SOURCE: Heiserman, Arthur. “Divine Romance.” In The Novel before the Novel: Essays and Discussions about the Beginnings of Prose Fiction in the West, pp. 188-202. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977.

In the following excerpt, Heiserman analyzes Heliodorus's development of plot, focusing on the theme of destiny and its role in the lives of its main characters.

… Like other romances, the Aethiopica is set in the misty period of Persian hegemony over the East, and it culminates in Ethiopia, the Land of the Sun outside the confines of the later empire, where naked black sages, the purest devotees of Helios, defy their priestly king.¹ The specific cults described in the story—those practiced at Delphi, Memphis, and in Ethiopia itself—are judged to be inferior to a cultless life devoted to the acquisition of wisdom (sophia). On the other hand, allusions to Helios and to “the god” abound...