A change in the form of narrative presentation divides Heliodorus’ Aethiopica in two halves, the first embracing Books 1–5, the second Books 6–10.Footnote 1 The shift has been described in different terms: Keyes notes that, whereas the first part uses an in medias res opening, the second follows by and large chronological order.Footnote 2 Morgan ascribes to the first half a ‘hermeneutic impulse’ that gives way to an ‘end-directed’ drive in the second half.Footnote 3 Using Sternberg's concept of narrative time,Footnote 4 one could say that by and large the first five books are dominated by curiosity, the second five books by suspense: after trying to fathom the prehistory, the reader then directs her attention to the further development of the plot.Footnote 5 The shift, however, concerns not only the orchestration of time, but also the stance of the narrator: while Hefti juxtaposes the net of embedded narratives in the first five books with the predominance of the primary narrator in the last five books,Footnote 6 Futre Pinheiro considers the shift in terms of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’.Footnote 7 The difference between the two halves of the Aethiopica thus hinges on the central narratological categories of time and voice.
This paper investigates the transition from the first to the second part of the Aethiopica. Not only beginning and ending,Footnote 8 but also the middle of the Aethiopica deserves special attention. Marked by several devices, it has a particularly dense narrative texture: the end of Book 5 features strong closural elements (section I). Instead of the main plot, however, it is the minor story, the so-called Athenian novella, that comes to an end at the beginning of Book 6. The farewell of Cnemon reinforces the juxtaposition of major with minor story-lines and is metanarratively charged (section II). The main plot is also thrown into relief by the vignette of the anonymous lover of Isias whose mise en abyme is more intricate than has been seen so far. The triangulation of love concepts encapsulates the juxtaposition of different literary genres (section III). Heliodorus is not the only ancient author who directs attention towards the middle of his narrative. A concluding comparison with other texts will throw the special character of the Aethiopica's middle into relief (section IV).
I. FALSE CLOSURE
The Aethiopica sets up a dazzling play with the course of its own action. Generic conventions and prolepses let the reader expect the plot to end with a happy union of Charicleia and Theagenes. The action, however, continuously veers off into directions that go against the anticipated telos.Footnote 9 When, for instance, Charicleia stands on the pyre, her impending death is irreconcilable with the expected union with Theagenes. On the other hand, the Aethiopica teems with false closures: the series of adventures comes to an end, but only seemingly as yet another hindrance is about to surface. One of the strongest closural moments that turn out to be false marks the middle of the Aethiopica. Calasiris finishes his long narration that fills the reader in on the prehistory of the plot. We are finally able to understand fully how Theagenes and Charicleia fell in love and came to Egypt. Moreover, after numerous trials their happy union seems to be only one step away: Nausicles has restituted Charicleia to Calasiris and finding Theagenes may take no more than a single day. In the words of Nausicles to Calasiris (5.33.4): ‘Father, you can be of good cheer from now on. You already have your daughter back, and it is only the night that prevents you from seeing your son. At daybreak we shall go to Mitranes and try every means at our disposal to secure the release of your excellent Theagenes.’ (ὦ πάτερ … σὺ δὲ εἰς τὸ ἑξῆς γοῦν εὔθυμος εἶναι τὴν μὲν θυγατέρα ἤδη τήνδε κεκομισμένος τὸν παῖδα δὲ ἰδεῖν ὑπὸ τῆς νυκτὸς μόνης εἰργόμενος· εἰς ἕω γὰρ ἀφιξόμεθα πρὸς τὸν Μιτράνην καὶ πάντα τρόπον λύσασθαί σοι τὸν ἄριστον Θεαγένην πειρασόμεθα.).Footnote 10 Through the gradual revelation of information Heliodorus seems to have crafted a plot that makes the revelation of the prehistory and the culmination of the action converge. The reader seemingly gains full comprehension of the backstory at the very moment when the action itself comes to an end. The past, so to speak, becomes clear when the future has become the present.
The closural drive is reinforced by the device of ring composition: as Fusillo stresses, ‘the most typical feature of novelistic closure is circularity’.Footnote 11 Calasiris ends his narration with the very tableau that opens the Aethiopica (5.33.1): ‘When day dawned, I saw him [i.e. Theagenes] lying at her feet like a dead man and her, sitting over him, weeping, obviously wanting to take her own life but dissuaded from doing so by a faint hope that the young man just might come through alive.’ (ἀλλ’ εἶδον ἡμέρας γενομένης τὸν μὲν ἴσα καὶ νεκρῷ προκείμενον τὴν δὲ προσκαθημένην καὶ θρηνοῦσαν καὶ βούλεσθαι μὲν ἐπισφάττειν ἑαυτὴν ἐνδεικνυμένην ὑπὸ δὲ ὀλίγης ἐλπίδος τοῦ τάχα ἂν καὶ περιγενέσθαι τὸν νεανίσκον ἐπεχομένην.). The reader encounters the scene of the first pages for a second time. As at the beginning, the scene is internally focalized; this time, however, it is not the bandits but Calasiris, a beholder unmentioned at the beginning, through whose lens we revisit the spectacle on the beach.Footnote 12 While being shorter than the elaborate ekphrasis at the beginning, Calasiris’ report unmistakably covers the same scene. Particularly striking is the comment on Charicleia's willingness to commit suicide (5.33.1): ‘…obviously wanting to take her own life but dissuaded from doing so by a faint hope that the young man just might come through alive.’ This harks back to Charicleia's words to Theagenes in 1.2.4: ‘“It depends on you whether I live or not. Do you see this?” She indicates a sword that lay on her knees. “Till now it has been idle, stayed so long as you draw breath.”’ (‘ἐν σοί … τὰ ἐμά … σῴζεσθαί τε καὶ μή· τοῦτο γοῦν ὁρᾷς;’ δείξασα ἐπὶ τῶν γονάτων ξίφος, ‘εἰς δεῦρο ἤργησεν ὑπὸ τῆς σῆς ἀναπνοῆς ἐπεχόμενον.’). What is reported in direct speech at the beginning has become, in accordance with the vantage-point of the distant bystander, a conjecture. The repetition of specific details, this time from a different perspective, conveys the feeling that the action is coming to a close.
The ring composition is not confined to Calasiris’ description of Charicleia and Theagenes on the battlefield. Already his account of the events leading up to the slaughter echoes the opening scene of the Aethiopica. Calasiris encourages Peloros to go to the ship and take a look at Charicleia (5.31.1): ‘You will see Artemis herself sitting there!’ (αὐτὴν τὴν Ἄρτεμιν ὄψει προκαθημένην.). This comparison evokes the guess of the bandits that they are facing a goddess, namely Artemis or the local Isis (1.2.6). Peloros sees Charicleia ‘with a crown of laurel on her head, refulgent in her gown of golden weave’ (δάφνης τε φέρουσαν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς στέφανον καὶ χρυσοϋφεῖ στολῇ καταυγάζουσαν, 5.31.2). In 1.2 we read that ‘on her head she wore a crown of laurel’ (δάφνῃ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἔστεπτο, 1.2.2) and that ‘the gown of golden weave was refulgent in the sun’ (χρυσοϋφοῦς δὲ τῆς ἐσθῆτος πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀνταυγαζούσης, 1.2.5). The description of the view which incites Peloros to start the quarrel with Trachinus thus verbally harks back to the opening tableau and thereby gestures towards the havoc generated by his intervention. The analepsis at the level of sjuzet works as a prolepsis at the level of the fabula: it refers to something that still lies in the future in Calasiris’ narrative but is already known to the reader.
