Studies in Heliodorus

Nine essays on Heliodorus' Aithiopika, assessing narrative technique, the construction of culture and the work's reception by more recent cultures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913701277

Book preview

Phoenician games in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika*

Ewen Bowie

This paper looks at two related chains of images in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, a work rich in a range of literary features that might be called ‘imagery’. One feature eligible for the term ‘image’ is the striking, almost cinematically depicted scene of which the opening tableau is the most often cited. This aspect of Heliodorus’ literary technique has deservedly had ample attention.¹ Another concerns the novelist’s use of similes and metaphors, examined in a useful chapter by Feuillâtre:² but his twenty pages are more of a survey than an analysis, and do not begin to offer the meticulous treatment accorded four years earlier to Aristophanes by Taillardat (1962). More remarkably, perhaps, the imagery based on terms drawn from the stage was already being discussed more than a hundred years ago by Waiden (1894). I think much more work is waiting to be done on simile and metaphor in Heliodorus. One interesting feature is the way in which Heliodorus sustains the impact of metaphorical uses of words or of similes by interweaving these with literal uses. A second is a related phenomenon, the way in which much of his metaphorical universe not only functions effectively within its immediate context but reflects much more broadly the major themes of the tale he is telling.³ I do not attempt any such analysis here, but I mention these phenomena because their presence in the work may offer some support to the suggestions that I make.

These suggestions concern neither metaphors nor similes but words that seem to me to have a symbolic function – to carry a further layer of meaning for the narrative over and above their sense in their immediate context. I do not expect to persuade everybody that they do, but I hope that exploration of the question will be rewarding.

It has been suggested to me that the close reading of the text of Heliodorus which the following hypothesis implies is not the way that Heliodorus’ early readers are likely to have approached either his or other novels. No doubt his first readers approached the Aithiopika in a variety of ways, and it is likely enough that some read fast and inattentively. But although we are lamentably ill-informed about the novels’ early readership, one can argue (as I have elsewhere)⁴ that at least the sophistic novels were directed to and read by members of the intellectual élite; and though the presence of allusions to earlier literature (for which I shall also be arguing in what follows) is one prop of such an argument, it is not the only one. Richard Hunter demonstrated fifteen years ago that in the case of Longus ‘an echo of earlier literature invests a scene with a layer of meaning which would otherwise be difficult to fit into a simple narrative’.⁵ Such echoes are more readily observed by careful than by hasty readers, and can only be observed by those whose education or leisure has made them familiar with that earlier literature. We know, too, that professional expounders of classical literature wrote, and may presume that some of the leisured élite read, commentaries and essays whose points depended on very close attention to texts. Of course these texts were all from the classical period. Poets predominated, above all Homer. But ‘Longinus’ expected his readers to take points about a number of prose authors, the latest of whom is Amphikrates, of the first century B.C., and himself wrote a monograph on Xenophon.⁶ It is not unlikely that a reader trained to think carefully about metaphors and similes in poets, orators and historians should also be alive to their power in prose fiction.

* * * * *

We cannot be sure with what conception of its title and author a reader approached the Aithiopika. Hefti argued that the form was more probably τὰ πεϱὶ Θεαγένην ϰαὶ Χαϱίϰλειαν than one which revealed the destination of the lovers by the term Aἰθιοπιϰά.⁷ For what follows it would make a significant difference whether Heliodorus expected the work’s title and his personal name, without an ethnic, to appear at the beginning and to be on a slip attached to each roll, or whether he expected to be described there as in the last sentence of the transmitted text of the work, ἀνήϱ Φοῖνιξ Ἐμισηνός.⁸

That said, let us begin where readers of rolls are required and of codices are encouraged to begin, with the much-discussed beach scene at the opening of Book 1. Heliodorus writes of the stricken Theagenes:

ἤνθει δὲ ϰαὶ ἐν τούτοις ἀνδϱείῳ τῷ ϰάλλει ϰαὶ ἡ παϱειὰ ϰαταϱϱέοντι τῷ αἵματι φοινιττομένη πλέον ἀντέλαμψεν. (1.2.3)

even in this condition he bloomed with a manly beauty, and his cheek, growing crimson (phoenittomene) by the blood that flowed down it, gleamed with a greater contrasting whiteness.

