This chapter is an abstract of a paper that argued that historians of Greek civic culture in the Roman Empire should draw on the novels for details of Greek city life, of the behaviour of its elites, and of the relation between city and country – something Fergus Millar did, quite independently, and very effectively, in his UCL inaugural lecture ‘The world of the Golden Ass’ in March 1981.

This chapter argues that the poets whose epigrams were assembled by Philip of Thessalonice in his Garland share predominantly North Aegean origins, and that their mentions of Romans and of visits to Rome should be taken as evidence of these Romans being their ‘patrons’ much less often than they were by Gow and Page 1968: rather, some at least of these poets were more probably from the propertied Greek elite (as Crinagoras of Mytilene certainly was) and made short visits to Rome either as envoys on behalf of their cities or as tourists, picking out in their poetry its monuments that had Hellenic connections. Only Philodemus seems certainly to have become a long-term resident of Italy, and his contrast of his simple abode with Piso’s mansion does not demonstrate him to be financially dependent on him.

This chapter analyses several roles of silence in Greek novels before Heliodorus. On a macro-level, it suggests that the writing of the text was itself a breaking of silence, manifested in narrators’ openings in Achilles Tatius and Longus. Moving to characters, it reviews situations where the choice of silence is crucial to plot development – most far-reaching in Longus, where the couple’s origins must be concealed for four fifths of the narrative to allow them to grow up as simple herdsfolk. In Chariton too the choice between speech and silence repeatedly affects plot development. Silence is often allied with deception, twice with fear. In three novels a protagonist’s romantic involvement with a third party is crucially suppressed in communications between the couple. Next addressed are types of silence closely related to the novels’ central theme of eros, whether as a symptom, or the silent kissing Cleinias suggests to Cleitophon. Different is the silent awe a protagonist’s dazzling beauty triggers. Finally some topoi shared with other genres are examined: ‘everybody else was silent, but X began to speak’; and ‘for a long time X was silent, but eventually began to speak’. It is concluded that silence’s uses reveal it as an important element in constructing an engaging narrative, noting that of these writers only Longus has an ‘unmarked’ use of σιωπ- to mean little more than ‘he/she stopped speaking’.

This chapter examine some ways in which Greek novels flaunt and make play with their textuality, particularly Antonius Diogenes’ The incredible things beyond Thule and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. It argues that Antonius Diogenes presents recurrent tensions between the textual and the oral and highlights the importance of γράμματα, ‘letters’, to communication within his narrative, mirroring its writing down on wooden tablets that readers encounter in its frame. It also proposes meta-literary functions both for the name of the Arcadian envoy to Tyre, Κύμβας, ‘Cymbas’, since one of the meanings Hesychius gives the noun κύμβη is πήρα, ‘bag’ ( i.e. the receptacle in which the wizard Paapis carried his magic books) and for the twisting and turning of Mant(in)eas in P.Oxy. 4761. Longus apparently follows Antonius Diogenes in (unusually) specifying the number of his work’s books, but γράμματα, ‘letters’, have no role within his narrative (despite being taught to the young couple): that narrative is an entirely oral response by an unnamed exegete to a γραφή in the sense ‘painting’, and though within it tales are told, nothing is ever written or inscribed, not even in Dionysophanes’ paradeisos or in his civic elite world.

This chapter attempts a taxonomy of the metaphors in Daphnis and Chloe under the heads symptoms and concomitants of desire (where Longus’ metaphors situate his writing unambiguously in the Greek literature of ἔρως, ‘desire’); desire in society; anthropomorphisation of the inanimate and of animals; body-parts with a mind of their own; literary and meta-literary activity; and the world of learning.

This chapter explores the religious practice of characters in the five ‘ideal’ Greek novels, arguing that despite these works’ overall presentation of a world that is in many ways ‘realistic’, their representation of religion diverges from ‘reality’. At one end of the spectrum the behaviour of the rustic couple Daphnis and Chloe is almost hyper-religious, and it is only in Longus’ novel that we find a full range of traditional religious practices, including vows and libations. In the other four many features correspond to behaviour in the ‘real’ world – prayers, offerings, sacrifices, feasts and festivals: but libations are sometimes not poured when they might be expected; rituals associated with marriage or burial are omitted or played down; and, most strikingly, the practice of making a vow to a god at critical moments to secure help or rescue, a practice documented in the ‘real’ world by epigraphy and literature from the archaic period down to at least the third century AD, is wholly absent. Possible reasons for this absence are briefly discussed: is it simply a generally soft-focus and elliptical account of religious behaviour, or is it the avoidance of a device which, if deployed, would risk short-circuiting characters’ tension-creating peril in cliff-hanging situations?

This chapter aims at the sort of overview that the editors of ANRW then encouraged, and brings together the place of poetry in sophists’ education; an account of the many various poetic genres in which sophists composed, with citation of what we have from the only one of these genres to have survived, epigram; and epigrams on sophists composed by others.

This chapter argues that, unlike all other Greek novelists, Longus shows knowledge of Callimachus’ poetry, both the Aitia (whence his use of ἀρτιγένειος, twice: 1.15.1 and 4.10.1) and the Epigrams (whence the figurative ἕλκος of 1.14.1, near to Longus’ first use of ἀρτιγένειος). These strong cases increase the probability that some other words (ἐπτoηθεῖσαι 1.22.2) and themes (e.g. the simultaneous death of two young siblings at 4.24.2, cf. Call. Anth.Pal. 7.517; the recondite myth of Branchus, 4.17.6, cf. Call. fr. 229 Pfeiffer) are drawn from Callimachus. In explaining why Callimachus might attract Longus’ interest, it is proposed that the four-book format of Daphnis and Chloe, unique in the novels, might be a further Callimachean intertextuality, calculated to invite readers’ reflection on how Longus’ work could be read as a series of Aitia, that of the cave of the Nymphs (in the preface and Book 4) complementing those of the inset tales of Books 1 to 3.