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Efesíacas
Il était une fois à Ephèse, deux jeunes gens d'une égale et parfaite beauté, Habrocomès et Anthia, éprouvant l’un pour l’autre un amour aussi tendre que violent. On les unit et on les embarque pour un long voyage, mais toutes sortes d’embûches les attendent : pirates, brigands, marchands d’esclaves, viennent tourmenter les deux héros, tandis que les séparations et les tentations mettent à l’épreuve leur fidélité. Leur vertu obstinée, soutenue par les dieux helléniques et égyptiens, notamment Isis, triomphe de tous les obstacles et reste victorieuse. Telle est la trâme aussi sentimentale qu’édifiante des Ephésiaques, sans doute le roman grec le plus récent qui nous soit parvenu, et dont l’auteur nous est fort mal connu. De Xénophon d’Ephèse en effet, l’on ne sait rien avec certitude et même son nom et sa provenance sont mis en doute.
La présente édition rassemble en un volume les périples d’Habrocomès et d’Anthia. L’introduction fait le point des connaissances relatives à l’auteur en exposant les diverses hypothèses dont il a fait l’objet et propose une datation entre le IIème et le IVème siècle. Les liens avec les autres romans grecs sont analysés en profondeur, de même que ceux avec la sophistique. Une étude de la religion, notamment du culte d’Isis, vient également éclairer le texte. La tradition manuscrite est brièvement relatée, tandis que des notes éclairent la lecture.
La présente édition rassemble en un volume les périples d’Habrocomès et d’Anthia. L’introduction fait le point des connaissances relatives à l’auteur en exposant les diverses hypothèses dont il a fait l’objet et propose une datation entre le IIème et le IVème siècle. Les liens avec les autres romans grecs sont analysés en profondeur, de même que ceux avec la sophistique. Une étude de la religion, notamment du culte d’Isis, vient également éclairer le texte. La tradition manuscrite est brièvement relatée, tandis que des notes éclairent la lecture.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 150
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November 9, 2012
Rencontre d'Habrocomès et d'Anthia à la fête de Diane, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770)
Xénophon d'Ephese est l'auteur de ce roman grec, que l'on situe au début de notre ère sans plus de précisions. Habrocomés et Anthia en sont les deux héros. Comme dans la plupart des romans grecs antiques, ils sont d'une beauté incomparable, et d'une vertu à toute épreuve. Tombés amoureux dès le premier regard, leurs parents ne tardent pas à les marier, mais pour l’intérêt du roman, ils vont vivre une véritable Odyssée en tombant de Charybde en Sylla. Enlevés par des pirates, vendus en esclavage, séparés par des mers et des pays, condamnés à tort, torturés, menacés, affligés, leurs physionomies avantageuses ne laissent pas de causer sur ceux qui les voient les affres d'une passion extrême et bien sûr sans espoir, puisqu'ils se sont juré fidélité l'un à l'autre. Les personnages méchants sont évidemment d'une noirceur extrême, et ils ne dédaignent aucune vilenie pour ouvrir une carrière à leurs vices, mais la fortune se charge heureusement de châtier ces insolents.
On aura donc peine à trouver le plus petit embryon de psychologie ou de finesse, ce qui fait que les érudits chargés de conserver et de traduire ces textes ont pour l'ordinaire à l'égard de ceux-ci le plus grand mépris, affiché parfois de manière outrancière. Il n'empêche que ce n'est pas rien que ces textes ait survécu à vingt siècles d'oubli, et ils nous renseignent sur ce que pouvait être le goût de ces lointains ancêtres: il n'est pas bien différent de celui des modernes. En effet, lorsque ces récits furent redécouverts en Occident ils y a quelques siècles, il s'ensuivit une fureur et un engouement extraordinaires pour ces récits d'amour orientaux, faits d'aventures, d'enlèvements, de piraterie et de cruautés. Celui-ci est bien plus court que Les Ethiopiques, 1(Théagène et Chariclée) d'Héliodore d'Emese. J'aimerais bien trouver maintenant le roman d'Achille Tatius, Le Roman De Leucippé Et Clitophon.
March 31, 2026
The predecessor of, like, every love story ever.
January 19, 2024
Frankly I enjoy reading these ancient novels immensely, despite (or I suppose actually because of) their being the source of practically all narrative cliche and the endless tropes of bad novels, movies, and TV shows down through the ages. This one is a particularly bad offender, considered for centuries to be a clumsy narrative. The Ephesian Tale appears to borrow its few interesting plot points from other similar Greek novels of the Roman period, and is so bad (so wholly expository that is, bad by modern storytelling standards) that it's even suspected to be a synopsis rather than the full original text.
