SOURCE: Doody, Margaret Anne. “Heliodorus Rewritten: Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Frances Burney's Wanderer.” In The Search for the Ancient Novel, edited by James Tatum, pp. 117-31. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Doody discusses aspects of The Wanderer and Clarissa which derive from the Aethiopica.

In 1789 there appeared a new English edition of Heliodorus's Aethiopica, translated as The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea: A Romance. This two-volume novel contains a prefatory “Advertisement” by the translator, recommending the Greek novelist:

Heliodorus may be considered as the Homer of romance, and if it cannot be said of him, as it may of the great father of epic poetry, that he has never been excelled or equalled by any of his successors, it may with truth be affirmed that he has very seldom been so. In clear, spirited, elegant narration, Cervantes is not his superior—in the...