Thanks to Richard Hunter, Simon Goldhill, Judith Perkins, Tim Whitmarsh, Anthony Boyle, John Penwill and anonymous readers; to participants of seminars at UCL (especially Nick Lowe) and Cambridge, and to the joint Cambridge-Paris ‘elite and non-elite’ AHRC project (especially Greg Woolf and Mireille Corbier), all of whom commented on versions of this research. Thanks too to my colleagues James Clackson for help with linguistics, and Dorothy Thompson and Augusta McMahon for clarification of some points of Babylonian history.

1. Photius Bibliotheca, codex 94. The text is that of Henry, R., Photius: Bibliothèque vols. 1 and 2 (Paris 1960Google Scholar). All translations are my own.

2. Swain, S., Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250 (Oxford 1996) 126fGoogle Scholar.

3. See Brooten, B., Love Among Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Cameron, A., ‘Love (and Marriage) between Women’, GRBS 39 (1998), 137–56Google Scholar; Lilja, S., Homosexuality in Augustan and Republican Rome (Helsinki 1983Google Scholar); Montiel, J.F.M., Desde Lesbos con Amor: Homosexualidad femenina en la antiguedad (Madrid 1996Google Scholar); Rabinowitz, N.S. and Auanger, L., Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (Austin 2002Google Scholar).

4. See duBois, P., ‘The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault’, in D.H. Larmour, P.A. Miller and C. Platter (eds.), Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity (Princeton 1998), 85–103Google Scholar; A. Richlin, ‘Foucault’s History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?’, ibid. 138–70; Foxhall, L., ‘Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality’. in A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfame (eds.), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London 1994), 133–46Google Scholar; H. Morales, ‘The Ancient Novels and the History of Sexuality’ in T. Whitmarsh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Ancient Novels (Cambridge forthcoming).

5. On the difficulties of this formulation, and the complexities of understanding any perceived continuities between sexual practices in antiquity and the present day, see Brooten (n.3 above), 1–17, and N.S. Rabinowitz, ‘Introduction’, in Rabinowitz and Auanger (n.3 above), 1–33, who summarises the important debate (in relation to male sexual practices) between David Halperin and Amy Richlin.

6. On which see Brooten (n.3 above), 51–53; Montiel (n.3 above), 110–18; S.P. Haley, ‘Lucian’s “Leaena and Clonarium”: Voyeurism or a Challenge to Assumptions?’, in Rabinowitz and Auanger (n.3 above), 286–303.

7. Wilson, N.G., Photius: The Bibliotheca (London 1994), 5Google Scholar.

8. So D. Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton 1994), 76 n.39Google Scholar: ‘That narrative appears to differ in many ways from the so-called ideal romances that we have been considering. I have judged it unsafe to rely on this and other highly fragmentary texts in eliciting the pattern of erotic relations in the Greek novel. I am not persuaded that the novel is marginalised because it is fragmentary, rather than because it differs from the ‘ideal’ romances. Goldhill, Neither S.D., Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar), nor Haynes, K., Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel (London and New York 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar), discuss Iamblichus.

9. See Adams, J., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London 1982), 177Google Scholar, for ‘be with’ vocabulary as metonymic for sexual relations. The similar phrase is used in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans in a context in which there is no doubt that it refers to having sex (in this case between a girl and a young man): 6.1.

10. Sandy’s, Gerald translation in B.P. Reardon (ed.), Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley 1989Google Scholar).

11. Cameron (n.3 above), 151.

12. Cameron cites two examples from Herodas and Xenophon of Ephesus: (‘On the twentieth of Taureon Hecate is celebrating her daughter Artakane’s wedding’. Mimes 7. 85–86), and (‘Apsyrtus celebrated his daughter’s wedding’ Ephesian Tales 2.7): Cameron (n.3 above), 150f.

13. Brooten (n.3 above), 51. Boswell, J., Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago 1980), 84Google Scholar, and Rohde, E., Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer⁴ (Hildesheim 1960), 401–10Google Scholar, also think marriage the most likely option. W. Kroll, s.v. ‘Iamblichos’ in Pauly-Wissowa 9 (Stuttgart 1916), Schneider-Menzel, U., in Altheim, F. (ed.), Literatur und Gesellschaft im ausgehenden Altertum (Halle 1948Google Scholar), 55 and 67, and Montiel (n.3 above), 118–20, agree that it is more plausible that Berenice acted as organiser of Mesopotamia’s marriage.

