SOURCE: “Early Greek Romances—The Ethiopics of Heliodorus.” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 54, no. 333 (July 1843): 109-20.

In the following essay, an anonymous reviewer describes some defects of narrative and character in the Aethiopica.

“It is not in Provence, (Provincia Romanorum,) as is commonly said from the derivation of the name—nor yet in Spain, as many suppose, that we are to look for the fatherland of those amusing compositions called Romances, which are so eminently useful in these days as affording a resource and occupation to ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do. It is in distant and far different climes to our own, and in the remote antiquity of long vanished ages:—it is among the people of the East, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Syrians, that the germ and origin is to be found of this species of fictitious narrative, for which the peculiar...