In the same vein, the krater which Trachinus threatens to fling at Peloros (5.31.4; cf. 5.32.2) will remind the reader of the kraters that the bandits see dispersed on the beach (1.1.4): ‘There were kraters upturned, and some slipping from the hands that held them; some had been drinking from them, others using them like stones, for the suddenness of the catastrophe had caused objects to be put to strange, new uses and taught men to use drinking vessels as missiles.’ (κρατῆρες ἀνατετραμμένοι καὶ χειρῶν ἔνιοι τῶν ἐσχηκότων ἀπορρέοντες τῶν μὲν πινόντων τῶν δὲ ἀντὶ λίθων κεχρημένων· τὸ γὰρ αἰφνίδιον τοῦ κακοῦ τὰς χρείας ἐκαινοτόμει καὶ βέλεσι κεχρῆσθαι τοῖς ἐκπώμασιν ἐδίδασκεν.). The asyndetic list of missiles in 5.32.3, ‘sticks, stones, kraters, blazing torches and tables’ (ξύλοις λίθοις κρατῆρσι δαλοῖς τραπέζαις) partly repeats the instruments adduced in 1.1.5: ‘There they lay, here a man felled by an axe, there another struck down by a stone picked up then and there from the shingly beach; here a man battered to death by a club, there another burned to death with a brand from the fire.’ (ἔκειντο δὲ ὁ μὲν πελέκει τετρωμένος, ὁ δὲ κάχληκι βεβλημένος αὐτόθεν ἀπὸ τῆς ῥαχίας πεπορισμένῳ, ἕτερος ξύλῳ κατεαγώς, ὁ δὲ δαλῷ κατάφλεκτος.).
Besides these clear-cut echoes, we also find twisted correspondences. In 5.32.4, the pirates are the victim of Charicleia's bow, but ‘they did not know what this mischief was and suspected that the hits came from a daimon’ (τῶν δὲ ἀγνοούντων τὸ κακὸν καὶ δαιμονίους εἶναι τὰς πληγὰς ἐνίων ὑπονοούντων). The agnoia of the pirates echoes with the ignorance of what has happened that aligns internal with external audience in 1.2. That we now know not only more than the pirates but also more than when we read the opening scene also emerges from another parallel. In 1.1.6, the narrator states that ‘the daimon had contrived an infinitely varied spectacle in that small space’ (μυρίον εἶδος ὁ δαίμων ἐπὶ μικροῦ τοῦ χωρίου διεσκεύαστο). Admittedly, δαιμονίους in 5.32.4 is no pointed echo of this, and the notion of the daimon is so pervasive in the Aethiopica that we should not make too much of such a parallel. If we none the less follow up on it, the references to the daimon highlight the superior knowledge we have gained through Calasiris’ account. Unlike the pirates, we now know that the slaughter, initially also ascribed to the daimon by the narrator, derives in part from Charicleia and her bow. We not only return to the initial scene, but, literally seeing it through new eyes, gain a deeper understanding. Viewed through the lens of Calasiris, the riddle that the opening scene poses to internal and external audiences alike is solved. The enhanced understanding of the scene lends weight to the closural force of the ring composition.
Let me suggest yet more tentatively that the ring composition also extends to the frame of Calasiris’ embedded narrative (5.33.4):Footnote 13 ‘His story concluded, he began to weep, and the entire company wept with him. The symposium had turned to lament, mixed with a kind of pleasure (for wine disposes men to tears).’ (ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐδάκρυε μὲν αὐτὸς ἐδάκρυον δὲ οἱ παρόντες καὶ εἰς θρῆνον ἡδονῇ τινι σύγκρατον μετεβέβλητο τὸ συμπόσιον, ἐπίφορον γάρ τι πρὸς δάκρυον οἶνος.). While the combination of pleasure and tears is not uncommon in ancient literature,Footnote 14 the transformation of the symposium is noteworthy. It has, I think, special significance, as it resonates with the scene opening the Aethiopica and concluding Calasiris’ narrative (1.1.6): ‘The daimon had contrived an infinitely varied spectacle in that small space, defiling wine with blood and setting war over the symposium, combining dying and wining, pouring of drink and spilling of blood …’ (καὶ μυρίον εἶδος ὁ δαίμων ἐπὶ μικροῦ τοῦ χωρίου διεσκεύαστο, οἶνον αἵματι μιάνας, καὶ συμποσίοις πόλεμον ἐπιστήσας, φόνους καὶ πότους, σπονδὰς καὶ σφαγὰς ἐπισυνάψας …). Like the story narrated, the frame of the narration features a transformed symposium. The metamorphosis, however, works along different lines. While the pirates’ symposium is supposed to become a wedding (cf. 5.29.5) and then turns into carnage, the symposium of Calasiris, Cnemon and Nausicles turns to lament. Both the parallel and the difference are significant: the frame takes up the tension featured in the embedded narrative and at the beginning of the Aethiopica, and deflates it. Blood is replaced with tears when, instead of making way for slaughter, the symposium is mixed with mourning that brings pleasure. While Calasiris’ narrative solves the riddle of the opening scene, the symposium in which the narration takes place repeats and attenuates its tension. Both devices dovetail in reinforcing the closural force of the end of Book 5.
Numerous examples from Greek literature illustrate the capacity of ring composition to close narrative. The novel provides striking examples: just think of Chariton whose narrative commences and ends in Syracuse, or Xenophon who returns to his starting point in Ephesus.Footnote 15 Applying the device of ring composition not on the level of the fabula but of the sjuzet, the Aethiopica uses it to provide a false closure that gives emphasis to its middle. The closural force of ring composition is heightened by a shift of perspective: at the beginning of Book 1 still enigmatic, the scene at the mouth of the Nile can be fully comprehended by the reader when it is repeated. Together with the expectation that the reunion of Charicleia and Theagenes is at hand, the sense of finally understanding the puzzle of the opening scene conveys the impression that everything is falling into place. And yet, we are still in the middle of the plot: Charicleia will recapture Theagenes, but a new ordeal will surface in the form of Arsace and it will not be the last one the couple encounters …
II. CLOSING THE CNEMON STORY
While the closure turns out to be false and the plot continues, the Aethiopica's secondary story-line actually comes to an end at the beginning of Book 6. The middle of the novel is marked by the conclusion of the Athenian novella centring on Cnemon. I shall first argue that a summary embedded in the action helps to close this story. Moreover, the centre of the Aethiopica is more important to the juxtaposition of minor and major story-lines than has been seen so far. It also has a strong metanarrative dimension: in addition to the play with tragic and especially comic elements that throw into relief the novel as a distinct genre, Cnemon's meditation on whether or not to join the quest for Theagenes features an implicit reflection on reading the Aethiopica that is particularly appropriate in the middle of such a long novel.