14. Suda 2.603.18 s.v. . Text also printed in Habrich’s edition: Habrich, E., Iamblichi Babyloniacorum Reliquiae (Leipzig 1960Google Scholar).

15. We are unable to reconcile this account with that of Photius, which tells us that the novel ends after the sixteenth book. Most scholars trust Photius here, rather than the encyclopaedia.

16. For Montiel, the Suda entry is the decisive factor in the argument against this being a marriage between two women: Montiel (n.3 above), 118f.

17. Brooten (n.3 above), 335.

18. Text published in Henry (n.1 above), 40 n.1. Cf. Millar, F., The Roman Near East 31 BC AD 337 (Cambridge MA 1993), 489–523Google Scholar, at 491: ‘This note could indeed derive from a closer and less hurried reading of the original novel than Photius’ summary did.

19. Swain (n.2 above), 110, 130.

20. For example, the daughters of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy IX Soter II, and Ptolemy XI Auletes. See Stephens, S. and Winkler, J., Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments (Princeton 1995), 196 n.31Google Scholar; Beck, R., ‘History into Fiction’, Ancient Narrative 1 (2001), 283–300Google Scholar, quotation from 287.

21. So far as I have been able to verify, Garmos is neither a Babylonian nor a Greek name. None of the editions of Iamblichus comments on Garmos’ historicity. He has, however, a literary parallel. The fifty-ninth letter in Philostratus’ Letters of Apollonius of Tyana is written as if from Garmos, the King of the Babylonians, to Neogyndes, the King of the Indians. Nothing in the letter suggests a connection with Babylonian Tales, but two unrelated ‘Garmos, King of Babylon’s seems strange and the question of a common source, literary or historical, must remain open.

22. Cassius Dio Epitome 68.23.1.

23. The description of Mesopotamia as an island, rather than a region, is ideological rather than geographically accurate. On the relationship between the rivers and the land, see Oppenheim, A.L., Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago 1964), 35Google Scholar.

24. Another example comes immediately after the descriptions of Mesopotamia, Tigris and Euphrates. Photius writes that there followed a digression in which ‘[the tale of] Tanais, after whom the river Tanais is named, [is] told in detail’ (75b11).

25. Rhodanes and Sinonis are possibly Hellenised forms of the names of two Armenian epic heroes, Faredun and Shahnaz, although other derivations have been suggested: see J.R. Russell, ‘Poetics, Mystics and Philosophers; or the Near East in the Mind of Armenia’ (1994) www.commercemarketplace.com/home/naasr/NAASR_2003_1.htm. Schneider-Menzel (n.13 above, 79f.) suggests that the name Sinonis is derived from the Akkadian sinuntu, Aramaic senunit, which means ‘swallow’ This would bolster the interpretation of the prophecy of the eagle and kite chasing the swallow at 78a39 as portending Garmos and Rhodanes’ pursuit of Sinonis. The swallow eludes the eagle, we are told, but is caught by the kite, just as Sinonis eludes Garmos, but is reunited with Rhodanes. Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above, 199 n.42) comment: ‘In Babylonian divination, the eagle has royal associations similar to those it had in Greece; the swallow, which does not particularly figure in Greek omenry was also significant, usually for where it built its nest. Linguistically, the hellenisation of the Armenian names and the derivation from Akkadian and Aramaic are equally plausible.

26. See Ostrowski, J.A., Personifications of Rivers in Greek and Roman Art (Krakow 1991Google Scholar), and Huskinson, J., ‘Rivers of Roman Antioch’ in E. Stafford and J. Herrin (eds.), Personification in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (Aldershot & Burlington 2005), 247–64Google Scholar.

27. The praeceptor amoris envisages the boy pointing them out to the girl at his side: ‘That is Euphrates, with a fringe of reeds on his forehead; he with the dark blue locks hanging down must be Tigris’ (AA 1.223f.). See also Lucan’s Civil War (8.212–14) where Tigris and Euphrates represent—metonymically—wider territory.

