Novels and Romances
Fiction in its origin is with difficulty separated from myth—myth, however, being
unconscious and due to a desire to give concrete form to various beliefs that spring up in the
primitive mind; while fiction, as a literary motive, originates in a desire to amuse and
occasionally to instruct. Hence, the earliest form of fiction is the Beast Fable, which is
found in every quarter of the earth and at every period of history. A papyrus dating from B.C.
1200 gives an Egyptian version of the Aesopic fable of the Lion and Mouse; the inscribed
Babylonian bricks afford examples of the same thing, and the Hindus probably originated most
of the fables which Aesop, Babrius, and Phaedrus made popular in Europe. Akin to conscious
fiction and at the same time allied to myth are the folk-tales of nymphs, satyrs, ghosts,
fairies, demons, and vampires which Greeks and Romans alike propagated, but which have nearly
all been lost to us because they seemed to the ancients unworthy of preservation in formal
literature; so that we have now only here and there tantalizing half-glimpses and vanishing
suggestions of the curious and fascinating legends told by the common people. Such bits as
remain, however, are quite sufficient to prove the existence of a great unwritten literature,
and examples of these may still be found, though no longer preserved in their original
simplicity, in the stories of the love of Echo for Narcissus, the legend of Hylas and the
Naiads, of Cupid and Psyché, and in the various allusions to the monsters known as
the Lamiae, Mormolycé, Incubus, and Empusa, the spectre with the brazen leg and the
ass's hoof. Ghosts figure in Greek literature as early as Homer, and are introduced with
striking effect in the
Odyssey, as also by the Romans Attius and Vergil, and in
the famous story preserved by Pliny the Younger. To this informal fiction belong also the
tales of the Lares and the Larvae.
The earliest form of literary prose fiction, however, is to be found in the short stories
collected by Herodotus, most of which have their origin in the East, the home of storytelling.
Such are the famous anecdotes of Candaules (i. 8-12), of Arion and the Dolphin (i. 24), of
Rhampsinitus and the Robber (ii. 121), and of Polycrates and the Ring (iii. 39), all being
admirable instances of the short story in its earliest form—brief, simple, and
embodying a single incident.
Of a more formal type are the so-called Milesian Tales (
Μιλησιακά), a generic term for the short anecdotes which were produced in great
numbers in the luxurious cities of Asia Minor prior to the second century B.C., and first
ascribed to one Aristides, who is said to have written six books of them. No actual examples
are known to exist, though their nature may be judged of by the short stories found in later
writers, especially Petronius, from which it would appear that they were very much like the
stories told in the
Decameron of Boccaccio and the
Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles of Louis XI. of France—brief, witty, and indecent. The choice of
subjects in these early novelettes is seen in the existing collection of Parthenius of Nicaea,
who taught Vergil Greek. From him have come down thirty-six skeleton stories, or rather hints
for stories gathered by Parthenius for the use of Cornelius Gallus, and intended to be treated
by him poetically. They can be found in both Greek and Latin versions in the Didot Collection
(Paris, 1856). Other stories of this sort, written in other cities than Miletus,
were produced by a host of storywriters who gave to their collections the titles Ephesian,
Babylonian, Cyprian, Egyptian, Sybaritic, Naxian, Lydian, Trojan, and Bithynian Tales, though
these do not seem to have differed, except in name, from those of Miletus. Some of them are
preserved in epitome by
Photius (q.v.). One of the
most important writers of them after Aristides was Conon , from whom Cervantes borrowed an
episode in his
Don Quixote. While the short story was reaching its full
development, it was used philosophically by Plato in the story of Er, and by Prodicus in his
epilogue on the Choice of Heracles.
At about this time fiction underwent a further development as a result of the contact of the
Greeks with the East at the time of the Persian Wars and of the spirit of adventure resulting
from the conquests of Alexander. We now have instances of the historical romance in the
Atlantis of Plato and the
Cyropaedia of Xenophon, which find
their echo in modern times in the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the
New
Atlantis of Francis Bacon. The
Cyropaedia contains the first romantic
love-story in Greek fiction. These works, however, are partly political, and are of less
literary consequence than the romance of adventure which was afterwards introduced, and which
finds an illustration in the novel entitled
Τὰ Ὑπὲρ Θούλην
Ἄπιστα (Marvels Beyond Thulé), by one Antonius Diogenes, the
Munchausen of antiquity. It relates to the love-adventures of an Arcadian youth, Dinias, with a Tyrian girl, Dercyllis, and abounds with most extraordinary incidents.
It is, in reality, nothing more than a collection of short stories or episodes strung together
by a very slender plot. More homogeneous and artistic are the later romances of Lucius of
Patrae of uncertain date called
Metamorphoses, drawn upon by Lucian and
Apuleius; of Iamblichus of Syria, who wrote
Βαβυλωνικά, the
adventures of a married pair, Sinonis and Rhodanes, with a double plot; of Xenophon of
Ephesus, author of
Ἐφησιακά, the loves of Abrocomas and
Anthia, the ultimate source of
Romeo and Juliet; and especially of Heliodorus
of Emesa, in the fourth century A.D., whose
Αἰθιοπικά is
still in existence, and is regarded as the best of the novels of adventure produced by the
Greeks. It is in ten books, and relates the adventures of two lovers, Theagenes and Chariclea.
It has some quite interesting episodes, is regularly developed, and contains one curious
passage on the influence of pre-natal conditions upon the unborn child. It was much read in
its day, and again in the seventeenth century, when it was the favourite novel of the French
poet, Racine. See
Heliodorus.
