 Welcome back to another episode of We Are Being Transformed. I am joined this evening again by the esteemable Dr. Timothy Whitmarsh. How are you doing? I'm doing very well, Jason. Thanks for having me on the show. Welcome. Always a pleasure to have you on. So last time we had a fantastic discussion about the Greek novel, The Matrix, in which it was created, what made it so appealing. You gave a fabulous overview of that. In this discussion, I wanted to selfishly go over my favorite of the five, that is Achilles Taitius's Leucopy and Clitophon. So briefly, who was Achilles Taitius? Why is Leucopy and Clitophon so significant, especially when juxtaposed against the other texts in its genre? It sounds like that's a question for you. It's your favorite one, but I'll give it a go. And then perhaps you can tell me why it's your favorite one. Achilles Taitius was a second century AD Egyptian from Alexandria. As far as we know, unlike the other novelists, we think we know a little bit about him. We know of the titles, at least, of some of the other texts that he wrote, including a work on astronomy. And he's also said to have written on etymology as well. So he seems to have been educated, Alexandria, and Alexandria being a great intellectual capital founded by Alexander the Great and the site of, of course, the Alexandrian library and the like. So he seems to be breathing that atmosphere, that sort of highly intellectualized, recondite atmosphere. I reckon he was writing in the 130s. Other people think he was writing in the 170s. But I'd rather put him in the time of the Emperor Hadrian. I think it sort of speeds the air of the Emperor Hadrian, if you like. So Leucopy and Clitophon is a novel written in eight books. It's what I would call a second wave novel. I think the first wave occurs in the first century. When we get these two texts, Caratone and Xenophon of Ephesus, write these texts which share a lot with each other. They're both written from a detached perspective. The narrator takes a step back and describes what happens to his characters as they go through. And in both texts, the characters meet and fall in love at the beginning. And there are all sorts of similarities between the way in which they do that in both texts. But then they get married and then they get separated. And then they re-establish their marriage at the end. What we get in the second wave text of the second century is a very much more, at the same time, a much more sort of personal dynamic, direct approach to the novel. So in Achilles' Tatius, it's a first person romance. It's told from the point of view, mostly, of this figure, Clytophon. And it gives it a sort of visceral edge. It's very much about the desire of one individual and its male individual. And it's very androcentric as well, although there are ways in which one can see the subversion of that androcentrism coming in as well. So in a sense, it's much more punchy and powerful and much less idealizing, much more gritty. But at the same time, it's also got this very strongly, what I call a mediated quality to it. That's to say, you start out with a frame at the beginning, where an unnamed narrator, I think we encourage to think is Achilles' Tatius himself, turns up in the Phoenician city of Sidon, sees a painting. And it's a painting of Europa being abducted by Zeus in the guise of a bull, and ponders this painting. And then he's approached by a young man. And the two of them talk about the power of love. And that leads the young man into his narrative about his own experiences in the world of Ero's desire. And that becomes the first person narration. So whilst we do have this punchy first person narration, we've got this way in which it's sort of mediated through the figure of this narrator, who's also a sort of a bit of an art expert looking at this, this painting. So it's got that level of intermediality to it as well. It's we think about art as a sort of equivalent to narrative. And it's a very, very sort of erudite text, very sculpted text Achilles' Tatius, despite having this, so this energetic eroticism to it, it goes into some very highfaluting moments. It's full of illusions to earlier Greek literature. And it's got a sort of encyclopedic quality to it. I mean, in the course of things, we hear about different breeds of cows. We hear about magnetism, for example, the phenomenon of magnetism. We hear about grafting techniques and the like. So it's got this sort of, as I say, sort of feel of a universal encyclopedia shoehorned into the genre of the Greek novel. It really is like a flor allegium in a way. I really, when I read it, I really see it as like Achilles' Tatius, like just as a product of Pidea, like he's flexing. Let me show you what I know about stuff. Yeah, that's maybe a crude way to put it, but that's how I like to kind of see it. I think getting back to what your question, I know it was more like a kind of an off-handed remark in terms of why I like it. But I think why I