Lisbon Classics Seminar: John Laurence Hilton (University of the Free State)

Various explanations have been offered for the strange trajectory of the second half of the narrative of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, most notably the earlier theory that the author was himself an Ethiopian, and the more recent thesis that the novel was influenced by mercantile developments in the region in the fourth century. This paper will argue instead that the starting and ending point of the narrative can best be explained in terms of the idiosyncratic philosophical ideas of the Emperor Julian and Heliodorus’ numerological pointer to Charicleia’s identity as the Platonic World Soul.