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ACHILLES TATIUS

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Originally appearing in Volume V01, Page 144 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ACHILLES TATIUS , of See also:Alexandria, See also:Greek rhetorician, author of the erotic See also:romance, the Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon, flourished about A.D. 450, perhaps later. Suidas, who alone calls him See also:Statius, says that he became a See also:Christian and eventually a bishop—like See also:Heliodorus, whom he imitated—but there is no See also:evidence of this. See also:Photius, while severely criticizing his lapses into indecency, highly praises the conciseness and clearness of his See also:style, which, however, is artificial and laboured. Many of the incidents of the romance are highly improbable, and the characters, except the heroine, fail to enlist sympathy. The descriptive passages and digressions, although tedious and introduced without adequate reasons, are the best See also:part of the See also:work. The large number of existing See also:MSS. attests its popularity. (Ediiio princeps, 16os; first important See also:critical edition by See also:Jacobs, 1821; later See also:editions by Hirschig, 1856; Hercher, 1858. There are See also:translations in many See also:languages; in See also:English by See also:Anthony H[odges], 1638, and R. See also:Smith, 1855. See also ROMANCE.) Suidas also ascribes to this author an See also:Etymology, a See also:Miscellaneous See also:History of Famous Men, and a See also:treatise On the See also:Sphere. Part of the last is extant under the See also:title of An Introduction to the Phaenomena of See also:Aratus.

But if the writer is the prudentissimus Achilles referred to by See also:

Firmicus Maternus (about 336) in his Matkeseos libri, iv. so, 17 (ed. Kroll), he must have lived See also:long before the author of Leucippe. The fragment was first published in 1567, then in the Uranologion of Petavius, with a Latin See also:translation, 163o. Nothing definite is known as to the author-See also:ship of the other See also:works, which are lost.

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