like it is what you were talking about, the subversive kind of overall feeling of it. It's a text that's very, like when I read Mark. If the Gospels are Bioway and Mark is the most subversive Bioway, then of the Greek novels, Achilles' Tatius is creating the most subversive of the Greek novel. Like I love that intertextuality and I love this concept of, it's kind of like when you watch a movie from the 1930s and then you watch a movie from like now trying to be like a movie from the 1930s and they're throwing on all the illusions and they're playing with your expectations. It's kind of the same thing there. That's why I love it. It's just everything about it is so electric and so, you know, every expectation you could possibly have. We were talking about Sophrosine and the lovers devotion to each other and Achilles' Tatius just totally turns that on its head like towards the end of the story. But you know, the narrator is so dense that he doesn't really realize that, oh, he's still okay. You know, I'm still good. But, you know, just getting to identity here. Like a lot of the other novels, this is kind of like, you know, a geography, you know, geographically, Leucopy and Clidophon takes place around the Mediterranean. But it's me, a protagonist, the flavors that it ultimately portrays are Venetian. You mentioned something called a phoniquilla, or I can't pronounce that. Phoniquilla. Yeah, so what is the significance of Leucopy and Clidophon as a paradigm of a phoniquilla? Well, that's a very good question. I mentioned that he's from Alexandria. Phoenicia is what we call Lebanon now. So it's a Semitic speaking. It's the speaker Semitic language Venetian. So in a sense, it's a different kind of cultural paradigm to both Egyptian culture and to Greek culture. So how much of that Achilles Tatius himself actually understood is not clear. Some people think that there is a real really sort of deep saturation in Venetian culture. I tend to think that Achilles probably knew a bit about Venetian culture. There are moments where he seems to know, for example, the foundation myth of the city of Tyre, for example, which is not widely known in Greco-Egyptian culture. So I think he has some familiarity with it. But I don't think he necessarily has the most, you know, sort of rich, profound understanding of the nature of Venetian culture. But I think he likes the idea that he's setting this text in the margins of the Greek-speaking world. I think he likes the idea that Venetian culture has its own distinctive cultural dynamic and energy, which is hinted at in the corners of the sort of a number of the vision of the novel. By and large, the novel operates in a Greek-speaking community that is fairly homogeneous across the Mediterranean world, at least as it's presented in the novel. So he will rock up in all sorts of places. I mean, they do end up in Egypt after a while, and they talk to people who are purportedly Egyptian there, but speak Greek, and they're all of their cultural reference points are Greeks, all the gods that they talk about are Greek and the like. Again, he ends up in Asia Minor, Anatolia, modern Turkey, in Ephesus. And there's no reference really to anything other than Greek culture there. So you get the sense of a sort of a pan-Mediterranean elite who can all speak to each other. But in the, as I say, in the margins of your view, you get a sense of what local cultures are doing and the very distinctiveness of those individual local cultures. But it's only really sort of hinted at. I mean, the novel is, has a kind of tunnel of vision that comes with this first person narrator who, as you said, I mean, he's a very strongly characterized individual. He's by turns feckless, desirous, selfish. You know, he's not entirely awful, but he has all of these qualities. He only sees what he wants to see. And I think the author allows us to see a little bit more in the margins of our vista, if you like. And that includes the local color from Phoenicia. It's an exaggeration, but I always like to say, Clotiphon is just the worst. I mean, he cries when his girlfriend gets chopped up, right? But ultimately, he's pretty selfish and self-centered. He projects a lot onto Luke. Like all that, all that stuff that he's doing during the dinner party. And he's like, Oh, my eyes are my eyes were my meat. You know, her beauty was my meat and all that stuff. And I think we're going through your commentary on books one and two of Luke and Clotiphon. It really brings home that, you know, Clotiphon is a self-centered classic unreliable narrator. It's almost like ahead of its time in a way. He's projecting a lot. Yeah. But how much Achilles Tejas meant by that in my discussions with other scholars, it's debatable. I almost see like, like you're saying the margin, like Achilles Tejas has this unreliable narrator who only sees what he wants to see, right? But along the margins, you see the real heroes and heroines, right? So for me, when I read this text, I