Heliodorus: The Aethiopica. v1, 29 April 2016
 

The Aethiopica by Heliodorus, like Daphnis and Chloe by Longus and Clitophon and Leucippe by Achilles Tatius was written in the second or third century CE. They are among the first prose novels still to survive.

Very little is known about Heliodorus, and the story that he was bishop of Tricca who gave up his see rather than his book is thought to be apocryphal.

Book 1 opens on a scene in which a ship has been captured by pirates, and the only survivors are Theagenes and Chariclea. In the next two or three books their history (including how they fall in love at first sight) is given in conversations between people from their past. Theagenes is shown to be a nobleman from Thessaly, and Chariclea a princess of Ethiopia who was exposed at birth by her mother because she was white skinned. The remaining books tell how they travel to Persia and Ethiopia, how Chariclea is reunited with her parents, (the king and queen of Ethiopia), and marries Theagenes after he is saved from sacrifice.

The text was taken from the Internet Archive as noted on the title page. It is not a facsimile as I have silently omitted ligands and footnotes (including those changing the original Greek text), corrected typos, made changes to some paragraph structures, and changed some spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

The cover is taken from a portrait of Chariclea in the Rijksmuseum.

5 July: Version 2 corrects several typos, brought to my attention by kalwisti for whose help I am most grateful.

Version 2 corrects many typos and errors brought to my attention by kalwisti to whom I am most grateful.