The image of white stained by crimson seems to recall a well-known passage in the Iliad (of which book 1.46–7 is of course about to be evoked by the description of Charikleia’s rattling weapons at 1.2.5): the passage is the wounding of Menelaos by Paris, compared by Homer (Iliad 4.141–5) to ivory stained with crimson:

ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τίς τ’ ἐλέφαντα γυνὴ Φοίνιχϰι µιήνῃ

Mῃονὶς ἠὲ Kάειϱα, παϱήιον ἔμμεναι ἵππων … (Iliad 4.141–2)

As when a woman stains ivory with crimson,

A woman from Maeonia or Caria, for it to be a cheek-piece for horses…

A reader whose memory of that passage is triggered will call to mind not just the phenomenon of reddening, τὸ φοινίττεσθαι (phoenittesthai), but also the red dye, the φοῖνιξ (phoenix), which is necessary to the process of staining. He may also recall that the Homeric artefact was a cheek-piece, and note now Heliodorus has transferred the image to Theagenes’ manly cheek.⁹

Later in Book 1 we are twice reminded of this image of the wounded Theagenes. First, when Charikleia contemplates her reply to the noble robber Thyamis’ proposal of marriage she is unusually flushed:

ϰαὶ γὰϱ πεφοίνιχϰτο τὴν παϱειὰν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐνθυμημάτων πλέον ἢ σύνηθες …(1.21.3)

for as a result of her ponderings her cheek had a more crimson colour (pephoenikto) than usual…

The reason for the presence of both παϱειά and πλέον (as well as parts of τὸ φοινίττεσθαι) in both passages may of course be that in the second Heliodorus is unconsciously recalling the first: but we have many indications of his careful writing that make this less likely than that Heliodorus is consciously reminding his readers of the earlier passage.

Second, towards the end of Book 1, in the description of the attack on Thyamis’ island base that balances the battle that never was in the opening chapters, we again encounter something turned crimson by blood, when the wounded are described as

αἵματι τὴν λίµμνην Φοινιττόντων … (1.30.3)

making the marsh crimson (phoenittonton) with their blood…

We leave Book 1, then, with a well-established perception of φοῖνιξ (phoenix) and its cognates in its meaning ‘crimson’ and associated with blood.

A quite different sense of φοῖνιξ (phoenix) is introduced in Book 2. At 2.23 Kalasiris, shortly to be named for the first time (2.24.5), is about to tell Knemon his story. He insists, in one of his many Odysseus-modes, that they first take some food (2.23.4), and they eat his habitual vegetarian fare of nuts, figs, freshly picked dates and suchlike:

τῶν τε ϰαϱύων ϰαὶ σύϰων ἀϱτιδϱεπῶν τε φοινίϰων (2.23.5)

nuts, figs and freshly-picked dates

By attaching the epithet freshly-picked (ἀϱτιδϱεπῶν) to the dates φοινίϰων (phoenikōn) Heliodorus gives them more emphasis than the nuts and figs, and, I suggest, prepares our minds for further appearances of φοίνιϰες (phoenikes) of the palmary variety. A second-time reader may also notice that Kalasiris’ story is being nourished by Phoenician sustenance (τϱοφῆς, 2.23.4).

Book 3 brings back to us the crimson image established in Book 1. It reappears twice in the same chapter, 3.3. The fifty ephebes who accompanied Theagenes to Delphi wear boots with crimson straps, and Theagenes himself wears a crimson mantle:

ϰϱηπὶς μὲν αὐτοῖς ἱμάντι φοινιϰῷ διάπλοϰος ὑπὲϱ ἀστϱαγάλων ἐσφίγγετο … (3.3.2)

Their boots had interlaced crimson straps and were tied tightly above their ankles…

ἀπὸ γυμνῆς τῆς ϰεφαλῆς πομπεύων φοινιϰοβαφῆ χλαμύδα ϰαθειµένος… (3.3.5)

He processed with bare head and a flowing crimson cloak…

It will not cause surprise that when φοῖνιξ (phoenix) returns, as we surely knew that it would, in Book 4, it is again in the botanical sense of Book 2. This time, however, the term is not used for the fruit, but for the branch, φοίνιϰος (phoenikos) ἔϱνος, held out in Charikleia’s right hand when, in Kalasiris’ narrative, she allays the reader’s and Knemon’s fears by suddenly appearing to perform her appointed role at the Pythia:

τῇ λαιᾷ μὲν ἡμμένον πυϱφοϱοῦσα λαμπάδιον θατέϱα δὲ φοίνιϰος ἔϱνος πϱοβεβληµένη … (4.1.2)

In her left hand carrying the flame of a lighted torch, and in her other hand holding out a shoot of palm…

