Complete Works of Achilles Tatius

by Achilles Tatius

  [1] αὐτὸν τρόπον: τῇ δὲ ὑστεραίᾳ παραγενόμενος ὁ Κλεινίας ἔφη Θέρσανδρον διὰ τῆς νυκτὸς ἀποδεδρακέναι: τὴν γαρ ἔφεσιν οὐχ ὡς ἀγωνιούμενον πεποιῆσθαι, βουλόμενον δὲ μετὰ προφάσεως ἐπισχεθῆναι τὸν ἔλεγχον ὧν ἐτόλμησε. [2] Μείναντες οὖν τῶν ἑξῆς τριῶν ἡμερῶν, ὅσων ἦν ἡ προθεσμία, προσελθόντες τῷ προέδρῳ καὶ τοὺς νόμους ἀναγνόντες, καθ̓ οὓς οὐδεὶς ἔτι τῷ Θερσάνδρῳ λόγος πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἦν, νεὼς ἐπιβάντες καὶ οὐρίῳ χρησάμενοι πνεύματι κατήραμεν εἰς τὸ Βυζάντιον, κἀκεῖ τοὺς πολυεύκτους ἐπιτελέσαντες γάμους ἀπεδημήσαμεν εἰς τὴν Τύρον. [3] Δύο δὲ ὕστερον ἡμερῶν τοῦ Καλλισθένους ἐλθόντες εὕρομεν τὸν πατέρα μέλλοντα θύειν τοὺς γάμους τῆς ἀδελφῆς εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν. Παρῆμεν οὖν ὡς καὶ συνθύσοντες αὐτῷ καὶ εὐξόμενοι τοῖς θεοῖς τούς τε ἐμοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐκείνου γάμους σὺν ἀγαθαῖς φυλαχθῆναι τύχαις. Καὶ διεγνώκαμεν ἐν τῇ Τύρῳ παραχειμάσαντες διελθεῖν εἰς τὸ Βυζάντιον.

  19. On the following day Clinias came and told us that Thersander had fled in the night; he had appealed without any intention of appearing, and only wished, under this pretence, to put off the trial at which his plot would have come to light. We therefore stayed three days more, the legal time for renewing proceedings, and then appeared before the Chief Justice, where we had the laws read in accordance with which Thersander could no longer have any cause of action against us. We then took ship and, obtaining a favouring wind, arrived at Byzantium, where we celebrated the marriage for which we had so long prayed, and thence set out for Tyre. We reached it two days after the arrival of Callisthenes, and we there found my father just about to offer the proper sacrifices for my sister’s wedding, which was to take place on the following day. At this we were present to join in the sacrifices and to pray the gods that both my marriage and his might be guarded and secured by the best of fortune; and our intention was to pass the winter at Tyre and afterwards to proceed to Byzantium. (Our author seems to have forgotten that the story began by being Clitophon’s narration to himself. The narration took place at Sidon, and there should have been a few words to round up the book to explain how it came about that Clitophon found himself at Sidon, and for the author to thank him for his interesting narration.)

