Product Description

'Her mouth was like the bloom of a rose, when the rose begins to part the lips of its petals. As soon as I saw, I was done for...All my dreams were of Leucippe.' Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon is the most bizarre and risqué of the five 'Greek novels' of idealized love between boy and girl that survive from the period of the Roman empire. Stretching the capacity of the genre to its limits, Achilles' narrative covers adultery, violence, evisceration, pederasty, virginity-testing, and (of course) an improbable happy ending. Ingenious and sophisticated in conception, Leucippe and Clitophon is in execution at once subtle, stylish, moving, brash, tasteless, and obscene. This new translation aims to capture Achilles' writing in all its exuberant variety.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #492512 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Racy picaresque adventure set in C2nd Roman empire
Written in the late second century under the Roman empire, Leucippe and Clitophon was one of the most popular Greek romances. In lots of ways it epitomises the genre though it is undoubtedly racier with more overt sexual content than prose romances such as Daphnis and Chloe.

Full of elopements, shipwrecks, pirates, love potions, `dead' lovers coming back to life, it is more adventurous and less emotional than some other prose romances. The eroticism is treated playfully, though it is amusing to know that earlier translators used to put the `dirty bits' into Latin!

Picaresque in tone, it is clear to see the influence this exerted on later Renaissance romance such as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (Oxford World's Classics) and Sidney's superlative The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia) (Oxford World's Classics); but it also influences the development of the novel proper such as Don Quixote (Penguin Classics).

But apart from its literary impact, this is worth reading for itself and for its depiction of life under the Hellenistic empire. Fun, pacy and entertaining, this gives an important insight into everyday life in the Greek east.