This palm-shoot is the prize of victory which Theagenes shortly gets from her at the very moment of defeating the Arcadian Ormenos in the hoplite race (4.4.2), showing himself more than characteristically street-wise by surreptitiously kissing her hand. The mark of victory peculiar to the Pythian Games was a garland of laurel, as Heliodorus and most of his readers surely knew. But, as we learn from a discussion in Plutarch,¹⁰ the palm-shoot was a symbol of victory at all agonistic festivals, and, as Heliodorus and his readers could have known from their reading of classical texts, both laurel and palm are associated with sites of the cult of Apollo.¹¹ So in this Delphic context Heliodorus could have chosen to have Charikleia hold either a laurel-garland or a palm-shoot. The palm-shoot offers him at least two gains. The greater of these is to create another unit in his sequence of phoenix images: but, by putting a φοίνιϰος (phoenikos) ἔϱνος in the hand of the young maiden who has fallen in love with a handsome stranger at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, Heliodorus also links his scene with Book 6 of the Odyssey, and his heroine Charikleia with Nausikaa, who is there compared by Odysseus to a young palm-shoot, a φοίνιϰος (phoenikos) νέον ἔϱνος, which he had seen at Delos ‘beside the altar of Apollo’ (Ἀπόλλωνος παϱὰ βωμῷ, Odyssey 6.162–3).¹² It is one of a sequence of intertextualities which persistently invite us to question how like and how unlike the Odyssey this story is going to be.¹³

A small detail in the description of Theagenes’ race may also make its contribution. His competitor, as mentioned, is an Arcadian called Ormenos. As John Morgan noted,¹⁴ this would be an appropriate name for a runner if it means ‘speeding’, but I do not know of any support for that translation. The name is far from common.¹⁵ The name Ormenos, and the patronymic Ormenidas, appear four times in the Iliad. Twice Ormenos is the name given to a Trojan who is cast as mere spear-fodder (8.274, 12.187). More interesting, however, is the patronymic Ormenidas used of Amyntor, father of Achilles’ tutor Phoenix (whose relationship to Achilles bears some resemblance to the relationship of Kalasiris to his descendant Theagenes). Amyntor is a negative image in the Iliad – he prefers a concubine to his wife, Phoenix’s mother, and curses Phoenix when on that mother’s supplication he sleeps with the concubine (9.448–61 – this is the world of self-seeking sexual intrigue represented in the Aithiopika by Knemon, Demainete and Arsake).¹⁶ He is also the victim of a theft – from him was stolen the boar’s tusk helmet that eventually is worn by Odysseus in the Doloneia (10.266–71). We hear nothing of Amyntor’s father Ormenos: like Theagenes, he must have been a Thessalian. But by choosing the name Ormenos for the Arcadian with a run-on part Heliodorus succeeds in reminding us of another Phoenix, a Kalasiris-like figure, and of the wiles of Odysseus to whom Kalasiris also owes many traits.

The Odyssey too uses the name Ormenos. When Eumaeus tells Odysseus his life-story,¹⁷ it begins with a description of the prosperous island Syrie, ruled by his father, Ktesios son of Ormenos, then moves on to tell how as a boy he was kidnapped by his Sidonian nanny, herself seduced by tricksy Phoenician merchants. Again the name Ormenos takes the reader to a Phoenician connection against which Heliodorus’ own narrative can be read. In particular it reminds us of the disreputable status of Phoenicians in canonical Greek texts, a status from which we soon find Heliodorus promoting them.

Kalasiris proceeds with his tale. Hurrying to the temple at Delphi to seek guidance from Apollo on how to help Charikleia and Theagenes to elope, Kalasiris had met a group of people holding a banquet in honour of Herakles:

ἔλεγον δὴ οὖν εἶναι μὲν Φοίνιϰες Τύϱιοι τέχνην δὲ ἔμποϱοι (4.16.5)

Now they said that they were Phoenicians (Phoenikes) from Tyre, and were merchants by profession…

It turns out that the party was to celebrate the wrestling victory of a young Tyrian in the Pythian games. Kalasaris joined their festivities, though eating only his habitual food¹⁸ (which we may remember includes φοίνιϰες, 2.23.5), and elicited the offer of a passage on their boat. By now we are not surprised to discover ethnic Φοίνιϰες (Phoenikes) in the story, although it is surprising that these Phoenicians have been upgraded from the role of pirates, standard in almost all literature since the Odyssey, to that of respectable if chrematistic merchants. It is a nice literary reversal, complementing the paradox (in a novel written in Greek) that the city of Tyre has been announced as the victor’s city in a contest of Hellenes (νιϰῶσαν τὴν Τύϱον ἐν Ἕλλησιν ἀναγοϱεύσαντος).¹⁹ It is also characteristic of Heliodorus’ light touch that he mentions the garland that the Tyrian had won (στέφανος, 4.16.6) but says nothing of the palm-shoot (φοίνιϰος [phoenikos] ἔϱνος) that he must also be presumed to have been given.

