Achilles Tatius' Leukippe and Kleitophon

2021 ◽  
pp. 205-229
Author(s):  
Jean Alvares
Keyword(s):  
Achilles Tatius

More Tears in Achilles Tatius (7.4.3–6)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Single Line ◽  
Delayed Effects ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Achilles Tatius

A further passage shows the imagination and craft of Achilles Tatius taken to a still greater degree, as he depicts the hero Cleitophon at the terrible crisis of believing his beloved to be dead. The narrative is suspended as the writer develops, at remarkable length, a psychological and physiological observation on delayed effects. Where Heliodorus had heaped up imagery with abundance, Achilles develops with skilled organization a single line of thought and imagery, developing it and enriching it as he goes. Rhythm plays a vital part in this remarkable union of tight order and inventive imagination. The expansion and the deployment of science have a Plutarchan element; but the fantasy and the tautness create something quite different out of rhythm.

Some Tears in Achilles Tatius (Achilles 6.7.3–7)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Self Control ◽  
First Person ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Mind

Another novelist provides in some respects a point in between Chariton and Heliodorus. His elaborate expatiation on tears and the lover put rhythm at the service of an intricate treatment of the mind and body, and a shrewd depiction of amorous self-control and manipulation. The first-person narrative adds a further stratum of sophistication to this handling of the speaker’s rival and enemy. Achilles Tatius demonstrates further, in contrast with Chariton, the range of possibilities for the exploitation of rhythm seen already in the difference of Chariton and Plutarch. Comparison with Heliodorus brings out Achilles’ elegance.

Achilles Tatius and the Destruction of Bodies

2021 ◽  
pp. 221-254
Author(s):  
Daniel Jolowicz
Keyword(s):  
Bellum Civile ◽  
Achilles Tatius

Chapter 6 argues that Achilles is attracted to the gallery of bodily carnage on offer in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and Seneca’s Phaedra, as part of his apparent obsession with the vulnerability of human bodies and their susceptibility to wounding. It makes four distinct arguments. Section 6.2 makes the case that the episode of Charicles’ death in Achilles manifests strong indications of interaction with the accounts of the gruesome death of Hippolytus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Phaedra. Section 6.3 demonstrates that Achilles (or rather Clitophon) exhibits a recurrent interest in bodily dismemberment and reconstitution analogous to that in Ovid and Neronian poetry (especially Lucan). Section 6.4 argues that the decapitation of ‘Leucippe’ in Book 5 not only is modelled on the similar fate of the historical Pompeius Magnus but also combines the accounts of this event found in Lucan and Plutarch. These sections suggest that Achilles is alive to developments in Neronian literature that privilege the aesthetics of gore and bodily destruction, and which reflect the Roman imperial taste for violence more generally (perhaps energized by the institution of the amphitheatre). Section 6.5 elaborates a number of ways in which Achilles is attracted to the arresting style and verbal wit of Ovid, especially in connection with his flood narrative.

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