page_title: Ancient Greek literature
section_title: Prose fiction
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Greek literature / Roman period / Prose fiction
context_page_description: Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are the two epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, set in an idealized archaic past today identified as having some relation to the Mycenaean era. These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, comprised the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.
  The lyric poets Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar were highly influential during the early development of the Greek poetic tradition. Aeschylus is the earliest Greek tragic playwright for whom any plays have survived complete. Sophocles is famous for his tragedies about Oedipus, particularly Oedipus the King and Antigone. Euripides is known for his plays which often pushed the boundaries of the tragic genre. The comedic playwright Aristophanes wrote in the genre of Old Comedy, while the later playwright Menander was an early pioneer of New Comedy.
context_section_description: The Roman Period was the time when the majority of extant works of Greek prose fiction were composed. The ancient Greek novels Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius and Daphnis and Chloe by Longus were both probably written during the early second century AD. Daphnis and Chloe, by far the most famous of the five surviving ancient Greek romance novels, is a nostalgic tale of two young lovers growing up in an idealized pastoral environment on the Greek island of Lesbos. The Wonders Beyond Thule by Antonius Diogenes may have also been written during the early second century AD, although scholars are unsure of its exact date. The Wonders Beyond Thule has not survived in its complete form, but a very lengthy summary of it written by Photios I of Constantinople has survived. The Ephesian Tale by Xenophon of Ephesus was probably written during the late second century AD.
  The satirist Lucian of Samosata lived during the late second century AD. Lucian's works were incredibly popular during antiquity. Over eighty different writings attributed to Lucian have survived to the present day. Almost all of Lucian's works are written in the heavily Atticized dialect of ancient Greek language prevalent among the well-educated at the time. His book The Syrian Goddess, however, was written in a faux-Ionic dialect, deliberately imitating the dialect and style of Herodotus. Lucian's most famous work is the novel A True Story, which some authors have described as the earliest surviving work of science fiction. His dialogue The Lover of Lies contains several of the earliest known ghost stories as well as the earliest known version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." His letter The Passing of Peregrinus, a ruthless satire against Christians, contains one of the earliest pagan appraisals of early Christianity.
  The Aethiopica by Heliodorus of Emesa was probably written during the third century AD. It tells the story of a young Ethiopian princess named Chariclea, who is estranged from her family and goes on many misadventures across the known world. Of all the ancient Greek novels, the one that attained the greatest level of popularity was the Alexander Romance, a fictionalized account of the exploits of Alexander the Great written in the third century AD. Eighty versions of it have survived in twenty-four different languages, attesting that, during the Middle Ages, the novel was nearly as popular as the Bible. Versions of the Alexander Romance were so commonplace in the fourteenth century that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote that "...every wight that hath discrecioun / Hath herd somwhat or al of [Alexander's] fortune."
caption: A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre depicting a scene from Daphnis and Chloe
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