Essays on the Greek Romances

The greater subjectivity of the Apuleius’ romance as compared to the Greek Romances is attained by the aloneness of the hero, his quest and its implicit meaning, his individual satisfaction. This subjectivity is intensified by the complete adoption of the ego-narrative. Far more attention is paid by Apuleius than by the Greek romancers to the narrator and to his point of view in telling the whole romance. Achilles Tatius was afterwards to attempt the use of this device of narration in the first person, but he soon lost sight of the narrator in the narrative and even at the end he never let him reappear. Lucian adopted completely the ich-roman form, but, as far as can be known, without rich characterization of the teller. Apuleius uses to the full the advantage of having a man-ass as narrator, for his composite hero has a duplex view-point of man and animal and displays a double humor, of man and beast. All this keeps the hero-narrator before our eyes and we become ever more and more interested in the effect of the events narrated on his inner life and on his final solution of life.

Riefstahl points out that in the Greek love romances there is some striving after subjectivity in the presentation of external events. The possibility of expression is not yet rich, but by soliloquies, by descriptions of emotions, by reflections on events expressed in γνῶμαι the romancers are working from objective to subjective presentation of their material. The soul is treated as an individual entity separated from the body and contrasted to it. On this foundation in the love romances rests the inner structural arch of spatial separation and spiritual fidelity. The relation of the objective and the subjective creates somehow the scale on which all these romances take their place. The love romances are at the objective end of the scale, the older ones particularly, dynamic events holding writer and reader spell-bound. In Longus a peaceful atmosphere is created because there are few exciting events, little travel, only the study of the development of love in two adolescents in a quiet pastoral setting, but the expression is not adequate. Longus senses the dual conception of Eros, in man and in nature, for the love of the two young shepherds is set in the teeming, growing life of the outer world, but he does not develop fully this subtle implication. Achilles Tatius inclines toward the subjective direction through his attempted use of the ego-narrative. But the fullest subjective treatment is found in Apuleius. In Achilles Tatius as in Apuleius, the aim of the hero is a μυστήριον but with him it is the μυστήριον of love; in Apuleius it is the sacrorum arcana.[373] The powerful cosmic force of love appears only in Apuleius and there it is embodied in the personality of Isis. The goddess describes herself to Lucius as “the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers divine, queen of all that are in hell, the principal of them that dwell in heaven, manifested above and under one form of all the gods and goddesses.”[374]

The whole story of Apuleius pictures, according to Riefstahl, the striving of the individual towards the All. The cosmic Eros has taken the place of the ancient Greek Eros, who was a terrible power, often identified with the blind, cruel Τύχη. To this cosmic Eros Apuleius has given the name of Isis.[375] Riefstahl to be sure pushes too far his theory of an underlying philosophical content in Apuleius, representing the romance “as an artistic unit ... and as an issue of the writer’s intellectual interests and personality,” “ein künstlerisch gestaltetes Anschauungsbild der existenziellen Lebensgrundlage des Neuplatonismus.”[376] Yet he does point out astutely the fundamental difference in Apuleius which makes his Metamorphoses another distinct type of romance, the subjective philosophical.

A word now in retrospect. By the end of the second century A.D., this new genre of literature, the romance, had developed to full stature. Already besides the author of the Ninus romance, Chariton, Lucian and Apuleius had written their stories, and perhaps also Xenophon of Ephesus. The different types of romance were already established: the historical romance, the love romance with its secondary interests of adventure and religion, satirical romance, the subjective philosophical romance. The pastoral was soon to be added. That is, in the second century of our era, a new type of literature was created, a type which was to be the most popular in the modern world.[377]

It is strange to find that so distinguished and perceptive an historian as Rostovtzeff in his histories of Rome does not recognize the significance for the early empire of this new literary form. In describing the second century, he writes:[378]

“Except for the troubled reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire under the Antonines enjoyed profound peace, broken only by distant wars on the frontier. Within the empire life appeared to be, as it had been in the first century, a steady forward movement for the diffusion and enrichment of civilization. The creative power of Rome seemed to have reached its zenith. There was, however, one disquieting symptom: after the brilliant age of the Flavians we note an almost complete sterility in literature and art. After Tacitus, and after the artists who worked for Trajan ... the decades that followed failed to produce a single great writer or a single notable monument of art....

“Even before the time of war and pestilence in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we mark in the whole of intellectual life not merely a pause but even a backward movement. The only exception is a revival of Greek rhetorical prose, perfect in form but monotonous in substance. Its chief representative is the sophist and rhetorician, Aristides, and his best work is his Panegyric on Rome. The Dialogues of Lucian are witty and interesting; he was a sceptic and a humorist who mocked all ideals both new and old. In the West there are only two names to be quoted, that of the satirist Juvenal, a gloomy and bitter observer of the dark side of human life, and that of Pliny the Younger, a shallow orator and a brilliant representative of the epistolary style. The rest both in Greece and in Italy are writers of handbooks, text-books, and of miscellaneous collections of entertaining stories for the amusement and instruction of the reader.”

Rostovtzeff’s omission of all reference to the Greek Romances (even to Lucian’s) and to Apuleius shows how completely they have been disregarded. Yet for a picture of the social life of the second and the third centuries and of the psychology of the men of the time the Greek Romances and Apuleius are a revelation.

The Roman empire had checked both political activity and oratory, indeed the orator had been succeeded by the rhetor in Greece and Rome. In the unified Mediterranean world trade had developed greatly and travellers had followed traders from one country to another, among them the lecturing sophists. The new lands visited had their curiosities and splendors so travellers’ tales multiplied with descriptions often worthy of a natural history. Men, diverted from the aims of personal ambition which military conquest or a democratic state had afforded, now sought release and excitement in the personal relations. Women achieved a new freedom and a new importance. The emotional life came to have a new interest and this led to the development of the prose romance.

From the east came, with rich material resources, a wealth of new ideas, a mingling of superstition, magic, religion and philosophy. Just as man’s emotions were turned inward so was his thought. The greatest new adventure became the quest for a solution of life itself. The romances of the early empire whatever their type reflect the age: its craving for excitement, its desire for adventure, its dread of brigands, its curiosity about the new, its interest in art, its wish for fulfillment of emotion in romantic love, its awareness of unsolved mysteries in man and the universe. With even the partial re-dating of the Greek Romances all sorts of subjects open up for investigation such as the apparatus of religion in the use of oracles, dreams, epiphanies; the interest in works of art; the new position of women. At any time in the future new fragments of romances may be discovered, or new dating of some of the old ones may be made possible. But even now while archaeological discoveries are suspended and publication of new editions is delayed, we may read and re-read these amazing old stories and see what escape literature was in the second and third centuries. The Greek Romances have much to tell us of the psychology of their authors, their characters, and their readers. They have a deep human value.

FOOTNOTES