James Ν. O'Sullivan Xenophon of Ephesus w Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte Herausgegeben von Winfried Bühler, Peter Herrmann und Otto Zwierlein Band 44 Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1995 Xenophon of Ephesus His Compositional Technique and The Birth of the Novel by James N. O'Sullivan Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1995 © Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier, das die US-ANSI-Norm über Haltbarkeit erfüllt. Library of Congress Catalogìng-in-Publication Data O'Sullivan, James N., 1945 — Xenophon of Ephesus : his compositional technique and the birth of the novel / James N. O'Sullivan. p. cm. — (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte ; Bd. 44) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 3-11-014310-0 (alk. paper) 1. Xenophon, of Ephesus. Ephesiaca. 2. Greek fiction — History and criticism — Theory, etc. 3. Xenophon, of Ephe- sus—Technique. 4. Oral-formulaic analysis. 5.Oral tradition — Greece. 6. Fiction —Technique. 7. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Title. II. Series. PA4500.X5088 1995 883'.01 —dc20 94-40953 CIP Die Deutsche Bibliothek — CIP-Einheitsaufnahme O'Sullivan, James N.: Xenophon of Ephesus : his compositional technique and the birth of the novel / by James N. O'Sullivan. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1994' (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte ; Bd. 44) ISBN 3-11-014310-0 NE: GT © Copyright 1994 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikro- verfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany Druck: Werner Hildebrand, Berlin Buchbinderische Verarbeitung: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin WALTER AREND KEVIN O'NOLAN MILMAN PARRY in memoriam Preface My title with its reference to Xenophon's own compositional technique will doubtless surprise many since it is so widely held that the transmitted text of the Ephesiaca is only an epitome of a much longer original. But the reader who follows me fully will believe at the end that the text we have is composed in a very noteworthy manner that has hitherto scarcely been observed (chapter III below) and is best explained as due to a background of oral story-telling (chapter IV); that it has neither been epitomized (V1) nor extensively interpolated in honour of the Sun-god (V2); that the Ephesiaca, whatever its own relationship to writing, represents the background technique of the novel far more authentically than Chariton and that Xenophon should accordingly be seen as the earlier author (VI; see also II and n. 48 pp. 169f.). The kernel of the book is a description of Xenophon's technique that will stand even if some or all of the arguments I base on it are set aside. I have also taken care to keep those arguments separate from and independent of one another. For more than a century after the publication of Erwin Rohde's magisterial Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer (1876) enquiry into the ancient novel was dominated by the question of its origin. In the past few years a certain despondency has set in and there has been a turning away from this mystery. Lately two Oxford scholars have ad- monished us against the pursuit of the novel's origins as 'an insoluble and vain enquiry';1 the future is to belong largely to theories of narrative and the like. I hope nonetheless that knowing a little more about how the novel came to be and its nature and chronology will not be too great an impediment to modern literary approaches. I use the words 'novel' and 'romance' without distinction, and in particular 'romance' here carries no implication that the Ephesiaca and E. L. Bowie and S. J. Harrison, "The romance of the novel", JRS 83 (1993) 159-78 (172f.) VIII Preface its companions are not novels,2 the earliest examples of what has come to establish itself as the dominant literary form.3 Historians of prose fiction have tended to give to some arbitrarily chosen development — of which the chameleon novel, always responsive to the Zeitgeist and receptive of modification, has many to show - the status of first in- vention. The book may be expected to hold something for people working in a number of areas: students of the history of extended prose fiction and those concerned with literature of oral background in various languages and cultures; and it will no doubt be of particular interest to Homeric scholars to have an extensively formulaic work in Greek prose. The old wisdom of the novel as successor to the epic receives a new dimension. I should also like to contribute to a modification of attitude on ancient literary culture. There is a tendency to see things in purely literary