PREFACE

By no reader of classical antiquity will any of its remains be regarded as entirely devoid of worth. The "fine gold " will naturally stand first in estimation, but the "silver and brass and iron," nay even the "iron mingled with miry clay," will each possess its respective value. Accordingly, while the foremost place will ever be assigned to its Historians, Philosophers, Orators, and Poets, the time will not be esteemed thrown away which makes him acquainted with those authors who struck out a new vein of writing, and abandoning the facts of history and the inventions of mythology, drew upon their own imagination and sought for subjects in the manners and pursuits of domestic life.

The publication of a revised translation of Heliodorus and Longus, and of a new translation of Achilles Tatius, calls for some brief prefatory observations upon the origin of fictitious narrative among the Greeks; that department of literature which, above any other, has been prolific in finding followers, more especially in modern times; and which, according to the spirit in which it is handled, is capable of producing some of the best or worst effects upon society.

Works of fiction may, as we know, administer a poisoned cup, but they may also supply a wholesome and pleasing draught; they may be the ministers of the grossest immorality and absurdity, but they may likewise be the vehicles of sound sense and profitable instruction.

"As real History," says Bacon, "gives us not the success of things according to the deserts of vice and virtue

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Fiction connects it, and presents us with the fates and for tunes of persons, rewarded or punished according to merit.'

"It is chiefly in the fictions of an age," says Dunlop, "that we can discover the modes of living, dress, and manners of the period;" and he goes on to say-" But even if the utility which is derived from Fiction were less than it is, how much are we indebted to it for pleasure and enjoyment! It sweetens solitude and charms sorrow-it occupies the attention of the vacant, and unbends the mind of the philosopher. Like the enchanter, Fiction shows us, as it were in a mirror, the most agreeable objects; recalls from a distance the forms which are dear to us, and soothes our own grief by awakening our sympathy for others. By its means the recluse is placed in the midst of society; and he who is harassed and agitated in the city is transported to rural tranquillity and repose. The rude are refined by an introduction, as it were, to the higher orders of mankind, and even the dissipated and selfish are, in some degree, corrected by those paintings of virtue and simple nature, which must ever be employed by the novelist, if he wish to awaken emotion or delight."

Huet, Bishop of Avranches, was the first who wrote a regular and systematic treatise on the origin of fictitious narrative-"De origine Fabularum Romanensium."

He gives it as his opinion, that "not in Provence (Provincia Romanorum), nor yet in Spain, are we to look for the fatherland of those amusing compositions called Romances; but that it is among the people of the East, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Syrians, that the germ and origin is to be found, of this species of fictitious narrative, for which the peculiar genius and poetical temperament of those nations particularly adapt them, and in which they delight to a degree scarcely to be credited; for even their ordinary discourse is interspersed with figurative expressions, and their maxims of theology and philosophy, and above all, of morals and political science, are invariably couched under the guise of allegory or parable." In confirmation of this opinion he remarks, that "nearly all those who in early times distinguished themselves as writers of what are now called Romances, were of Oriental birth or extraction;”—and he instances " Clearchus, a pupil

of Aristotle, who was a native of Soli, in Cilicia,-Iamblicus, a Syrian-Heliodorus and Lucian, natives, the one of Emessa, the other of Samosata-Achilles Tatius, of Alexandria.'

This statement of Huet's is admitted to hold good, generally, by the author of a very interesting Article on the Early Greek Romances," in No. CCCXXXIII. of Blackwood's Magazine; who however differs from the learned. Bishop in some particulars.

"While fully admitting," he says, "that it is to the vivid fancy and picturesque imagination of the Orientals that we owe the origin of all those popular legends, which have penetrated under various changes of costume, into every corner of Europe, we still hold, that the invention of the Romance of ordinary life, on which the interest of the story depends upon occurrences in some measure within the bounds of probability, and in which the heroes and heroines are neither invested with superhuman qualities, nor extricated from their difficulties by supernatural means, must be ascribed to a more European state of society than that which produced those tales of wonder, which are commonly considered as characteristic of the climes of the East.'

This difference of opinion he fortifies, by remarking that "the authors enumerated by the Bishop of Avranches himself were all denizens of Greek cities of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and consequently, in all probability, Greeks by descent; and though the scene of their works is frequently laid in Asia, the costumes and characters introduced are almost invariably on the Greek model."

He concludes this part of his subject by saying; "these writers, therefore, may fairly be considered as constituting a distinct class from those more strictly Oriental-not only in birth but in language and ideas; and as being in fact the legitimate forerunners of modern novelists."

The first to imbibe a love for fictitious narrative from the Eastern people among whom they dwelt, were the Milesians, a colony of Greeks, and from them this species of narrative derived the name of "Sermo Milesius." * A

* In the opening of his celebrated novel, the "Golden Ass," Apuleius says " At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram," &c.

specimen of the Milesian tale may be seen in the Stories of Parthenius, which are chiefly of the amatory kind, and not over remarkable for their moral tendency. From the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor, especially from the Milesians, it was natural that a fondness for Fiction should extend itself into Greece, and that pleasure should produce imitation. But it was not until the conquests of Alexander, that a greater intercourse between Greece and Asia became the means of conveying the stores of fiction from the one continent to the other.

The Romance writers, who flourished previous to Heliodorus, are known only from the summary of their compositions preserved to us by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople; in the ninth century. We subjoin their names and the titles of their works :

Antonius Diogenes wrote "The incredible things in Thule;" Iamblicus, the "Babylonica," comprising the formidable number of sixteen books; in addition to which there is the "Ass " of Lucian, founded chiefly upon the "Metamorphoses of Lucius."

The palm of merit, in every respect, especially "in the arrangement of his fable," has been universally assigned to HELIODORUS, Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, who flourished A.D. 400; "whose writing," says Huet, "the subsequent novelists of those ages constantly proposed to themselves as a model for imitation; and as truly may they all be said to have drunk of the waters of this fountain, as all the Poets did of the Homeric spring."

The writers of Romance, posterior to Heliodorus, who alone are worthy of note, are Achilles Tatius, who is allowed to come next to him in merit; Longus, who has given the first example of the "Pastoral Romance;" and Xenophon, of Ephesus.

Having alluded to the various writers of fictitious narrative, our farther remarks may be confined to Heliodorus, Longus, and Achilles Tatius. With the work of the author of the "Ethiopics" are connected some curious circumstances, which shall be given in the words of an Ecclesiastical Historian, quoted by the writer of the article in Blackwood.

Nicephorus, B. xii. c. 34, says "This Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca, had in his youth written certain love stories,