.2). The Persian king Artaxerxes was most likely based on Artaxerxes II, who ruled 405/4-359/8 bce and was also married to a Statira. The siege of Tyre (Char. 7.4.3-9) parallels either the siege in 360 BCE, during an Egyptian revolt, as in the novel, or Alexander’s siege in 332 BCE. Chariton has thus combined several historical events and figures from the late fifth and fourth centuries bce into a synchronic pastiche. The educated and attentive reader would have noted these signals of dramatic date and delighted in finding the learned anachronisms (Bompaire 1977; Hagg 1987; Hunter 1994).
The historical setting of this novel, however, was merely atmospheric. The experiences of the characters - their private lives, religion and morality, social position, commercial and civic activity - still mirrored the world of author and reader. Classical Syracuse is only a mise en scene for the narrative foreground of Greek urban society under the Roman Empire. Callirhoe’s father Hermocrates is historical only inasmuch as he shares his name with the general who fought the Athenians. The circumstances of the Peloponnesian War, or any social, political, or economic effect it had on life in the Sicilian colonies, are irrelevant to the actions and thoughts of the actors. Rather, Chariton’s Syracuse is like any Roman provincial city: there are popular acclamations at the theater (1.1.11, 8.7.1), the pirate Theron is interrogated and crucified outside the walls (3.4.7-18), and the civic assembly grants honorary citizenship and farmland to the veterans from Chaereas’ Egyptian campaign (8.8.13-14). But the novelist, who was from Aphrodisias in southwestern Asia Minor and had probably never been to Roman Syracuse, portrayed the city’s topography imprecisely. His picture of the harbor is unusually specific, if inaccurate (3.3.18, 3.4.2, 8.6), presumably because it was the site of the great battle of 413 bce, one of the most memorable episodes in Thucydides (Thuc. 7.31-41).
In order not to disrupt this historicizing ambience the novelists eschewed direct references to Roman rule. The capital city itself never appears among the many cities both large and small mentioned in the novels. Provincial institutions and administrative officials that were well known to the novelists and their readers were cited only obliquely and in classicizing language. For instance, Xenophon of Ephesus includes two characters who are unequivocally identified by their activities as a municipal policeman from Tarsus (Xen. Eph. 2.13.3; cf. 3.9.5) and the governor of Egypt (3.12.6, 4.2.1, 4.2.9, 4.4.1, 4.4.2, 5.3.1, with Rife 2002). But when the novelist refers to their posts, he does not use the technical terminology abundantly attested in papyri, inscriptions, and Roman literature. He instead chooses oblique periphrases from the classical Attic lexicon, ‘‘the one presiding over the peace in Cilicia’’ (ho tes eirenes tes en Kilikiai proestOs) and ‘‘the ruler of Egypt’’ (ho archOn Aigyptou). The novelist Achilles Tatius referred to the same provincial governorship using a word with stronger connotations, ‘‘satrap,’’ the title of the Persian official (Ach. Tat. 3.134.14 passim). The novelists invented dramas of contemporary life familiar to their readers but fictionalized them by infusing historical reminiscences and classicizing geography and language.
Homeric revisionism also confounded past and present, but its method turned the novelistic creation of a classicized present upside-down. The revisionists relocated the fictional world of Homer in the present through the depiction of concrete details, familiar settings, and personal emotions. These devices validated the basic premises of this type of literature, namely, that the Trojan War was an historical event, that the Homeric heroes were historical persons, and that the truth about what happened to these people in that place and time could be uncovered through historical research. Moreover, if his veracity was accepted, Homer could provide historical data just like the classical historians or even eyewitness reports. This was the assumption of
Philostratus in his description of Apollonius’ Indian travels. The biographer cited Homer (II. 2.308) as a source for the species of dragons like those indigenous to India (VA 3.6), while Apollonius and the Brahmans revered Achilles and Ajax as philosophical luminaries (3.19), and considered an Indian youth the reincarnation of the hero Palamedes (3.22).
Three speeches by Dio illustrate how the historical truth of mythical subjects was a matter for rhetorical contestation (Said 2001: 174-86). In two works (D. Chr. 60-1) Dio rewrote the original version of the death of Hercules by Archilochus and Sophocles and reinvents Chryseis as a sentient being, far from the mute pawn in the power struggle among the Homeric warlords. In a third work (D. Chr. 11) Dio went so far as to refute systematically the Greek capture of Troy. Just like Dictys, he devises a fictional source to authorize his account. He asserts that he heard the story from an old Egyptian priest at Onuphis who preserved an oral tradition stretching back to Menelaus, who, according to Homer, had returned to Greece from Troy by way of Egypt (Od. 3.299-302). This tradition was inscribed in a temple, but, like so many epigraphic texts, several slabs had broken and the account was fragmentary (D. Chr. 11.37-8). Modern critics have debated whether this speech functioned as literary showpiece, political propaganda, or moral polemic. In any case, it demonstrates a profound interest in the literary construction of truth. A ‘‘true’’ account (alethes), as Dio defines it (D. Chr. 11.70, 11.76, 11.88, 11.90, 11.107, 11.139; 60.3, 60.5, 60.9; cf. 61.18, Plut. Thes. 10.4, 26.1, 31.2, 32.2), is one that is ‘‘credible’’ (pithanos), ‘‘plausible’’ (eikos), and ‘‘similar to actual events’’ (homoios gegonosi). His definition recalls the verisimilitude of plasma.
