Ancient Narrative Supplementum 8 is the first volume to be dedicated
entirely to parallel readings of the Greek and the Roman novel. As a
rule, publications taking a comprehensive look at the ancient novel
treat the Greek and the Roman novels independently of each other, or at
most discuss standard thematic categories. It is intriguing that a sharp
distinction between the Greek and the Latin novels should have ever
existed and that it should be tacitly maintained at the present time. Of
the three surviving Latin novels, Apuleius' Metamorphoses has a Greek
model, Petronius' Satyrica bears distinct traces of Greekness, and the
Historia Apollonii strongly resembles the Greek ideal novel, especially
Xenophon's Ephesiaka. The discovery of new papyrus fragments of Greek
fiction (Lollianos' Phoinikika, the Iolaos and the Tinouphis fragments)
has shown that low-life, comic, and sensational features are not the
exclusive province of the Latin novel. Recent chronological revisions
have squeezed the dates of the earliest Greek novels into the period
between 41 and 75 A. D., thus envisaging the birth of the Greek novel
and that of the Roman Satyrica as contemporary or near-contemporary
events. The need to re-examine the relations between the two main
traditions of the ancient novel in the context of a unified Greco-Roman
tradition emerges today as more urgent than ever. The portrayal on the
cover page of this volume of Echo and Narcissus, of self-reflection and
reduplication of sound, symbolizes a pictorial challenge to look at the
dialectics of the Greek and the Latin novels and appreciate their
intimate relationship.The parallel readings of the present volume
explore various issues in Greco-Roman fiction: political accommodation
in coming-of-age novels, the language and practice of magic, narratives
of failure, textual considerations and narrative meaning, hidden
authors, proposals and criteria for dating, the access to knowledge,
plot structures, religion and narrative, the fortunes of Athenian
Hellenism, vision and narrative, attitudes towards Roman imperial rule,
and the motif of the stolen cup.
