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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
Reading Heliodorus’ Aethiopica
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
Reading Heliodorus’
Aethiopica
Edited by
IA N R E PAT H A N D T I M W H I T M A R SH
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951891
ISBN 978–0–19–879254–3
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198792543.001.0001
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
For John Morgan, in admiration and affection
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
Contents
List of Contributorsix
1. Introduction: Reading Heliodorus 1
Tim Whitmarsh
2. Odyssean and Herodotean Threads in the Tainia of
Heliodorus’ Opening Chapters (1.1–5) 7
Ewen Bowie
3. Visualizing Assemblages: Demaenete, Thisbe’s Bed-Trick,
and the Creation of Charicleia (1.15–17) 20
Helen Morales
4. Thisbe’s Intrigue: A Plot between Deception and Illusion
(1.15–17)39
Jonas Grethlein
5. Theagenes’ Second Lament (2.4) 52
Stephen M. Trzaskoma
6. Cnemon Meets Calasiris (2.21–2) 70
Alain Billault
7. Allegory, Recognition, and Identity: The Egyptian Homer in
Context (3.11.5–15.1) 80
Lawrence Kim
8. The Mustering of the Delphians (4.19–21) 102
Tim Whitmarsh
9. Calasiris on Zacynthus and His Dream of Odysseus (5.17–22) 116
Michael Paschalis
10. Life, the Cosmos, and Everything (5.26–34) 129
Ken Dowden
11. On the Road Again (6.1–4) 146
Silvia Montiglio
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
viii Contents
12. Charicleia’s Dark Night of the Soul (6.8–11) 161
David Konstan
13. Epic into Drama (7.6–8) 174
Richard Hunter
14. Enter Arsace and Her Entourage! Lust, Gender, Ethnicity,
and Class at the Persian Court (Books 7 and 8) 186
Froma I. Zeitlin
15. Sending the Reader Round the Bend (8.14–17) 203
Ian Repath
16. The Siege of Syene: Ekphrasis and Imagination (9.3) 221
Ruth Webb
17. Sphragis 1: To Infinity and Beyond (10.41.4) 246
Tim Whitmarsh
18. Sphragis 2: The Limits of Reality and the End of the Novel
(10.41.3–4)256
Ian Repath
References 271
Index Locorum 289
General Index 299
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List of Contributors
Alain Billault is Professor of Greek Emeritus at Sorbonne Université.
Ewen Bowie is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and a Fellow Emeritus
of Corpus Christi College.
Ken Dowden is Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Birmingham.
Jonas Grethlein is Professor of Greek Literature at Heidelberg University.
Richard Hunter FBA is Regius Professor of Greek Emeritus and Fellow of Trinity
College, University of Cambridge.
Lawrence Kim is Professor of Classical Studies at Trinity University.
David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University.
Silvia Montiglio is Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University.
Helen Morales is Argyropoulos Professor of Hellenic Studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
Michael Paschalis is Professor Emeritus at the University of Crete.
Ian Repath is Senior Lecturer at Swansea University.
Stephen M. Trzaskoma is Professor and Director of the Center for the Humanities
at the University of New Hampshire.
Ruth Webb is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Lille.
Tim Whitmarsh FBA is A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University
of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John’s College.
Froma I. Zeitlin is Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature Emerita at
Princeton University.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
1
Introduction
Reading Heliodorus
Tim Whitmarsh
There was a time when scholars of Greek literature used to dismiss the
Greek romances as easy reading to fatten up the intellectually moribund as
they languished under the pax Romana.1 A low estimation of the literary
quality of the romances was accompanied by cavalier assumptions about
the demographic make-up of the readership, summed up in Ben Edwin
Perry’s notorious assessment that the romance was ‘melodrama for the edi-
fication of children and the poor-in-spirit . . . adapted to the taste and under-
standing of uncultivated or frivolous-minded people’.2 That model has not
been sustainable for many years: particularly since the 1990s, scholars have
demonstrated how many intellectual demands these texts place upon their
readers.3 The romances, which themselves vary enormously in terms of
sophistication and style, no doubt attracted a diverse readership; but there
is no reason whatsoever to doubt that women and men of the highest
intellectual sophistication found richness and depth in these texts. As
Stephen M. Trzaskoma’s contribution to this volume shows, we are only
now beginning to comprehend just how extensively the romance-writers
shaped the world-view of those around them.