All that aside, the tropes have been repeated endlessly because we still, even after all these centuries, see love as something of a guiding light and seem well aware that all of the other stuff that happens to us acts as a kind of narrative dross, as tribulation (I wonder if this is where Christianity picked up that trope--they sure ran with it!) keeping us from going to bed with the one we love. How brilliant that the most erudite novel up to that point (and maybe even now), Joyce's Ulysses ends with the protagonist going to bed with his wife.
Culturally it's also interesting to think about this Roman world, so lawless and filled with so damned much slavery! Also the lost awareness that sexual desire has little do with gender norms as Judaeo-Christian social mores, puritanism, and even more uptight Protestantism would have it. I'm so happy that Christianity's conquering of the Roman world subdued slavery--at least among Christian and at least until the Renaissance brought it back and carried into the new world, but I'm very angry that it's perverted our view of sexuality and marriage and made a real mockery of the sacredness of actual love between two people, of whatever genders in order simply to control, dominate, and grow rich on our money and subservience. What progress gives on the one hand it takes away on the other.
Also I snickered a lot reading this one since its major theme is chastity (here to remain faithful to a lover despite all of the tribulations of a standard romance narrative) because Boccaccio so brilliantly spoofs it in a novella in the Decameron. In Boccaccio's tale a maiden sets out by ship to marry a nobleman in a nearby port and spends some ten years, if I recall correctly, going from pirate chattel to serving wench to married woman--in sum, through all of the vicissitudes of the standard Greek romance--only to finally arrive ten years late and marry as a virgin (although she's been forced to "marry" every other man she's met along the way. Ah, virginity, stupidest of all conventions!
All that aside, the tropes have been repeated endlessly because we still, even after all these centuries, see love as something of a guiding light and seem well aware that all of the other stuff that happens to us acts as a kind of narrative dross, as tribulation (I wonder if this is where Christianity picked up that trope--they sure ran with it!) keeping us from going to bed with the one we love. How brilliant that the most erudite novel up to that point (and maybe even now), Joyce's Ulysses ends with the protagonist going to bed with his wife.
Culturally it's also interesting to think about this Roman world, so lawless and filled with so damned much slavery! Also the lost awareness that sexual desire has little do with gender norms as Judaeo-Christian social mores, puritanism, and even more uptight Protestantism would have it. I'm so happy that Christianity's conquering of the Roman world subdued slavery--at least among Christian and at least until the Renaissance brought it back and carried into the new world, but I'm very angry that it's perverted our view of sexuality and marriage and made a real mockery of the sacredness of actual love between two people, of whatever genders in order simply to control, dominate, and grow rich on our money and subservience. What progress gives on the one hand it takes away on the other.
Also I snickered a lot reading this one since its major theme is chastity (here to remain faithful to a lover despite all of the tribulations of a standard romance narrative) because Boccaccio so brilliantly spoofs it in a novella in the Decameron. In Boccaccio's tale a maiden sets out by ship to marry a nobleman in a nearby port and spends some ten years, if I recall correctly, going from pirate chattel to serving wench to married woman--in sum, through all of the vicissitudes of the standard Greek romance--only to finally arrive ten years late and marry as a virgin (although she's been forced to "marry" every other man she's met along the way. Ah, virginity, stupidest of all conventions!
August 17, 2021
There's something so deeply refreshing about the purely epic narrative of ancient times. So many familiar themes - you upset a god, he takes revenge but proves merciful in the end; true love conquers all; an almost neverending series of trials. Great if you want to find something new looking for something very old :)
August 28, 2026
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/%e1%bc%90%cf%86%ce%b5%cf%83%ce%b9%ce%b1%ce%ba%ce%ac-xenophons-ephesian-history-or-the-love-adventures-of-abrocomas-and-anthia-in-five-books-translated-from-the-greek-by-mr-rooke/
I was inspired to get hold of this because when I visited Gent last month, I was struck by Joseph Paelink’s The Fair Anthia Leading Her Companions to the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, which represents a scene from the first chapter, and prompted me to seek out the source material.
It’s the story of Anthia and Habrocomes (the ‘H’ tends to get dropped in translation), who fall in love and set off on a largely involuntary saga of travels around the Eastern Mediterranean, where they are shipwrecked, separated, kidnapped, threatened with seduction, encounter sultry pirates, brigands, merchants and merchant’s wives, believe each other to have died and are finally reunited. Sorry to spoil the ending, but this is a book written in about 200AD and anyway it’s about the journey, not the destination. It is a tremendous romp speaking from the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire and looking back to a more adventurous era. I have seen the Ἐφεσιακά described as the earliest known novel; I’d like to know more about the competitors for that title, but I can sense a format pushing at the boundaries and trying to find out what it can do.