  The Biography

  Roman ruins at Alexandria — Achilles Tatius’ birthplace

  INTRODUCTION TO ACHILLES TATIUS by Stephen Gaselee

  I

  WE know very little of the author of the Clitophon and Leucippe. Suidas (The lexicographer who wrote in the tenth century, but made much (and usually accurate) use of earlier materials.) speaks of him thus: “Achilles Statius (Sic. We find the correct form of the name in the MSS. of our author and in other places where he is casually mentioned by late grammarians and scholiasts.) of Alexandria: the writer of the story of Leucippe and Clitophon, as well as other episodes of love, (This may either be interpreted that he wrote other novels with a love-interest, or as referring to the various loves, happy and unhappy, which are represented in the present work, subordinate to the main passion of the hero and heroine.) in eight books. He finally became a Christian and a bishop. He also wrote a treatise on the sphere, and works on etymology, and a mixed narration telling of many great and marvellous men. His novel is in all respects like that of the other writers of love-romances.” It is possible that our author became a Christian later in his life (though there is certainly no sign of any such tendency in 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 palaeographical considerations forbid us to attach a much 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 composition of the novel. There is no particular reason to doubt the statement of Suidas and of some of 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 writer’s patriotism. The scholiast Thomas Magister calls him an orator, and he may well have been an advocate: 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 how much of our knowledge of Achilles Tatius is little more than conjecture on somewhat narrow grounds: one can only say that he seems to come towards the end of the school of the Greek novelists (See a short general article on the Greek novelists printed as an appendix to the Loeb Series edition of Longus and Parthenius.) 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 (Patriarch of Constantinople, 858-886: a man of real erudition, but not quite equal judgment.) 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 Heliodorus.” We have a formal comparison of the two authors from the pen of Michael Psellus; it is too long to give here, but may be found on pp cvi-cxiv of Jacobs’ edition, and is an interesting example of eleventh century criticism, for, besides ethical comparisons, the styles of narration are set against one another with plentiful illustration and considerable acumen.

  Almost the only other reference to our author in ancient literature is an epigram in the Palatine Anthology (ix. 203), which is ascribed in the lemma as “by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople: but others say that it is by Leon the philosopher.”

  There are difficulties in both ascriptions: the style of prosody is too late and accentual for Leon (and his other epigrams are hardly of the same style), and the sentiment of the little poem is rather more favourable to the moral standard of the novel than we should expect if we judge from the other mentions by Photius. This attribution is, however, the more probable of the two — and the real point of the epigram is that the reader is not to allow himself to be distracted by any of the incidents of the novel, but to profit by the lesson of the main plot, which is undoubtedly, considered as a whole, a panegyric of chastity.

  II

  It must frankly be admitted that a critical edition of Achilles Tatius, founded on a complete collation of the manuscripts, has yet to be made. The manuscripts, with one notable if fragmentary exception presently to be mentioned, are all late and do not vary very much among themselves in date or excellence: they are described at length on pp lxviii-xciii of the Prolegomena to Jacobs’ edition. It will here be sufficient to state that most are of the fifteenth or even of the early sixteenth century, (Two MSS. — one at the Vatican and the other at Florence — seem to be as early as the thirteenth century. The former is perhaps the best single authority for the text.) and though no “stemma codicum” has yet been produced showing their relationship, they are clearly all derived from a common ancestor not very distant from their own time; in none of them are there any traces of an independent tradition: one of the MSS. in the Vati
can seems rather better than the rest, but there is indeed little to choose, and no edition of Achilles Tatius that has yet appeared is definitely founded on any one manuscript. The text in the present volume is frankly eclectic: I have taken what I believed to be the best readings from whatever source I could find them, fully recognizing that the present must be considered an interim edition until some competent scholar devotes the necessary time and skill to a complete examination of the existing authorities. There is, however, a single authority for one short passage which we must examine further.

  The papyrus (GH) of the text was discovered at Oxyrhynchus and published in vol x. of Grenfell and Hunt’s Oxyrhynchus Papyri, p. 135, No. 1250. It measures 24.4 by 22.5 centimetres and contains three consecutive and nearly complete columns of the text, of which two are reproduced in a facsimile by Grenfell and Hunt. The papyrus is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

  The fragment is some thousand years older than any extant MS. of our author, and naturally presents a better text; those of its readings which are clearly the true original have been incorporated into the text of this edition, and attention has been called in a footnote to other places where it is probably correct. It is, however, satisfactory to find that our MSS., late as they are, have not habitually lost the truth, and that several places which have been doubted and freely altered by modern editors are corroborated in their traditional form by the new fragment.

