The Romance of the Novel

Students of the ancient world are falling for the ancient Greek and Latin novels in increasing numbers, a state of affairs of which there were few intimations a generation ago. To be sure, theSatyricaof Petronius and theMetamorphosesof Apuleius were given standing-room on the edge of the classical canon, though few scholars and fewer students made the acquaintance of the complete texts. Encounters were usually restricted to theCena TrimalchionisandCupid and Psyche, and linguistic oddities were the chief topics of polite conversation (nothing evil in this, so long as other topics are not barred). There were of course exceptions, like Eduard Fraenkel's Oxford seminar on Petronius in 1958/9, where study of language was but one of many techniques harnessed to the establishment and interpretation of the whole text. The Greek novels were still wallflowers: partly, no doubt, because they constituted only a small portion of a vast Greek prose literature written in a period generally judged decadent, whereas the Latin novels were welcome and substantial contributors to the comparatively exiguous remains of Latin prose written by Romans at their imperial acme. No explosion of interest had followed Rohde'sDer griechische Roman und seine Vorläuferof 1876, and although some important work was done on establishment and interpretation of texts and on the development of the genre, scholars active in this field were isolated from each other and their results made little impact on their colleagues. Furthermore much of that work was focused, like Rohde's, on trying to elucidate the genre's origins.