1 ‘When, as an undergraduate in the 1970s, I first declared my interest in doing my doctoral
research in the area of the Greek novel, I was reassured, in all kindness, by a very senior Oxford
classicist that I need not feel downhearted at the prospect of spending three whole years read-
ing silly love stories, because there were some very interesting uses of the optative to be dis
covered in Heliodoros’ (Morgan 1996: 63).
2 Perry 1967: 5 (the phrase ‘the poor in spirit’ alludes to Matt. 5:3).
3 On the social contexts for the production and reception of the Greek romances see
Bowie 1994; Stephens 1994; Morgan 1995; Cavallo 1996. For an insightful discussion of the
relationship scholars have assumed between the alleged low quality of the literature and the
low standing of the readership, with an emphasis on gender, see Egger 1999: 108–12.
Tim Whitmarsh, Introduction: Reading Heliodorus In: Reading Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. Edited by: Ian Repath and
Tim Whitmarsh, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198792543.003.0001
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
2 Introduction
There are five romances that survive in full: Xenophon’s Ephesian
Adventures of Anthia and Habrocomes and Chariton’s Callirhoe (both
probably first century ce), Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (second
century), Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (second or third century), and
Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Adventures of Charicleia and Theagenes (probably
fourth century).4 In the case of the first four of these (chronologically speak-
ing), it is just about possible to see how earlier generations of scholars might
have misread them as simple tales for simple souls. Take Daphnis and Chloe,
the tale of two young rustics who fall in love, but in their hopeless naivety
lack the intellectual resources to consummate their desire. This story was
idolized by Europeans Romantics, who found in it a perfect depiction of
pure innocence; this has given Longus’ tale a singular prominence among
the romances, which brought it to the attention of creative artists as diverse as
Ravel, Chagall, and Mishima. Recent scholars, however, have emphasized that
pastoral, romantic charm is only one aspect of an infinitely more complex
text, a parable, alternately comic and religiose, about the relationship between
urban wealth and rustic poverty, the (gendered) violence of socialization,
the play of nature and nurture, and literary self-reflexivity.5
To read Longus’ text as a simple, sweet tale is an act of gross simplifica-
tion, for sure; but history shows that it is quite possible to do so. To read
Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Adventures of Charicleia and Theagenes (convention-
ally shortened to ‘the Aethiopica’) in this way, however, would be impos
sible. This is a labyrinthine text composed in arguably the most challenging
prose of any ancient Greco-Roman literary writer. As Otto Mazal noted,
Heliodorus’ extravagant syntax and bejewelled lexis mirror the complexities
of his narrative.6 In fact one early reader, and one alone, seems to have
claimed it to be an easy read. Photius, the tirelessly bibliophagic ninth-
century bishop of Constantinople, described it as ‘brimming with sweet
simplicity’ (ἀφελείᾳ καὶ γλυκύτητι πλεονάζει); Heliodorus’ clauses, he com-
mented, are balanced, compact, and brief (περίοδοι σύμμετροι καὶ πρὸς τὸ
βραχύτερον οἷα δὴ συστελλόμεναι).7 At first sight this is inexplicable: the
only possible reason might be that Photius may have found Heliodorus
mildly easier than the tortuous intricacies of Byzantine theology. In fact,
however, Photius’ assessment is probably based not on a hard-nosed stylom
etry but on a moral judgement of the Aethiopica’s sexual character: when
4 For general introductions see Morgan and Stoneman eds 1994; Schmeling ed. 2003;
Whitmarsh ed. 2008; Cueva and Byrne eds 2014.