28. ARMENIA ET MESOPOTAMIA IN POTESTATEM P[OPVLI] R[OMANI] REDACTAE. The obverse shows a bust of Trajan wearing a laurel wreath and imperial cloak. Breglia, L., Roman Imperial Coins: Their Art and Technique (New York 1968), 134fGoogle Scholar.; Carson, R.A.G., Coins of the Roman Empire (New York 1990), p1. 10Google Scholar, fig. 130; Mattingley, H. and Sydenham, E.A., Roman Imperial Coinage Vol 2: Vespasian to Hadrian (London 1926), 289, p1. 11Google Scholar, fig. 191. Huskinson (n.26 above, 250–52) discusses personifications of Tigris and (probably) Euphrates and Mesopotamia in a mosaic in the House of Cilicia at Seleucia, dated to the latter half of the 2nd century CE.

29. Millar (n.18 above, 491) writes that Euphrates, Tigris and Mesopotamia were the ‘three daughters’ of the priestess of Aphrodite. This seems simply to be an error, but it is an error that encourages non-recognition that Iamblichus’ representation of the three youths fits an established pattern.

30. Aeneid 1.2f.

31. Connors, C., ‘Metaphor and Politics in John Barclay’s Argenis (1612)’ in S. Harrison, M. Paschalis and S. Frangoulidis (eds.), Metaphor and the Ancient Novel (Groningen 2005), 245–74, at 246Google Scholar; Haynes (n.8 above), 161f.

32. On marriage in the Greek novel see Haynes (n.8 above), 156–62. On the specific difficulties of teleology in Achilles Tatius see Morales, H., Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (Cambridge 2004), 143–51Google Scholar, Repath, I., ‘Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Cleitophon: What Happened Next?’. CQ 55 (2005), 250–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. There is a possible inconsistency between the narrative at 77b38 where we are told Sinonis is ‘now married to the king of Syria’ and 78a24 where ‘Sakas sends a letter to Garmos saying that Sinonis is about to be married to the king of the Syrians, a young man’ However, it is also possible that the letter may have arrived after Sinonis got married, in which case the versions are not incompatible.

34. They suggest ‘[t]he latter would seem more probable in a text that so proclaimed its current Syrian connections’: Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above), 183.

35. Babyloniaka is the name attested by the Suda. Photius gives no title, referring to it only as . The A MS of the Suda has ; instead of . Commenting on this, Tim Whitmarsh makes an interesting conjecture: ‘This may be simple dittography; but it is also possible that A transmits the traces of an original reading , perhaps via an intermediary corruption to : Whitmarsh, T., ‘The Greek Novel: Titles and Genre’, AJP 126 (2005), 586–611Google Scholar, for a discussion of the titles of the novels.

36. Adler, A., Suidae Lexicon: Vol. 4 (1926), xi.49Google Scholar.

37. Collected in Jacoby, F. (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Vol. 3 (Berlin and Leiden 1958Google Scholar), 364–97 = FGrHist 680. On the problems of transmission of these testimonia see Schnabel, P., Berossos und die Babylonisch-Hellenistische Literatur (Leipzig 1923Google Scholar). Translation and commentary in Verbrugghe, G.P. and Wickersham, J.M., Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (Michigan 1996Google Scholar).

38. On the purpose of Berossos’ Babyloniaka, see Kuhrt, A., ‘Berossus’ Babyloniaka and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia’, in A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-White (eds.), Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilisations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander (London 1987), 32–56Google Scholar.

39. It does not follow from this that a relationship between novel and historiography entails the kind of generic constraints envisaged by Rohde (n.13 above), 263f, and Perry, B.E., The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins (Berkeley 1967), 167–69Google Scholar, wherein the histories create expectations of historical ‘realism’ in the novels: the relations are freer and more imaginative than that.

40. See e.g. Apuleius Apol. 38; Lucian Menipp. 9 and Philops. 12.

41. Also: ‘The soldiers coming in the darkness saw the bodies and, following the custom of the Babylonians () threw down various items for them..’ (Fragment 19 = Suda 4.387.26 s.v. ). On the meaning of this ‘custom’ see Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above), 207 n.56.

