SOURCE: Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton. “Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe.” In Essays on the Greek Romances, pp. 14-37. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1943.

In the following essay, Haight examines the plot, characters, and style of Chaereas and Callirhoe.

There are two reasons for beginning a perusal of the Greek Romances with Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe. It is “the earliest Greek romance of which the text has been completely preserved.” It is “a lively tale of adventure in which a nobly born heroine is kidnapped across the sea from Syracuse to Asia Minor, where her beauty causes many complications and she is finally rescued by her dashing lover.” I quote from Warren E. Blake whose publication of the Greek text and a literary translation of it are a monument to American scholarship.

The date of the manuscript of this novel has been proved to be not later than the middle...