SOURCE: Forcione, Alban K. “Heliodorus and Literary Theory.” In Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles, pp. 49-87. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970.

In the following essay, Forcione details the influence of the Aethiopica in sixteenth century literary circles.

Not everyone can be a Theagenes or an Aristotle.

Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa

I offer you the Trabajos de Persiles, a book which dares to compete with Heliodorus.

Cervantes

In 1526, one year before Alessandro de' Pazzi wrote the dedication to the translation of Aristotle's Poetics which would lead to the reorientation of Renaissance literary theory, an event occurred which was to have far-reaching consequences in the development of the European prose narrative. During the sack of Buda by the Turks, a soldier discovered the richly bound manuscript of Heliodorus' Aethiopica in the library of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. Shortly thereafter this postclassical Greek romance¹ came into the...