Lucian, in his guise as critic of false intellectualism, has given us the most outrageous revisions of the Homeric poems. He asserts that he wrote his travel tales as a lighthearted critique of authors who passed off myths as truthful histories, such as Odysseus when he recounted his journey in the court of Alcinous (Ver. Hist. 1.3). Lucian’s fantastic voyage includes several episodes involving Homer or the Homeric heroes as historical figures. For instance, Thersites indicts Homer on a charge of slander (2.21), and Odysseus writes a love letter to Calypso professing how much he misses her (2.35). Lucian also wrote a comic dialogue between a poor cobbler and his rooster that lampoons Homeric revisionism founded on bogus autopsy, such as the ephemeris of Dictys ( Gall. 17). The bird claims to be the reincarnation of the Trojan hero Euphorbus and judges that Homer was completely wrong on many things, because at the time of the war Homer himself was actually a Bactrian camel!
One of the most compelling resurrections of the classical past in the contemporary experience of the Greek provinces is Philostratus’ Heroic Discourse. This dialogue between a Phoenician traveler and a native vinedresser takes place in the Thracian Chersonese, but the staging evokes a novelistic scene. Like Dio’s Euboean Speech, Philostratus portrays a confrontation between a wealthy foreigner from the city and a simple peasant in the country that teaches the outsider something unexpected but important. The vinedresser tends the plot around Protesilaus’ tumulus in the territory of Elaious. The ghost of the hero appears to him regularly and instructs him on sundry matters, from gardening and philosophical virtue to the true history of the Trojan War and the inaccuracies of Homer. Furthermore, the vinedresser asserts, the ghosts of several other heroes - Ajax, Hector, Palamedes, Patroclus, Achilles - still haunt the Trojan plain where their tombs and other memorials are to be seen, talking with local residents and exacting retribution on those who disregard their cults (Her. 18.1-23.1, 52.3-54.1). The vinedresser convinces the skeptical Phoenician of the heroic presence by citing the discovery of giant bones, some in tombs, near Troy and throughout the Greek world (6.7-8.18; cf. VA 5.16, Dict. Cret. 6.10). At the end of the catalog of marvelous finds, the Phoenician considers himself fortunate to have heard the vinedresser’s ‘‘truthful account’’ (historia: 8.18).
The monuments and cults of the heroes of the Trojan War were venerated during the Roman Empire. Hadrian restored the decrepit tomb of Ajax when he visited the site probably in 124 ce (Philostr. Her. 8.1), and Caracalla in imitation of Alexander sacrificed to Achilles there in 214 ce (Dio 78.16.7). Even Apollonius of Tyana performed obsequies at the tombs of the Achaeans (Philostr. VA 4.11), and encountered the ghost ofAchilles, who complained that the Thessalians had failed to keep his cult (4.16; cf. 4.23). The existence of these tombs inspired the composition of epigrams fashioned as epitaphs on the actual graves of the heroes or as graveside dedications to them (e. g., AP 7.136, 7.137, 7.140, 7.142, 7.145, 7.146, 7.148). During the early empire, the geographer Strabo recorded numerous ancient landmarks like those described by Philostratus’ vinedresser in the real territory of the Roman colony of Ilium, citing the events of the Trojan War among references to Sulla, Mithridates VI, Antony, and Augustus (Strabo 13.1.24-50). This intense fascination in the archaeology and topography of the Trojan plain shows how the mythical past of fictional literature, namely, the Homeric tradition, was revived in Roman history. Works such as the Heroic Discourse encouraged readers to travel to Troy and communicate with the heroes themselves, or at least imagine themselves in the place of the Phoenician. Tombs, bones, and landmarks all played a crucial part in this experience. As sacred relics for cultic veneration they were the portal between the present and the past; as historical artifacts they verified the truth of the experience (see now, in general, Zeitlin 2001).