42. By Soterichos (writing around 300 CE) according to the Suda s.v. Soterichos: Adler (n.36 above), s.877.

43. Most commonly, if erroneously, referred to as ‘temple-prostitution’ Lerner, G., ‘The Origin of Prostitution in Ancient Mesopotamia’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11.2 (1986), 236–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the common failure to make distinctions between the different types of cultic and commercial activities in and around temples that involved sex. Beard, M. and Henderson, J., ‘With This Body I Thee Worship: Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity’ in M. Wyke (ed.), Parchments of Gender (Oxford 1988), 56–79Google Scholar, expose ‘temple-prostitution’ to be an Orientalist fantasy. On Herodotus and Strabo see also Kurke, L., Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold (Princeton 1999), 227–48Google Scholar. In Herodotus’ account of what he calls ‘the most disgraceful of the customs the Babylonians have’ (), at some point in her life every local woman must sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have sex with a stranger (1.9.9). In Strabo’s version women also come to the temple of Aphrodite to have sex with a stranger (16.1.20). Prostitution is not mentioned in Photius’ epitome, but the temple of Aphrodite figures prominently in the narrative. Mesopotamia’s mother (who is not named) is the priestess of Aphrodite. There is also mention of (but with little detail) ‘a digression about Aphrodite’s temple, and how women who visit there must publicly announce the dreams that they have in the temple’ (75a36). From this we might conjecture that maybe the original made some play with sexual stereotypes of Babylonians, but we are not in a position to say more than that.

44. For the self-representations of ancient novelists as learned and cultured, see Stramaglia, A., ‘Fra “consumo” e “impegno”: usi didattici della narrativa nel mondo antico’ in O. Pecere and A. Stramaglia (eds.), La Letteratura di consumo nel mondo Greco-Latino (Cassino 1996), 99–149Google Scholar, at 148.

45. Ramelli, I., ‘I Babyloniaka di Giamblico e la cultura plurietnica dell’ impero fra II e III secolo’. Athenaeum 89 (2001), 447–58Google Scholar, places Iamblichus in the ‘context’ of the four writers mentioned above, but they hardly form a group and are not all contemporaries chronologically (Tatian is 110–180 CE, Bardesanes 154–222 CE, Sextus Julius Africanus some time in the 3rd century CE, Porphyry 254–c.305 CE).

46. Swain (n.1 above), 421f.

47. Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above), 182 n.10.

48. Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above), 183. But see also Stephens, S.A., ‘Fragments of Lost Novels’; in G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden 1996), 655–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which takes rather a different approach. Following Braun, M., History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature (Oxford 1938Google Scholar), she argues that this is ‘nationalistic novel’

49. On the complexity of identities (especially) at this time, I have learned from Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Review Article: Greek Knowledge, Roman Power’. CP 83 (1988), 224–33Google Scholar; Woolf, G., ‘Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East’, PCPS 40 (1994), 116–43Google Scholar; Gleason, M., Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1995Google Scholar); Goldhill, S.D. (ed.), Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar), especially ‘Introduction. Setting an Agenda: Everything is Greece to the Wise’ 1–25; Whitmarsh, T., Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford 2001Google Scholar); id., The Second Sophistic (Oxford 2005Google Scholar).

50. Jos. Ant. 18.9.9.

51. Cf. Millar (n.18 above), 492f.: ‘Though all generalisations are rash, it seems from our evidence that we should see both the pagan and the Christian culture of this area, as expressed in Syriac, as derivatives of Greek culture, and not as a source of Syria proper. Above all, the notion that there was a “Syrian” culture, embracing equally the zone of Syriac literature and Roman Syria, goes beyond our evidence.’

52. Millar (n.18 above), 497f.: ‘His account of learning [Babylonian] can hardly be meant as a reference to the acquisition of another branch of Aramaic, presumably written in the same alphabet (as most branches were), but in a somewhat different script. He must surely intend to imply that what was learned was what moderns call Akkadian, also a Semitic language, but written in cuneiform. There is perfectly clear, and increasing, evidence for the continuing production of cuneiform tablets through the Hellenistic period, and indeed into the first century AD. But if it is a historical reality (and not a piece of fiction, as it may be) that a captive taken by Trajan’s army could still be learned in Akkadian, all presumptions about the culture of the area will need to be revised.’

53. Millar (n.18 above), 497.

54. Millar (n.18 above), 492–510.

55. Millar (n.18 above), 503.

56. Hägg, T.The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford and New York 1983), 34Google Scholar.

57. Hägg (n.56 above), 34; Borgogno, A., ‘Sui Babyloniaca di Giamblico’, Hermes 103 (1975), 101–26Google Scholar, at 105: ‘In Garmo non troviamo, come in Dionisio, la delicatezza e la sensibilità dell’ : e la tipica figura del despota barbaro.

58. R. Johne, ‘Women in the Ancient Novel’, in Schmeling (n.48 above), 151–208, at 184. The essays in Bottero, J. (ed.), Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (= Initiation a l’Orient ancien [Paris 1992]Google Scholar), tr. A. Nevill (Edinburgh 2001), also reinscribe stereotypes of Mesopotamia.

