15. FRAGMENTS of LOST NOVELS 1 Susan Stephens No Survey
15. FRAGMENTS OF LOST NOVELS 1
Susan Stephens
No survey of ancient fiction can be complete without some consid eration of the body of material that has been lost to us, fragments of which increase at least threefold our inventory of Greek novels. Knowledge about these lost texts has been transmitted in several ways. An invaluable source of information has been the 9th century patri arch of Constantinople, Photius, who, in addition t9 summarizing the extant novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, left us epitomes of two others: a text that Photius, at least, considered to be the flns et oligo of the novel-writing enterprise, Antonius Diogenes' Incredible 7hings B~ond 7hule, and Iamblichus's Babyloniaca. A variety of other ancient sources provides testimony about the existence of ancient fictional works and even supplies us with quotations: John Lydus's On Months and Porphyry's Life if Iythagoras have given us several pages from Antonius Diogenes; the Souda Lexicon has provided a series of short fragments attributed to Iamblichus's Babyloniaca and Persian lexica an epitome as well as fragments from a-,Persian version of Metiochus and Parthenope, which now help to reconstruct the Greek original. Additionally we may learn something from incidental remarks in Lucian or from the existence of pavement mosaics whose subject matter was inspired by novels. 2 But by far, the largest and most varied supply of new material has been papyri from the sands of Egypt, recovery of which began in the 19th century. First to appear at the end of the century were eight columns from a romantic narrative about the young king of Nineveh, the legendary Ninus. This was followed in rapid fashion by the publication of other fragments, named by their editors for their main characters- Calligone, a tale set in the region of the Black Sea, Chione ("Snow White"), a princess plotting to escape a forced marital alliance, Metiochus and Parthenope, and Herpyllis. Finds in this century have yielded the sensational events of Lollianus's
1 The views presented here are based on the analyses of novel fragments to be found in 'Stephens-Winkler (1995). Greek texts and translations of the fragments are also--taken from that work. Line numbers for Greek texts are the same for all editions. 2 For the most recent discussion of these mosaics, see Quet (1992). 656 SUSAN STEPHENS
Phoenicica, the lolaus fragment, further fragments of Metiochus and Parthenope, Sesonchosis, a Hellenized romantic adventure about the leg endary king of Egypt, as well as a handful of lesser pieces. Papyrus fragments of novels range in date from the first century AD. (Ninus) to , the fourth century AD. (Sesonchosis)Greek literature and is not necessarily correlated to an increase or decline in novel writing as a cultural phenomenon. Working with fragments of any genre presents limitations, but for novels, where even a relatively large fragment of several columns can represent only a tiny fraction of the whole text, reconstruction is not only difficult, but frequently idiosyncratic. The limited glimpse of characters and plot often encourage an editor to make a judgment or even indulge in an occasional flight of fancy that subsequent edi tors may regard, or new finds prove, misguided. The earliest pub lished fragment of Sesonchosis, for example, was identified as Egyptian history,3 and it was only recognized as belonging to a novel when another portion of the same papyrus came to light. F. Zimmermann identified P.0-9'.416 as belonging to Arrian's Life if Tillorobus4 and it is so-listed in the standard handbook, Pack's Greek and Lat~n Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt, although there is nothing about the papyrus, apart from the rather dubious reading of 'ttL to permit such an identification. In the ensuing assessment of the range and signifi cance of papyrus contributions to our understanding of the ancient novel as a whole, I have attempted to err on the conservative side, outlining positions in the main for which there is considerable con sensus. On issues where there is genuine disagreement, I have tried to present each side of the argument. The following discussion is focused on broadly interpretative issues rather than grammatical par ticularities of the text or the reconstruction of scenes, although occa sionally the two areas intersect. Fragmentary novels seem to fall into four fairly distinct, but occa-
3 See Rea (1962) 134--136. 4 Zimmermann (1935). Our only information about this supposedly lost work comes from a comment in Lucian's Alexander §2: "He- [sc. An-ian] thought it appro priate to record the life of Tillorobus the bandit."