almost see Satyrus, Menelaus, Clinius as the true protagonist of this story. They're always bailing him out. They're always actually getting stuff done. Even Melite, to a certain extent, she's very independent for a character in these novels at this time. She's a very three multi-dimensional character. And that's what I really love about it. But yeah, Clotiphon is basically, I don't know if you've ever seen Big Trouble in Little China, but there's a character played by Kurt Russell. His name is Jack Burden. And he's supposedly the main character. But he's basically like this guy who thinks he's the hero, but he isn't. Because everybody around him is actually doing stuff and getting stuff done and beating up the bad guys and rescuing the girl. But he's just kind of always getting himself into trouble having to be bailed out. So it's really what I saw here. And you discussed that pretty well. I think I wanted to get back to that I was wearing my unreliable narrator t-shirt today. Amazing. Yes. Those are the best kinds for sure, the unreliable narrators. I think you touched upon that pretty well. So I actually wanted to get to my next question, which you touched upon, which is just Luke and Clotiphon is like almost like an encyclopedia of things. And one thing that really struck out to me was in book two, where Chirifon and Sostratus are solving that puzzle. And then Chirifon starts exploring these natural marbles, like the river in Spain that seems like a lyric. So beautiful. So what would be the reason for Achilles Tejas putting these topographical paradoxographies in his text? Part of it is to do with the encyclopedic ambitions of the text as a whole that I mentioned. I mean, it is an ambitious text. It's a text that in some ways tries to offer an all-encompassing theory, which is quite odd, given that as we were saying, it's largely narrated by this factless individual who is not really a sort of theoretical figure. But there are theoretical statements in the novel or statements that can be read as theoretical to do with the universal power of love and the interconnectedness of the whole of existence through the stewardship of love of arrows overhanging all of this. So whilst the text doesn't really hang together as a, it's not a stoic theory of the interconnectedness of everything. It's not theoretical in that sense. I think the ways in which it tries to bring in aspects of everything are pointing towards a, if you like, a sort of jumbled mosaic. It's not a complete mosaic with all the pieces in the right place, but it's trying to speak with that language of there being a possible theory underlying all of this. But it's ironized, it's mediated, it's not fully resolved into a clear vision. So I think there's something of that, and there's quite a lot of encyclopedism knocking around in this time. And this is where we're talking not long after Pliny's natural history, for example, the one of the biggest encyclopedias of antiquity. And around this time also we get the sort of aesthetics of fragmentation in a certain amount of literature. So Achilles is roughly contemporary with Aulus Gellius, who writes this huge sort of encyclopedic tract on, I mean, sort of Latin literary culture in effect. But he does it in this very sort of sprawling, unresolved way. A little bit later, Christian author Clement of Alexander, does a similar sort of thing with a sort of compendium of all the clever things that people have said and how it fits into a Christian theology, but again, sort of celebrates the asystematic nature of it. So I think Achilles is participating in that sort of aesthetics of encyclopedic fragmentaryness. He really is an author that much like Lucian, who's one of my absolute favorite solution of Samosata, he really revels in playing with all these different motifs and all these different genres. And he revels in like not giving you a complete answer. Like you said, the asystematic kind of way in which he makes his texts is just really beautiful to me. My last question is going to touch upon a more serious matter, but it's something that all the Greek novels touch upon in one way or another. Luke of Pea and Clotophon does it quite poignantly. So when I look at this text, I'm seeing just not just the text, but when I look at the founding myths of Rome, for example, and the maps of Roman imperial power, there's a very troubling sexual assault narrative we find, you know, especially in things like the founding of Rome, the Sabine women, even in this text, you see Clotophon finding the stories of Apollo and Daphne and Zeus and Europa very stimulating, very dark undertone. Yeah, these unsettling aspects of these narratives seething under the surface. So I was wondering, and also going to the aspect of the slavery, be people are constantly being trafficked in these texts. And there's lots of subversions of roles, especially happens with Luke of Pea when she has her, her head shaved, and, you know, she's like a thration slave. And