Cnemon's synopsis
The Athenian novella starts in Book 1, when Theagenes and Charicleia encounter Cnemon in the camp of the Boukoloi. While the reader is eagerly waiting to find out who Theagenes and Charicleia are, she first learns the story of Cnemon. In 1.9.14–1.17.6, Cnemon reports how he resisted the advances of his stepmother Demainete. With the help of the slave-girl Thisbe, she sets up a malicious intrigue that results in Cnemon's exile. Switching allegiances, Thisbe then tricks Demainete, who is sued for adultery and kills herself. Cnemon's narrative is interrupted by the attack against the village of the bucaneers and resumed in 2.8.4–2.10.1: Demainete's relatives sue Cnemon's father Aristippus who, while not being convicted of murder, loses his property. Thisbe elopes with her new lover Nausicles. The thread of Cnemon's story is then entwined with the main plot when the corpse found in the cave turns out to be not Charicleia but Thisbe, who, after figuring only in the embedded narrative, most unexpectedly surfaces in the action. The substitution of Thisbe for Charicleia is later inverted when Nausicles receives Charicleia instead of Thisbe from the Persian Mitranes, and Cnemon mistakes her for Thisbe (5.2–5.3).
After serving as the addressee of Calasiris’ long embedded narrative that fills the reader in on the backstory, Cnemon leaves the stage of the Aethiopica at the beginning of Book 6. He first travels together with Calasiris and Nausicles to Mitranes from whom they hope to receive Theagenes. On their way, however, they learn from an acquaintance of Nausicles that Theagenes is not in the hands of the Persians anymore, but with Thyamis and the Bessans. Cnemon decides not to join the longer expedition to the Bessans. Instead, he accepts Nausicles’ offer to bring him back to Athens and also marries his daughter. Chapter 11 in Book 6 is the last time that Cnemon's name is mentioned in the Aethiopica. While Calasiris is taken from the Aethiopica's tableau through death (7.11), Cnemon simply disappears—despite his prominent role in the first part of the novel, the reader is not informed about his further fate.
Besides the motifs of return and marriage, a summary of Cnemon's adventures helps to close the secondary story.Footnote 16 On the way to Mitranes, Cnemon complies with Calasiris’ request and reports his adventures. Not only had he promised to present his tale in exchange for Calasiris’ (2.23.3–4), but the two narrations are also juxtaposed through verbal echoes of 5.16, where Nausicles asks Calasiris to tell his story. Like Calasiris, Cnemon is chided for delaying his narration (5.16.2; 6.2.2: ὑπερθέμενος). ‘Now would be a good moment for you to tell it’ (ἐν καιρῷ λέγοις ἂν τὸ παρόν, 6.2.2) harks back to ‘But you cannot keep it back for a better moment than the present—there will never be one!’ (οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως ἂν ἐς καιρὸν βελτίονα τοῦ παρόντος φυλάξειας, 5.16.2). ‘Calasiris assented, partly to please Cnemon’ (ἐπείθετο ὁ Καλάσιρις ἅμα μὲν τῷ Κνήμωνι χαριζόμενος, 5.16.5) is reminiscent of Calasiris’ request to ‘please Nausicles’ (Ναυσικλεῖ τε ἅμα τῷδε χαριζόμενος, 6.2.2) and the responding ‘Cnemon assented’ (ἐπείθετο ὁ Κνήμων, 6.2.3). Both Calasiris and Cnemon are said to abbreviate part of their narration (5.16.5: ἐπιτεμνόμενος—6.2.3: ἐπιτέμνων).
The pointed echoes throw into relief differences: Calasiris aims not only at ‘pleasing’ Cnemon, but also tries to ‘place Nausicles under an obligation for the future’ (ἅμα δὲ τὸν Ναυσικλέα τῶν μετὰ ταῦτα ἕνεκεν ὑποποιούμενος, 5.16.5). That Calasiris is more shrewd than Cnemon also comes to the fore in that he ‘deliberately omitted some details that he deemed it best Nausicles should not know’ (καί τινα καὶ ἑκὼν ὑπερβαίνων ὅσα τὸν Ναυσικλέα γινώσκειν οὐ συμφέρειν ἐδοκίμαζε, 5.16.5). Both manipulation and the additional motive drive home the difference in character. The comparison also highlights the special narrative function of Cnemon's tale. Very economically the narrator only states that Calasiris recounts the adventures that he has already told Cnemon and then goes on to reproduce Calasiris’ narration of untold events in direct speech. While the narrator here elegantly avoids repeating elements already familiar to the readers, he densely, but fully, summarizes Cnemon's speech. Only one sentence is devoted to previously untold material; the rest covers the events we already know from Books 1 and 2. The difference from how the narrator handles known parts of the story in Calasiris’ speech underscores the function of Cnemon's speech as a summary of the secondary plot. Letting the reader in a single glance envisage the adventures of Cnemon before he drops from the scene, the synopsis helps to close the Athenian novella.
A similar summary, this time of the main plot, can be found, I propose, at the very end of the Aethiopica. In the highly twisted and over-determined closure of Heliodorus’ novel, Charicles, the Delphic stepfather of Charicleia, shows up in Meroe. He introduces himself by briefly narrating the story of Charicleia's theft and how he came to Ethiopia (10.36). While his reticence on the subject of her origin, as is highlighted by the narrator (10.36.1), is rather reminiscent of Calasiris’ cunning, the beginning of his speech draws on the very formula with which Cnemon opens his story in Book 1 (10.36.2): ‘I had a daughter’ (ἦν μοι θυγάτηρ)—(1.9.1) ‘I had a father’ (ἦν μοι πατήρ). The function, however, aligns Charicles’ speech with Cnemon's narrative in 6.2. Both serve as summaries, one of the main plot, the other of the side-story. There are of course differences: while granting direct speech to Charicles, the narrator condenses Cnemon's account drastically. Cnemon is the main character of his story whereas Charicles figures only in the Delphic scene of the Aethiopica and therefore reports from a marginal vantage-point. These differences notwithstanding, Charicles’ speech provides a synopsis of the main plot at the end of the Aethiopica just as Cnemon's report sums up the minor story right before it comes to an end. In both cases, a summary, firmly embedded in the action, contributes to closure.
Major and minor plot lines juxtaposed
Much has been written on the function of the Athenian novella as a foil to the romance of Theagenes and Charicleia. While Winkler emphasizes that the Athenian novella is narrated like a conventional novel with a chronological, easily intelligible plot and thereby throws into relief the more complex narrative of the Aethiopica,Footnote 17 Morgan homes in on the contrast at the level of content: the pure, chaste and reciprocal love between Theagenes and Charicleia is highlighted by the variously flawed relationships in Cnemon's story.Footnote 18 It is striking that neither Morgan nor Winkler pays much attention to the middle of the Aethiopica. Here however the juxtaposition of the two strands of the plot is foregrounded:Footnote 19 Charicleia does not attend the wedding festivities of Cnemon and withdraws to her room. There she contrasts the fate of the two couples in stark terms (6.8.4): ‘Cnemon is getting married, but Theagenes is wandering the world, a prisoner what is worse, perhaps even in chains. Even that would be a supreme happiness, so long as he were alive. Now Nausicleia is a bride, and I am parted from her who until this night shared my bed; Charicleia is alone and forsaken.’ (Κνήμων γαμεῖ, Θεαγένης δὲ ἀλητεύει καὶ ταῦτα αἰχμάλωτος ἢ τάχα καὶ δέσμιος· καὶ ταῦτα ἂν εἴη τὰ εὐτυχέστερα, σῴζοιτο μόνον. Ναυσίκλεια νυμφεύεται κἀμοῦ διέζευκται ἡ μέχρι τῆς παρελθούσης ὁμόκοιτος, Χαρίκλεια δὲ μόνη καὶ ἔρημος.). Charicleia's dirge drives home the discrepancy between the easy wedding of Cnemon and the ordeals to which she and Theagenes are subjected.Footnote 20 The ending of the minor storyline in the middle of the Aethiopica thus makes explicit the contrast with the major storyline that has been more or less implicit before.