Other instances of the romantic novel are those of Achilles Tatius of Alexandria, entitled
Τὰ κατὰ Λευκίππην καὶ Κλειτοφῶντα (The Loves of
Leucippé and Clitophon) in eight books; the
Chaereas and
Callirrhoë of Chariton of Aphrodisias; and the novelette called
Apollonius Tyrius, of unknown authorship, preserved only in a Latin version,
in which it was much read in the Middle Ages, and suggested a part of Gower's
Confessio
Amantis (iii. 284 foll.), and probably Shakespeare's
Pericles, Prince of
Tyre. Of very late origin are the trashy Greek novels by Theodorus Prodromus of
Constantinople, and the imitation of this by Nicetas Eugenianus (both in doggerel verse), and
last of all the eleven books on the adventures of Hysminé and Hysminias, perhaps
the original source of the story of Don Juan.
Early in the Christian era, fiction was written in the form of letters by Alciphron, a Greek
sophist, of whose imaginary epistles 118 are still preserved and give valuable pictures of low
life in Athens during the second century A.D. They are very lively and entertaining, and are
the best character sketches that Greek fiction can show us. Other writers of the same class
are Aristaenetus of Nicaea (?), the author of two books of erotic letters written in a cynical
spirit; and Theophilus of Simocatta (A.D. 610), from whom we have 85 letters, rhetorical and
epigrammatic, but of no literary merit.
The prose pastoral was created by Longus (perhaps not the author's name), whose romance
Ποιμενικὰ τὰ κατὰ Δάφνιν καὶ Χλόην, usually called
Daphnis and Chloë, is one of the most original and pleasing things in
ancient literature. Its theme is the growth of the sexual instinct in two children, a boy and
a girl, who have been brought up together in a state of perfect innocence. Its
physico-psychological motive makes it unique in the history of early fiction, and the warmth
and beauty of its descriptions of nature are also very striking. It has been many times
translated into all the modern languages, and is the original of Bernardin de St. Pierre's
Paul et Virginie, of Allan Ramsay's
Gentle Shepherd, and of
many other less important works.
The Romans have left us only two specimens of true prose fiction—the
Satiricon of Petronius Arbiter and the
Metamorphoses of
Apuleius; but these are in many ways superior to anything of their kind in Greek. The
Satiricon, in fact, though incomplete, is one of the first great novels of our
time, and is remarkable for its modern tone, its subtle touches of character, its wit, its
vivid pictures of life in the Roman provincial towns, and for the grace and elegance of its
style. It also gives us some of the best existing specimens of the
sermo
plebeius, the colloquial Latinity of uneducated men. (See
Petronius;
Sermo
Plebeius.) The
Metamorphoses of Apuleius is based upon the
Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae, and possibly upon the
Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος of Lucian, the contemporary of Apuleius; but it is more
likely that both Apuleius and Lucian drew independently from the earlier writer. The novel of
Apuleius, which is in eleven books, tells the story of one Lucius, who, by a mistake,
swallowed a magic potion which turned him into an ass, in which form he passed through a maze
of curious and amusing adventures, until at last he regained his natural shape. The novel is
highly diverting and is told with much cleverness, though often with a disregard for even an
elemental sense of propriety. Among its episodes is the very famous one giving the story of
Cupid and Psyché, one of the most exquisite things in literature and one that has
inspired innumerable works of art. See
Apuleius;
Psyché.
In the Middle Ages, when the knowledge of ancient literature and history became lost to
Western Europe, confused recollections of them still existed in the minds of men, and,
together with many Teutonic folk-tales, became blended into a curious collection of stories
known as the
Gesta Romanorum, which were told and retold in many forms by the
mediævals. They mingle together the characters of antiquity in a most remarkable
way, having no chronological or historical accuracy, but reproducing the legends of the past
in a sort of literary mirage. Vergil, Homer, Alexander the Great, the Roman emperors, and
Hercules, Romulus, and Remus, appear and reappear side by side with knights and wizards and
dragons; but the tales have a certain value in literary history as forming the connecting link
between the fiction of Greece and Rome and the fiction of modern times, which took its early
themes largely from those monkish legends.
The ancient novel is far inferior to the modern, because
1.
it was developed only after literature had entered upon its decline;
2.
because of the difference in the social spirit of antiquity which made impossible the
modern romantic treatment of the relations of men and women; and
3.
because the true fiction of the Greeks was to be found, not in prose, but in the great
epics which more perfectly represented the highest manifestation of the Hellenic imagination.
Bibliography.—For the general subject of the origin of
pure fiction, see Clauston's
Popular Tales and Fictions (London,
1887); Rutherford's introduction to his edition of Babrius
(1883);
Rhys-Davids, Buddhist Birth-Stories (1880); Benfey's
introduction to the
Panchatantra (1859);
Bedier, Les
Fabliaux (1893); and
Lang, Custom and Myth
(1885). On the Greek and Roman novels, see Dunlop,
History of the
Novel (last ed. London, 1887); Salverte,
Le Roman dans la
Grèce Ancienne (Paris, 1893);
Chauvin, Les
Romanciers Grecs et Latins (Paris, 1862); Chassang,
Histoire du
Roman dans l'Antiquité Grecque et Latine (Paris, 1862); Rohde,
Der Griechische Roman (Leipzig, 1876); Warren,
History of the Novel (N. Y. 1895). The principal Greek romances
are printed in the
Erotici Graeci of the Didot Collection
(Paris,
1856); and the epistolographers in the
Epistolographi Graeci of the
same collection. For special texts, translations, etc., see the separate articles in this
Dictionary on the writers named above. The
Gesta Romanorum will be found
edited by Oesterley
(Berlin, 1872); and translated into English by Swan, revised
by Hooper
(London, 1877).