The term “Greek Romances” is applied to long stories in Greek prose, written from the end of the first to the beginning of the fourth century before Christ and later imitated by Byzantine writers. It was one of these last, Nicetas Eugenianus, who prefixed to his own romance a prelude of verses which described their content:

The subjects listed in these lines are typical of nearly all the novels. An author selected new names for his hero and heroine and portrayed the same quest for love and adventure. The young pair always marvellously handsome fall desperately in love and plight their eternal fidelity in a sacred oath. Soon they are separated by misadventure or the cruel will of Fortune and suffer alone every misfortune and temptation, but by superhuman effort and often by the aid of the gods, they at last emerge triumphant and chaste and fall in exultation into each other’s arms.

It was just because of this similarity of pattern that it became the fashion for critics to belittle these melodramas, to emphasize their similarities, and to disregard their individual characteristics and enthralling style. Erwin Rohde’s great critical study, Der griechische Roman, was perhaps the first to treat them with the serious consideration which they deserve. Now Rohde’s theories have to be in large part rejected because of new discoveries in papyri which have necessitated the re-dating of the extant novels and adding to their study fragments of novels hitherto unknown which help establish new types and give a basis for a new critique.

My own discussion is to be concerned with the novels themselves, their individual characteristics, their literary qualities, viewed on the basis of their new dating. For this reason I shall spend little time on the famous theories of the origins of the Greek Romances and on their precursors. For my purpose of intensive, literary study it is enough to present these in outline.

In regard to the origins of the Greek Romances, two special theories must be mentioned since they have had more vogue than any others. These are the theories of Erwin Rohde and of Bruno Lavagnini. Erwin Rohde in Der griechische Roman, which first appeared in 1876, recognized two essential elements in the Greek Romances: stories of love and stories of travel. He studied the precursors of these two types. He finally affirmed that the synthesis of the two, the romance, is a direct product of the rhetorical schools of the Second Sophistry which flourished in Greece during the Empire. Rohde based his work on the extant romances and the summaries of Photius (Patriarch of Constantinople, 858-886) and believing that none of this material antedated the second century of our era, he constructed his theory that “Greek romance was a product of the Zweite Sophistik, and had no direct connection either with the short story as represented by the Milesian Tales or with any Greek or Alexandrian literary form.”[3] W. Schmid in the third edition of Rohde (1914) summarized in an Appendix the new discoveries and theories after Rohde’s death.

I omit a rÉsumÉ of the work of Huet,[4] Dunlop,[5] Chassang[6] and of Chauvin,[7] all significant in their times, to present a theory which is now more striking. In 1921 Bruno Lavagnini in a learned monograph, Le Origini del Romanzo Greco, traced the development of the Greek romance from local legends of Magna Graecia, Greece proper, the Greek Islands and Asia Minor. He found support for his theory in the titles of many of them:

a Philippus of Amphipolis, which Suidas mentioned. In his study he took into account the novelle or short stories which Rohde believed had no influence on the novel, and studied the ????s?a??, the short Love Romances of Parthenius, the fragment of the Aitia of Callimachus, Acontius and Cydippe. He showed that Rohde had entirely neglected the important influence of the novella in the Greek romance and had been mistaken in his insistence on the fundamentally different character of the two. Rohde claimed that the novella was realistic, the romance idealistic and hence declared that any derivation of the romance from the novella was impossible. Lavagnini recognized other influences in the development of the romance, especially those of satire and of the new comedy, but he maintained that an essential feature was the historical. He admitted that in the use of his local legends the events are projected into an ideal and remote past.

The tendency in the new criticism of the Greek Romances, notably in the work of Aristide Calderini,[8] is not to seek for any one main source for their “origins,” but rather to consider all possible precursors in the field of fiction who directly or indirectly influenced them. Their name is legion and they appear in the fields of both poetry and prose. For from the earliest times of Greek literature the art of narration was in use. Epics presented narratives of war in the Iliad, of adventure in the Odyssey, of love in Apollonius Rhodius. Drama produced narrative speeches particularly in tragedy in the role of the messenger. Elegiac poetry developed subjective-erotic stories, based on myths, or history, or real life, and written in lyric mood in narratives or letters. Idyls finally portrayed against a pastoral setting the outdoor loves of shepherds.