One late Greek poem exhibits many of these fictional developments, despite the fact that its literary form is appropriated from the very tradition it is revising. The epic by Quintus of Smyrna mostly catalogues the deaths of numerous heroes at Troy during the period between the Iliad and the Odyssey. This gap in the Homeric narrative was particularly susceptible to revision because no master-text existed. Quintus employed Homeric language and meter and adapted many of the original characters and events, but he also turned to Greek tragedy and Hellenistic writers, like Apollonius of Rhodes and Lycophron. Furthermore, as a professed native of Smyrna in the Roman province of Asia (Q. S. 12.306-13), Quintus reveals his knowledge of the civic realities and political sphere of the empire, despite its incongruity with the temporal setting of his story. In one simile, Quintus compares the sons of Atreus on the battlefield with beasts in a gladiatorial show at the amphitheater (6.531-7). As Aeneas escapes a burning Ilion with his father and son, the seer Calchas prophesies that he will found a city by the Tiber destined for far-flung dominion (13.334-41). Like Philostratus and Strabo, Quintus treats the vicinity of Troy as a concrete landscape that can be retraced through its natural and artificial features. Dominant among the monuments of the war are the tombs of the great warriors, the exact form and location of which he provides, including those of Achilles (3.718-42, 9.47-9), and Ajax, son of Telamon (5.653-6). Just as in the Heroic Discourse, the poet imagines encounters between the living and the dead that might remind readers of participation in a contemporary cult. The heroes visit the tombs to leave dedications and to mourn, as do Achilles and Ajax at the grave of Patroclus (1.376-9). The ghost of Achilles comes to his son Neoptolemus to give him advice and demand the proper observation of funerary rites, in particular the sacrifice of Polyxena (14.179-223). This scene had been written long before by Euripides (Hec. 35-44, 220-4, 534-40; cf. Tr. 39-40), but Philostratus also portrayed Achilles’ spirit dictating sacrifices, and Caracalla saw fit to pay his respects at the most popular cult site in the Troad. There is no evidence that Quintus ever in fact visited the site of Troy; he could have extracted these details from his reading. Regardless of its accuracy, his Trojan geography maps out a monumental space that his readers could imagine themselves traversing.
Another strategy Quintus employs to resituate the past in the present is his strikingly un-Homeric treatment of human experience and private, ordinary events. He depicts the daily preparations for battle at Troy, when men don their equipment with the aid of tearful wives and little children. They are sorry to leave their loved ones but heartened by fatherly pride; sometimes they are spurred to bravery by their elderly fathers who once fought too and have the scars to show for it (Q. S. 9.11024). The arming scene was an epic set piece, and readers of Homer would have immediately remembered the poignant, tragic image of Hector’s last farewell to his wife Andromache and his infant son Astyanax (II. 6.369-502). But in the latter-day epic, soldiers were nameless and voiceless, their actions and feelings not heroic but mundane. Later, the poet described the Trojans’ return homeward after a day on the battlefield. Their wives and children help them remove the gory armor and bathe their wearied limbs. Some seek medical care for their painful wounds, others relax at dinner while their stabled horses loudly chomp on fodder (Q. S. 11.316-29). Quintus examines the physical and emotional effects of war on the human body and psyche. His subject in these vignettes is the experience of everyman, not the deadly competition for status among commanders. He draws the reader into the fictional events of his story through his sensitive use of such personal detail.
All these works insert the imaginary world of the classical past into the historical world of the reader. On the one hand, historicizing novels and fictional letters transport the present into the past by applying historical decoration, such as allusions to historical persons and events. On the other, Homeric revisionism brings the past into the present by generating high realism and sympathetically depicting physical and emotional states. The commingling of past and present is only possible in the medium of fiction, which manipulates the boundaries between what is true and what is not true to produce a vision that is ‘‘like true.’’ This world could be either so like the truth that it elicited religious devotion, such as the tombs and bones of the Homeric heroes, or so unlike the truth that it was comically absurd, such as Lucian’s revisionist rooster.
There remains the fundamental question of why Greek authors of the Roman Empire indulged in fictional creation. It could not have been a game of happy escapism from a gloomy present or a movement of resistance against foreign subjugation. These works were reflections, however distorted or fragmentary, of the world of the authors and their readers. Moreover, Greek-ness was not a nationality, and it should not be implicated in the political relations between rulers and ruled. Indeed, westerners read Greek fiction, and eastern authors associated with powerful Romans and enjoyed their patronage. Greek fiction served instead as a channel for expressing intellectual, social, and moral values, and the preferred mode of expression was antiquarianism, or the reinvention of the classical past in the Roman present. Cultural identity was constructed through the process of literary creation and reception. Writing and reading fiction thus signaled participation in a supralocal elite that was defined by a common educational system and a shared aesthetic taste. A similar creative ethos marked the prose narratives of nascent Christianity, from the evangelical biography of Jesus to the apostolic acts, martyrology, and hagiography. Much like Greek fiction, early Christian literature offered the imaginary or the unreal as the truth, in this case not the classical past but the mortally impossible - miracles, god in man, death transcended. But those works traced a strange new nexus of identities and relations in Greco-Roman society.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I express my sincere gratitude to my teachers and friends Ewen Bowie, Ludwig Koenen, and David Potter for helping me better to understand Greek fiction in its socio-cultural and literary historical contexts. For introducing me to ancient fiction I am indebted to William E. McCulloh, with whom I first read Herodotus, Lucian, and Philostratus in the idyllic countryside of central Ohio. This chapter germinated during the fall of 2001 in a spirited seminar at Cornell. Those students taught me what a joy it can be to teach fictional polyphony.
World History
