2ETHIOPICA, °Tales of Ethiopia,' a Greek romance in 10 books in which is told the story of the love, adventures and final union of Chariclea, an Ethiopian princess, and Thea genes, a Thessalian Greek. The author is a certain Heliodorus of Emesa in Syria, who lived in the latter part of the 3d century A.n., and not, as was until recently believed, Helio dorus, bishop of Trikka in Thessaly. The development of the tale, which is on the whole the best of the extant Greek romances, is ex tremely complicated, often, though Tasso thought otherwise, unreasonably so. For the author not only adopted the technique of the epic and disclosed subsequently through the speeches of his characters the events which had brought about the situation at the opening of Book I, but he also allows these characters, as they successively appear, to relate their own previous adventures. The tale thus abounds in episodes, amid which the thread of the main story is temporarily lost. There are, besides, countless incidental discussions of mat ters connected with geography, natural science, war, literature, etc., etc. It may fairly he said that about one-quarter of the 'IEthiopica' is either irrelevant to the story or impedes its i progress. The interest naturally depends al most wholly upon the plot and the fantastic adventures in strange lands; there is but little character-drawing. The author displays, how ever, a remarkable power of pictorial descrip tion, especially in those scenes which mark some important turn in the action. Of these
probably the most striking is the brilliant scene in Book VII in which the lovers meet again under the walls of Memphis. The VEthiopica' exerted no inconsiderable influence upon the fiction of the Renaissance. Tasso greatly ad mired the structure of the story and drew from it material for his
Neisota G. MCCREA, Antkon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, Columbia University.