5 Morgan 2004a; Bowie 2019. 6 Mazal 1958. 7 Phot. Bibl. Cod. 73 50a.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
Tim Whitmarsh 3
he writes of the ‘purity’ of Heliodorus’ expression (λέξεσί τε εὐσήμοις καὶ
καθαραῖς), for example, he borrows an epithet used in the text itself of
Charicleia, the virtuous heroine.8 Stylistic and moral assessments have
become entangled here. Correspondingly, Photius saw a contrast between
the purity of the Aethiopica and ‘the excessively disgraceful, impure nature’
(τό γε λίαν ὑπέραισχρον καὶ ἀκάθαρτον) of Achilles Tatius.9
Other ancient readers clearly shared modern readers’ impressions of
Heliodorus as a challenging but rewarding stylist.10 In the eleventh century,
in the early years of the Comnenian revival of the Byzantine Empire (which
inspired a literary renaissance and a recovery of classical learning), the his-
torian and philosopher Michael Psellos returned to the comparison between
Heliodorus and Achilles. Like Photius, Psellos preferred Heliodorus on
moral grounds, but he also observed the greater complexities. The
Aethiopica, thought Psellos, ‘is of loftier design, thanks to its innovative
phrasing’ (τῇ καινοτομίᾳ τῆς φράσεως πρὸς τὸ ὑψηλότερον συγκεκρότηται);
Heliodorus uses the arts of Isocrates and Demosthenes, famously grandiose
writers (presumably the implication here is that Achilles, by contrast, fol-
lows the ‘simple style’ of Lysias). But it is not just a question of style. Psellos
also acknowledges (in colourful language) the narrative sophistication that
recent scholars have done so much to expose:
At first the reader thinks that there is a lot of excess material; but as the
story unfurls, he will marvel at the author’s organization of his text (τὴν
οἰκονομίαν τοῦ συγγεγραφότος). The beginning of the text looks like coiled
snakes, concealing their heads inside the nest while the rest of the body
pokes out.
It is not just that Heliodorus begins in medias res, confusing the reader by
withholding crucial information; it is also that multiple, unresolved plot
lines appear almost simultaneously. Charicleia, Theagenes, Thyamis,
Cnemon, Thisbe, Calasiris, and Nausicles are all introduced in the opening
two books, and all have interesting backstories that are either partially or
completely obscured at this early stage. Conversely, Psellos notes, Heliodorus
makes the middle of the story into a beginning (ἀρχὴν πεποίηται τὴν
μεσότητα). As with the Odyssey, to which the Aethiopica repeatedly looks,
8 Phot. Bibl. Cod. 73 50a. 9 Phot. Bibl. Cod. 88 66a.
10 In general on Heliodorus’ Byzantine reception, see Gärtner 1969; Agapitos 1998; Nilsson
and Zagklas 2017; and Trzaskoma in this volume.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
4 Introduction
the narrative falls into two halves, a complex first one (with multiple plot
lines and flashback narrative) and a more linear second one, during which
the organization (οἰκονομία) becomes clear.
Ancient readers found Heliodorus fascinating for another reason. There
are hints in the Aethiopica itself that invite an allegorical reading.11 At least
one ancient reader accepted the invitation, and read Charicleia’s story as a
disguised parable of the journey of the soul through life. ‘Philip the
Philosopher’ is thought by many to have been a nom de plume of the twelfth-
century Philagathos of Cerami,12 and his reading reflects the way the text
provokes multi-layered readings, of a kind which feature prominently in
this volume.
For modern readers, the text’s complexity takes its cue from its portrayal
of character, particularly that of the priest Calasiris, who seems to combine
high-minded virtue and duplicitousness in equal measure.13 Since Calasiris
is a major narrator, the question of his moral probity is inseparable from
that of the trustworthiness of the stories he tells—especially since he notori-
ously tells two conflicting tales of how he discovered the truth of Charicleia’s
origins.14 Calasiris emerges from much modern scholarship as an Odyssean
figure whose ambiguities model those of the text itself.
The endeavour to make sense of this extraordinary author is an ongoing
one. In 1982, Jack Winkler wrote that ‘the Aithiopika is an act of pure play,
yet a play which rehearses vital processes by which we must live in reality—
interpretation, reading, and making a provisional sense of things’.15 In 1998,
Richard Hunter asked whether it is ‘beyond interpretation’.16 This emphasis
upon the lability of the text, its stubborn refusal to yield any final meaning,
might be thought characteristic of the postmodern phase of literary
criticism, and thus perhaps even obsolescent. Yet there is no sign of any
slowdown; indeed, readers are currently unearthing ever deeper layers of
sophistication. Heliodorus’ handling of narrative,17 fictionality,18 allusion,19
11 Most 2007.
12 The text is printed in Colonna 1938 and Bianchi 2006. See further Trzaskoma in
this volume.
13 Especially since Winkler 1982; see also Sandy 1982b; de Temmerman 2014: 250–7; and
Kim 2019.
14 The starting point for Winkler 1982; see further Baumbach 1997, 2008; Billault 2015.
15 Winkler 1982: 158. 16 Hunter 1998a.
17 Morgan 1998, 2004b, 2007a, 2007b, 2012a; Montiglio 2013a; Andreadakis 2016;
Kruchió 2018a, 2018b; Palone 2020.