The gap that separates Cnemon from Theagenes and Charicleia comes to the fore in a comment by Calasiris. When Cnemon chides Charicleia for her pessimism about the situation of Theagenes, Calasiris remarks (6.5.4): ‘It is obvious from your words that you have never been in love, Cnemon. Otherwise you would have known that for lovers even perfectly innocent things are full of fear.’ (‘οὔπω ποτὲ ἠράσθης … ἐξ ὧν λέγεις, ὦ Κνήμων· ἦ γὰρ ἂν ἔγνως ὡς καὶ τὰ ἀδεᾶ φοβερὰ τοῖς ἐρῶσι …’). This comment has an ironic ring to it; for only a few chapters later Cnemon will marry. The narrator even points out that he is in love (6.7.8): ‘Many things had already led Charicleia to suspect that Cnemon was enamoured of Nausicles’ daughter, for a lover is quick to discern another who has fallen prey to the same passions as himself …’ (ἡ δὲ Χαρίκλεια τόν τε Κνήμωνα ἐκ πολλῶν ἤδη συμβάλλουσα τοῦ Ναυσικλέους ἐπὶ τὸ θυγάτριον ἐπτοημένον, ὀξὺς γὰρ ὁ ἐρῶν φωράσαι τὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ἴσων παθῶν κεκρατημένον …). While contradicting Calasiris’ assertion that Cnemon has never been in love,Footnote 21 the narratorial statement none the less pinpoints the discrepancy between Cnemon and Charicleia: whereas Cnemon lacks empathy, she is sensitive to his feelings. Love, it appears, is not the same as love.
Metanarrative
The explicit juxtaposition of minor and major storylines accentuates the middle of the Aethiopica. It is even charged metanarratively. As Paulsen demonstrates, Cnemon is at pains to style himself a tragic hero, but is much more reminiscent of a character of New Comedy.Footnote 22 In particular, Cnemon's meditation on the vicissitudes of life starting with ‘o most unstable movement of human fate, permanently shifting’ (ὦ πάσης … τροπῆς ἀνάμεστον καὶ ἀσταθμητότατον τύχης ἀνθρωπίνης κίνημα, 6.7.3) has a tragic colouring and evokes more specifically laments of other characters, particularly that by Theagenes in 2.4.Footnote 23 While, however, Theagenes’ mourning is triggered by what he takes to be the corpse of his mistress, Cnemon affects the tragic pose before opting for the easy way out, deciding to return to Athens with the aid of Nausicles. The wedding with Nausicleia, finally, gives his story a type of closure that is familiar from comedy.Footnote 24 Already in the first two books there is a tension between tragic and comic elements in the figure of Cnemon. His relationship with Demainete is explicitly modelled on the Hippolytus myth, but several comic features undercut the tragic tone. At the beginning of Book 6 the tension is exacerbated and the ultimately comic framing of Cnemon's story dismantles his attempt to cast himself as tragic hero.
The evocation of a comic framework not only serves to characterize Cnemon, but also throws into relief the genre of the Aethiopica. New Comedy, which often deals with erotic relationships, exerted a major influence on the novel,Footnote 25 and yet the discrepancy between Cnemon's wedding and the main plot highlights that the frame of comedy is at odds with the more complex construction of the Aethiopica's main plot. Cnemon's wedding evokes the conclusions typical of New Comedy, where a divine intervention or sudden turn brings the action to a quick end.Footnote 26 These swift conclusions of New Comedy contrast with the artfully retarded and multiply charged closure with which the Aethiopica will end.Footnote 27 The pointed deployment of Cnemon's story as a contrasting foil to the main plot implies a generic self-fashioning of the novel against comedy. While being indebted to New Comedy, Heliodorus sets his own genre off against it.
Let me propose that the farewell of Cnemon is loaded with further metanarrative significance. In addition to evoking an alternative genre for love stories, Cnemon, when he ponders on whether or not to join Calasiris and Charicleia in their quest for Theagenes, raises a question that also pertains to the reader of the Aethiopica (6.7.5):
Which way should I turn? What ought I to do? Am I to abandon Charicleia before she has found Theagenes? What a cruel and sinful thing to do, o earth! Should I follow her then and join the quest? If the success of the quest were certain, it would be nice to toil in the expectation of success. But on the other hand if the future is uncertain and holds yet more misfortune, then it is also uncertain where my wanderings will lead to.
ποῖ γὰρ τράπωμαι; τί δέ με καὶ χρὴ πράττειν; καταλίπω Χαρίκλειαν οὔπω Θεαγένην ἀνευρηκυῖαν; ἀλλὰ δεινόν, ὦ γῆ, καὶ ἀθέμιτον· ἀλλ’ ἓπεσθαί με χρὴ καὶ συναναζητεῖν; εἰ μὲν ἐπὶ προδήλῳ τῇ εὑρέσει, καλὸν τὸ μοχθεῖν ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι τοῦ κατορθώσειν· εἰ δὲ ἄδηλον τὸ μέλλον καὶ πλέον τὸ δυσχερές, ἄδηλον ποῖ ποτε καὶ στήσεταί μοι τὰ τῆς ἄλης.
Cnemon's musing is fully embedded in the plot as it prepares his departure from the Aethiopica's tableau; at the same time, it invites a metanarrative reading. Strikingly, the question voiced by Cnemon describes the very situation which the reader faces. Here, as at any other juncture, she has to decide whether or not to accompany Charicleia and to continue reading the Aethiopica. This question gains poignancy from its position in the text: while closure seems to be within reach, the reader is still in the very middle of the novel … Moreover, the presentation of Cnemon's own story can be seen in light of his meditation on Charicleia's fate.Footnote 28 After Cnemon's farewell, it remains ‘uncertain where his wanderings will lead to’. We learn nothing about his return to Athens and further life. Ironically, Cnemon's decision not to follow Charicleia's quest, that is the Aethiopica's main plotline, throws into relief Heliodorus’ treatment of Cnemon's story.
