Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel

The Greek romance as we know it seems to have achieved its canonical form in the first century of the Roman principate. For sure, Hellenistic precedents may well have existed, particularly in the ‘national literature’ of the subject peoples of the Greek kingdoms: one particularly important case is Joseph and Aseneth, which tells of the mutual love, marriage and tribulations of the biblical patriarch, but the dating remains controversial (estimates vary between the second century bce and the fourth century ce). But it remains true, on the current consensus, that the ideal, fictional romance as we know it is very much a product of the early imperial era. The two first-century romances that survive in full are Chariton's Callirhoe and Xenophon's Anthia and Habrocomes. Each offers a broadly similar narrative: young lovers meet, fall in love, are separated abroad, and return to be reunited. Each is set in a major Greek homeland (Syracuse for Chariton, Ephesus for Xenophon); the temporal setting is, implicitly (Xenophon) or explicitly the past (Chariton locates his romance in the aftermath of the failed Athenian invasion of 415–413 bce; his heroine is the daughter of the historical general Hermocrates).

How can we explain the emergence of this genre at this particular historical juncture? In my introduction, I argued that we should not look to historical determinism alone to explain the emergence of the romance; we should be thinking of how individual authors creatively construct paradigms of identity rather than expecting them to reflect them passively.