Aethiopica

The Aethiopica (Ancient Greek: Αἰθιοπικά, Aithiopiká, 'Ethiopian Stories') or Theagenes and Chariclea (Ancient Greek: Θεαγένης καὶ Χαρίκλεια, Theagénēs kaì Kharíkleia) is an ancient Greek novel which has been dated to the 220s or 370s AD. It was written by Heliodorus of Emesa and is his only known work.

Quotes

Book I

• Day had begun to smile and the sun was shining upon the hilltops when a band of armed pirates scaled the mountain which extends to the mouth of the Nile called the Heracleot, where it empties into the sea. They halted for a little to survey the waters which stretched before them. Out at sea, where they first directed their attention, not a sail was stirring to whet the pirates’ appetite for plunder; but when they turned to look at the coastline nearby their eyes encountered a strange spectacle. ... A merchant ship lay moored by its hawsers, bare of crew but heavily loaded, as was easy to conjecture, for its weight pressed the ship down until the water reached its third loading line. The beach was strewn with fresh carnage; some of the victims were dead, of others the limbs were still quivering; obviously the battle had been recent.
  • Book I, 1, Incipit (tr. Moses Hadas)

• When once all hope is lost, desire is extinguished in the soul; and the impossibility of reckoning upon anything in the future hardens the afflicted to sorrow.
  • Book I, 15 (tr. Athenian Society)

• A lie is sometimes permissible, even praiseworthy, when it benefits those who tell it and does no harm to those who hear it.
  • Book I, 26 (tr. Athenian Society)

Book II

• And now is she my daughter with me here, my daughter I say, named by my name, and on her all my hopes depend. And beside other things, wherein she is better than I could wish, she has quickly learned the Greek tongue and has come to perfect age with such speed as if she had been a peerless branch, and so far doth she surpass every other in excellent beauty that all men's eyes, as well strangers as Greeks, are set on her.
  • Book II, 33 (tr. Thomas Underdown); quoted in Bernard Minier, The Frozen Dead (2014), p. 327

• Oracles and dreams for the most part are only understood when they be come to pass.
  • Book II, 36 (tr. Thomas Underdown)

Book III

• But when rosy-fingered Dawn, the child of morning, appeared (as Homer would say), when from the temple of Artemis rode forth my wise and beautiful Charikleia, then we realized that even Theagenes could be eclipsed, but eclipsed only in such measure as perfect female beauty is lovelier than the fairest of men. She rode in a carriage drawn by a pair of white bullocks, and she was appareled in a long purple gown embroidered with golden rays. Around her breast she wore a band of gold; the man who had crafted it had locked all his art into it—never before had he produced such a masterpiece, and never would he be able to repeat the achievement. It was in the shape of two serpents whose tails he had intertwined at the back of the garment; then he had brought their necks round under her breasts and woven them into an intricate knot, finally allowing their heads to slither free of the knot and draping them down either side of her body as if they formed no part of the clasp. You would have said not that the serpents seemed to be moving but that they were actually in motion. There was no cruelty or fellness in their eyes to cause one fright, but they were steeped in a sensuous languor as if lulled by the sweet joys that dwelt in Charikleia’s bosom.
  • Book III, 4 (tr. J. R. Morgan); quoted in R. S. Wright, A Golden Treasury of Greek Prose (1870), no. XLVIII

Book V

• They instantly forgot their plight and clasped one another in a prolonged embrace so tight that they seemed to be of one flesh. But the love they consummated was sinless and undefiled; their union was one of moist, warm tears; their only intercourse was one of chaste lips. For if ever Charikleia found Theagenes becoming too ardent in the arousal of his manhood, a reminder of his oath was enough to restrain him; and he for his part moderated his conduct without complaint and was quite content to remain within the bounds of chastity, for though he was the slave of love, he was the master of pleasure.
  • Book V, 4 (tr. J. R. Morgan)

About

• There are those perchance who will think but lightly of these imaginings: yet some folk deem a blood red rose, or a lark's song, to he more precious than a king's coronet.
  • F. A. Wright, ed. An Aethiopian Romance, Broadway Translations (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1923), Dedication to Frederic J. Warburg

Translations

• Thomas Underdown, An Æthiopian Historie (1587)
  • Charles Whibley, ed. An Æthiopian History, Tudor Translations V (London: David Nutt, 1895)
  • F. A. Wright, rev. ed. An Aethiopian Romance, Broadway Translations (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1923)

• Rowland Smith, The Greek Romances of Heliodorus, Longus and Achilles Tatius, Bohn's Library (London, 1848)

• The Athenian Society, Heliodorus (The Aethiopica) (Athens, 1938)

• Moses Hadas, An Ethiopian Romance (University of Michigan Press, 1957)

• J. R. Morgan, "An Ethiopian Story" in B. P. Reardon, ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels (University of California Press, 1989)