Khariton

When Chaireas first sees Kallirhoe, the most beautiful woman in Syracuse, he falls in love at first sight (with a little help from Venus and Cupid). After they are married, her unsuccessful suitors plot to inflame Chaireas’ jealousy by making it look like she has been unfaithful to him. Chaireas kicks Kallirhoe, and she appears to be dead. Grave robbers find her awake in her tomb, and they take her to Ionia to sell her as a slave. Because of her great beauty, her new owner, Dionysos, falls in love with her and marries her. More misfortune falls on Kallirhoe as every man who sees her falls in love with her and causes more trouble. By the end of the story, Chaireas has found her and won her back through bravery in a Persian war against the Egyptians, and they live happily ever after.

I like this story. It was relatively short and simple (despite all the plot twists). It was also very accessible compared to some ancient Greek literature.… (more)

3 down, 998 to go. I actually found this one interesting, and readable. More than the telling of the story, it's circumstance was also an experience for me. This is, allegedly, the first novel ever written, and it's quite a ride to see where and how it all began, and to hold in my hands the first scrabblings and attempts to communicate in this forum. It's quite a thing to see how dialogue was formerly written. The translation is a beholding unto itself as well. I read the version where "f"s still took the place of "s"es, and struggled a bit to read that, but no matter. As for the story, it was intriguing, and had good tension, and fun fawning, and a translator that did not mind jumping in and finding fault with some narrative inconsistencies. I certainly feel enriched by the reading, and that's a very good thing.… (more)

By no means one of the best known novels this is nonetheless a fascinating read and is not well-known outside the realm of mostly specialists. Yet, the rollicking plot careens our heroine from master to master through one disaster after another before resolving, more or less, in the happiness of the protagonist.

Chariton of Aphrodisias (Ancient Greek: Χαρίτων Ἀφροδισεύς)[1] was the author of an ancient Greek novel probably titled Callirhoe (based on the subscription in the sole surviving manuscript), though it is regularly referred to as Chaereas and Callirhoe[2] (which more closely aligns with the title given at the head of the manuscript). Recent evidence of fragments of the text on papyri suggests that the novel may have been written in the mid 1st century AD, making it the oldest surviving complete ancient prose romance and the only one to make use of apparent historiographical features for background verisimilitude and structure, in conjunction with elements of Greek mythology, as Callirhoë is frequently compared to Aphrodite and Ariadne and Chaereas to numerous heroes, both implicitly and explicitly.[3] As the fiction takes place in the past, and historical figures interact with the plot, Callirhoe may be understood as the first historical novel; it was later imitated by Xenophon of Ephesus and Heliodorus of Emesa, among others.

Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariton… (more)