18 Jackson 2016.
19 Elmer 2008; Telò 2011; Tagliabue 2015, 2016; Castrucci 2017: 93–9; Kasprzyk 2017;
Ciocani 2018; Lefteratou 2018; Zanetto 2018; Krauss 2021 (exploring ‘horizontal’ intertexts in
the fourth-century world).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
Tim Whitmarsh 5
aesthetic experience,20 and ethics21 have all come under ever-more intense
scrutiny.
Modern readers have also discovered new depths in Heliodorus’ treat-
ment of identity, and in particular what we have come to call ‘race’. A text
that focuses on a white girl born of black parents has an obvious allure in an
age in which skin pigmentation has been scrutinized as (arguably) never
been before. Already in the early years of the twentieth century, the cele-
brated African-American novelist Pauline Hopkins cited the Aethiopica as
an early instance of Afrocentrism.22 More recently, however, Charicleia’s
colouring has been seen more as a paradox or a conundrum: something
that calls, once again, for close interpretation, and turns the act of reading
identity from skin colour into a puzzle.23 And a highly politicized puzzle,
what is more: in the Aethiopica Charicleia’s implausible acceptance as an
Ethiopian in spite of her white skin takes place in front of the Ethiopian
populace, and catalyses a revolution in religious practice (the abolition of
human sacrifice). ‘The parallel between a social and legal scandal and the
scandal of narrative credibility’, writes Terence Cave, ‘is all but explicit
here’.24 Heliodorus’ treatment of gender too has been subjected to scrutiny:
some have found his handling of the resourceful and energetic Charicleia
indicative of a constructive gynocentrism;25 others have disputed this
appraisal, pointing instead to his stereotyped presentation of sexually appe-
titive older women,26 the creation of Charicleia as a complex, enigmatic fig-
ure from the cloth of earlier literature,27 and her reduction to the status of
tradeable commodity.28 His relationship to Christianity too has been much
disputed: some see points of continuity,29 others sharp differentiation.30
Each generation finds new treasure in the Aethiopica, a text that seems
never to stop giving to those prepared to dig new mines. This volume brings
together an international team of Heliodorean specialists to explore the
pleasures, subtleties, nuances, and difficulties of reading the Aethiopica at
20 Grethlein 2017: 74–130. 21 Bird 2017, 2019, 2020.
22 Hopkins 1905: 16, with Selden 1998: 204–8. For a comparative reading of Hopkins’s Of
One Blood and the Aethiopica, see Harris 2001.
23 Whitmarsh 1998; Perkins 1999; Stephens 2008; Lye 2016; Derbew 2022 (I am grateful to
the author for advance sight of a version of her Heliodorus chapter); D’Alconzo 2019.
24 Cave 1988: 19. 25 e.g. Johne 1987; Egger 1999: 134–6.
26 See Zeitlin in this volume, with further literature.
27 Papadimitropoulos 2017; Capettini 2018; Lefteratou 2018; Morales in this volume.
28 Lefteratou 2019 (and more generally on Heliodorus’ use of the trade theme Sánchez
Hernández 2018).
29 e.g. Ramelli 2002; Andújar 2013; Krauss 2021.
30 e.g. Bargheer 1999; Morgan 2005.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/02/22, SPi
6 Introduction
the level of detail. Each contributor has chosen a specific passage on which
to focus; each of the ten books is covered. The aim has been not to define a
single methodology for reading this text but to showcase the exuberant
range of reading practices adopted by scholars. Some contributors have
selected shorter passages, some longer; some have focused narrowly on the
passages in question, others have ranged more freely. Indeed, to underline
both the richness of the text and the variety of approaches, on two occasions,
two contributors (Morales and Grethlein; Whitmarsh and Repath) read the
same passage, coming to instructively different conclusions.
In commissioning these chapters, the editors have sought out a distin-
guished, international cast list. The omission of one name from the contents
list, however, will strike all who know the field as an obvious absence.