You can easily get the 1727 translation by John Rooke on the Internet Archive. John Rooke also translated Arrian’s account of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, but little else is known of him. My eye was caught by a couple of sentences in the preface:
"I muſt not however omit acquainting my Readers, that I have given a different Turn to one Paſſage, towards the beginning ot the third Book, becauſe it would not have ſounded well in an Engliſh Ear; and whatever Toleration the ancient Greeks might plead, it is entirely repugnant to the Genius and Cuſtoms of our Country. Whoſoever underſtands the Original may eaſily find out the Deviation, and to thoſe who do not, the Knowledge thereof is no ways material: This I only add, leſt any ſhould pretend to accuſe me for want of Skill in the Language, and take this Paſſage for a Handle."
The passage in question is the second chapter of Book III. The context is that Habrocomas has fallen in with a hot bandit chap called Hippothous, who now tells his own origin story. In Rooke's translation, Hippothous "was struck with the Charms of a fair Virgin there [in his home town, Perinthus], whose Name was Hyperanthe. When first I saw her lead up the Perinthian Maids in a Dance, I lov’d her". The story has an unhappy ending.
From the English translation alone, it’s a fairly standard story of love gone tragically wrong, one of several in the course of the Ἐφεσιακά. But the part that Rooke felt he could not translate directly into English is this: in the original Greek, it’s absolutely clear that Hippothous fell in love, not with a beautiful young girl called Hyperanthe but with a beautiful young boy called Hyperanthes (incidentally otherwise recorded only as a Persian name). He didn’t see a young girl dancing with the other maidens; he saw a beautiful young man (μειράκιον) exercising in the gymnasium (πρῶτα ἐν γυμνασίοις διαπαλαίοντα). This was what Rooke felt “entirely repugnant to the Genius and Cuſtoms of our Country”. It’s not the only case of same-sex romance (let alone lust) in the Ἐφεσιακά, but it’s the one where the reader is most clearly meant to sympathise with the unhappy lover. Incidentally the 1797 translation into French is perfectly clear that Hyperanthes is a boy.
Anyway, this short romp from an earlier age is well worth seeking out. There is also a recent educational edition.
I was inspired to get hold of this because when I visited Gent last month, I was struck by Joseph Paelink’s The Fair Anthia Leading Her Companions to the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, which represents a scene from the first chapter, and prompted me to seek out the source material.
It’s the story of Anthia and Habrocomes (the ‘H’ tends to get dropped in translation), who fall in love and set off on a largely involuntary saga of travels around the Eastern Mediterranean, where they are shipwrecked, separated, kidnapped, threatened with seduction, encounter sultry pirates, brigands, merchants and merchant’s wives, believe each other to have died and are finally reunited. Sorry to spoil the ending, but this is a book written in about 200AD and anyway it’s about the journey, not the destination. It is a tremendous romp speaking from the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire and looking back to a more adventurous era. I have seen the Ἐφεσιακά described as the earliest known novel; I’d like to know more about the competitors for that title, but I can sense a format pushing at the boundaries and trying to find out what it can do.
You can easily get the 1727 translation by John Rooke on the Internet Archive. John Rooke also translated Arrian’s account of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, but little else is known of him. My eye was caught by a couple of sentences in the preface:
"I muſt not however omit acquainting my Readers, that I have given a different Turn to one Paſſage, towards the beginning ot the third Book, becauſe it would not have ſounded well in an Engliſh Ear; and whatever Toleration the ancient Greeks might plead, it is entirely repugnant to the Genius and Cuſtoms of our Country. Whoſoever underſtands the Original may eaſily find out the Deviation, and to thoſe who do not, the Knowledge thereof is no ways material: This I only add, leſt any ſhould pretend to accuſe me for want of Skill in the Language, and take this Paſſage for a Handle."
The passage in question is the second chapter of Book III. The context is that Habrocomas has fallen in with a hot bandit chap called Hippothous, who now tells his own origin story. In Rooke's translation, Hippothous "was struck with the Charms of a fair Virgin there [in his home town, Perinthus], whose Name was Hyperanthe. When first I saw her lead up the Perinthian Maids in a Dance, I lov’d her". The story has an unhappy ending.