just the ways in which these people are dealing with these issues, it seems to be like an unfortunately, everyday occurrence to them. So I was wondering if you had any thoughts on this problematic issue? Yeah, well, in a way, they are witnesses, as you say, to the culture and the conventions of their time. But there's something more to it than that when you were talking about people actively reveling in, you know, taking erotic pleasure in stories of, as you say, sort of erotic pursuits and sexual violence. That does suggest that there is a sort of a way in which a reader might be encouraged to gravitate towards that subject position and to enjoy similar forms of gratification. And that is, as you say, it's deeply troubling. And this is, you know, part of the reason why obviously metamorphosis, for example, is such a problematic text. And people have been very, it's, you know, it's not super clear whether we should be teaching it in universities these days. I don't want to get into that. But, you know, there are strong arguments on both sides. Achilles Taitius is, I think, a slightly different kind of text to that. I mean, there are, as you say, he does say that he was turned on by the story of Apollo's pursuit of Daphne. But soon after that, there's a discussion about erotic protocols, which is problematic in its own ways. But one of the things that Clytophan has told very clearly is that you mustn't use any kind of force. Persuasion and seduction are fine. But, you know, if you see any resistance, you should pull back. Now, when he puts that into practice, it gets a little bit icky again, because there's one point where he believes that he's having a kiss with her. And she seems to resist, and he reads that as, you know, playful resistance. But of course, we don't get her perspective on this. And this is where the monomaniacal tunnel vision view of the narrator becomes really problematic. Now, I think you can sort of, there are ways of reading that as exposing the, you know, the brutality of male desire and male self-deception, male delusion, if you like, men trying to read the intentions of women and not doing it very successful. I think there are good reasons to think that Achilles is pushing us in that direction. But at the same time, you can imagine readers missing that as well. So I think it is for all sorts of reasons. I think this is a text that speaks to a lot of the issues that we face today. It speaks, obviously, using a different language, not just Greek, but a different cultural language. But it is grappling with these issues. And it's troubling, and there's no easy way of describing or talking about these issues. But as I say, I think Achilles is alive to some of these sorts of issues that we are talking about today. Like things like the non-comodity texts, the Greek novels, New Testament literature, they're all dealing with, like you said in the previous interview, space. They're trying to reconceptualize people in that space using the motifs and more as, but also trying to give different, maybe results and maybe new maps of how people should interact with that world. The like texts found in non-comodity like on the exegesis of the soul will deal with the troubling aspects of human trafficking and try to present a more equal way between men and women to come to terms with the world using that metaphysical theological language. Things like the Greek novel do the same thing. Like they take these concepts of slavery, Roman imperial rhetoric. They use them, but then they give vastly different answers at times to how people should respond to that world. Well, I think what you've just said is absolutely right. I think when it comes to enslavement, the novels like the Odyssey, which is their parent text in all sorts of ways, they do talk about the central characters often going through the experience of enslavement and in a way that does have a sort of humanizing effect. I mean, it means that readers who may not have been enslaved themselves, may have been enslaved, but may not have been enslaved themselves come to see what the world looks like from the position of the less fortunate. Now, of course, they resolve themselves happily in the end, so no romance finishes with the lovers still enslaved, and they're rather casual in their use of metaphors of slavery. I mean, a slave to love, they say that kind of thing. And there are signs of, I mean, particularly in Achilles-Tatius, there are signs of a sort of callous disregard of slaves, whilst there are also signs of respect towards slaves. So they're not straightforward, and they do describe a world in which attitudes towards slaves are very, very repugnant from our perspective. But I think this idea that what the novels try to do is give you a very multifaceted portrait of life, including life from below, is part of the way in which they're really fascinating social documents that do belong to their time, but also, in a sense, sort of analyze their time as well.