Despite the inevitable cost to the volume, that omission was quite inten-
tional: this volume is dedicated to John Morgan by his friends, colleagues,
collaborators, and students, in boundless gratitude for over forty years of
Heliodorean inspiration and insight. One need only see how often his work
is referred to over the course of the following chapters to appreciate his deep
and lasting influence on the scholarship on the Aethiopica: the editors hope
this volume will manage to repay some small part of the debt that all the
contributors, and many others, feel.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/02/22, SPi
2
Odyssean and Herodotean Threads in
the Tainia of Heliodorus’ Opening
Chapters (1.1–5)
Ewen Bowie
On an Egyptian beach, brigands encounter a mysterious and beautiful
young woman, holding a bow, but wholly absorbed in tending a handsome,
wounded youth, and surrounded by dead men variously slaughtered. The
bandits’ plundering of the nearby ship’s high-value cargo is interrupted by
another, larger group of robbers. These use their only two horses to convey
the young people to their community, living in huts or boats in lake-edge
marshland, their babies fed on sun-roasted fish and tethered to prevent
drowning.1
Unlike the other four members of the famous five, Heliodorus opens
with no indication of his couple’s origins or identity, though by 1.3 his
description of the unmanageably beautiful κόρη and the handsome ephebic
youth whom she tends has at least disclosed to readers that this is a couple.2
He also offers only a brief, albeit precise indication of where the scene is set:
‘at the outpouring of the Nile and its mouth that is called that of the Heracleion’
(κατ᾽ ἐκβολὰς τοῦ Νείλου καὶ στόμα τὸ καλούμενον Ἡρακλεωτικόν, 1.1.1).
The reason for its name, as will have been known to readers of Herodotus’
1 For discussions of 1.1 and its ekphrastic dimension, see inter alia Feuillâtre 1966;
Winkler 1982: 95–114; Bartsch 1989: 47–50; Morgan 1991; Birchall 1996b; Winkler 2000–1;
Whitmarsh 2002: 116–19; Webb 2009: 181; Telò 2011; Whitmarsh 2011: 108–9; Tagliabue 2015;
Lefteratou 2018; Zanetto 2018. For comparisons with cinematographic technique, see
Bühler 1976; Morgan 1991: 86; Winkler 2000–1; Fusillo 2007: 131–2. On the representations of
the scene in modern art, see Stechow 1953.
2 Despite the identification of the κόρη as a goddess attributed to some of the bandits I think
the term κόρη and the description of the gravely wounded and barely conscious Theagenes
excludes the suggestion of Wasdin 2019: 388 that for a reader the two may be taken to be ‘divine
siblings or romantic partners’.
Ewen Bowie, Odyssean and Herodotean Threads in the Tainia of Heliodorus’ Opening Chapters (1.1–5)
In: Reading Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. Edited by: Ian Repath and Tim Whitmarsh, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198792543.003.0002
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/02/22, SPi
8 Odyssean and Herodotean Threads
version of the story of Helen’s time in Egypt (a story that is one of the many
ancestors of that of Charicleia),3 was a temple of Heracles. The temple and
associated city, Thonis–Heracleion, and its close links with another city that
will turn out to be important for the Aethiopica, Naucratis, are now much
better understood after the spectacular results of Franck Goddio’s under
water archaeology.4 As was noted by John Morgan in his introduction to his
translation,5 the Nile’s Heracleotic mouth is very close to the site of
Alexandria. The fact that Heliodorus’ chosen mode of reference here says
nothing of the city of Alexandria and that as the story unfolds we encounter
brigand-ridden marshlands and lakescapes but no city until the mention of
Memphis (1.18.4) together allow the reader to infer that the novel’s action is
imagined to precede Alexandria’s foundation. At the same time the refer-
ences to the institutions of democratic Athens in Cnemon’s inset narrative—
the Areopagus (1.9.1) and the ekklēsia, albeit anachronistically functioning
as a court (1.13.1)—point her to the period after the end of the Peisistratid
tyranny in 511–510 bc.6 But throughout Aethiopica Book 1, and for most of
Book 2, the events narrated are compatible with any date between the late
sixth century and the conquests of Alexander of Macedon in the 330s bc, a
temporal frame that receives final confirmation, but no further precision,
from the reader’s discovery (at 2.24.2) that Egypt is currently ruled by a
Persian satrap, Oroondates.7
For a reader familiar with Herodotus—and much in the Aethiopica
suggests that Heliodorus envisaged such a reader8—the earlier part of that
period is a time at which Egypt was part of the Persian Empire (as of course
it still was after the years covered by Herodotus’ Enquiries). Even before
the mention of Oroondates’ position as satrap, then, and indeed as early as
Cnemon’s logos set in ‘classical’ Athens, a reader may expect that the dramatis
personae will include not simply pirates, Egyptian boukoloi and brigands,
3 For the reworking of major myths by the novelists, see Lefteratou 2018.
4 See Robinson and Goddio 2015. The mouth was sometimes called Naucratitic: Plin.
HN 5.64.