terms: if an author has a variant form of a myth or story, he must have it from another author or have invented it himself. But, however justified this approach is in many instances, it is very probable that there was constant interaction between written literature — itself usually read aloud - and oral story-telling and that there was in popular tradition a veritable kaleidoscope of motifs and motif-complexes available to anyone They satisfy in full, e.g., the definition of the novel in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago etc. 51974, repr. 1988; vol. 8 s.v. novel), a definition certainly not made primarily to fit them: 'an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting'. See further e.g.: S. L. Wolff, The Greek romances in Elizabethan prose fiction, New York 1912; P. Turner, "Novels, ancient and modern", Novel 2 (1968) 15 - 24; P. G. Walsh, The Roman novel (Cambridge 1970) 224 -43; B. P. Reardon, Courants littéraires grecs des 11' et III' siècles après J.-C. (Paris 1971) 332 with η. 53; Α. Heiserman, Ute novel before the novel, Chicago and London 1977; K. Plepelits, Achilleus Tatios. Leukippe und Kleitophon, eing., übers, und eri. von Κ. P. (Stuttgart 1980) 48ff. (esp. 53-6, 58-60); G. Schmeling, Xenophon of Ephesus (Boston 1980) 148ff.; G. N. Sandy, Heliodorus (Boston 1982) 97ff.; T. Hägg, The novel in antiquity (Oxford [Blackwell] 1983) viif., 1 -5,192ff. (with bibliography on 249f.); O. Schönber- ger, Longos. Hirtengeschichten von Daphnis und Chloe. Griechisch und deutsch von O. S. (Darmstadt 41989) 45ff.; J. Tatum (ed.), The search for the ancient novel, Baltimore and London 1994 (esp. the essays by D. de Armas Wilson [88-100] and M. A. Doody [117-31]). Preface IX who wanted to draw on it (cf. p. 96 below).4 The book was conceived in 1977 in the course of work on textual problems in the Ephesiaca. It was written, more or less as it is today, except for the pages on the irenarch and the occasional footnote, in 1978 —80 in Göttingen, where I was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, and in Vandoeuvres at the Fondation Hardt, where chapter VI on Xenophon and Chariton received its final form in the summer of 1980.1 am very conscious of my debt to the Fondation Hardt and particularly to the Humboldt Stiftung, which also provided important assistance in connection with publication. That the book has been allowed to mature in my files for fourteen years is due to a web of circumstance fit more for a life-story than for a preface. But a full-time job as Homeric lexicographer will go some way towards explaining it to all but the most unsympathetically chalcenterous. I am deeply grateful to the friends and colleagues who have given me their help and advice. William Beck, Winfried Bühler and Volker Langholf read the complete typescript and discussed it with me to my profit. In this regard I am also indebted to Hermann Grensemann and Reinhold Merkelbach. After years of intermittent typing of a manuscript no one else could read I was overtaken at the post by the demands of modern publishing. Barbara Schönefeld produced with admirable patience and skill the laser print-out required by the publisher. In this connection I must also thank S. R. van der Mije for help with particular problems of presentation. William Beck took upon him the real pains of proof-reading this book and saved me from many an oversight. My wife, Susan, has not only lived with the book - manuscript, typescript, print-out - for over a decade, but also shared in correcting the proofs. I am very pleased to have a second book in this splendid series and most grateful to its editors, especially to Winfried Bühler: without his Compare what John Speirs says of oral and written culture in medieval England: 'There was, of course, a long phase of both oral and written traditions, existing side by side. These traditions were certainly not isolated from one another; on the contrary, they drew freely from each other's repertory. Thus tales that were told were made into written tradition and later taken back again into the stream of oral recital and re-shaping' {The Pelican guide to English literature vol. I, ed. Boris Ford [Harmondsworth 1959] 38f.). χ Preface friendly encouragement over the years the birth of 'the birth of the novel' would have been even slower and more painful. I dedicate my book to the memory of three scholars whose work, though not on the Greek novel, provided in large part the foundation of my own. Here I should also like to mention Fr. William Meany who made me aware early in my undergraduate days of the importance of Milman Parry's contribution to the understanding of Homer. Hamburg, September 1994 James N. O'Sullivan