Ebook: Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon Books I–II

"Achilles Tatius' The Matters Concerning Leucippe and Clitophon - hereafter L&C - was arguably the single most significant literary text written in Greek in the second century CE (Section 2(a)). We know little, however, about its author. A notice in the Suda, the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia, reads as follows: Achilles Statius (sic) of Alexandria, the author of the novel concerning Leucippe and Clitophon (and other erotic matters) in 8 books.1 He converted late in life to Christianity, and became a bishop. He also wrote On the Sphere and On Etymology, and a Miscellaneous History, which records many great and wondrous men. His style is everywhere similar to the erotic romance.2 (Suda a. 4695 = T v Vilborg.) How much of this can we trust? That Achilles was from Alexandria, asserted without controversy by the MS tradition and two other Byzantine sources,3 is credible. L&C incorporates an encomium of the city, placed at the significant position of the opening of the romance's second half (5.1), and other laudatory references to Alexandria, to Egyptian cows and to the Nile suggest a particular affection (2.15.3-4n., 2.31.6n., 4.12); he also seems to have a certain amount of local knowledge.4 If Achilles was based in Egypt, that might also explain why readers in Oxyrhynchus had 1 The position of [kai alla erotika] in the sentence indicates that the phrase refers to other erotic stories within L&C (i.e. not other erotic texts). 2 Vilborg 1962: 17 n. 10, by contrast, takes the last sentence to mean 'His style is everywhere similar to that of the (other) romance writers.' 3 Phot. Bibl. cod. 87 (T ii Vilborg); Eustathius ad Hom. Od. 14.350 (T vii Vilborg). 4 In particular, A. knows of the revolt of the so-called Boukoloi (Henrichs 1972: 48-50), and the recondite fact that their base was in Nicochis (4.12.8; cf. P.Thmouis 1.104.16, with Bremmer 1998: 167). Claims (e.g. Vilborg 1962: 8) that his descriptions of the hippopotamus (4.2) and crocodile (4.19) are based on eye-witness experience seem to me less secure. "--