Leucippe And Clitophon

The first modern commentary in English on this most sophisticated and brilliant of ancient Greek novels. With its freewheeling plotline, its setting on the edge of the Greek world, its ironic play with the reader's expectations and its sallies into obscenity, it will appeal strongly to students and instructors.

Publisher Description

Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon is the most bizarre and risqu ́e of the five "Greek novels" of idealized love between boy and girl that survive from the time of the Roman empire. Stretching the capacity of the genre to its limits, Achilles' narrative covers adultery, violence, disembowelment, pederasty, virginity-testing, and a conveniently happy ending. Ingenious and sophisticated in conception, Leucippe and Clitophon is at once subtle, stylish, moving, brash, tasteless, and obscene. This new translation aims to capture Achilles' writing in all its exuberant variety.

Prose fiction, although not always associated with classical antiquity, flourished in the early Roman Empire, not only in realistic Latin novels but also and indeed principally in the Greek ideal romance of love and adventure. Enormously popular in the Renaissance, these stories have been less familiar in later centuries. Translations of the Greek stories were not readily available in English before B.P. Reardon’s first appeared in 1989.Nine complete stories are included here as well as ten others, encompassing the whole range of classical themes: romance, travel, adventure, historical fiction, and comic parody. A foreword by J.R. Morgan examines the enormous impact this groundbreaking collection has had on our understanding of classical thought and our concept of the novel.

The sole surviving work of Achilles Tatius, a Greek writer from Alexandria, is a novel in eight books, ‘The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon’, one of the five surviving Ancient Greek romances. Delphi’s Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Greek texts. This comprehensive eBook presents the complete extant text of ‘The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon’, with relevant illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Achilles Tatius’ life and work * Features the complete text of ‘The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon’, in both English translation and the original Greek * Concise introduction to ‘The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon’ * Includes Stephen Gaselee’s translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition of Achilles Tatius * Images of famous paintings inspired by ‘The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon’ * Excellent formatting of the texts * Provides a special dual English and Greek text, allowing readers to compare the sections paragraph by paragraph – ideal for students * Features a bonus biography – discover Achilles Tatius’ ancient world Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to explore our range of Ancient Classics titles or buy the entire series as a Super Set CONTENTS: The Translation LEUCIPPE AND CLITOPHON The Greek Text CONTENTS OF THE GREEK TEXT The Dual Text DUAL GREEK AND ENGLISH TEXT The Biography INTRODUCTION TO ACHILLES TATIUS by Stephen Gaselee Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles

From Bedroom to Courtroom argues that the fictional trial scenes in the Greek ideal romances reflect Roman legal institutions and ideas, particularly relating to family and sexuality. Given the genre's emphasis on love and chastity, the specter of adultery looms over most of the scenarios that develop into elaborate trials. Such scenes shed light on the Greek reception of the criminalization of adultery promulgated by the moral legislation during the reign of Augustus. This book focuses on three major novels whose composition coincided with the extension of Roman citizenship when access to Roman courts was granted to increasing numbers of inhabitants of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Chariton's Callirhoe is interpreted as an artifact of the generation after the implementation of the Augustan moral legislation, particularly its criminalization of adultery. Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon was created in a legally pluralistic milieu where shrewd sophists learned to navigate and exploit the interstices between the overlapping jurisdictions of imperial and local law. Finally, Heliodorus' Aethiopica, widely regarded as the masterpiece of the genre, adapts the type-scene of the trial to present a series of case studies of different types of government, culminating in the utopian kingdom of Meroe. Through the novels' melodramatic trial scenes, we can begin to see how the opening of Roman courtroom to Greek-speaking citizens of the Roman Empire stimulated dreams of a world in which universal justice under Rome was wed to Hellenism.