Editors’ Introduction Numerous sessions of ICAN 2008 were devoted to the Nachleben of the ancient novel in the ancient and medieval worlds, in the Renaissance, and in early modern and modern literature and culture. The papers presented at ICAN 2008 on reception were at the forefront of scholarship in the field, and stimulated scholarly research on the ancient novel and its influence over the centuries up to modern times, thus enriching not only Classics but also mod- ern languages and literatures, and related fields. The three sections into which this book is divided follow a chronological order. The first category (Receptions in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds), is headed by Michael von Albrecht, who begins his essay “Ovid and the Novel” by stressing the fact that he will not dwell on the figure of Ovid in novels of the modern period, due to the richness and amplitude of the material as well as to numerous methodological problems that such a discussion would create. Instead, he discusses in the first part of his essay the use ancient novelists made of Ovid’s text, and in the second part he focuses on the issue of Ovid’s poten- tial use of previous novels. He explores the links between the texts of Ovid, Petronius and Apuleius, and addresses some methodological dilemmas such as: “Does the later author enter into an intertextual dialogue with his prede- cessor or do the parallel passages attest other intentions? Does he play on his readers’ knowledge of his predecessor? Or does he refer to common generic traditions (in the case of Ovid: epic, elegy, epigram, didactic poetry etc.)? Or is he even simply using a famous phrase regardless of its original context? Does he intend to parody his predecessor or is he using the famous quotation mainly to establish contact with his readers? Does he consider the scope and perspective of Ovid’s text, or does he refer only to the myth as such or even to a given work of art (a sculpture, for instance) which represents a scene known to us from Ovid?”. In the second part, despite the fact that many Ovi- dian texts show an affinity with the novel or related genres, the difficulty of answering questions such as “Are such similarities owing to a direct know- ledge of novels? Are they conditioned by common models (e.g. epic)? How does the use of prose sources affect Ovid’s style? What is, more generally speaking, the relationship between poetic and prose diction in Ovid as com- Fictional Traces I, XI–XXII XII EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION pared to the novelists? “, leads the author to be cautious about establishing a close relationship between the novel and the literary genres treated by Ovid. In “Lucilius & Declamation: a Petronian Intertext in Juvenal’s First Sa- tire”, Christopher Nappa explores the influence of Petronius’ Satyrica 1-5 on Juvenal’s first satire. As the author stresses, “Though Juvenal’s intertextual relationships with his predecessors are a regular topic of scholarly discus- sion, the influence of Petronius on Juvenal has been more or less ignored, except in the most general terms.” After analyzing the first five chapters of the Satyrica, which contain a debate on education between Encolpius, who declaims against declamation, and Agamemnon, who cites parents as the reason for the defects in declamatory training, and who finishes his speech with a poem containing a reference to the “Lucilian low style”, Nappa, fol- lowing Collignon, Setaioli and Courtney, argues that this must point to a Lucilian reference, or even improvisation, by Encolpius in an earlier, now lost, portion of the novel. So, Nappa claims, “… an antithesis between Luci- lian satire and declamatory education underlies this whole section of the work.” In Juvenal’s first satire, that begins with his famous attack on poetry treating tired mythological themes (1.1-14), we find a similar antithesis, disguised by the fact that Juvenal introduces the Petronian antithesis through a denunciation not of declaimers but of poets. However, as the author stresses, “It is crucial to Juvenal’s attack that these poets become as bad and as unoriginal as they are because of their training in declamation.” But the role antithesis plays in each work is hardly evaluated, due either to the con- tradictory and hypocritical behavior of Encolpius, whose “performance throughout the novel is a rhetorical and poetic tour de force”, or to Juvenal, who “is argued away from his own Lucilian stance by the end of the poem.” Thus, in both Petronius and Juvenal we have a pattern (in each, Lucilian candour and frankness are proposed as a means of combatting the ill-effects of declamatory training), but, in practice, they end up closer to the declai- mers, and the poets who learned from them, than to the Lucilian ”reality”. To sum up Nappa’s thesis, “ Juvenal found inspiration in Petronius for his speaker’s failed attempt to oppose Lucilian frankness to the fantasies and irrelevancies of declamation.” The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, an early eighth-century forgery, allegedly written in the first person by a pagan “philosopher” named Aethi- cus, probably cannot