Two suggestive parallels may buttress the interpretation of Cnemon's question as representing the position of the reader. The prefix sun- in συναλητεύειν and συναναζητεῖν that expresses Cnemon's companionship with the hero couple is also used for the involvement of recipients. Demetrius in De Elocutione, for example, argues that suspense forces the reader to share the anxiety at the level of the action: συναγωνίαν (216). In the Aethiopica we find a similar use of sun- for an internal audience: when Charicleia is watching the footrace in Delphi, ‘her feet began to skip and dance, as if, in my estimation, her soul were flying together with Theagenes and sharing his passion for the race’ (οἱ πόδες ἔσκαιρον ὥσπερ, οἶμαι, τῆς ψυχῆς τῷ Θεαγένει συνεξαιρομένης καὶ τὸν δρόμον συμπροθυμουμένης, 4.3.3). Needless to say, sun- is a common prefix and we do not have a pointed echo; that being said, its use to anticipate the response of internal and external audiences underscores the parallel between Cnemon's participation in the quest and the reader's involvement in the Aethiopica.
Charicleia thanks Cnemon for his services and emphasizes that ‘you are under no obligation whatsoever to concern yourself about us or to undergo against your will the trial of a destiny that is not your own’ (οὐ πάντως ἐπούσης ἀνάγκης τὰ ἡμέτερα ἐκφροντίζειν οὐδὲ ἀλλοτρίαις τύχαις καὶ ἄκοντα συναποκινδυνεύειν, 6.7.8). The phrase ἀλλότριαι τύχαι is reminiscent of the famous statement in Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen that those who listen to the logos are affected by ‘fearful fright and tearful pity and mournful longing, and at the successes and failures of others’ affairs and persons the mind suffers, through the words, a suffering of its own’ (φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή, 11.9 DK). Plato may well refer to this passage when he has Socrates criticize that ‘the best element in our nature … relaxes its guard over this mournful part, as it contemplates sufferings of others’ (τὸ δὲ φύσει βέλτιστον ἡμῶν … ἀνίησιν τὴν φυλακὴν τοῦ θρηνώδους τούτου, ἅτε ἀλλότρια πάθη θεωροῦν, Resp. 606a-b). Despite the prominence of the Encomium of Helen, I would not press the case and argue that Heliodorus alludes to Gorgias. None the less, the parallel drives home that Cnemon's situation is cast in terms that were used to describe audience response in antiquity.
Cnemon's question not only raises an issue that concerns the reader, it also specifically opposes, as I suggest, the perspective of the characters in the Aethiopica to that of their readers. While the uncertainty of the future prompts Cnemon to ‘abandon Charicleia’, the audience is ‘certain’ of the ‘success’ (and will continue reading). Generic conventions as well as foreshadowing privilege readers over characters and let them expect that after a long series of trials Charicleia and Theagenes will be happily united. Scholia testify that ancient readers rated certainty of a happy ending very highly. Ancient commentators on the Iliad and the Odyssey, for example, single out prolepses that evoke the positive outcome when something seems to go badly.Footnote 29 Cnemon's comment, while making perfect sense at the level of the action, simultaneously reflects the desire of ancient readers for happy endings.
In the preceding section I argued that a false closure gives the middle a pronounced position in the narrative texture of the Aethiopica. We have now seen that, while the plot continues, the closural force built up at the end of Book 5 is redirected at the minor story: at the beginning of Book 6, Heliodorus waves goodbye to Cnemon. Before being closed, the Athenian novella is compared with the main story, making their juxtaposition explicit. The evocation of comedy as an alternative frame for love-stories and Cnemon's meditation on what to do imbue his farewell with metanarrative significance. Combined with the false closure, the high degree of self-referentiality lends weight to the middle.
III. THE ANONYMOUS LOVER
Cnemon and Nausicleia are not the only foil at the Aethiopica's centre that throws into relief the love of the hero couple. On their way to Mitranes, Calasiris, Cnemon and Nausicles bump into an acquaintance of Nausicles, who is hurrying to bring a flamingo to his capricious mistress Isias.Footnote 30 Morgan notes that the function of this additional character is not confined to providing information about Theagenes, who has passed from the hands of Oroondates into those of Thyamis. The anonymous man is also ‘the representative of an alternative and perverted style of loving’.Footnote 31 I will expand on this observation and argue that the deployment of this second contrasting foil is even more intricate. It features a particularly shrewd play with names and establishes a triangle of styles of love. There may even be a metanarrative dimension involved that corresponds to the evocation of comedy through Cnemon's marriage.
Love triangulated
The anonymous man is in a rush because Isias ‘is now looking around with many eyes to see [him]’ (πολλοῖς περισκοπεῖ τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς, 6.4.1). When Calasiris, Cnemon and Nausicles return, Charicleia is impatiently waiting for them in front of the house ‘looking around into all directions to see them from afar’ (πόρρωθεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ἐκ πάντων κλιμάτων περισκοποῦσαν, 6.5.1). The pointed repetition of περισκοπεῖν, intensified by πολλοῖς τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς and ἐκ πάντων κλιμάτων respectively, aligns Charicleia with Isias while simultaneously alerting us to the difference. Whereas the anonymous man hurries to Isias to avoid punishment, Charicleia is peering in vain around for Theagenes. I propose that two further points underscore this juxtaposition of the couples, the word phoenix and the name of Isias. The explanation of the anonymous stranger that he is bringing the flamingo to his mistress elicits from Nausicles the comment: ‘What a considerate mistress you have got yourself involved with. How modest her demands are if it is only a flamingo that she has demanded of you and not the phoenix itself that comes to us from Ethiopia or India.’ (‘ὡς εὐγνώμονι … ἐρωμένῃ συμπέπλεξαι καὶ ὡς μικρὰ λίαν αὐτῆς τὰ ἐπιτάγματα, εἴ γε φοινικόπτερον ἀλλ’ οὐκ αὐτόν σοι τὸν φοίνικα τὸν ἐξ Αἰθιόπων ἢ Ἰνδῶν ὡς ἡμᾶς ἀφικνούμενον ὄρνιν ἐπέταξεν.’ 6.3.3). Nausicles’ remark is of course highly ironical. Isias is anything but ‘considerate’; as described by her lover, she is whimsical and cruel. Moreover, there is an obvious pun in the comparison of phoinikopteros with phoenix.
Scrutinizing the use of the word phoenix in the Aethiopica, Ewen Bowie shows how brilliantly Heliodorus juggles with its different meanings, especially crimson, palm and Phoenician. Bowie notes that the passage just quoted adds to this list yet another meaning, that of the bird.Footnote 32 With the reference to Ethiopia and India as places where the phoenix may come from, Heliodorus nods to other authors such as Herodotus, Achilles Tatius and Philostratus, who discuss the phoenix and its origins. More tentatively, Bowie proposes that the phoenix relates to Calasiris: there is a tradition that compares the sage with the phoenix and ‘for the moment the only sage on parade is Kalasiris’.Footnote 33
Let me advance another interpretation that builds on an intratextual echo: in 5.5.2, Charicleia and Theagenes choose passwords that may facilitate their recognition should they lose track of each other, lampas for Charicleia and phoenix for Theagenes. Given that Charicleia holds a torch in her hand when she crowns him as victor of the Delphic footrace with the shoot of a palm-tree, it is natural to assume that Theagenes’ password signifies palm-tree.Footnote 34 That being said, as Bowie shows, Heliodorus indulges in playing with the polysemy of the word ‘phoenix’. Mentioned in the context of an erotic relation, the bird may also evoke the password chosen by Theagenes. This association is bolstered by the fact that, just like the phoenix, Theagenes figures as the object of a quest. The mission of the anonymous unnamed stranger to bring his mistress a flamingo is thus implicitly compared with Charicleia's quest for Theagenes. Heliodorus deploys the homonymy of phoenix, signifying both the bird and Theagenes’ symbol, the palm-tree, to reinforce the juxtaposition of the two couples and their modes of love. Besides throwing into relief the enormous challenge that Charicleia is facing, the alignment also calls attention to the special nature of the Aethiopica. The exquisite bird underneath which the symbol for Theagenes lurks like a palimpsest drives home the extraordinariness of the novel's subject.