  There is, however, one important divergence in the papyrus: it is a matter of order, chapters ii and iii. §§ 1-2 of Book II. being placed between chapters viii and ix. I will here quote the words of Grenfell and Hunt, who express clearly and concisely the exact state of affairs: “Some slight changes in the transitional phrases are made, so that the passage as it stands runs quite smoothly. But the last section of chapter iii would not join on to the end of chapter i., and there must have been a larger modification at this point. The abruptness of that section had already been observed by Jacobs, who suggested that something had fallen out. These remarkable divergences of the papyrus from the current version seem capable of two explanations. Either there were two redactions of the romance, a view which was suggested long ago by Salmasius but was vigorously contested by Jacobs, or possibly a leaf in the archetype from which the mediaeval MSS. were devised was copied in the wrong position and the dislocation has been concealed by subsequent patching. The omission in some MSS. of the words καί, άρτι.... καιρός ην, in others of καί, πάλιν.... καιρός ην at the beginning of chapter ii might be taken to point in that direction.” The second explanation, or something like it, seems the more probable; but after considerable hesitation no change from the traditional order has been made in the present edition. It would have been necessary to make some kind of bridge between the end of chapter i and the latter part of chapter iii., which would have presented considerable difficulties, and the story, which now reads continuously, would run less smoothly if such a course were adopted. It was therefore thought sufficient to chronicle the fact of the variant order in the papyrus, and to allow readers to try for themselves the difference that this changed order would have made.

  But the most important service rendered by GH to the study of our author is in its date. It had been the fashion of the last few years to bring Achilles Tatius down to a rather late date — to make all the novelists later than had previously been supposed, and to put Achilles Tatius as the last of them, except the Byzantines, after a considerable interval; it was thus a common-place among the best German critics to speak of him as writing in the fifth (Rohde, Der griechische Roman, p. 472.) or sixth (Schmid in Pauly-Wissowa, s v. “Achilles Tatius.” But Schmid had somewhat reconsidered his views in favour of a rather earlier date in his edition of W. v. Christ’s Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (5th ed. ), II. ii p. 854 (1913).) century. But palaeographical reasons forbid us to consider GH as having been written later than the first half of the fourth century, and we must therefore not suppose that the Clitophon and Leucippe was composed after 300 A.D. Achilles Tatius must thus, as Grenfell and Hunt remark, be placed only a generation after Heliodorus, and if he comes at the end of the earlier school of Greek novelists he is only just the last of them.

  III

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The first appearance in print of any part of Achilles Tatius was a Latin translation of the last four books by Annibale della Croce (Cruceius) of Milan (Lyons, 1544); in a second edition (Basle, 1554) he translated the whole.

  The Greek text first appeared at Heidelberg in 1601, with Longus and Parthenius in the same volume. The edition of Salmasius (Leyden, 1640) was both critically and exegetically of great importance, as was that of F. Jacobs (Leipzig, 1821); this is indeed still the fullest and in many ways the most valuable edition, especially for the very elaborate notes. Since that time the most important texts are those of G. A. Hirschig (Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1856, still in print) and R. Hercher (Leipzig, Teubner, 1858). (Both these are in collected editions of the Greek novelists (Scriptores Erotici Graeci).) The last-named is long out of print, and it is said that another edition is in preparation for the Teubner series. —

  There are translations into Italian by L. Dolce (Venice, 1546) and Angelo Côccio (Venice, 1550); into French by F. de Belleforest (Paris, 1568), Jacques de Rochemaure (Lyons, 1573), Jean Baudouin (Paris, 1635), and L. A. Du Perron de Castera (Amsterdam, 1733); into German (anonymous) in 1670, by D. C. Seybold (Lemgo, 1772), and by F. Ast and G. Guldenapfel (Leipzig, 1802); and into English by W. B[urton] (London, 1597), (Only one copy of this book exists, now in the possession of the present writer. For details see the Literary Supplement of the Times, February 10, 1905, and Appendix C to Wolff’s. Greek Romances in Elizabethan Fiction, New York. 1912.) Anthony Hodges (Oxford, 1638), Anonymous (London, 1720), and by Rowland Smith (Bohn’s Library, London, 1848). —

  Reference should also be made to a ‘general bibliography in the article mentioned in note 1, p ix.

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