International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Dušan Popović
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
Drosilla and Charicles
: An Instance of the Ambivalent Conception of Literary 
Emulation in Middle Byzantine Context
It has already been established that the ancient novel, as a genre, largely represents a kind of 
patchwork, made of various literary allusions which refer to classical mythology, historiography, epic 
poetry and comedy, partly reflecting all these genres at the same time. This type of literary references 
was very aptly defined as the “aesthetic of reception“ (C. Müller). On the other hand, the same literary 
procédé is also likely to be assigned to the Byzantine authors of the so-called learned novels in the 
12
th
century, since for them the Aristotelian conception of the mimesis of the real world was of far 
lesser importance in comparison to the mimesis of literary products as such. This characteristic of the 
Comnenian novels, as has already been noticed, is supplemented by another quality, in the sense that 
they may reflect literary allusions originating from their ancient models, too.

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All three completely preserved Byzantine novels – namely Theodorus Prodromus’s Rodanthe 
and Dosicles, Nicetas Eugenianus’s Drosilla and Charicles, and Eustathius Macrembolites’s Hysmine 
and Hysminias – abound with more or less direct references to ancient literary products, but a lot 
of such allusions, rather citations, are to be found especially in the second mentioned novel. The 
fact of the matter here is a speech of more than 200 verses from the 6
th
book of the Eugenianus’s 
novel, delivered by a somewhat rude character (Callidemus) in an attempt to seduce the novel’s 
heroine: in view of that he uses, as arguments in persuasion, a wide repertoire of famous classical 
and hellenistic love-stories, whose enumeration assumes a comical effect, having in mind that the 
speech was devised as formal in keeping with prescriptive rhetoric. The most interesting feature 
in this passage is that here, besides Homer, Plato, Musaeus and Theocritus, he is referring to, or 
directly citing from, two ancient, so-called sophistic novels, originating from the late imperial 
Roman period, namely Heliodorus’s Theagenes and Chariclea and Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, 
whose protagonists and some of their antagonists are explicitly used as examples whose purpose is 
to persuade, in a sort of interplay with the older tradition of the genre. 
For this occasion we shall attempt to make a connection between this treatment of the classical 
novelistic genre with other middle Byzantine literary-historical and literary-critical evaluations of some 
representatives of the same genre by such important figures as Michael Psellus in his essay on Heliodorus 
and Achilles Tatius, but also by some less influential authors, such as Philip “the Philosopher“ in his 
allegorical interpretation of the Aethiopica (if we assume his identification with Philagathus of Cerami 
and thereby date this opusculum back to the 12
th
c.). As for Longus’s novel, on the other hand, it is much 
more difficult to find the reason for this procedure, having in mind that Daphnis and Chloe was far 
less commented on and did not nearly enjoy the fortune of the manuscript tradition of Heliodorus or 
Achilles Tatius; but it seems plausible that the intertextual use of Longus’s text by Eugenianus depends 
on the overall impression that bucolic atmosphere dominates in Drosilla and Charicles. Finally, it does 
not seem unreasonable that Eugenianus’s heavy relying on some themes and motives from Theocritus 
reflects the beginning of renewed Byzantine writers’ interest in pastoral poetry, whose influence will in 
the following centuries rise primarily as a result of its reading in an allegorical key.