The second point that invites the reader to compare the anonymous man and his erotic passion with the hero couple is the name of his mistress, Isias. Bowie and Jones have demonstrated the significance of names in the Aethiopica: ‘… some names appear to have been given for their direct appropriateness to their bearers, and others with ironic intent, for their utter incongruousness … certain names help to characterize others, rather than merely their own bearers.’Footnote 35 What then is the story behind the name of Isias? While there seems to be no relevant literary precedent, the formation of the name is, I think, significant:Footnote 36 Isias is a theophoric name derived from Isis. This is relevant because Charicleia is associated and aligned with Isis. While Charicles is supposed to meet the Ethiopian ambassador at the Isis-temple of Katadoupoi in order to learn about Charicleia's identity (2.32.5), Thyamis dreams that at the Isis-temple in Memphis the goddess herself hands Charicleia over to him (1.18.4). More incisively, Charicleia is taken to be Isis by some of the buccaneers at the very beginning of the Aethiopica (1.2.6). The arguably most salient passage can be found in a narratorial report on the Egyptians’ attitude towards the Nile (9.9.2–9.10.1).Footnote 37 The narrator distinguishes three levels of understanding the seasons of the Nile (9.9.4–9.9.5): the common people worship the Nile as ‘the greatest of deities’, embodying the wet that, combined with the dry, is the principle of everything. A deeper meaning is revealed only to initiates: the Nile is Osiris, the land Isis. Finally, a yet smaller group is initiated ‘into clear knowledge in the privacy of the holy shrine’ (ἀνακτόρων ἐντός … φανότερον τελούντων, 9.9.5).
The second level of comprehension is pertinent to my interpretation, as it casts the process of the Nile's flood as a divine romanceFootnote 38 that parallels the story of Theagenes and Charicleia: ‘the goddess longs (pothei) for her husband when he is away and rejoices at his union (συνόντι) with her, mourns his renewed absence and despises Typhon like a mortal enemy.’ (ποθεῖ γοῦν ἀπόντα ἡ θεὸς καὶ χαίρει συνόντι καὶ μὴ φαινόμενον αὖθις θρηνεῖ καὶ ὡς δή τινα πολέμιον τὸν Τυφῶνα ἐχθραίνει, 9.9.5). The verb used for the union of the gods (συνεῖναι) is part of the formula with which Sisimithres marries Charicleia to Theagenes at the end (10.41.1). Charicleia's desire to be with Theagenes and her grief over his absence is couched in the same vocabulary as, for example, in 6.9.4 when she defends her resignation: ‘Your censure is well founded, father, but perhaps I may be forgiven; for it is neither common desire nor desire à la mode that prompts me to this behaviour in my distress, but rather a pure and sound longing for one of whom I have no experience but whom I none the less consider my husband, for a man of Theagenes’ quality. I feel anguish that he is not with me (σύνεστι), and, what is even more, fear whether or not he is still alive.’ (‘ἀληθῆ μὲν … ἐπιτιμᾷς, ἀλλ’ ἴσως ἐμοὶ συγγνωστά, ὦ πάτερ· οὐ γάρ με δημώδης οὐδὲ νεωτερίζουσά τις ἐπιθυμία πρὸς ταῦτα ἐξάγει τὴν ἀθλίαν ἀλλὰ καθαρός τε καὶ σωφρονῶν ἀπειράτου μὲν ἀλλ’ ἔμοιγε ἀνδρὸς πόθος καὶ τούτου Θεαγένους, λυποῦντος μὲν καὶ ὅτι μὴ σύνεστι πλέον δὲ εἰ περίεστιν ἢ μή, φοβοῦντος.’). The analogy between the plot of the Aethiopica and the ‘romance of the Nile’ is underscored by Winkler's observation that corner-events of Charicleia's tale coincide with the movements of the river, that ‘Charicleia's journey north and return south [is] reproducing, in harmony or counterpoint, the river's growing up (αὔξησις) and returning home’.Footnote 39
The final level of interpretation which the narrator only mentions without disclosing it may actually refer to the secret knowledge of mysteries,Footnote 40 but it can also be interpreted along very different lines as a metaliterary pun (9.9.5): ‘there is, I imagine, a school of natural philosophers and theologians who do not denude (παραγυμνούντων) to the uninitiated the meanings embedded in these stories but simply give them preliminary instruction in the form of a myth. But those who have reached the higher grades of the mysteries they initiate into clear knowledge in the privacy of the holy shrine, in the light cast by the blazing torch (λαμπάδι) of the truth.’ (… φυσικῶν τινῶν, οἶμαι, ἀνδρῶν καὶ θεολόγων πρὸς μὲν τοὺς βεβήλους τὰς ἐγκατεσπαρμένας τούτοις ὑπονοίας μὴ παραγυμνούντων, ἀλλ’ ἐν εἴδει μύθου προκατηχούντων, τοὺς δὲ ἐποπτικωτέρους καὶ ἀνακτόρων ἐντὸς τῇ πυρφόρῳ τῶν ὄντων λαμπάδι φανότερον τελούντων.). In the context of a passage that is so highly charged with self-referentiality as the narratorial digression on the Nile, it may not be too fancy to connect the ‘blazing torch (λαμπάδι) of the truth’ with the symbol that Charicleia chooses for herself in 5.5.2.Footnote 41 Note also that at the end of the Aethiopica Sisimithres calls it ‘the torch of the drama’ (λαμπάδιον τοῦ δράματος) that the captive, i.e. Theagenes, has been revealed to be the bridegroom of Charicleia (10.39.2). Moreover, in the novel's last paragraph the couple goes to Memphis ‘to the accompaniment of lit torches’ (ὑπὸ λαμπάσιν ἡμμέναις).
Seen from this perspective, the final unveiled level of understanding would be the self-referential reading as the vocabulary used for the second level insinuates. Such a reading is corroborated by Whitmarsh's observation that, as indicated by the erotic connotation of ‘denude’, the unrevealed third interpretation mirrors the final sexual union of Charicleia with Theagenes, which the text denies us.Footnote 42 This link is further strengthened by Morgan's observation that ‘the most mystic aspects of the marriage’ (τῶν ἐπὶ τῷ γάμῳ μυστικωτέρων) between Theagenes and Charicleia (9.41.3) allude to the ‘more mystic aspects’ (τὰ μυστικώτερα) that the narrator decides to pass over in 9.10.1.Footnote 43
The crucial point for my interpretation is that the narratorial digression on the Egyptians and the Nile suggests an analogy between the romance of Theagenes and Charicleia and the love of Osiris and Isis. Via an allegorical interpretation of the Nile Charicleia is equated with Isis. The digression on the Nile thus drives home the alignment of the heroine with the Egyptian goddess which is already intimated in the first books of the novel. Seen against this backdrop, the name Isias, derived from and nearly homophonic with that of the goddess, underscores that the love which binds the anonymous traveller to her figures as a foil to the main plot of the Aethiopica. While being cosmically charged through the alignment with Isis, the union between Theagenes and Charicleia is thrown into relief by the contrasting foil of Isias and her lover.