Another trick Heliodorus plays is never to name this wrestling victor, although he predictably falls in love with Charikleia, seeks to marry her and stays in Kalasiris’ story until their vessel is overpowered by real pirates (this time apparently non-Phoenician) and the Phoenicians scramble to save their lives in a dinghy (5.25.3). At that point the unnamed Phoenician disappears from the tale as suddenly as he had been brought into it. At least one reader is left puzzled by the anonymity of this character, referred to repeatedly simply as the Tyrian merchant (e.g. 5.19.1, 5.22.6) or the Phoenician (e.g. 5.20.1) – a character rather more important to the story than other unnamed individuals like the lover of Isias of Chemmis (6.3.1–3, cf. below). Of course the Phoenician who seduced Eumaeus’ nanny is given no name in Homer (Odyssey 15.420), but that in itself seems an insufficient ground for Heliodorus’ decision. Closer to home, perhaps, is a text that Heliodorus has already evoked in Book 2, Philostratus’ Heroikos. That dialogue is conducted between an unnamed vintner and an unnamed Phoenician from the area of Tyre and Sidon, detained at the Dardanelles (as Heliodorus’ Phoenician will be at Zakynthos) by weather unsuitable for sailing. The hymn that the vintner reports as sung by Thessalians coming to sacrifice at Achilles’ tomb in the Troad seems likely to be the model for the hymn of the Thessalian Ainianians who have come to honour Achilles’ son Neoptolemos at Delphi (Heliodorus 3.2.4), and Philostratus’ play with an internal narrator and audience may also have caught Heliodorus’ eye.²⁰ The anonymity of Heliodorus’ Phoenician might then have been expected to turn the reader’s attention to Philostratus’ Heroikos. Once there, another Phoenician connection awaits. One of the few contemporary references in the Heroikos is to the athlete T.Aurelius Helix, who after an initial wrestling victory at Olympia entered in the next Olympic games for both wrestling and pankration: nearly banned by the Eleian organizers from both events, he was reluctantly allowed to claim victory in the pankration.²¹ We know Helix’s origin from Philostratus’ Gymnastikos, though there he is not given a city: he is simply a Φοῖνιξ (Phoenix), a Phoenician.²² We have no evidence that he competed at the Pythian games, nor does it matter whether he did. As the only Phoenician athlete to be noticed by literary texts of the early third century he is somebody whose renown might be known both to Heliodorus and to his readers. Indeed it seems, as will be argued by Christopher Jones, that it is with this wrestler that an athlete labelled Helix on a mosaic at Ostia should be identified.²³ It is tempting to suppose that, in giving his unnamed Phoenician a wrestling victory at the Pythia, Heliodorus is compensating for the wrestling victory denied to T.Aurelius Helix by the Eleans. Heliodorus’ luctatory Phoenician also alerts us for a further and more significant involvement of Φοίνιϰες (Phoenikes) than their bloody, botanical and ethnic appearances had so far intimated.

Thus forearmed a reader might be glad to discover that when (at 5.5.2) Theagenes and Charikleia agree on passwords whereby they might recognize each other – in a sequence where, unusually, the author is himself filling in details of the story-so-far, cf. 5.4.3 – Charikleia chooses the word λαμπάς, ‘torch’, and Theagenes the word φοίνιξ (phoenix). Since a torch, λαμπάδιον, was what Charikleia held in her left hand when she gave Theagenes a palm shoot, φοίνιϰος ἔϱνος, with her right (4.4.2, cf.4.1.2 above) we should certainly associate these passwords with that moment of modulated erotic excitement, and so think of the password φοῖνιξ (phoenix) as a palm-shoot (φοίνιϰος ἔϱνος): but if we simply translate the Greek and think of φοῖνιξ as palm we are cutting down its resonances. We might also reflect that it is extremely odd that the lovers should think that they will need such passwords. They have already agreed on the name Pythian – ὁ Πυθιϰός for Theagenes and ἡ Πυθιάς for Charikleia – as the signature of any graffiti they might inscribe to mark the direction of their journey (5.5.1). Moreover, when in the extraordinary scene outside the walls of Memphis Theagenes fails to recognize Charikleia in her beggarly disguise (7.7.7) so that she has both to address him as ‘Pythian’ (Ὦ Πύθιε) and to ask him ‘if he does not remember the torch’ (οὐδέ τοῦ λαμπαδίου μέμνησαι), the reader is surely as surprised as she is. I find it hard to resist the conclusion that the password device is introduced more for the reader’s benefit than for that of the couple, and that Theagenes’ failure to recognize Charikleia is forced on Heliodorus by his adoption of this device for other reasons. I suggest that the chief reason is his wish to foreground the term φοῖνιξ (phoenix).