In prose, there are full-grown novelettes combining love and adventure embedded in the Greek historians: Herodotus’ story of Candaules’ wife,[9] the story of Rhampsinitus’ treasure,[10] the story of the love of Xerxes,[11] the story of Abradatas of Susa and Panthea in Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus which Whibley calls “the first love-story in European prose.”[12] Short stories or novelle in prose are known from the accounts of the Milesian Tales and from Parthenius’ miniature Love Romances. The ????s?a?? were written in the second century B.C., by Aristides of Miletus and a collection of them was translated into Latin by Cornelius Sisenna who died 57 B.C. Their character was definite: they were erotic stories of a lascivious type. Their philosophy of life was that all men—and women—are sinners, and this belief was embodied in episodes from every-day life. Their amorality was such that the Parthian Surena was horrified when in the Parthian War of 53 B.C., a copy of the Milesian Tales was found in the pack of a Roman officer. Other short local tales, for example those of Sybaris and of Ephesus, shared these characteristics of realism, irony and disillusion.

Parthenius of Nicaea wrote a collection of short Love Romances of a very different type. This Greek elegiac poet of the Augustan Age wrote his Love Romances in Greek prose as a storehouse for his friend, Cornelius Gallus, to draw upon for material for epic or elegiac verse; and for this reason he put them forth in the briefest and simplest form possible. Most of them are unfamiliar stories even when they are about well-known mythological characters. In many the love tales are set against a background of war. Short as they are, both their subject matter and style are significant for the development of Greek prose fiction.

Moreover, the work of the rhetorical schools must be considered among the forerunners of the novel, both in Greek and Latin. Although we know now that the Greek Romances were being written before the time of the New or Second Sophistry which Rohde postulated to be their origin, still in the Greek Romances as well as in the Satyricon and in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, there are many illustrations of the influence of the practice cases of the rhetorical schools. A study of the Controversiae in Seneca the Elder and in the pseudo-Quintilian, a study of The Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus demonstrates that in these school exercises where “oratory became a theatrical fiction”[13] lay many first drafts of a new literary genre, the romance.[14]

It is a pity that Erwin Rohde could not have lived to revise himself his great work on the Greek Romances in the light of the new discoveries about them. No scholar has yet arisen equipped with his tremendous erudition and penetrating criticism to succeed him worthily. Perhaps indeed the time has not yet come to write a new critical history of the Greek romance, for at any time added discoveries may demand still further revision of dates and consideration of types. But at this stage it is essential to review the new discoveries and to try to estimate their significance. This outline is based on three important summaries: the introduction by Aristide Calderini to his translation of Chariton;[15] the “Appendix on the Greek Novel” by Stephen Gaselee in the edition of Daphnis and Chloe and Parthenius in The Loeb Classical Library;[16] and the chapter on “Romance: the Greek Novel” by R. M. Rattenbury in New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, Third Series.[17]

Most spectacular and important of the new discoveries was that of the fragments of the Ninus Romance, first published in 1893. They were found on an Egyptian papyrus, on the back of which are written some accounts of A.D. 101. The writing of the romance is so clear and beautiful that it is dated by experts as belonging to the first century B.C. As Rattenbury says: “The Ninus Romance is therefore the only pre-Christian specimen of its kind; it is indisputably two centuries earlier than the earliest of the completely extant romances (Charito), and probably as much earlier than any of the known fragments.”[18] The remains consist of two separate fragments with parts of five columns on the first and of three on the second. Gaselee writes of the content:[19] “in the first (A) the hero, Ninus, and the heroine (unnamed), deeply in love with one another, approach each the other’s mother and set forth their love, asking for a speedy marriage; in the second (B) the young couple seem to be together at the beginning, but almost immediately Ninus is found leading an army of his Assyrians, with Greek and Carian allies, against the Armenian enemy.”

