War and peace in the ancient Greek novel.

Abstract

This article investigates how war and peace are represented in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, the Ninus fragment, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, and Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. With the exception of the Cyropaedia and possibly the Aithiopika, these romances were composed at the height of the pax Romana when warfare between nations within the Roman Empire had declined. Nevertheless, war and battles constitute significant elements in these narratives, although they are often set in the remote past at the time of the Persian Empire and are frequently pastiches drawn from the historians. In Chariton, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, military episodes have an important narratological function. Attitudes to war vary: it is an intrusive element in the lives of most of the characters, and military bravado and imperial expansionism are sometimes viewed with irony. Occasionally the romances describe contemporary conflicts in considerable detail.