A little later in Book 5 Heliodorus reintroduces the sense ‘crimson’ when he notes the paleness of the shade of red in the Iberian or British amethyst by contrast with that from Ethiopia:

ἡ μὲν γὰϱ ἀδϱανεῖ τῷ ἄνθει φοινίσσεται (5.13.3)

For its bloom of crimson is pale and weak.²⁴

It is only a page or two later in Book 5 that the arrival of the Phoenician boat at Zakynthos is made the occasion for some words of high praise: the boat has been crafted (ἐϰπεπονημένης) with a view both to size, μέγεθος, and beauty, ϰάλλος, making it εὐάγωγον. It is recognizably a Φοινίϰιον φιλοτέχνημα, a work of Phoenician craftsmanship:

οἱ δὲ τῆς νήσου πεϱὶ τὸν ὅϱμον οἰχϰοῦντες ἀπέχοντα οὐ πολὺ τῆς πόλεως ϰαθάπεϱ ἐπί τι παϱάδοξον τὴν θέαν τὴν ἡμετέϱαν συνέϱϱεον, ἀγάμενοι μὲν ὡς ἐφαίνοντο ϰαὶ τὸ τῆς λϰάδος εὐάγωγον εἰς ϰάλλος τε ἅμα ϰαὶ μέγεθος αἱϱόμενον ἐχπεπονημένης, Φοινίϰιον τὸ φιλοτέχνημα γνωϱίζειν λέγοντες, πλέον δὲ θαυμάσαντες ὥς παϱαλόγῳ τῇ τύχη χϱησαµένους εὔδιόν τε ϰαὶ ἀπήμονα πλοῦν ἐν χειµεϱίῳ τῇ ὥϱᾳ ϰαὶ Πλειάδων ἤδη δυοµένων ἀνύσαντας. (5.18.2)

Those who lived around the island’s harbour, not far from the city, gathered together to the spectacle we afforded as if to something unexpected, admiring, as it seemed, the manoeuvrability of the merchant vessel which had been crafted with an eye to beauty and at the same time superior size, saying that they recognized the masterpiece as Phoenician, and more surprised that as a result of enjoying unpredictable good luck we had completed our voyage unharmed and in fine weather at a stormy time of the year when the Pleiads were already setting.

ἐϰπονεῖν (‘to craft’) is rare in the novelists: twice in Longus, and otherwise only here. Longus’ first use is in his preface, where he describes the creation of his work in the terms τέτταϱας βίβλους ἐξεπονησάμην (‘I crafted four books’, pr.3). In a context already marked out as pastoral this word certainly recalls Lykidas’ description of his song as one which, he claims, ἐξεπόνασα (‘I crafted’) in Theocritus 7.50–1, a claim joined with a request for aesthetic approval:

ὅϱη, Φίλος, εἴ τοι ἀϱέσχει

τοῦθ’ ὅτι πϱᾶν ἐν ὅϱει τὸ μελύδϱιον ἐξεπόνασα.

See, friend, if you are pleased

by this little song that I crafted the other day on the hillside.

Longus’ second use of the verb describes Philetas’ labours on his garden (2.3.3):

ϰῆπός ἐστί µοι τῶν ἐμῶν χειϱῶν, ὃν ἐξ οὗ νέµειν διὰ γῆϱας ἐπαυσάμην ἐξεπονησάμην, ὅσα ὧϱαι φύουσι πάντα ἔχων ἐν αὐτῷ ϰαθ’ ὥϱαν ἑϰάστην.

I have a garden, my own handiwork, which since I stopped herding because of my old age I have crafted: everything that the seasons bring forth, it has in it in each season.