59. Frag. 85 (= codd. Laur. 57,12 and Vat. 1354). We do not have any context for this fragment of Iamblichus, and it is, of course, possible, if unlikely, that it was originally framed so as to undermine, rather than support, that view. On the difficulty of reading sententiae, see Morales, H., ‘Sense and Sententiousness in the Greek Novels’ in A. Sharrock and H. Morales (eds.), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (Oxford 2000), 67–88Google Scholar.

60. H. Kuch, ‘A Study on the Margin of the Ancient Novel: “Barbarians” and Others’, in Schmeling (n.48 above), 209–20, at 213.

61. Judith Perkins’s argument, in an unpublished paper entitled, ‘Who’s Who? Iamblichus’ Babyloniaka’. delivered at the APA in 1995. I’m grateful to Professor Perkins for letting me see a copy of her paper.

62. Perkins (n.61 above). Chaereas kicking the pregnant Callirhoe is an exception to this pattern.

63. Perkins (n.61 above).

64. Fragment 35.

65. As Perkins (n.61 above) also suggests.

66. Heiserman, A., The Novel Before the Novel: Essay and Discussions about the Beginnings of Prose Fiction in the West (Chicago 1977), 62fGoogle Scholar.; Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above), 185f.

67. Leigh, M., Comedy and the Rise of Rome (Oxford 2004), 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. So Gaius Inst. 1.129: ius postliminii, quo hi, qui ab hostibus capti sunt, si reuersi fuerint, omnia pristina iura recipiunt. It could also apply to voluntary exile and other situations. Leigh discusses the historical evolution of postliminium, and the full range of circumstances it could involve: Leigh (above), 60–77. I have also found useful Kornhardt, H., ‘Postliminium in Republikanischer Zeit’. SDHI 19 (1953), 1–37Google Scholar and Cursi, M.F., La struttura del postliminium nella repubblica e nel principato (Naples 1996Google Scholar).

68. Bowersock, G.W., Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley 1994), 109Google Scholar. Bowersock’s argument—that Scheintode in the novels reflect resurrection narratives in contemporary Christian narratives—takes a very different direction from mine.

69. Stephens and Winkler (n.20 above), 184.

70. On which see Selden, D.L., ‘Aithiopika and Ethiopianism’, in R.L. Hunter (ed.), Studies in Heliodorus, PCPS suppl. 21 (Cambridge 1998), 182–232Google Scholar; T. Whitmarsh, ‘The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenism’, ibid. 93–124; Perkins, J., ‘An Ancient “Passing” Novel: Heliodorus’ Aithiopika’, Arethusa 32 (1999), 197–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71. ‘What Callirhoe was to Ionia, Rhodogune was to Asia’ .

72. K. Dowden, ‘Greek Novel and the Ritual of Life: An Exercise in Taxonomy’ in Harrison, Paschalis and Frangoulidis (n.31 above), 23–35, at 23. He argues that the novels are essentially allegorical, but not in the linear, often forced, way that Merkelbach and Kerenyi’s Mysterientexte approach presented it.

73. Theodoras Priscianus (Eupor. rer. med., 2.11.34).

74. See Pellegrini, A., ‘There’s No Place like Home? Lesbian Studies and the Classics’, in L. Garber (ed.) Tilting the Tower (New York and London 1994), 70–82Google Scholar, on the invisibility of ‘lesbian’ history, even within ‘feminist and gay-affirmative’ classical scholarship:

75. Hall, E., ‘The Ass with Double Vision: Politicising an Ancient Greek Novel’, in D. Margolies and M. Joannou (eds.), Heart of the Heartless World: Essays in Cultural Resistance in Memory of Margot Heinemann (London 1995), 47–59Google Scholar, at 51.

76. Hall (n.75 above), 51: ‘This [dual perspective] is particularly remarkable because all the other Greek novels try to erase the reality of submission to Rome, preferring to set their action nostalgically in the “free” pre-Roman Greek past of a few hundred years before.

77. See e.g. E. Sciolino, ‘Is Baghdad’s Tiger a Literary Lion?’. The New York Times, May 27th 2001, p.A10; B. Whitaker, ‘Another Side of Saddam—The Shy Romantic Novelist’ The Guardian, May 26th 2001. See also Connors (n.31 above), 245–47.

78. According to Sciolino (n.77 above), quoted by Connors (n.37 above).

79. Whitaker (n.77 above).