Achilles Tatius

Outline of the whole work at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11rmnyWDzCEN2surASr83wxULyQeh06K6y8eQQQ84Xrc/edit?usp=sharing

Some closing thoughts on Achilles Tatius:

• Quite a mix of genres: paradoxography, geography, ecphrasis, legal speech/rhetoric, light philosophy. At times the narrative is clearly being constructed in order to provide an excuse for some setpiece, e.g. the description of the phoenix that ends book 3.
• Book placement: as that phoenix anecdote exemplifies, books often end in a high point, e.g. book 5 ends in the climactic lovemaking between Kleitophon and Melite.
• Women are underdeveloped in the text: we rarely see things from their perspective, and even when we do (e.g. Leucippe’s narration at the end of the work or Melite’s pleas in book 5), their motivations are thin. Leucippe is particularly bad – she never really arises above the level of passive, beautiful love interest.
• The work plays with the cliches of love (perhaps a motivating force for the genre as a whole). Particularly obvious is an interest in erotic stories of metamorphosis, but also many of the cliches of Hellenistic love epigram (also seen in Daphnis and Chloe), e.g. kiss by proxy, kiss like a bee sting.
• Apparently Parthenius does not have many stories of metamorphosis, but Lightfoot 1999 claims that aetiological stories of metamorphosis are “the commonest Hellenistic metamorphosis type”
• Stories of metamorphosis in Daphnis & Chloe and in Achilles Tatius recently discussed by Pauline LeVen, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2023/2023.08.43/
• Not unconnected is the work’s interest in sexual mores, which seem very different to me than archaic/classical norms. Homosexuality is acknowledged but is despised (Thersander, 8.8-11), or appreciated but unsuccessful (Kleinias, 1.7-14). A lot of stress is placed on virginity and the act of sexual penetration and consummation in particular: e.g. the ‘tests’ that Leucippe undergoes in book 8 to prove her virginity, and Melite’s interest in at least one act of sex (culminating in the end of book 5). This interest in virginity is matched with a prudishness by the narrator in e.g. refusing to discuss sex in any detail (contrary to e.g. Aristophanes or even Lucian/pseudo-Lucian). The world feels a lot more like the 1950s than other ancient texts.
• On this point Foucault I think probably has some interesting things to say (Lightfoot 1999 cites Foucault 1990 on the ancient novel, “love, virginity and marriage form a whole: the two lovers have to preserve their physical integrity, but also their purity of heart, until the moment of their union, which is to be understood in the physical but also in the spiritual sense.”
• Didn’t really come through in the audiobook but lots of discussion about AT’s intertextuality – the only real example I noticed was Melite’s pleas to Kleitophon, which reminded me a lot of Dido’s in Aen. 4 and apparently have been seen as allusions to Virgil (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.03.20/)

Generally Achilles Tatius feels much more 'imperial' to me than Daphnis and Chloe: there's travel throughout the eastern Mediterranean, lots of ecphrases, lots of natural wonders (elephants, crocodiles), some light philosophizing on love and vision, mixed with exciting narratives of robbers and pirates.