Longus’ use of the same form of the verb as in the preface, ἐξεπονησάμην (‘I crafted’), encourages us to see Philetas’ garden, in which Eros makes a guest appearance, as a mise en abyme of the four-book work as a whole, a creation upon which πόνος has been lavished and which is as a result perennially fruitful. When Heliodorus, whom I have argued elsewhere to have known Longus,²⁵ uses ἐϰπεπονημένης of a Phoenician ship complimented on its beauty, size and manageability, one is naturally tempted to see this human creation too as a mise en abyme: the fates of Theagenes and Charikleia are conveyed by a work that possesses not just ϰάλλος (‘beauty’) but, unlike that of Longus, μέγεθος (‘size’),²⁶ and is εὐάγωγον (‘manoeuvrable’) in the hands of a pilot whom the reader will ultimately discover to be Phoenician. That it is reasonable to succumb to that temptation is confirmed by the Zakynthians’ recognition of the ship as Φοινίϰιον φιλοτέχνημα. The unusual term φιλοτέχνημα, a ‘superb work of craftsmanship’, is more appropriately used of a literary creation than of a ship.²⁷ Like Philetas’ garden in Longus, which admirably bears fruit in every season, this φιλοτέχνημα of Heliodorus causes admiration (θαυμάσαντες) because of its unpredictable good fortune in making a safe journey in fine weather from the port of Delphi to Zakynthos despite the stormy season of the year. This unpredictable good fortune (παϱαλόγῳ τῇ τύχῃ) is also, perhaps, metonymic for the whole story of the couple’s adventures: the phrase joins a number of hints given by the author that his couple’s tale will indeed have the generically requisite happy ending. This may well be recognized by an alert reader, who has just been reminded by the somewhat contrived phrase Φοινίϰιον τὸ φιλοτέχνημα γνωϱίζειν λέγοντες (‘saying that they recognized the masterpiece as Phoenician’) that recognition is to be a recurrent issue in this as in so many other novels.

As we proceed further through Books 5 and 6 we may settle down with the expectation that Φοίνιϰες (Phoenikes) are to be understood as Phoenicians (as at 5.25.3). But Heliodorus has another trick up his sleeve. The party that leaves Chemmis to try to find Theagenes encounters the lover of Isias taking her a φοινιϰόπτεϱον (phoenikopteros, ‘flamingo’, 6.3.2–3). When this unnamed friend of Nausikles explains his mission, Nausikles tartly remarks that he is lucky that Isias had not asked him to get her a φοῖνιξ (‘phoenix’):

Φοινιϰόπτεϱον ἀλλ’ οὐϰ αὐτόν σοι τὸν φοίνιϰα τὸν ἐξ Aἰθιόπων ἢ Ἰνδῶν ὡς ἡμᾶς ἀφιϰνούμενον ὄϱνιν … (6.3.3)

‘a flamingo and not the phoenix itself, the bird which comes to us from the Ethiopians or Indians…’

Heliodorus could of course have made Isias ask for all manner of love-gifts. The choice of the φοινιϰόπτεϱον (‘flamingo’) is, I suggest, to give an opportunity for Nausikles’ comment, and that in turn completes the set of the chief meanings of the Greek word φοῖνιξ (phoenix) – ‘crimson’, ‘palm’, ‘Phoenician’ and now ‘phoenix’. Heliodorus thus reminds us that Phoenicians are not the only sort of φοῖνιξ. He also reminds us, by his suggestion that the phoenix comes from the Ethiopians or Indians, that Ethiopia – to which Isias’ lover might have had to travel to find a phoenix – is still a long, long way away. Herodotus’ story (2.73.3) had been that the phoenix came from Arabia, an area located suggestively near Phoenicia itself. Achilles Tatius makes his general in Book 3 give an account of the phoenix that mentions only Ethiopia as its place of birth and upbringing: like Herodotus, Achilles Tatius makes Heliopolis the goal of the bird’s journey when it brings its father for burial encased in a ball of myrrh, but unlike Herodotus is explicit in associating the phoenix with the sun.²⁸ Lucian in his On the death of Peregrinus (28) ascribes to his vilified charlatan the wish to be called no longer Proteus but Phoenix, τὸ Ἰνδιϰόν ὄϱvεov ‘the Indian bird’, because it climbs onto a funeral pyre in extreme old age.²⁹ Philostratus in his Apollonius (3.49), whether or not independently, has his Indian Brahmin Iarchas appropriate the phoenix for India.³⁰ Heliodorus here combines the traditions of predecessors in the writing of prose fiction, Achilles Tatius, Lucian and Philostratus – the phoenix may come from India or Ethiopia, the same disjunction of origins as is offered for the sort of amethyst produced by Kalasiris at 5.14 – but he probably does not expect us to forget the Herodotean association with Arabia that is thus being denied. He may well also expect his reader to recall that for Achilles Tatius the phoenix was specifically associated with the Sun God.

