No abstract

This article considers the Lucianic Erôtes a receptor of Greek novels and focusses on Chariton’s Callirhoe as hypotext. It argues that Chariton’s construction of Callirhoe as a double of Aphrodite, and the plot that this predicament generates, are central to the presentation of the statue of Aphrodite in the Erôtes. This is revealed by consistent verbal echoes and by the re-enactment of memorable scenes in the novel. The Erôtes emerges as an important document for the early reception of Greek novels, and its author as an attentive reader of them.

The quotes in the sacro-profane florilegia have so far been neglected as documents for the 9th-century readership of the Greek novels. This article uses the quotes as intertextual links to the originals and reconstructs the excerption: mapped back onto the novels, the quotes highlight the excerptors’ points of interest and the patterns that connect them. Excerption is thus fully understood as reading practice. The quotes were collected not only because they could provide wisdom when decontextualised, but also because they played a relevant role in the excerptors’ analysis and interpretation of the novels. The florilegia are therefore unique texts in revealing the experience of reading the novels in the 9thcentury.

No abstract

This article reconfigures the Lucianic Erōtes as an outstanding testimony to the early reception of Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, predating all other early examples of sophisticated readership. The analysis demonstrates the author's extensive remodelling of the novelist's technique of proleptic ekphrasis, and uses it to tease out the literary implications, so far undetected, of the characters' debate on sex preferences. By proposing an evolutionary theory of imitation and putting it into practice, the author inserted the novel in literary history.