Needless to say, the Aethiopica features numerous amorous entanglements that in one way or the other shed light on the romance of the hero couple. Just think of Demainete's obsession with her stepson, Nausicles’ fling with Thisbe and Arsace's infatuation with Theagenes. And yet, the wealth of foils notwithstanding, the triangulation at the centre of the Aethiopica is striking: three couples, three different forms of love shine light on each other. The cruel teasing of Isias that results in an asymmetrical relationship and unfulfilled longing contrasts with the easy union in which Cnemon finds himself just as the material calculations at work in his wedding stand in opposition to the attitude of the anonymous man who unflinchingly subjects himself to the whims of Isias. While sharing the deferral of desire with the anonymous man and the mutual agreement with Cnemon and Nausicleia, the romance of Theagenes and Charicleia is distinct: a reciprocal and pure love that stands the test of the most adverse circumstances inflicted on the couple by tyche.
Let me suggest that this triangulation is even marked by a comment of Charicleia that I have already quoted (6.9.4). Defending her resignation against Calasiris’ reproaches, Charicleia sets her love off against ‘common desire’ (δημώδης ἐπιθυμία) and ‘desire à la mode’ (νεωτερίζουσά τις ἐπιθυμία). ‘Common desire’ nicely describes the wedding of Cnemon just as ‘desire à la mode’ is an apt label for the seruitium amoris of the anonymous man. While purity sets off Charicleia's love against a union that is built on convenience and calculation, soundness is the element missing in the subjection to Isias’ vagaries. Charicleia's attempt to justify her despondence thus delineates the triangulation that lets the reader appreciate the ideal nature of her love.
Latin love elegy?
In the preceding section, I pointed out that Cnemon not only represents an alternative style of love, but also conjures up comedy as a generic foil to the Aethiopica. I will now discuss whether or not the entrance of the anonymous man serves a similar function. Commentators note that his relationship with Isias strikes a tone which we know from Latin love elegy, but, probably subscribing to the widely held view that Greek authors did not engage with Latin literature, do not consider the possibility that Latin love elegy may be evoked as a foil to the novel.Footnote 44 Recent research, however, has given us a fuller picture of the role of Latin and the reception of Latin literature in the Greek world.Footnote 45 Egyptian papyri with passages from the Aeneid and Latin-Greek glossaria indicate that Latin poetry was read in the Hellenophonic East.Footnote 46 There is also evidence for Greek translations of Virgil.Footnote 47 Not only writers concerned with Roman history such as Appian and Cassius Dio, but also Lucian and other authors draw on texts written in Latin.Footnote 48 Of particular relevance here is the argument that other Greek novelists engaged with Latin literature. Recently, Tilg resuscitated the case made by Cataudella in 1927 that Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe verbally alludes to the Aeneid, especially to the Dido tragedy in Book 4.Footnote 49 Collecting possible echoes of Virgil in Daphnis and Chloe, Hubbard concludes that, ‘while none of these parallels may be conclusive by itself, their cumulative totality does add up to a substantial case in favor of Longus’ familiarity with Virgil.’Footnote 50 It has also been suggested that the Herpyllis novel of which we have only fragments is modelled on the Ceyx and Alcyone episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses.Footnote 51
How strong is the case that can be made for the Aethiopica? The slave-like degradation of a lover is a topos that seems to have been coined by the Augustan elegists. The scanty transmission makes it notoriously difficult to make assertions about Hellenistic poetry, but in what we have of earlier Greek and also Latin literature there are only occasional comparisons of a lover with a slave.Footnote 52 It is thus not unlikely that, if this literary trope is employed, it involves Latin elegy. Its focus on love makes Latin elegy an obvious choice as the point of comparison for the erotic novel. And yet, the idea that, in fashioning the anonymous man's infatuation with Isias as seruitium amoris, Heliodorus engages with Latin elegy poses particular problems. Nearly all Greek authors that seem to have read Latin literature either spent time in Rome or served some function in the provincial administration. On the author of the Aethiopica we have no reliable information; even the name of Heliodorus is open to doubts. Given that the knowledge of Latin seems to have increased significantly during the fourth century, the controversy about the date of composition does not make the case any easier.Footnote 53 We ought to note though that our ignorance of Heliodorus’ biography does not represent firm proof against references to Latin literature in the Aethiopica; it only makes it hard to prove them.
Another point that bedevils the issue at stake concerns the Latin works to which the passage under discussion seems to gesture. Virgil is by far the most prominent author in Imperial Greek literature.Footnote 54 While quoting evidence that also suggests familiarity with Horace and Ovid's Metamorphoses,Footnote 55 Rochette in his investigation of Latin in the Greek world has nothing on the likes of Gallus, Tibullus and Propertius. That being said, an anecdote from Aulus Gellius indicates that educated Greeks were familiar with a wide range of Latin poets (NA 19.9): at a banquet, a group of learned Greeks tease an orator named Antonius Julianus by denigrating Latin literature. While belittling Laevius, Hortensius, Cinna and Memmius, the Greeks admit the high quality, if small quantity, of Catullus’ and Calvus’ works. Given that the conversation is placed in the vicinity of Rome, one should not press the evidence too hard,Footnote 56 but it is noteworthy that Aulus Gellius unflinchingly introduces Greeks whose knowledge extends to the kind of poets to which the figure of the anonymous lover in the Aethiopica seems to be indebted.
Two points in the Aethiopica, while proving nothing, may incline us not to reject the idea of Heliodorus referring to Latin poetry out of hand. As Winkler observes, Heliodorus is highly sensitive to issues of communication in a polyglot world:Footnote 57 he has some characters speak more than one language and distinguishes various degrees of mastering a foreign language. Some scenes capitalize narratively on a character's lack of comprehension. Needless to say, this is far from suggesting, let alone proving, that Heliodorus read Ovid & Co., but familiarity with non-Greek literature would tie in nicely with this kind of sensitivity to foreign languages. It can be added that Emesa—if the author of the Aethiopica actually did come from this town as he claims at its end—was a place that especially under the Severans had close ties with the capital of the Roman Empire:Footnote 58 Julia Donna, the wife of Septimius Severus, and her sister Julia Maesa, grandmother of Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, were from Emesa.
The second point is more specific. I suggested that, while the δημώδης ἐπιθυμία implicitly refers to Cnemon, the νεωτερίζουσα ἐπιθυμία aptly labels the seruitium amoris of the anonymous lover. It is not possible to simply link the νεωτερίζουσα ἐπιθυμία to the Neoterics who paved the way for the genre of love elegy. As Cameron shows, in ancient criticism νεώτερος and neotericus do not signify a specific school of poets but a ‘detail of usage which is either stated or implied to be unclassical or incorrect’.Footnote 59 The often deprecatory label is applied to Hesiod and Aeschylus as well as to Lycophron and Aratus. In Latin, not even Virgil and Cicero are immune from the charge of writing neoterice. That being said, the wide use of the term in ancient criticism gives it a strong metaliterary connotation. While thus not directly referring to such poets as Catullus, the word evokes the language of criticism and may thereby point the reader to the poetic genre of which characters like the anonymous man are emblematic.