The phoenix may also evoke another set of associations. The peripatetic philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, in his treatise πεϱὶ εἱμαϱμένης (‘On fate’, De fato) dedicated to Severus and Caracalla between A.D. 198 and 209, also knows a tradition that makes the phoenix Ethiopian.³¹ He scoffs at the Stoic position that makes the truly virtuous man, the sage (ὁ σοφός) ‘like some unexpected creature contrary to nature, rarer than the phoenix of the Ethiopians’.³² The comparison itself is not Alexander’s own: the comparison of the rare sage with the phoenix was already made by Seneca, and presumably goes back even earlier.³³ It is therefore not unlikely that Heliodorus was familiar with this comparison of a sage to the phoenix. A reader may only see its full possible significance much later, but for the moment the only sage on parade is Kalasiris (whose name may owe something to the self-immolating Indian sage Kalanos). When in Book 7 Kalasiris unexpectedly dies, his now pious children at his bedside (7.11.3–4), we may feel that he too, a priest whose travels took him from Ethiopia and who received burial from his progeny in an Egyptian holy city, has something of the phoenix in him.

But Books 7, 8 and 9 have no explicit mentions of any species of φοῖνιξ: we may begin to wonder if, like Kalasiris, they have been killed off by the author so that the couple may be left to find their own destinies. Book 10 will falsify any such presumption, but they may also make a veiled appearance in Book 7. The conflict of the brothers Thyamis and Petosiris outside the walls of Memphis (7.4–7) clearly recalls the single combat between Eteokles and Polyneikes (just as the pursuit recalls that of Hector by Achilles in Iliad 22).³⁴ Of the dramatic treatments of the Theban brothers’ combat, the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman reader was more familiar with that of Euripides than that of Aeschylus:³⁵ and that Euripidean play was entitled (from its chorus) Phoenissae. A nice touch, even if it does no more than hint at the importance of Phoenicians in Greek literature.³⁶

In Book 10 Φοίνιϰες return in force. The horsemen carrying news of Hydaspes’ victory to Meroe ride through the city

τάς τε ϰεφαλὰς τῷ Nειλῴῳ λωτῷ ϰαταστέψαντες ϰαὶ φοινίϰων πτόϱθους ταῖς χεϱσὶ ϰατασείοντες. (10.3.2)

their heads garlanded with the Nile lotus and waving palm branches.

These are not palm-shoots (φοίνιϰος ἔϱvη) as in Book 4 but palm branches (φοίνιϰος πτόϱθους). Heliodorus follows this up with a description of the area around Meroe in which he especially commends its ‘ultra-tall palms bearing ultra-heavy, mouth-watering dates (φοίνιϰες ὑπεϱμήϰεις ϰαὶ τὴν βάλανον εὔστομοί τε ϰαὶ ὑπέϱογϰοι, 10.5.2).

The palm shoots (φοίνιϰος ἔϱvη) duly make their appearance in the next chapter among the principal components of the huge and environmentally friendly canopy that covers the pavilion erected for the sacrificial ritual (10.6.2):

σχήματος τετϱαπλεύϱου γωνίαν ἑϰάστην ἑνὸς ϰαλάμου χίονος δίϰην ἐϱείδοντος χαὶ ϰατὰ τὰς ἄχϱας εἰς ἁφῖδα πεϱιαγοµένου ϰαὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅμα φοινίϰων ἔϱνεσι συμπίπτοντος ϰαὶ τὸ ὑποϰείμενον ὀϱοφοῦντος.

a single reed supporting each corner of a rectangular structure like a column and bent round at its tip to form an arch, joining the others and together with palm-shoots roofing over the space beneath.

Just at the moment Theagenes and Charikleia seem to be destined for imminent death our minds are taken back by the mention of palm-shoots to the first time they kissed (4.1.2, 4.4.2).

There is then a remission until, almost half-way through the book, the term φοινίττειν (‘to make crimson’) is used to describe the blush of Meroebos when he colours at the prospect of marriage to Charikleia:

ὁ δὴ Mεϱόηβος πϱὸς τὴν ἀϰοὴν τῆς νύμφης ὑφ᾽ ἡδονῆς ἅμα ϰαὶ αἰδοῦς οὐδὲ ἐν µελαίνη τῇ χϱοιᾷ διέλαθε Φοινιχθείς, οἱονεὶ πυϱὸς αἰθάλην τοῦ ἐϱυθήματος ἐπιδϱαμόντος. (10.24.2)

At the mention of the ‘bride’ Meroebos, in pleasure and at the same time embarrassment, went visibly crimson even with his black skin-colour, the blush running across his face like a flame running over soot.