5 Morgan 1989c: 350.
6 The Panathenaea festival (1.10.1) is not similarly diagnostic since its foundation happened
no later than the 560s bc.
7 Oroondates (if correctly transmitted, which with sixty-three instances in the text is
surely the case) is not a bad shot at a Persian name: cf. the previously unattested Iranian
name Ὀροντοδάτης from Xanthos in Lycia, first century ad, reported by SEG 46.1723. The edi-
tors compare Ὀροντοβάτης and Ὀροντοπάτης, all these based on Orontes, of which a few cases
are attested in the Greek world (one in Cyprus; six in northern Greece and Pontus in LGPN vol.
4). I am grateful to Andrej Petrovic for directing me to this item.
8 Cf. Elmer 2008.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/02/22, SPi
Ewen Bowie 9
and young Greek prisoners, but also representatives of the occupying
power, Persians.
This bears upon a reader’s interpretation of the opening scene. Mario
Telò has demonstrated in detail that Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors
(μνηστηροφονία) is an important intertext for this tableau, and Aldo
Tagliabue has convincingly argued that the visual qualities of Heliodorus’
ekphrasis suggest that he himself possessed, and expected some of his
readers to possess, some knowledge of the treatments of this scene in paint-
ing and sculpture.9 Tagliabue may be right to think that sarcophagi will
have been one channel by which some readers might know visual represen-
tations of the story, but the paintings on classical vases that he also men-
tions, albeit important for our modern reconstruction of iconographic
traditions, are very unlikely to be known in this period. Moreover, as
Tagliabue points out, both these media regularly present the slaughter of the
suitors in progress, and only one ancient treatment is so far known which
portrayed Odysseus after the conflict had ended, just as Charicleia is pre-
sented after the slaughter on the beach has ceased. To me that treatment
seems to be highly relevant to the opening of the Aethiopica. This was a
painting by Polygnotus, probably painted soon after 479 bc, and displayed
in the temple of Athena Areia at Plataea which was constructed with the
proceeds of the Plataean spoils from the battle of Marathon:10
Πλαταιεῦσι δὲ Ἀθηνᾶς ἐπίκλησιν Ἀρείας ἐστὶν ἱερόν· ᾠκοδομήθη δὲ ἀπὸ
λαφύρων ἃ τῆς μάχης σφίσιν Ἀθηναῖοι τῆς Μαραθῶνι ἀπένειμαν. τὸ μὲν δὴ
ἄγαλμα ξόανόν ἐστιν ἐπίχρυσον, πρόσωπον δέ οἱ καὶ χεῖρες ἄκραι καὶ πόδες
λίθου τοῦ Πεντελησίου εἰσί· μέγεθος μὲν οὐ πολὺ δή τι ἀποδεῖ τῆς ἐν
ἀκροπόλει χαλκῆς, ἣν καὶ αὐτὴν Ἀθηναῖοι τοῦ Μαραθῶνι ἀπαρχὴν ἀγῶνος
ἀνέθηκαν, Φειδίας δὲ καὶ Πλαταιεῦσιν ἦν ὁ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς τὸ ἄγαλμα ποιήσας.
γραφαὶ δέ εἰσιν ἐν τῷ ναῷ Πολυγνώτου μὲν Ὀδυσσεὺς τοὺς μνηστῆρας ἤδη
κατειργασμένος, Ὀνασία δὲ Ἀδράστου καὶ Ἀργείων ἐπὶ Θήβας ἡ προτέρα
στρατεία. αὗται μὲν δή εἰσιν ἐπὶ τοῦ προνάου τῶν τοίχων αἱ γραφαί, κεῖται
9 Telò 2011; Tagliabue 2015; cf. Zanetto 2018. For the importance of comparisons to works
of art in Heliodoran writing, see Whitmarsh 2002: esp. 112–18, and for the possibility that
Charicleia’s posture may recall a well-known statue of Penelope (the Vatican ‘Penelope’), see
ibid. 116; see however Lefteratou 2018.
10 Roscino 2010: 15. Zanetto 2018: 219–20 notes that this painting described the ‘outcome of
the slaughter’ but does not emphasize enough how that and its description by Pausanias make
it a prime candidate for Heliodoran intervisuality, nor does he note the possible relevance of
the context of its display at Plataea.
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