All in all, it must remain a tentative suggestion that the scene featuring the anonymous lover of Isias refers to Latin love elegy. It can be neither proven nor ruled out that Heliodorus knew Latin and was familiar with Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. If we leave aside the thorny issue of authorial intention and follow up on the elegiac flavour that the scene undoubtedly has for everybody familiar with Latin elegy, a particularly rich reading emerges: then the middle of the Aethiopica features a triangulation not only of styles of love but also of literary genres. The juxtaposition of the romance of Theagenes and Charicleia with alternative modes of erotic engagement is paralleled by the juxtaposition of the Aethiopica with the genres in which these modes are at home. Embedded elements from New Comedy and love elegy help set the Aethiopica off against these genres.
IV. CONCLUSION
While not receiving the same attention as the beginning and ending of texts, the middle and its significance have not gone unnoticed in classical scholarship.Footnote 60 Latin poetry in particular has proven fruitful ground: Conte and Thomas elaborate on centrality as ‘an important hermeneutic device’ in all of Virgil's works.Footnote 61 The contributions to an edited volume tackle middles in the works of nearly all major Latin poets: Lucretius, Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Persius, Martial, Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus. It seems harder to find strong cases in Greek literature.Footnote 62 A possible reason is the fragmentary state in which nearly all of Greek lyric has been transmitted. That being said, there are instances of a marked middle in Greek poetry, the invocation of Erato at the beginning of Book 3 of Apollonius’ Argonautica being an obvious case. In this paper, I argue that Heliodorus provides us with an intriguing example from prose. The most arresting features of the middle section in the Aethiopica are a false sense of closure and a high degree of self-referentiality. If in conclusion I view these two points very selectively against the backdrop of other ancient texts, I do not argue for their direct influence on Heliodorus, but use them as a foil that help highlight his specific take on the middle.
There is however one text that may well have served as a model for the highlighting of the middle in the Aethiopica, and that is the Odyssey. The end of Book 12 in the Odyssey coincides with the end of the apologoi. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, narrated at the beginning of Book 13, creates a strong caesura. We now move from such exotic figures as Polyphemus and Scylla to the everyday world of a Greek island. Both Homer and Heliodorus use the middle to shift from an extended embedded narrative to the voice of the narrator, replacing retrospect with linear sequence. Given the prominence of the Odyssey as an intertext in the Aethiopica, it is hard not to see the break marking the centre of the Odyssey as influencing Heliodorus’ treatment of the middle of his narrative.
Unlike Homer, Heliodorus has the embedded narrative conclude with the tableau that opens the Aethiopica. The closural force of this ring composition seems to be borne out by the course of the action: Charicleia has already been restored to Calasiris, and the recapture of Theagenes, it seems, is the matter of a single day. False closure in the middle has also been found in poetry, for example in the odes of Horace: in the Archytas ode, for example, the reference to death in the fifth stanza as taking all is strongly closural (1.28.19–20), but there are still four stanzas to follow. As Harrison shows, Horace here plays with the form of sepulchral epigrams that frequently close on such a note and can reach a length of twenty verses.Footnote 63
Achilles Tatius provides us with an example that is closer to the Aethiopica.Footnote 64 In the course of Book 4, Leucippe and Clitophon are freed from the Egyptian army and its general Charmides, who has been lusting after Leucippe. With the help of Chaereas, Leucippe is cured from the love-spell a potion had cast on her and is in love with Clitophon again. When the couple heads towards Alexandria, nothing seems to be in the way of their union anymore. The ekphrasis of a crocodile that concludes Book 4 brings the action to a halt and has a closural effect.Footnote 65 And yet, there are still four books to go, in the words of the narrator: ‘further trials were in store for us on Fortune's obstacle course’ (ἔμενεν ἡμᾶς καὶ ἄλλο τῆς Τύχης γυμνάσιον, 5.2.3).Footnote 66 Like Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius places exactly in the middle of his novel a strong closure that turns out to be false. That being said, the false closure of the Aethiopica gains a special twist from the fact that, while the main plot continues, in its stead the minor story of Cnemon is concluded. The closural force does not suffice to end the main story; instead it completes this minor thread. This ‘minor’ closure deploys a device that we also find in the middle of another novel. The Cnemon novella is summed up by his account just as Chariton recapitulates the plot so far at the beginning of Book 5.Footnote 67 In Chaereas and Callirhoe, however, the summary is not placed at a closural moment; it rather interrupts the action in full swing, with Callirhoe crossing the Euphrates.
The second prominent aspect in the middle of the Aethiopica is self-reflection. Heliodorus triangulates at the beginning of Book 6 the romance of Charicleia and Theagenes with two embedded stories. While not being granted the easy (and flat) solution that Cnemon finds in marrying Nausicleia, Charicleia and Theagenes, unlike the anonymous lover in his asymmetric relation with Isias, will happily be united. Evoked by these miniature romances, the genres of New Comedy and, arguably, of Latin elegy throw into relief the Aethiopica as a distinct narrative engagement with the notion of love, as unique as the phoenix. Heliodorus uses the middle section not only to juxtapose his romance with other genres and their take on love, but also to reflect implicitly on the reader and her response to his novel. Cnemon's meditation on whether or not to accompany Charicleia mirrors a question that confronts readers with particular urgency in the middle of such a long novel. Again, Chariton provides an instructive parallel. As Nimis argues, the middle of Chaereas and Callirhoe also features self-reflective elements. While references to Fortune, Eros and Rumour thematize agency and narrative composition, quotations from the Odyssey and Menander evoke narrative frames that are ‘hinting at a possible shape for the story’.Footnote 68 And yet, the self-reflective moments in the middle of Chariton's novel are far less incisive than what the Aethiopica has to offer. Here, as elsewhere, Heliodorus trumps the other Greek novelists with the depth and breadth of his self-reflection.
It is worth comparing Heliodorus also with the ancient author who may well provide the richest material for studies of the middle, that is Virgil. Observing that the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid all have additional proems at their centre, Conte shows their special character: while the proems at the beginning serve the purposes of exposition, the proems in the middle are programmatic declarations of poetics: the initial quid is followed by the quale at its centre. Conte traces the poetological proem back to Hellenistic poetry. Put in the middle, it ‘permits’ Virgil ‘to declare himself, but with less conspicuousness’.Footnote 69 The Aethiopica are in prose, they lack even an initial proem and famously dispense with the idea of exposition. It bears repeating that their poetological reflections are only implicit. And yet, these differences notwithstanding, Heliodorus uses the same position as Virgil to set his narrative into relief. Scholarship elaborating on the metanarrative wit of Heliodorus tends to focus on Calasiris as secondary narrator and on Cnemon as embedded audience.Footnote 70 However, it seems that, like Virgil, Heliodorus minded the middle and imbued it with reflections on his narrative.