The circumstances of this blush assimilate it to Charikleia’s at 1.21.3 when she answered Thyamis’ proposal of marriage, while its comparison to a flame running over soot – οἱονεὶ πυϱὸς αἰθάλην τοῦ ἐϱυθήματος ἐπιδϱαμόντος – can be argued to invert the image of red blood on a white cheek with which, at 1.2.3, this whole sequence began. This image had already been recalled earlier in Book 10, when Charikleia’s ebony birthmark was said to ‘stain’ her ivory left arm:

ϰαὶ ἦν τις ὥσπεϱ ἔβενος πεϱίδϱοµος ἐλέφαντα τὸν βϱαχίονα µιαίνων. (10.15.2)

And there was a sort of ebony ring staining her ivory arm.

That contrast between red and white finally recurs in the description of the silks brought as gifts by the Chinese (in the chapter immediately after Meroebos’ blush):

τὴν μὲν φοινιϰοβαφῆ, τὴν δὲ λευϰοτάτην ἐσθῆτα πϱοσϰοµίζοντες. (10.25.2)

bringing some garments dyed crimson, some pure white.

Here the adjective φοινιϰοβαφῆ (‘dyed crimson’) picks up its use of Theagenes’ cloak at 3.3.5.

This concentration of φοῖνιξ terms in Book 10 thus helps to create an impression of closure. It also prepares us for Heliodorus’ last throw, when – if we accept that this sphragis belongs to the text – he signs off as ἀνήϱ Φοῖνιξ Ἑμισηνός, ‘a Phoenician man from Emesa’. Only now do we realize why the writer has been juggling so persistently with various senses of φοῖνιξ, and even the comparison of the phoenix to a sage (σοφός) may have some relevance to the framing of our text.

Parallel to this φοῖνιξ (phoenix) sequence runs another. At 5.5.2 the φοῖνιξ (phoenix) was chosen as a symbol by Theagenes, just as its colour had been first associated with him in 1.2.3 and again with his cloak in 3.3.5. Charikleia’s chosen symbol was a torch, λαμπάδιον (lampadion). λαμπάδιον (lampadion), torches (λαμπάδες, lampades), and the fire of torches (λαμπάδιον πῦϱ, lampadion pur) first enter the story associated, as very commonly, with weddings. Thyamis thinks that his dream of the Iseum full of torches relates to deflowering Charikleia:

ϰαὶ τὸν νεὼν τῆς Ἴσιδος ἐπεϱχόμενος λαμπαδίῳ πυϱὶ τὸν ὅλον ἐδόϰει παταλάμπεσθαι. (1.18.4)

And coming to the temple of Isis he thought that it was entirely lit up with the flames of torches.

This dream is recalled by him a little later:

ἐνθύμιον αὐτῷ τὸ ὄναϱ γίνεται ϰαθ’ ὃ τὴν Ἶσιν ἑώϱα ϰαὶτὸν νεὼν ἅπαντα λαμπάδων ϰαὶ θυσιῶν ἀνάμεστον … (1.30.4)

He took thought of the dream in which he had seen Isis and her whole temple full of torches and sacrifices…

Shortly thereafter Theagenes presents the conflagration in which he thinks Charikleia has perished as a wretched substitute for marriage torches (2.1.3):

ἀλλὰ πυϱός, οἴμοι, γέγονας ἀνάλωμα, τοιαύτας ἐπί σοι λαμπάσας ἀντὶ τῶν νυμφιϰῶν τοῦ δαίµονος ἄψαντος… (2.1.3)

‘But fire, alas, has consumed you – these are the sort of torches, instead of bridal torches, that the divinity has lit…’

Again, when Theagenes and Knemon think they have found Charikleia’s body, Knemon throws his torch to the ground and exstinguishes it:

‘ὦ Zεῦ, τιτοῦτο; ἀπολώλαμεν. ἀνήϱηται Χαϱίϰλεια. ϰαὶ τὸ λαμπάδιον εἰς τὴν γῆν ϰαταβαλὼν ἀπέσβεσε…

‘O Zeus, what is this? We are lost! Charikleia has perished!’ And he threw the torch to the ground and extinguished it… (2.3.3)

Two books later Charikles recalls the death of his own daughter in a fire as an exstinction of her bridal torches:

τὴν πϱώτην µοι ϰαὶ γνησίαν … θυγατέϱα ταῖς νυμφιϰαῖς λαμπάσι συναπέσβεσε. (4.19.8)

‘[Ill fortune] has extinguished my first and natural daughter together with her bridal torches’

Alongside these cases stands Charikleia’s handing of the ritual torch to Theagenes at 3.5.4–6.1, an act