From the English translation alone, it’s a fairly standard story of love gone tragically wrong, one of several in the course of the Ἐφεσιακά. But the part that Rooke felt he could not translate directly into English is this: in the original Greek, it’s absolutely clear that Hippothous fell in love, not with a beautiful young girl called Hyperanthe but with a beautiful young boy called Hyperanthes (incidentally otherwise recorded only as a Persian name). He didn’t see a young girl dancing with the other maidens; he saw a beautiful young man (μειράκιον) exercising in the gymnasium (πρῶτα ἐν γυμνασίοις διαπαλαίοντα). This was what Rooke felt “entirely repugnant to the Genius and Cuſtoms of our Country”. It’s not the only case of same-sex romance (let alone lust) in the Ἐφεσιακά, but it’s the one where the reader is most clearly meant to sympathise with the unhappy lover. Incidentally the 1797 translation into French is perfectly clear that Hyperanthes is a boy.
Anyway, this short romp from an earlier age is well worth seeking out. There is also a recent educational edition.
January 9, 2025
Prehistoria europejskiej powieści. Pohulał sobie autor zdrowo!
Trochę homomiłości, trochę hetero, on ma 16 lat, różne i różni zapłoną rządzą ku niemu, gdyż jego ciało efeba pięknością przewyższa posągi Erosa; ona ma lat 14, i pragnie mu się oddać, od kiedy tylko go ujrzała.
Co my tu jeszcze mamy: śluby wierności, pederastia, piraci, zbóje, porwania, próby wierności, pochowanie żywcem, wrzucenie do dołu z głodnymi psami, wierni służący, przepowiednie itd. itp. Grecja, Azja Mniejsza, Egipt, Fenicja, Sycylia, Italia. A wszystko na 70 stroniczkach. Happy end.
Romans grecki prawdopodobnie (datowanie jest przybliżone, ale niepewne) z I w.n.e.
A imię autora dla mnie to Ksenomorf.
Trochę homomiłości, trochę hetero, on ma 16 lat, różne i różni zapłoną rządzą ku niemu, gdyż jego ciało efeba pięknością przewyższa posągi Erosa; ona ma lat 14, i pragnie mu się oddać, od kiedy tylko go ujrzała.
Co my tu jeszcze mamy: śluby wierności, pederastia, piraci, zbóje, porwania, próby wierności, pochowanie żywcem, wrzucenie do dołu z głodnymi psami, wierni służący, przepowiednie itd. itp. Grecja, Azja Mniejsza, Egipt, Fenicja, Sycylia, Italia. A wszystko na 70 stroniczkach. Happy end.
Romans grecki prawdopodobnie (datowanie jest przybliżone, ale niepewne) z I w.n.e.
A imię autora dla mnie to Ksenomorf.
March 7, 2022
Efesíacas ha sido una novela sumamente entretenida. Si bien empieza como una historia de amor, también se mezcla con las aventuras de ambos amantes para reencontrarse.
Jenofonte de Éfeso mantiene una escritura concisa para narrar los sentimientos de los protagonistas, totalmente apasionados.
Si bien comparte algunos elementos con Romeo y Julieta, esta novela se diferencia en más cosas.
Jenofonte de Éfeso mantiene una escritura concisa para narrar los sentimientos de los protagonistas, totalmente apasionados.
Si bien comparte algunos elementos con Romeo y Julieta, esta novela se diferencia en más cosas.
July 5, 2026
Find yourself a man like Habrokomes, brother is the biggest simp under the sun.
Ok, so this was very fun, suprisingly fast-paced and quite emotional. The whole thing is so ridiculous that it becomes absurdly entertaining. I really enjoyed reading it and seeing all the romantic clichés that you can think of lmao
Ok, so this was very fun, suprisingly fast-paced and quite emotional. The whole thing is so ridiculous that it becomes absurdly entertaining. I really enjoyed reading it and seeing all the romantic clichés that you can think of lmao
January 2, 2019
Charmant et naïf à souhait. A ne surtout pas manquer surtout que le roman est très court.
October 14, 2019
A super repetitive story but very interesting and quick to read
February 8, 2022
def not one of fav ancient novels; probably due to it's form as an epitome. i enjoyed the parallels to the odyssey, and the complicated ethical values of the characters.
March 8, 2022
again as far as classics go this was pretty good!
December 28, 2022
Szczerze mogę przyznać, że ta lektura naprawdę mi się podobała - nie sądziłam, że starożytna epika może być tak wciągająca (a motywem przewodnim tej historii jest przecież miłość!).
April 30, 2023
li para a faculdade, mas foi fixolas yh gostei de ler
September 18, 2023
Essentially same sequence of events as Callirhoe, only shorter.
November 20, 2023
Anthia was extremely Snow White coded
September 26, 2025
insane read for class
November 17, 2025
Es como una copia con fines de promover el culto a Isis de la obra de Caritón pero bastante peor. Se puede leer, pero el interés es limitado
December 3, 2025
powieść o tym, że warto być brzydkim
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