be labeled a novel stricto sensu, but is an extensive piece of travel fiction, pseudo-biography and Philosophenroman. The text is presented as an epitome made by St. Jerome, who claims to have expurgated passages that were too fantastic to be believed, or ran contrary to Christian EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION XIII doctrine. In “The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister: One More Latin Novel?”, Michael W. Herren claims that the work is “a double forgery. A fictitious redactor claims to be editing the work of a fictitious author.” After examin- ing the sources, date and milieu of Aethicus’ Cosmography, Herren analyses the nature and the salient features of the work, whose largest portion is given over to a periplous, in which the exploits of Aethicus dominate. He observes that “Greek voyage tales are notorious for mixing real places and peoples with fictional ones, and the Cosmography adheres to the pattern.” Aethicus’ itinerary follows a large part of the route of Pythias of Massalia, and is peopled with the likes of Alexander the Great, the heroes of Greek mytholo- gy, and the early Roman kings. Herren stresses the hybrid nature of the work, dissecting the Cosmography (an imaginative jeu d’esprit) as a com- plex and interactive text, where motifs from earlier literary genres (the so- phistic novel, the sage’s biography, periplous, and dialogue), paganism and Christianity, fictional geography and paradoxography, reality and imagina- tion, fact and fiction, mythical and biblical paraphernalia, parody and se- riousness blend together and intertwine. Herren concludes that “It is difficult to draw conclusions about the overall purpose and message of the Cosmo- graphy. A work that appears to start out as a scholastic parody metamor- phoses into a kind of apocalypse envisioning the collapse of the Greek (Christian) world in the face of attacks from East and West… Aethicus, while decrying the collapse of Greek civilization, portrays himself and his family as victims of Greek (disguised as Roman) oppression and describes the devastation of his homeland.” The ancient novel enjoys a well-known afterlife in medieval Byzantine literature, but its impact on middle Byzantine art has been less extensively explored. In “Off the Page and Beyond Antiquity: Ancient Romance in Me- dieval Byzantine Silver”, Alicia Walker moves in this new direction. She examines the iconographic and ideological debt of a twelfth-century Byzan- tine silver-gilt censer (a pavilion-shaped container used for burning incense that is now preserved in the Treasury of the Basilica of San Marco in Ve- nice) to ancient romances and tackles the complex and fascinating relations between literature, society, ideology, and art, exploring romance themes in middle Byzantine artistic production. Focusing on the unusual degree of agency afforded to female figures in the iconographic program of the object, she addresses the Byzantine twelfth-century novel, Hysmine and Hysminias by Eustathios (or Eumathios) Makrembolites, and argues for the interweav- ing of romance conventions and the visual tradition. According to Walker, eroticizing elements, such as gender, sexuality and gardens (a favorite topos XIV EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION in the medieval Greek novels according to Littlewood and Barber), coexist in both the design of the San Marco censer and in the medieval Greek no- vels. As Walker states, “In the profoundly patriarchal, even misogynist cul- ture of medieval Byzantium, women wielded power rarely, in limited situa- tions, and to a minimal degree. Yet the imaginary realm of the novel offered leeway for alternative female types, who operated outside the normal pro- scriptions of Byzantine society.” However, this does not mean that the By- zantine novel and its iconographic analogue subvert Byzantine conventions of sexual power dynamics. On the contrary, the ethical concern for exem- plary behavior and the potential circulation of moralizing values between secular and sacred objects and texts continues the late antique culture of paideia and consistently realigns the medieval novels and their visual reflec- tions with Byzantine social norms. Walker concludes that “This perspective raises appreciation for the object’s highly interactive nature. Rather than a mere decoration, it invited the viewer’s active engagement with its icono- graphic program and the narratives it recalled.” The next two essays are connected with the reception of the Ancient Novel in Byzantine literature. “The Ismenias Passage in the Byzantine Alex- ander Poem” by Willem J. Aerts revolves around the reception of the Alex- ander Romance in the Byzantine world, particularly in the 14th century By- zantine Alexander Poem (BAP), that is a versification of the original prose narratives, (mostly) versions A and B. Aerts focuses on the episode devoted to Alexander the Great’s expedition against Thebes, which is a poem recited by a famous musician, Ismenias, who tries desperately to prevent Alexander from his destructive plans by suggesting that he cannot destroy a city that was protected by so many of his godly ancestors.