Heliodorus

Heliodorus, the earliest and best of the Greek romance writers, was born at Emesa, in Syria. He was a sophist of the second half of the 3d century A.D., but has sometimes been confounded with a bishop of Trikka, in Thessaly (circa 390). The work by which he is known is entitled Ethiopica, in ten books, narrating in poetic prose, at times with almost epic beauty and simplicity, the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea. The work is distinguished from the later Greek romances by its vigour and its pure morality. See Rohde, Der Griechische Roman (1876). There are editions by Bekker (1855) and Hirschig in Scriptores Erotici (1856).