The papers assembled in this volume explore a relatively new area in scholarship on the ancient novel: the relationship between an ostensibly non-philosophical genre and philosophy. This approach opens up several original themes for further research and debate. Platonising fiction was popular in the Second Sophistic and it took a variety of forms, ranging from the intertextual to the allegorical, and discussions of the origins of the novel-genre in antiquity have centred on the role of Socratic dialogue in general and Plato’s dialogues in particular as important precursors. The papers in this collection cover a variety of genres, ranging from the Greek and Roman novels to utopian narratives and fictional biographies, and seek by diverse methods to detect philosophical resonances in these texts.
Reviews
Zacharias Andreadakis in Latomus 72.2 (2017), 519-521
Acknowledgments VII
Introduction IX
OURANIA MOLYVIATI
Growing Backwards: The Cena Trimalchionis and Plato’s Aesthetics of Mimesis 1
PETER VON MÖLLENDORFF
Stoics in the ocean: Iambulus’ novel as philosophical fiction 19
URSULA BITTRICH
The Caring Gods: Daphnis and Chloe as Pronoia Literature 35
RICHARD STONEMAN
Tales of Utopia: Alexander, Cynics and Christian Ascetics 51
STEFANO JEDRKIEWICZ
Targeting the ‘intellectuals’: Dio of Prusa and the Vita Aesopi 65
WALTER ENGLERT
Only Halfway to Happiness: A Platonic Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass 81
RICHARD FLETCHER
Ex alienis uocibus: Platonic Demonology and Socratic Superstition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 93
VERNON PROVENCAL
The Platonic Eros of Art in the Ancient Greek Novel 109
STEVEN D. SMITH
Platonic Perversions: Horror and the Irrational in the Greek Novel 125
GARY REGER
Apollonios of Tyana and the Gymnoi of Ethiopia 141
Abstracts 159
Autobiographical Notes 165
Indexes 169
Index locoroum 169
General Index 173