Fragment A is short enough so that we can read Gaselee’s translation of it:[20]

Ninus and the maiden were both equally anxious for an immediate marriage. Neither of them dared to approach their own mothers—Thambe and Derceia, two sisters, the former Ninus’ mother, the latter the mother of the girl—but preferred each to address themselves to the mother of the other: for each felt more confidence towards their aunts than towards their own parents. So Ninus spoke to Derceia: “Mother,” said he, “with my oath kept true do I come into thy sight and to the embrace of my most sweet cousin. This let the gods know first of all—yes, they do know it, and I will prove it to you now as I speak. I have travelled over so many lands and been lord over so many nations, both those subdued by my own spear and those who, as the result of my father’s might, serve and worship me, that I might have tasted of every enjoyment to satiety—and, had I done so, perhaps my passion for my cousin would have been less violent: but now that I have come back uncorrupted I am worsted by the god of love and by my age; I am, as thou knowest, in my seventeenth year, and already a year ago have I been accounted as having come to man’s estate. Up to now I have been nought but a boy, a child: and if I had had no experience of the power of Aphrodite, I should have been happy in my firm strength. But now that I have been taken prisoner—thy daughter’s prisoner, in no shameful wise, but agreeably to the desires both of thee and her, how long must I bear refusal?

“That men of this age of mine are ripe for marriage, is clear enough: how many have kept themselves unspotted until their fifteenth year? But I am injured by a law, not a written law, but one sanctified by foolish custom, that among our people virgins generally marry at fifteen years. Yet what sane man could deny that nature is the best law for unions such as this? Why, women of fourteen years can conceive, and some, I vow, even bear children at that age. Then is not thy daughter to be wed? ‘Let us wait for two years,’ you will say: let us be patient, mother, but will Fate wait? I am a mortal man and betrothed to a mortal maid: and I am subject not merely to the common fortunes of all men—diseases, I mean, and that Fate which often carries off those who stay quietly at home by their own fire-sides; but sea-voyages are waiting for me, and wars after wars, and I am not the one to shew any lack of daring and to employ cowardice to afford me safety, but I am what you know I am, to avoid vulgar boasting. Let the fact that I am a king, my strong desire, the unstable and incalculable future that awaits me, let all these hasten our union, let the fact that we are each of us only children be provided for and anticipated, so that if Fate wills us anything amiss, we may at least leave you some pledge of our affection. Perhaps you will call me shameless for speaking to you of this: but I should indeed have been shameless if I had privily approached the maiden, trying to snatch a secret enjoyment, and satisfying our common passion by the intermediaries of night or wine, or servants, or tutors: but there is nothing shameful in me speaking to thee, a mother, about thy daughter’s marriage that has been so long the object of thy vows, and asking for what thou hast promised, and beseeching that the prayers both of our house and of the whole kingdom may not lack fulfilment beyond the present time.”

So did he speak to the willing Derceia, and easily compelled her to come to terms on the matter: and when she had for a while dissembled, she promised to act as his advocate. Meanwhile although the maiden’s passion was equally great, yet her speech with Thambe was not equally ready and free; she had ever lived within the women’s apartments, and could not so well speak for herself in a fair shew of words: she asked for an audience—wept, and desired to speak, but ceased as soon as she had begun. As soon as she had shewn that she was desirous of pleading, she would open her lips and look up as if about to speak, but could finally utter nothing: she heaved with broken sobs, her cheeks reddened in shame at what she must say, and then as she tried to improvise a beginning, grew pale again: and her fear was something between alarm and desire and shame as she shrank from the avowal; and then, as her affections got the mastery of her and her purpose failed, she kept swaying with inward disturbance between her varying emotions. But Thambe wiped away her tears with her hands and bade her boldly speak out whatever she wished to say. But when she could not succeed, and the maiden was still held back by her sorrow, “This,” cried Thambe, “I like better than any words thou couldst utter. Blame not my son at all: he has made no over-bold advance, and he has not come back from his successes and his victories like a warrior with any mad and insolent intention against thee: I trust that thou hast not seen any such intention in his eyes. Is the law about the time of marriage too tardy for such a happy pair? Truly my son is in all haste to wed: nor needest thou weep for this that any will try to force thee at all”: and at the same time with a smile she embraced and kissed her. Yet not even then could the maiden venture to speak, so great was her fear (or, her joy), but she rested her beating heart against the other’s bosom, and kissing her more closely still seemed almost ready to speak freely of her desires through her former tears and her present joy. The two sisters therefore met together, and Derceia spoke first. “As to the actual (marriage?),” said she....”

In fragment B the seventeen-year-old warrior is found marshalling his forces, “seventy thousand chosen Assyrian foot and thirty thousand horse, and a hundred and fifty elephants,” and at the end beginning the advance at the head of his cavalry:

And stretching out his hands as if (offering sacrifice?), “This,” he cried, “is the foundation and crisis of my hopes: from this day I shall begin some greater career, or I shall fall from the power I now possess.”[21]